life with kiddos Archives – Page 3 of 14

A Double Exposure

On March 29, 2022

Sometimes I wonder if I am the anachronism.

This weekend brought a short and windy return of winter bluster, capping off what had been a nice stretch of seasonally warm weather and visions of spring. Friday evening it was moderately cold, but the blasts of wind roaring over the eastern ridge made even reasonable temps in the 40s feel bone-chillingly cold. Each night over the weekend, we covered up our new ferns with bedsheets, our front porch looking more suitable for Halloween than spring.

We’ve just capped off an entire week of houseguests. Kel’s parents stayed with us for several days to celebrate Annie and Julia’s birthdays, and then my Mom came up Friday and stayed the weekend. It was our first opportunity to deploy the little guest apartment in the detached garage, and everything seemed to work brilliantly.

Our house in Statesville closed a week ago, and Kelly and I can both feel the difference. Although mildly surreal to now be wholly detached from what we both considered our hometown, it’s still a relief to have the stress of selling a house behind us, to not worry about keeping up with two mortgages, and to cash that check. We’ve got a few projects in mind here in Sylva.

Keep paddling.

By James D. Hogan

On January 31, 2022

In writing

Thomas, my boy:

I am writing this from the kitchen of our new house in Sylva, and I’m writing it exactly one month later than I intended. This letter, the sort that I write to you and your sisters exactly once every three years, is somehow overdue, but I feel that if you look back on this time—and goodness, what memories you’ll have of it going forward—you may very well understand.

The kitchen is a good enough place for writing because Mom bought a trio of barstools after she dropped you off at your new school, the one you started four weeks ago after break. Millie is stretched out on a bathroom mat spread out in the den floor; it’s comically too small, but somehow it ended up there, and it’s the right size for our young pup.

There are still boxes and boxes left to unpack and a couch and a bed down in the detached garage that we don’t know what to do with. We are still learning how to pull into and out of the steep driveway without scraping the bottoms of our cars.

All of which is to say, your ninth birthday fell in a maelstrom of life. In the last 80 days, the world you’ve spent your entire life in was turned upside down, then packed away, then upended once more.

It’s my fault.

Best Thomas in the world

By James D. Hogan

On December 31, 2021

In diary

What you say, and how you say it, and why it’s everything to me.

Dear Thomas:

When I sat down to write this triennial letter to you, I closed my eyes to think of all things Thomas, and one thing quickly sprang to mind: your voice.

Your voice, I’ve decided, comes from the Williams side of the family. Much like your Mom and your Poppy, yours is a voice that rarely struggles to be heard. It booms, even if it comes from your young frame; it cuts clear above the rest of the family’s chatter. From time to time, we will remind you to use an inside voice, but it doesn’t matter. Your volume switch bottoms out somewhere around “indoor voice, but as if one is in a crowded arena.”

How you use your voice to speak, and what it sounds like, are the products of hard work. As we marked your ninth birthday, we were mostly convinced that soon you would need surgery to correct what we had found was a physical gap in your throat that caused you to have a slight speech impediment.

Tag: life with kiddos Page 3 of 14

A Double Exposure

Sometimes I wonder if I am the anachronism.

Keep paddling.

Best Thomas in the world

What you say, and how you say it, and why it’s everything to me.