Storytelling, I have decided, is sort of the verbal hieroglyphics of a family, the color added to the commentary; the explanation for the picture of your brother dressed as a princess at age four long after everyone has forgotten it ever happened.
 

After a couple dozen re-tellings, stories take the place of actual memories. They fill in all the gaps.
 

My mother was a fabulous storyteller. So good that at some point, she simply took over my father’s own childhood stories, which were clearly lacking, and told them herself.
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Wild thoughts go through your head when you’re pregnant, scary thoughts like, ‘Why should I cave in to societal pressures and not sprinkle pretzels on top of my pie a la mode?’
 

Once you have the child, other fears take over, many irrational. When my daughter Amanda was born nearly 14 years ago, I was seized by one in particular. Awakened in a sweat in the middle of the night, it plagued me.
 

What would I do if her hair grew to a length where it became necessary for some sort of accessory or other apparatus?
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Most people, most normal people, would describe this past weekend in Chicago as one of the most exciting and successful in this city’s recent sports history.  Read more...

Showed up at junior high Career Day this morning without a career.
 

I didn’t plan it that way, of course. I had a career when they asked me to come back again this year. Actually, I had a career yesterday. Or was it two days ago? It’s all sort of a blur at this point.
 

My 13-year-old daughter’s instructions were pretty clear on how to address her fellow eighth graders, this being the first time she and I had ever collided on the Career Day circuit.
 

“Please,” she said with real feeling. “Please, don’t be boring.”
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It is 4:30 in the morning and I have spent the last two hours reciting my memoirs in my head, the last half hour going through my buddy list and asking everyone without an away message: “Are you up?”

Apparently, I am not the only one to remain logged on without an away message as the 10 people I have asked are either not up or a little scared of me.

I always thought that whole first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life thing was one of the lamer clichés. But this is it. And I don’t think sleepless and swollen-eyed is exactly the way it was intended to be interpreted.  Read more...