Tag: family Page 4 of 18

And We Must Go

On beginnings and endings, change, and staying un-stuck.


Something there is about the ends of things, the delicate parts where the golden light shines on everything about you before it fades to dusk. Something there is when you know that ahead, just across the horizon, lies the big, the unknown.

For the past nine years, our growing family has made its home in a quiet neighborhood dotted with brick ranches and mature trees. For nine years before that, we lived a few hundred yards away in the next neighborhood over in a cozy split-level on a cul-de-sac.

Kelly is a native of this town, born in the old downtown Davis hospital the college razed a few years ago. She grew up in another brick ranch and tall treed neighborhood not much more than a mile from where our house stands now. She attended school in the same building where she now works, the same place our children learn. Save for the four years she spent away at college, she’s never lived anywhere but within a handful of several square miles in Statesville.

Those college years were formative in many ways.

Calling the Bet

2020 was the year that kept on giving.


Here’s a funny trend: the last few years have been tough–so tough that as we reach this last week before New Year’s Day, we have habitually wished away the year in hopes the next would be better. 2016 was one such year, as was 2019. Funny, isn’t it? What on earth happened to us in 2019 that convinced us to hurry up with it, to roll along as fast as we could in hopes that 2020 would bring us some kind of respite?

Well, 2020 called our bets and ran the table on us, plowing us over with a merciless pandemic, widespread civil unrest, and an election that annihilated any sense of national unity.

Twelve months ago, for the second time, I patched together a list of resolutions for the year 2020. I pecked out my meager ideas on the old, Olympia typewriter that belonged to my grandfather. Last year (2019), I kept the list on my fridge the entire year and followed up on my efforts.

The Earring

As told by me on Twitter:


It’s late, but that means it’s good timing for a bedtime story. Six years ago, my wife and I snuck away for a long weekend in Chicago. It was her first time in the Windy City, and we picked a blustery few days to be there. Very cold. We bundled up.

We did a lot of touristy stuff in the Loop, all fun: Art Institute, Sears Tower, shops on Michigan. We stayed at my favorite hotel, the Palmer House.

I thought it would be fun to have a drink before dinner at the bar at the top of the Hancock building, so up we went. The view was fun, the drinks quite nice, the atmosphere all you could ask. I wanted to show Kel the basement bar a few blocks down at the Drake, so off we went.

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