My wife and I have an ongoing debate about whether I take too many photos. Or, more to the point, whether I keep too many of the photos I take. The matter has come to a head lately because our photo account just filled to 89% capacity. We get warnings all the time now. I […]
Parenting
I first wrote this post in October 2020, when my kids were much younger and Halloween decorations loomed from every corner. * I forget this every year—in October, there are places where it is no longer safe to walk. If we want to go to our friend Peter’s house, we can’t go up the street […]
A couple of weeks ago I spent a long weekend with my dad in Astoria, the town in Oregon where I grew up. Our visits tend to go like so: On the first day I arrive in the late afternoon and we go for a walk, either at a beach or around the neighborhood. The […]
In the last two years I’ve had a number of stressful experiences. And every time I’ve realized: I am really suffering, but this is a very normal experience. People do these things all the time. How did I not realize how amazingly tough all these people are? For example: my parents both died, about 7 […]
My preschooler is awed by many things, some of them more generally relatable than others. A spider in the sliding-door track. Mist coming through the woods. Irish butter. And rocks. For a long while now, her favorite miracles have been rocks. She doesn’t anthropomorphize them, turn them into pets, or expect unreasonable things from them. […]
I believe. I don’t know in what exactly, but something is happening out there, gears and orbits turning, disparate points meeting, then moving apart. We’re bound in ways unexplained by simple principles of causality. That is my belief. My youngest turned 18 last week as comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS passed at its closest to Earth, which didn’t […]
Father’s Day. Many of the fathers of the People of LWON’s have died, some long ago, some recently; and some haven’t died at all and are entirely alive. We have things that belonged to them, we have things we want to ask them. This sounds like it might be sad but it’s not. Helen: Right […]
An Icelandic beach, which I did not visit this summer. Summer is not over, officially, just yet; I know, it’s past Labor Day, but it is still Lower Summer* here and I am not ready. So although it is not gone, I am already mourning its end, especially the things I did not do, and […]
