Category: family

  • About Pete

    About Pete

    The world is losing one of the greatest musicians, rhythmic theorists, and just lovely and decent human beings ever to exist.

  • A Cat Tale

    A Cat Tale

    First thing after her breakfast, Snow White climbed into a small, half-filled paper and cardboard recycling box.

  • A Tale of Two Pools

    A Tale of Two Pools

    One of these worlds is gone, and to the other, we will never return.

  • A thousand tiny pieces

    A thousand tiny pieces

    Snow White pushed a stack of ceramic espresso dishes off of the kitchen counter this morning, to see how many of them would smash into a thousand tiny pieces. The answer was most of them.

  • What’s your favorite season?

    What’s your favorite season?

    As a child, I loved summer—no school! I could stay indoors all day and read! But summer camp, which I dreaded, ended my romance with that season. Even as an adult, no longer forced “for…

  • My Life is a New Yorker Cartoon

    My Life is a New Yorker Cartoon

    “Why are you uncomfortable having a nonbinary cat?” …my teenage daughter demanded as we sat together on the couch.

  • The Shame: A Personal Essay About Autism

    The Shame: A Personal Essay About Autism

    Daughter Ava wrote this for you. “Ava, you need to understand that there’s something wrong with you, actually, quite a few things.” I listened closely, sitting in the large orange chair, making stick figures with…

  • My Glamorous Life: Sunday Repairs

    My Glamorous Life: Sunday Repairs

    For about a week, now, my bedroom floor has been torn up due to under-floor flooding created by a malfunctioning window air conditioning unit. The A/C unit began leaking during the summer months when I…

  • Covid-19 Progress Report

    Covid-19 Progress Report

    I’m what they call a long-hauler.

  • Day in the Life

    Day in the Life

    The chiming of my iPhone woke me from an afternoon of profound sleep marked by a long, unsettling dream involving basements. I’d taken to bed out of equal parts respect for my own exhaustion and…

  • The hump

    The hump

    Corona Virus Week 6. Recovering, bit by bit. Still get winded carrying a light package more than a dozen steps. I can sit up in the morning, make breakfast, and listen to music for several…

  • The world we return to

    The world we return to

    It’s a rotten disease. You’re well enough not to need hospitalization, but too weak to do anything useful.

  • Going viral

    Going viral

    Finishing Week 4 with Coronavirus, heading into Week 5. I’m home—haven’t needed to go to the hospital, thank God—and my fever petered out last week. So all that’s left are cold and cough symptoms and…

  • My glamorous life: are you ready to math?

    My glamorous life: are you ready to math?

    For the past two years, I’ve been publishing a daily work-and-life diary on Basecamp, sharing it with a few friends. This private writing work supplanted the daily public writing I used to do here. In…

  • Abandon Hope!

    Abandon Hope!

    THE FILTHIEST men’s room in New York is on the 8th floor of 291 Broadway. You would think the men’s room at Penn Station or the bus terminal would beat any other for filth and…