Can You Hear Me Now Question Mark

The words you are reading have been typed by my own fingers, pressing little keys that make letters on my screen. If you really want to get into it, my keyboard is a little bit dirty. I don’t clean it often enough, and my kids use it a lot (I tell them to wash their […]

Get in the Car, We’re Leaving   (for early Fathers Day)

A man and his well-traveled family came by the house the other night, friends of friends needing a place to stay. He was a gray-bearded mountain climber, tall plank of a man 70 years old, one eye squinting, the other permanently closed from some accident in his youth that I didn’t ask about. He came […]

A Council of Writer Dads

Sunday is Father’s Day, a national holiday built around the giving and receiving of ugly ties, power tools and camping gear. I’ve always felt that Father’s Day is a sort of second class holiday – an awkward “me too” to Mother’s Day that is just a tick above Administrative Professionals’ Day (4/22/15) and Fairy Day (6/24/15). […]

Fatherhood: From Here to Eternity

“My father,” I would say, “is older than the universe.” The line has always gotten laughs. It comes at a point in my public talks when I want to convey how comically recent is our current understanding of the universe—so recent that people who were present at the creation still walk among us. I’ve never thought […]

The Mystery of the (Not) Missing Fathers

There’s a song we all like to sing along to at our house. “Popcorn” by the Barenaked Ladies is uptempo, wistful, and propelled towards an explosive crescendo by an onomatopoetic beat. There’s much to love, in other words, but I always get tripped up a little by the first line of the lyric:   Mama […]