Tag: dadlife
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The Good Life
To escape the bickering, and whining, and catering to the needs and desires of everyone’s demands, I took our dog, Annie, for a walk on a quiet fire trail near our house. Bright and beautiful out, a sweet sea breeze came over the Oakland Hills with the afternoon sun. The mile and a half dirt…
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Married? Wish He Was…Better?
A modern twist on a Christmas Carol, A MARRIAGE FABLE is a novella, another tall tale of the powerful genie, Finnegus Boggs, and his lessons on love that inspires Andrew Wyman, a typical modern-day husband nearing his 25th wedding anniversary, to become a better man. New #Review: Journey Toward Enlightenment If you’re a fan of…
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We Are What We DO
In the car with my 10 yr old daughter the other day, she asked me what Ego meant, one of her vocabulary words for the week. I laughed. “Good question. What do you think it means?” “I wouldn’t ask if I knew, mom.” “Well, use it in a sentence, in context. You’ve heard the word…
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Between What is Said and What is Heard
On our drive from school the other day my tweenage son told me a classmate had offered him a joint. I’d been preparing for this moment, staging it in my head for years, ready with my bag full of allegorical stories of my reckless youth before easing into the “Why drugs are bad for you”…
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Raising Kids Without Religion
My husband and I raised our children without religion. We gave them no religious identity (as in claiming to be Christian or Jewish because of our parentage). We are both devout atheists, and I use the term devout with purpose. We don’t believe in a higher power, or any gods, or even the possibility of one. We…
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LOVE Defined
My sister is dead, I told the bank manager. She isn’t dead. She lives in Washington with her husband, having recently moved from L.A., where we were both born and raised. The bank manager expressed his condolences. He accepted the paperwork from our lawyer to remove my sister’s name from our Trust as the potential…
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Jobless America
Took a family vacation to Yellowstone last summer. After a day of exploring the spectacular park, we ate dinner at Canyon Village, a sprawling commercial development in the mist of the natural wonders. The kids wanted some souvenirs so we stopped in the gift shop before eating. The clerk at check-out was a kid, no…
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The Terrorist Within
Strong winds shake the plane and rain sheets off the wings and streaks down the small windows as we sit on the runway waiting to take off. The 737 engines ramp to a high pitch roar. My three year old daughter sitting next to me suddenly grabs my hand as our plane accelerates, faster and faster…
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On Being Cool
Had a meltdown on my tween son when he asked, yet again, for an iPad at breakfast this morning. Before the iPad he wanted a laptop. He’d insisted he needed my old HP the moment I purchased my Toshiba, though he could give no reason why he had to have it, since he had a powerful PC…
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The Power of Love
My son’s guitar teacher was freaking out the other day over the impending arrival of his first child. Beyond a healthy birth, he was consumed with anxiety over the care and feeding of an infant, all the way up through guiding his child through their teen years. As a parent of two tweens, I shared…
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