What they don’t tell you about parenting…
is that one night everything will go perfectly, the boys will eat their dinner without complaint–with compliments!–and offer almost no protest at bedtime. You will pour a glass of wine, sit down to watch...
Category: Friends & Family
How to make a Moscow Mule
The fiber swam-viscous, milky, sexual-on the other side of the amber glass. I pressed my eye as closely as I dared. My heart felt precious little shame as I thought, “That must be what...
Father’s Day 2012
My kids and wife brought me breakfast in bed–good black coffee, some egg whites with chopped peppers and Sriracha–and four hand-made cards. There were gifts, too: a couple of beers and limes in a...
12-year gift: Fireflies
Fourteen months ago, my wife and I bought this home. It had its flaws. It had its places it could be improved. It’s a slow and sometimes frustrating process turning someone else’s house into...
Some things never change
You can move from one house to another. You can mature beyond your age. You can grow up as fast as fate allows. But sometimes the unavoidable gravity of youth pulls your face back...
Mastodon Weekend returning to Greenville?
Details are still to come (you’ll see them right here sometime in the next week or two), but for now, if you ever thought, “Wow, it sure seems like those cats in Greenville are...
GoPro Hero 2: Experiments in fatherhood and beyond
My dad died the weekend before my 38th birthday. I didn’t learn until a few days later that one of the last things he did was buy me a birthday gift. It was a...
13.1 miles for Dad
I wanted to tell somebody, but there was nobody to tell. Though I was elbow-to-elbow with some 40,000 people, I was alone. There was no one to tell my story, no one who a...
Hunting
My son found a .30-06 rifle in my dad’s closet, similar to these Winchester rifles. It was unloaded, unclean, and unused for decades. Though mildly unnerving for all of us, my boy was in...
Christmas Eve 2011
My dad was born in Texas on Christmas Eve 1946. He was a child with no privilege, a post-war baby, the son of a decorated Navy man, the son of a boxer who would...
John H. Willis (1946-2011)
For those who knew my dad or our family, this will be published in our local paper Tuesday morning. I’m posting it here for family and friends around the country who may not be...
He smelled the flowers
A few years ago, I looked down a sidewalk at my local zoo to see my father leaning over to smell the blossoms in front of him. He was alone and not affecting any...
My blood runs cold…
The boy had just finished his homework in the playroom of our house. We were alone when he broke into song…a song a seven-year-old boy probably shouldn’t be singing. After I heard it, I...
Saturday Night Lights
The backfield tackle was the kind in which the quarterback is hit, hit again, and finally collapses under the weight of blockers, tacklers, and the inevitability of yet another sack. Less than two minutes...