Picture me snapping this picture while walking across campus this morning to pick my son up after swim practice. Now see me thinking of how to incorporate the photo into an end-of-year message to people I care about. I’m wishing you a calm and celebratory day (or else an invigorating one, if that’s your thing)….
Have you enjoyed my photography over the years? Interested in a physical memento of some of my artwork? I have 2026 calendars available now. I created two calendar options for 2026, one Pacific Northwest photography and one of all Lewis & Clark College images. I also have a small, but growing, array of blank notebooks…
It’s the time of year in Oregon where the weather says it’s still summer, but school calendars, sports schedules, and changing activities say otherwise. For example, I’m still a few weeks away from obsessively taking fall leaf photos (get ready!). Yet, fall in its broader, societal sense is here. It is the time where I…
Our yard steeps in terrestrial smells with the slow crawl of a season. This morning is wet soil and dark decay and rich mud along our fence line where my son tramps his path up and down and the builders who replaced our fence the week before dug or trod the last of our grass…
It’s heavy right now. Our world this week, this month. Before, too. This short post by Seth Godin resonated for me earlier in the week. It’s a one-minute read and well worth the time. The final two sentences: “The purpose of speech is to alert others to our point of view, and the purpose of…
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”—Virginia Woolf New eras are often old times dusted off and dressed in different clothes. A new age of book burning, book banning. Censorship and shutdown. Reality distorted to fill…
We can observe the character of our impact on the world around us in the sort of people who come to us for guidance or direction.
“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.” —Virginia Woolf In the end, one’s mind is not so free as we…
“The problem is not scientifically illiterate kids; it is scientifically illiterate adults. Kids are born curious about the natural world. They are always turning over rocks, jumping with two feet into mud puddles and playing with the tablecloth and fine china.”—Neil deGrasse Tyson Our children spill from the elementary in T-shirts indifferent to the rain…
We sometimes get a second chance at things. But, never a second first chance. Past remains past and we dwell there only in our minds. And only for short spells if we want to move forward. Whether a physical path or a path more spiritual or metaphorical, realizing when we cannot go back is freeing. …
This morning I read an interview with the futurist Brian David Johnson and he said, “The future is intensely local.” One of his points is that we need to understand that we build our futures and that we have a lot of control over our role in this process. We aim our focus. We get…
Josephina has been through this before. She knows things won’t always come easy. Times get tough. But, she also knows that she is prepared. She will adjust when necessary and she is confident in her ability to find solutions and make the most of what lies ahead. She has nurtured the support networks in her…
My daughter hovers beside me while I tear into the cardboard box. I see the books I ordered while she sees something different. “Bubbles!” she says. I hand her lengths of clear, plastic packing material from around my books and she hurries out of the kitchen to the bathroom. She shuts the door and explosions…
Yesterday I watched our flag lift and dip on a breeze as light snow fell all afternoon. Today the flag hangs low, pulled toward Earth by the weight of ice crusting its red, white, and blue all-weather nylon. The all-weather earning its keep this weekend. Fewer trees will stand in Portland next week. Fewer limbs…
A Chinese proverb translates to: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” We are adept at finding things we wish we had done differently a long time ago. Past decisions we didn’t make. The path we did not lay for ourselves. Knowledge like this is…
Picture a blue, canvas-lined laundry cart. The kind of thing you might have thrown used gym towels into back in high school. A Goodwill worker gestures you toward the left side of the lot and rolls one of a matching pair of blue carts forward as you idle to a stop. A younger man follows…
When all else fails, simple pleasures will remain.
Sometimes, I catch myself waiting for time to pass. Engaged less with my presence in this moment than with the idea of getting to the next moment. Some future time. Daydreaming is different. I daydream, too. It is a kind of not staying present, but it can offer richness. Finding the right time to daydream,…
“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”—Rainer Maria Rilke I have always liked milestones. Commemorating the passage of time in our artificial human increments. I believe in work and sport anniversaries. When a friend celebrates an Alcoholics Anonymous milestone, I rejoice with them. Theirs is an accomplishment of greater magnitude…
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.“—John Steinbeck Thirty degrees when we woke on this eve of Christmas Eve. The kids put on an extra layer over pajamas, donned boots, and went out at sunrise to leave footprints in the frosty grass. They traipsed trails in…
Down which tunnel do you stare? It helps to pay attention. Take a few steps back and make sure it is the best one for you. Sometimes, we get tunnel vision gazing into that intoxicating, luminescent little device in our hand. Other times it is peering deeply into a personal slight or a missed opportunity….
“You can’t use too much water or it will be slippery.” A stooped gentleman swipes his mop in between chair legs and around a table leg in deft arcs. The air is rich with donut scents from rows of fritters and glazed, cakes and old-fashioned. “Now you try.” The old man offers the mop handle to…
Words of Others In the introduction to Brave Enough, Cheryl Strayed says, “I think of quotes as mini-instruction manuals for the soul.” Her book goes on to comprise well over one hundred pages of quotation from sources across her writing career. I have been a quote collector longer than I can remember. I return often to words that…
Beginnings are opportunity. Many of us stare at a new beginning in the coming days. Wrapped in changing schedules, a return to school, or a relocation. Maybe all of the above. Many of us now exit a sort of hibernation phase. For many of us, this has been the longest ever disruption to our usual…
Children play readily with nearly anything. And at most any time. Their minds arc toward play simply and naturally. Sometimes that changes as we grow up. Somewhere the inclination falters and gets replaced. Maybe sometimes we miss it. We can’t force ourselves back into play. But, we can open to it. A moment, a spell of…
Longest day of the year. Did you make the absolute most of it? Is that too lofty an expectation? Here’s the thing, perfection might be a nice target, but falling short can still mean a job well done. Did you give it a good go? Did you take care of yourself and show kindness to…
It has been quite a month of June and we are only to the 13th. Quite a spring, really. I have written various messages in my head and in notebooks and not quite figured out what I wanted to share, what warranted sharing with you or would be of any benefit. I wrote this last…
I spoke with a high school student last weekend. When I asked how her Saturday was going, she said it was going well and then added, “Although Saturday feels a lot like Thursday.” So true. I thought I would share a few things I have come across or rediscovered this week as we roll through…
My step-dad got me this Mary Oliver book for Christmas. Dog Songs is a collection of the poet’s works about or involving various pooches. And she was clearly a dog person. I like to read a poem or two from this volume in a sitting every so often, as I do with most of my…
[I wrote this just shy of three years ago. I still enjoy this view into the start of a perfect morning when the kids were younger.] The sound of silverware clinking on dishes. No line. No rush. Cashier at my favorite breakfast joint who remembers my name. Free coffee refills. Classic rock soundtrack not yet…
The opposite of a letdown is the lift-up. As a coach, a teacher, or a parent, we sometimes create an expectation. People agree to be part of something, to live up to a set of guidelines. Then, we live our lives. We traverse busy days. Just getting through the day can seem like an odyssey….
The warm feeling of making someone’s life better. Because you could, not because you had to. It feels great when you do your friend a favor, often even better when that friend shows you gratitude. What about planning for our own future well-being? Sometimes that is harder than expected. We are not innately geared to…
A writer who elegantly connects the dots is critical to the important, often fraught, conversations of our time. Jill Lepore wrote a fantastic article in The New Yorker last week called “Are robots competing for your job?” She lays out a history of human fears about automation and the often-misguided worries that attend those fears. She fairly…
There is only room for so much. Lin-Manuel Miranda once tweeted, “Good night beautiful. Make room for happiness tomorrow. If you make room for it, it’ll show up.” Where does that space come from? Maybe from the thoughts we spend on worry. Past regrets and future anxiety. Time committed to perseverating on what we don’t want…
Elevating our game for the rush only works because there is also down time. That part of our day or our calendar where there is no rush. My morning coffee shop was bustling when I arrived and has grown busier since I sat down. The baristas hurry. They move in a fluid way around one…
I breathe easy as brake lights sizzle to life in the lane next to me and I cruise on past to merge onto a different freeway, leaving people idling on the interstate. Dodged a bullet once again. My traffic app is like the concierge for my mental health. I tap open the map and local…
Sometimes we know what we need. And then we wait… We hope the person who could help will notice, will reach out, will step up. And sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. And while these tests—of loyalty, of friendship, of awareness, of our own worth—might seem like the best course, they don’t usually yield the…
When life seems it could not possibly get weirder, history is there to show us some things change while others do not. Many of us cleave to reason. Okay, some of us. Humans will never operate in a completely rational way. Nevertheless, the goal of seeking knowledge is critical. Beginning from an inquisitive starting point…
He is a chicken police officer and I am a raccoon. Same job title. We are patrolling a construction site at night. What was that strange noise from behind the cement mixer? We should investigate. Those with less imagination would notice it is broad daylight on a sunny afternoon in our back yard In a…
A conversation my four-year-old son does not have with his friend from preschool: “Hey Zachy, remember that time you smashed me in the face with a bucket?” “What’s that you say, Jakey?” “Yeah, it was a bucket.” “Ummm…” “You were spinning around holding it at arm’s length, just going around and around and around.” “A…
“Dad, I’m a T-Rex and you are a tiny baby fox.” I fear he has stacked the odds heavily in his favor. Although, you never can tell. In his land of imagination polar bears still eat seals, yes. Just the same, sometimes seals go out on the ice floes hunting polar bears. What follows is a…
I was a freshman in college. I remarked to my teammate, Joal, on how quickly my year was flying past. (We were riding in the back of a U-Haul, long story…). Joal was a senior, sage and kind. Early on, he had taken me under his wing. He smiled—I remember it as a wistful sort…
He seems too big to be my baby boy, yet still so small for someone who will one day be a man as big as I. Little hands fill tiny mittens. Growing feet squeeze into small blue boots. My hat. His gone missing in the rush to get out into the snow. His sister watches…
How often do I throw my head back like this to laugh in delight? Not enough. More since having kids. Emily’s laugh is intoxicating, her whole body taken over by bliss. She doesn’t decide to laugh, but merely embodies it. If she were an adult, this could almost be one of those advertising photos with a…
Sometimes housekeeping feels overwhelming. Entropy threatens every open piece of carpet, every counter top. Young people scamper vigorously, moving toys from room to room, scattering them like so many breadcrumbs that create no discernible trail home, instead appearing as an expansion of territory outward from the playroom. Brightly colored chaos of sharp objects to distract…
An article I wrote just went live on SwimSwam. Poets and media can talk about legacy. An athlete has the process. I touch on a few areas around the un-glamorous (yet critical) area of process in our sport and in life. I hope you’ll take a moment to give it a read. If you do,…
By this point I had picked him several dozen ripe blackberries. Our hands were stained with purple juices lining the creases in our skin. I can reach higher and deeper into the bushes so I collect the ripest, fattest berries from overhead and out of his reach while he works at my knee level. I…
What a week! It’s that time once a quadrennial where the sport that lives near and dear to our hearts on a daily basis takes up that position in the hearts of many more people around the world. Our daily act of improving in swimming and competing for one’s team leaps onto the world stage….
(Because I won’t get near trademark infringement…) I’ll take all I can get and still want more. I’m not an equal opportunity junkie, though. I have my favorites. First week of the summer Olympics, I go straight for the swimming coverage. But, once I’ve plowed…
It wouldn’t be the same without traffic. It wouldn’t be the same without trains. Dining out with my 3 ½-year-old is also imminently easier, by comparison, than if we were joined by his baby sister. Don’t get me wrong, we both love Emily. But, Jakey and I have certain routines. We sometimes have our fun…
Our kaleidoscopic castle grows taller, wider. An elaborate Lego internal structure gives way to a magnet tile outer wall and an attached garage. The garage is for the school bus. This all began half an hour earlier in the hustle and bustle of my wife getting ready to leave for work. It began with a…
Thursday. April 21st, 2016 A pretty nondescript Thursday from my perspective. Only a couple things on the calendar: Take Jakey to preschool. Teach Lifeguarding class. Then other work. The business of relating to people, recruiting, accounting, taking delivery of huge pieces of pool equipment. I like days like this with a wide swath of open…
Relaxing Sunday morning. All five of us gather in bed for post-wake-up lounging around 6:50 this morning. The fifth occupant being the cat. Although, in deference to chronology, if not seniority, Beatrice is really number three in our household. Sun peeking through the blinds is gold, happy. Soothing without the rush of schedule. Moment to…
A short conversation between my wife and our son: “I like using the snissors.” “What were you using them on?” “I was cutting the ground.” “You mean the carpet?” He shows his mischievous smile. “That’s why you don’t get to use the snissors, babe. You don’t always make the best decisions with them.”
The other day while driving to preschool I asked Jakey what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, “Shark.” I laughed. I laughed for about a block and then said, “Really, a shark?” “Yeah!” “And I will eat. And I will go omp, omp, omp!” His vigorous arm movements flashed in the…
One year holds so much life. For our family, the days and hours of laughter pile up quickly. Adventures arise in a trip to the playground, the supermarket, and our favorite breakfast stop for biscuits and biscuit sandwiches. Sometimes it feels like a year has flown by. Parts of my life do feel this way….
Jakey notices everything that happens in our neighborhood. He’s like that creepy old lady who peeks out from behind the curtain and observes everyone else’s life, cataloguing it, just waiting. Except he’s two and a half, so it’s not creepy yet. Give him time, though. This morning, he asked where our neighbor was when we…
If we try hard enough (or smart enough) we can often look past difficulty. Or around it. The key is not to look directly at the difficulty so long that we become paralyzed and eventually give up. Many times we throw in the towel even before starting the search for other options. You can take…
Dear Coach, Week before last I was hosing down the pool deck at the college. You know the routine. Careful steering of debris toward the drains. Wet feet by the end. Two home meets coming up and the deck needed some work. Several times I thought of you. Remembered the times, too many to count,…
Wet ground, wet grass, wet leaves from rain last night Partly cloudy sky, bright sun shines on fall leaves of orange yellow red brown every color in between Light breeze drifts fingers through forest Shakes each crinkly translucent pennant so the whole of Autumn shimmers
“Poison Control, this is Janet. How can I help you?” Hers was the calm confidence you want to hear in an emergency. This was my first call to the Poison Control hotline, but I could tell by Janet’s voice—warm, a touch grandmotherly—we were in good hands. I gave her the quick rundown. My son had eaten…
Adrift. On wide open seas. I don’t think we’re going to make it. All three of us are on the same futon, surrounded by sharks. We have paddles—a plastic rake missing one tooth, a plastic shovel, and a matching yellow hoe. These are little use. Inexplicably, we have begun chumming the water to, as Jakey…
I often have conversations with friends that begin, “I just read this interesting article” or “In this podcast I was listening to…” The world is big and interesting. Consider this digest and those to follow as my online repository for those conversations. Now those chance conversation topics live on. Here is what I’ve been reading,…
I would say our family has been running in circles a lot lately, but it’s really more of an oval. Jakey will walk up to me and say, “Daddy, will you scare me?” The invitation is tough to turn down even if I’m tired. Most evenings Heather and I spend at least some minutes running…
Firetrucks Time to read a magazine Hugs Construction equipment Boats Throwing stones into water Sunday mornings around the house Everyday sights like garbage trucks passing outside, dogs on walks, and people mowing their lawn Minor to medium-sized holidays Using the blender or coffee grinder It is not lost on me that these are all simple…
I must have looked like a confused golden retriever with my head cocked to one side when I first saw the sunflower sticking up out of the ravine. It was about waist high to my position on the paved shoulder and a few feet down the hill. Out of place. I pass this ravine almost…
Elation. We should all be so lucky to live with this much joy in our lives. If even a moment of each day could contain this much unbridled, rapturous energy… What a way to live! This video has been bouncing around the internet for a while, but every time I watch it I’m renewed in…
Many things happened Friday. Specifically last Friday June 26th, 2015. For starters, a girl named Hollie thanked me for teaching her that morning at swim camp. She thanked me several times actually. Hollie is maybe the most courteous young person I have ever coached. I don’t mean the kind of rote and robotic courtesy you…
“Is her house made out of gingerbread?” “What?” In hindsight, I can see how my question might have confused Heather. “In Hansel and Gretel. Is the witch’s house made of gingerbread? Do they eat it?” “I don’t remember them eating the house.” The thing about fairy tales is they can start to blur together. We…
“The first six miles really weren’t that bad.” This is how she put it. “There was a lot to look at, all the bridges and buildings. But, once I passed under the Fremont Bridge…” I had lunch with my friend Emily recently. She coaches swimming and she swims, as well. A few years back she…
Picture a man carrying a 13-foot long stand-up paddle board over his head through a crosswalk at a busy intersection. For the sake of the imagery, picture him as a small man in stature, but in fairness you should also know he’s totally ripped (as we said back in the day). Stefan mentioned this morning…
Sometimes people give us a gift and sometimes their gift is simply that they thought to share news of their own good fortune with us. Today I was thinking back to mid-March when one of our junior women walked—nearly sprang—into our office to tell us, “I got the Rogers!” Sofia meant a competitive summer research…
I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Santa Clara. It’s stunning. Just a couple miles down the road from Google and you can practically smell it in the air. Or maybe that’s just the coffee. Although, when you get down to it coffee is probably what fueled the tech boom in the first place. Nonetheless, you…
“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.” — Maya Angelou Heather often asks our son if he wants infinite kisses. On just a couple of occasions, he has said yes. More times, he grins and says, “No thank you,”…
“What you doin’?” That’s how Jakey begins many a line of inquiry. He shortens words like doing so he has an adorable, manly tone like a tiny Joey Tribbiani from Friends. “What’s doggie doin’?” “What Mr. Beachwood doin’?” Traffic was crazy this morning. I had to take the right turn onto Terwilliger and circle around…
Of the dead. Usually it’s discouraged. But, I’ll get to that. I am sitting in Village Coffee this morning in Multnomah Village. I am seated in the window nook in the center of three old theatre-style folding chairs. My laptop is on a TV tray. Four older men are seated around a tiny round table…
Starting is hard. Often much harder than continuing. The time between your alarm going off and when you actually get out of bed is inevitably more agonizing than twenty minutes later when your morning routine is underway. For most swimmers, the act of jumping into the pool at 6:00am is incomprehensibly more difficult than the…
I started my Earth Day with a free doughnut. Which is funny because when I made a pot of coffee this morning to take to the office, I thought, “Man, this would really go great with a doughnut.” Because that’s how people think in their heads. Right? Okay, probably the transcript for my internal monologue…
Happy Earth Day 2015! Let’s keep it healthy so this guy has somewhere to play with his grandkids.
Some people do things that still astonish me even after I’ve seen them a hundred times. An Olympic gymnast springing far too high into the air and doing what appears far too many flips before touching down. Or the way my wife can type speedily into Excel and the program actually knows what to do…
I followed this truck along Broadway and over the Broadway Bridge last week. Which is to say, I followed the tow truck that was towing this beat-up old mail truck. Every time I looked the delivery truck square in the face, it felt just a little off. I knew it was being towed, but there…
There’s a boy outside our house right now climbing on the same dirt pile Jakey likes to climb on. Everything about his body language says he is having a blast. He seems to be on a walk with his grandmother. Something in her body language says that she doesn’t love him climbing my dirt pile,…
In the movie Groundhog Day, a well-dressed, portly man approaches Bill Murray’s character in the hallways of a B&B and asks, “Think it’ll be an early Spring?” Bill Murray says, “I’m predicting March 21st.” Spring got an early start in Oregon this year. Owing to our near absence of winter. No one told the white…
By the time most people read this, my son will be two. I wrote this next part a year ago with the approach of Jakey’s 1st birthday. I never finished it. I felt like it was about time. Rewind your mind one year. Join me… in Spring 2014. _________________________________________ Birthdays. I have never anticipated any…
“Do you remember when he learned to walk?” Heather asked me this tonight in the kitchen long after Jakey was in bed. We’re in a bit of a countdown to the young man’s second birthday and it makes us nostalgic about all the milestones along the way. I recounted his pulling up onto anything that…
“I’m now living my 85th year.” That’s how Ron put it this morning. He was in our swimming pool during lap swim, his usual lane 8. Privilege is too artless a word to describe how lucky I feel to know Ron these past 7 ½ years I’ve lived in Portland. He is easily on my…
Our friend Arri said to my son, “Jakey, what’s your favorite color?” He paused a few seconds and I expected him to say yellow. He identifies most things as yellow to begin with even when they’re not. It’s one of the first words he learned, but I actually think he’s being contrary in a developmentally…
People go new places for vacation because these places are different. Or sometimes we might return to the same place year after year because it was once a new place that struck a chord with us. We love having a version of that same experience upon each return. For some people it’s Cabo or Maui….
We love watching people do things well. High level performance of just about any kind is captivating. Doesn’t matter if you know much about what you’re seeing or not. I watched Olympic curling in person. Really, curling. I have no idea what they’re doing, but it was amazing! All that sweeping and sliding. I loved…
Jakey has been a grabber since day one. As he rounds out his second year, the grabbing has intensified and his wingspan is much longer. The boy has orangutan arms and tentacles for fingers. All that he can reach he touches. Which brings us to our short detour on the way home from daycare last…
In reference to yesterday’s post… It doesn’t have to be a negative to have a high opinion of oneself, within reason. A lot of the best people I know fit this bill. You can usually tell them from the other kind—those who are conceited, vain, arrogant—by the way they make you feel. Is their personality…
Sometimes we say things like, “He has a high opinion of himself.” It’s not usually a compliment. And when I’ve used that phrase in the past I haven’t meant it as a compliment either. But, what’s wrong with having a high opinion of yourself? I certainly want my swimmers to have high opinions of themselves….
The second glove fell a split second after the first and I saw both of them drift downward through the wind to rest in brown, brushy grass that poked up out of the snow. There should have been no grass visible in that spot, but for the saddest Cascades snowfall in years. All four little…
Yes In My Back Yard More or less. Just down the road, actually. Minutes from our home. Cool stream, verdant mossy rocks, decaying logs. Did I mention the spectacular new playground just yards away that my son loves? He climbed his first cargo net today and slid down the big-kid slide. Then threw stones in…
Sometimes beauty can bring you to a standstill, even when you’re on skis. If you are willing slow down long enough. How often do we notice something amazing and keep right on moving? Oh, that’s nice is all our brains and our hurry will allow. Life is a little bit better—or a lot bit better—if…
Trees and kids go together. I climbed them to heights that now dizzy my head and would survey all the lands around my childhood home. I may as well have been a seafarer high on a mast sighting distant land for the excitement and freedom these perches radiated through my heart. Smaller trees fell to…
Today’s heroes in chronological order: First, Rachel. One of my swimmers. You went out of your way to play with Jakey at the pool and are always so excited to see him. You make faces at him and receive high fives. You also used an old remote control that he found in a drawer to…
It’s like returning to your childhood home to find a shopping mall where you expected the little league field. Ski slopes should have snow on them in February, at least in the northern hemisphere. At least on Earth. I learned to ski at Meadows when I was 12. Sometimes you ski powder and sometimes you…
Ten minutes from home on the freeway. That’s when Jakey fell asleep. On our way back from the train show this afternoon. When I got him into his bedroom, I tried for a stealthy diaper change and crib transplant. No dice. At first, he was happy to see the inside of his crib—stuffed G-raffe and…
Better to cross the starting line already moving than to begin from a standstill. Last year at this time I wrote about New Years Resolutions. Some people believe that January is not the best time for resolving to make big changes. See holiday challenges, travel, iffy weather, all that. I get it. But, you know…
What you’ll hear first is Jakey. Followed by his mom. Then the little man again. Hands down—no question—one of my Top-5 favorite things Jakey says. It’s up there with “weed whacker,” “leaf blower,” and “Daddy!” Zimbabwe stands for the last letter in the “Alphabet of Nations” song by They Might Be Giants. It’s one of…
Facebook probably already told you this, but yesterday was 12/13/14. Plenty of people had birthdays or anniversaries, but the significance for most of us lay largely in the quaint, clean progression of numerals. We are pattern-recognizing animals, after all. Numbers on clocks and calendars are artificial constructs people created to give order to their days…
Every day has a high point. What was yours? It’s no surprise this close cousin of gratitude should follow on the heels of the Thanks-giving holiday. It’s also no mystery that we get more of what we focus on. Who doesn’t want more high points? Maybe it was a kind word, a sight, or simply…
Thanksgiving means more once you’ve left home for good. Maybe that’s going away to college. Maybe it’s just moving out on your own for the first time. Thanksgiving starts to mean a return to family, tradition, and history, rather than just another holiday on the calendar. And sometimes it means giving thanks. Is this cliché?…
A year ago when Jakey began a new daycare, they gave us what felt like reams of paperwork to complete. One of the questions was Things your baby is afraid of: We laughed at this question. When Jakey was seven months old, all we could come up with was unexpected loud noises. Almost everyone jumps…
Sometimes you have to pull the plug. Tonight has been a good night writing away on some fiction after Jake-meister went to bed. Until tiredness set in. Then things like this happened: It didn’t just start right away. Yawns came on first, followed by slow thinking like sailing across molasses. Then my eyelids fluttered shut…
The leaves remind me. Seven years I have walked or driven along Terwilliger Boulevard almost every day. Thin Oregon Ash line the southern sidewalk for a stretch of several blocks, from the Subway shop on down to my turn at Alice. Most of each year they stand thick with green leaves rustled by spring and…
In the forest it sounds like it’s raining long after a heavy storm has passed. Millions of droplets make their way leaf to leaf toward earth through a thick canopy. No more rain falls from still pregnant clouds overhead and the puddles in the open are glass. Yet just yards away I hear a rain…
I worry about people who pin their emotions to weather patterns. Weather can impact our feelings, but we’re asking for trouble if we let it drive our emotions and outlook to the extreme. What else is askew if the rain, snow, or sun dictates our mood? More on this tomorrow…
Today was my first swimming lesson. (As a dad.) Jakey and I journeyed across town to Matt Dishman Community Center. I didn’t expect the sensation coursing through me as I carried him across the parking lot. I was nervous. I spend all my time around pools. I run two of them, I have swum in…
I am walking out of New Seasons market when I pass two boys, about ten or eleven years old, milling around out front by a column. I’m carrying the eggs I bought hurriedly on my lunch break. Both boys have skateboards and are loitering in the truest sense of the word. One holds a bottle…
Ripened, sun drenched grapes sag on full vines above my head. Hundreds more pepper the ground, burst open with juices running into the soil. Their perfume conveys so much sweetness I stop to savor breath after deep breath. This could be what people mean when they speak of drinking something in when they don’t actually…
I’ve been teaching Jakey to beat box. He can make a few different sounds. His best one is the cymbal noise I’ll describe as “tssch.” He’s still working on the bass sound that goes something like, “Pbfff.” His tiny lips purse and twist as he works for each noise. Satisfaction pouches out his cheeks in…
Have you ever read a book that blew you away so completely that you wondered how you got by in the world before that book existed or before you read it? Take your time answering… If yes, then try this neuroses on for size: After completing this life-altering, genre-bending masterpiece, does a certain melancholy creep…
More or less made it to the new year last night, but only just. We stayed up “late” by watching a movie and heading for bed at 10:00pm. We’ve been on sleep triage lately trying to get to bed soon after the baby. This was an exception. I read until about 11:50 and fell asleep. …
Welcome. I bid you good morning or good evening. Or even good afternoon, if that is the case. Thank you for joining me here today. Shel Silverstein begins his book Where the Sidewalk Ends with a poem called “Invitation.” It goes like this: If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer,…
