Category Archive

[Written in April, with apologies for the delayed publication] In a week, we head to visit the in-state university where our eldest has committed to spend the next four years of her life. My wife, who feels each kid’s pain at twice the intensity felt by the kid, fortunately also feels each kid’s success with twice the delight. Her feet …

I was at game night with the fellas when one of their high school age kids joined us for dinner. Knowing a couple of us are finance geeks, she shared a budgeting exercise that was an assignment for an economics course. My enthusiasm for hearing her planned budget (how, based on an average starting salary after graduating college, she proposed …

We’ve had a couple of major knucklehead moments among the men in our household this past week, and they are remarkable enough to be worth noting – we’ve earned the public shaming. The first belongs to my son. A month ago, his all frosh high school team overcame the odds to beat an all-star senior team in the school trivia …

The liberal arts undergraduate eduction is dead; you must know what you want to be by age 16. This is what you might conclude from looking around at the friends of my high schoolers. A couple of kids have been doing bench research in a lab for two summers, something I did not have the preprofessional stamina to pursue until …

I am up before dawn. My daughter is about to leave the U.S. for a couple of weeks on an all expenses paid program to another country, part of a sponsored cultural exchange. She will live with a family, converse in the language of the land, and experience the solitude and growth that accompanies this type of experience. I am …

Spring Break this year constituted visits to family. The hazard with such visits is always trying to time the duration exactly right, long enough that the memories you make together lay a foundation for positive common experiences, short enough that you don’t regress to your worst childhood self. I used to be a squeeze every ounce together kind of guy, …

Bidding my daughter good night recently, I played her an album of Icelandic alternative rock (Sigur Ros) that I haven’t listened to for years. The songs were orchestral, a little abrasive to listen to, but they built on one another through their arrangement. It got me thinking (in the digressive manner I increasingly relish with age) about order. I was …

[This is Part 2 of 2. Please find Part 1 here.] When we last checked in, I was a high school student enjoying the benefits of participation in theater arts and music. The value can best be described as a combination of eventual self-confidence that comes with repeat public performances compounded by the comfort in one’s skin that comes with …

I was a teenage Madrigal. That was the name of the highly competitive coed singing group I belonged to in high school. (I was also a member of another, less selective group, the Royal Knights. The entry requirements for that group were a pulse and a Y chromosome). The competition to join singing groups at our high school was cutthroat …

The biggest investment I made over of the last couple of years was in being present for the end of my father’s life and helping my parents plan for his death. Dad survived a diagnosis of lymphoma in his late 20s, fortunate that the era heralded some of the first truly effective treatments for that disease. One major treatment component …