One of my favorite parts of my day is after my boys fall asleep and I go into Claire’s room and sit on her bed. Sometimes we both read silently, and other times she tells me about the dramas of fourth grade or other things that are on her mind. One day last week, when […]
Claire
Field Trips, Open Houses and Other Events I Can’t Attend Anymore
The other day I was sorting through the kids’ paperwork after school and came across a permission slip for a field trip for Claire. I signed it, and then was putting it on my calendar when Claire came over to me. I asked her about what she thought she was going to do on the […]
CNAS Tribute to Shawn (Part 2)
Below are the remarks I gave on October 29, 2018 at the CNAS event honoring the life and work of Shawn Brimley. Thank you all so much for being here to honor Shawn. I thought a lot about what I wanted to say to you tonight. Shawn was a brilliant, funny, thoughtful man, and I […]
Claire’s Hero
At the start of fourth grade, Claire came home with an assignment to write about her hero. “I picked you!” she announced to me. She then spent much of the afternoon finding a photo that she liked of me and writing about why I was her hero. It was really sweet and touching. My kid […]
The Marine
While traveling this summer, I had one day that was particularly bad. I was alone with my three kids and we’d been bumped from our original flight to a later one. We were seated in random seats across the very last row of the plane, and everyone was exhausted. As we got on, I instructed […]
Reading with Claire
Every night, the routine is the same. I read a book to Tommy. I read a book to Austin. Then I sit on the end of their bed until they fall asleep. They have a bunk bed, but they both sleep in the bottom bunk together. This is something they did for most of 2017, […]