I had a great time with my kids today at this old timey historic re-creation farm thing. There were lots of lovely flowers, and cute animals - oh my god! piglets! - and some metallic blue dragon flies, and my kids were very snuggly during the tractor ride portion of our day.

We walked by some corn fields and I remembered when I was a kid there was lots of running through the cornfield next to the house, sometimes with my cousins and sometimes with my dogs and sometimes both. If you’ve never run though a corn field you might not know that the leaves can cut the shit out of you, like the kind of nasty paper-cut you can get from the edges of cardboard boxes, but cornleaf-cuts did not deter my cousins and I from playing hide and seek out there.

If you ever happen to be playing hide and seek in a corn field and you’re the one hiding, here are some tips:

1. Be shorter than the corn.
2. While...

Old friends stopped off at ours today on their way back home in the last leg of a multi-state trek. I hadn’t seen them in long enough that I can’t remember how long it’s been. Two years, I think, and only for a day or three, and probably another year or more before that. We looked at each others’ kids and said “wow, you’re so big now!” The kids smiled and looked away, a mix of “yes, I am big” and “who the hell are you?”, and two of them wandered over to the toys strewn across the lawn and two of them walked to the back of our yard to peak through the cracks in our backdoor neighbor’s privacy fence to see if anyone was swimming in the pool.

For much of the afternoon I sat on the picnic blanket in the shade and made eyes at my friends’ baby. She likes me. I think we bonded over having the same hairstyle, though hers is a bit more grown out than mine, more grown out on the top of the head...

We took our kid to a therapist. It was hard at first because it felt like we were saying there was something wrong with our child, and because it seemed like a lot of hassle - looking for information, trying to figure out if our insurance will cover it, and having to deal with another human being. So far it’s all worked out great, so once again my impulses are basically wrong. Most things are less work than I think they are, and less unpleasant than I think they are. I remain convinced, however, that all things are too much work and are very unpleasant. This is, I am sure, part of why I am raising a child who benefits from therapy.

I benefited from therapy myself. I did a few years of it in my early 20s or so, in response to some baggage from an unpleasant childhood, and as a result went from someone who would likely be a lousy partner and parent to someone who is a good partner and...

If you kick your sister in the face then you have to give back the book you yanked out of her hands. This is not a complex or debatable point. Like any sudden confrontation with one of the occasional moral certainties in our universe, this sets off tears and wailing. And somehow I’m the one who ends up feeling guilty. My three year old lies on the hallway floor, face streaked from crying, and bangs on the bedroom door with one hand, screaming “I need that book! I need it!” In the face of this absurd and self-absorbed display I felt bad for the little monster. I admit, not proudly, that for a moment I also resented my older daughter for having the poor judgment to be reading a book my younger daughter turned out to want, and to be lying down with her face in a kickable place. Why couldn’t she have just anticipated her sister’s wants beforehand and then catered to them? Is that really too...

I hear a thump and my insides shake, someone’s in the house, they’re in the kitchen, I can hear them moving around, as I stand I grab the mug of chamomile tea, cup it in my hand, handle wrapped around my fingers, I’ll toss the liquid in his face swing the mug at his nose his eyebrows, the tears and blood will make it so he can’t see then I can run. I listen, no further sound, he is - or they are, there’s probably more than one - waiting for me, heard me get up.

The small white cat with the gray and brown spots keeps purring, looks up at me. The cat. The other cats. No one’s in the house, it’s just my cats. God I’m so stupid clink clatter that’s the empty beer bottles I left on the kitchen table, he bumped the table no just the cats I’m safe I’m fine I’m safe thud something on the floor just a cat jumping off the counter but what if I’m wrong, car door slams outside, they’ll be at my...

“Can I help you?”

“I’ll take a decaf please.”

“Sure thing.”

“I’m trying to cut down on my caffeine.”

“One decaf. What size?”

“Small. If I have it too late in the day then I don’t sleep and I end up tired the
next day and it defeats the purpose of having coffee in the first place.”

“Sure. That’ll be one eighty three.”

“I think I got exact change. I like the taste of coffee though so that’s why I get the decaf. You know what actually could I get a medium? Is that a hassle?”

“No hassle at all, I haven’t poured it yet.”

“Great. I hate to be a bother to anybody.”

“Sure. That’ll be two forty three.”

“Thanks. Here, let’s see. One, two, twenty. Nope. No exact change. Sorry.”

“No problem.”

“I hate to be a bother. I was telling my sister that yesterday, she checks up on me. At my age she thinks I might forget where I am or fall over.”

“Medium decaf coming right up.”

“I think it’s...

“Hey what’s that lump? Hey did you hear me?”

“I’m busy.”

“Have you always had that lump?”

“What lump? I don’t know.”

I hear all of this with not even half my mind, I’m reading a book.

“Nate would you come over here?”

The conversation above clicks into place as I stand up, walk into the room. What lump? Lumps can’t be good. My daughter is naked - she takes her clothes off any time she can - standing in the living room turning in a circle holding a barbie doll in each hand.

“Look at this on her back.” My wife points. I walk a circle around my daughter at the same pace she’s turning. Yes, a lump. It’s maybe the size of my daughter’s elbow. It sits next to her shoulder blade. What if it’s cancer? My mind goes to both of my grandfathers hollowed out, once gigantic and powerful with voices that filled rooms “Nathan!”, turned to matchsticks, fragile, small shuffle-steps across tile...

The car pulls up. I wave, smile. My littlest leans forward in her carseat, points at me, mouths “Daddy!” I unlock the trunk, heave in my suitcase and backpack, slam the trunk shut, pop the rear passenger door open, lean in, “Daddy!” they both say, “my girls!” I kiss both their foreheads, “I missed you!” I shut the door, open my door, climb in, kiss my wife on the cheek, “thanks for picking me up!”

“Of course! Great to have you home.”

She drives back to our house, catches me up on the what they did - an outing to the park, swimming at the public pool, the children’s museum with Evelyn.

“Oh, you know, I may be being paranoid but when I got in the car the glovebox was open and the passenger door wasn’t all the way latched.”

“Huh. Anything missing?”

“No. Not that I know of anyway. The GPS is still here.”

I open the cover of the armrest between the driver and passenger seat.

“The...

KarenandTess. My older daughter wrote it on the wall behind the door in the computer room at our house. Her name and the name of her best friend. The letters run into each other, tip forward and backward like toddlers learning to walk. They’re all capital letters, “those are easier to read, Daddy,” she has explained to me. I left the writing there on the wall when I found it, out of distraction. I was looking for her socks or shoes or something, in a hurry to get to the library in time for storytime or to meet a friend for a playdate. I continued to leave it there out of inertia, only seeing it when looking for something, and out of laziness, there’s always enough - too much - to do and anyway the door covers it. As we’ve begun packing to move I’ve left it there out of sentimentality. She hasn’t seen Tess in about a year. I don’t know when she will.

My wife was Tess’s nanny close to...

In which Nate writes against the darkness, shows great decorum and maturity, and resolves to read Winnie the Pooh in the tub

Power’s out. Laptop says it has about an hour and a half of juice left. It’s not late enough to try to sleep. It’s too hot, too, and humid. I opened the windows, helping one of those problems, worsening the others. I hope the electricity comes back on in time for the AC to cool the place, and dry it out, enough for me to sleep.

I got a bunch of graphic novels at the library today, was excited to start one tonight, was excited to finish Winnie the Pooh as well. I’ve read it with my ears, as an audiobook, several times because it was my oldest’s favorite for a year or so, but that was always interrupted by having to do something. No reading, though. I guess technically I could read something dull and marxist on a PDF on my computer. I guess I could do a lot of...