Recent Columns

They were all missing … Liz’s swimsuit (they call them swim ‘costumes’ here), Jean’s shirts, Jon’s underwear and other things that we didn’t even know of. It got increasingly disturbing when that underwear supply got thinner and thinner. This was the situation some time ago at the back of our house, from the clothes rack […]

Really Dad, the birds and the bees? You told Jon about the birds and the bees? This is what Liz asked me. I had obviously made a mistake only a nine-year-old big sister could know. What? I said. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. Jon and I were sitting in his garden with the […]

I dreamed we had a series of skating rinks in our house. We can’t do that, my Bride said when I told her about it. I was skating round and round without a shirt on, I told her. For sure, our kids would also appreciate skating rinks in the house. Deprived of skating most of […]

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Once there was a little Ugandan girl who loved school. The girl, who had been an orphan when she was younger, loved learning new things and making new friends and pretty well everything about it, especially the stories. Maybe she loved school all the more because of her years as an orphan, which started in a hospital in Mbarara, in western Uganda, where she was left abandoned when she was barely larger than a cat. There she was given all she ever owned, her name, Hannah.

Walmart is closing all its stores worldwide except for four “life boat” stores. One is in San Francisco. This is what I dreamed last night, sometime after the thunderstorm. In season, it rains hard here. Thus, I suppose, the lifeboats. I told my kids at the breakfast table. Wal Mart is closing. That’s nice, said […]

So 12.12.12. came and went and the world didn’t end. No, the planet didn’t blow up, give up, or pack up its things and say, That’s All Folks! In Africa, our evening included our annual community carol sing. Liz sang Silent Night solo, Jon handed out candles when he wasn’t playing with the light, and […]

The thing about being a kid is that everything is so big, often bigger than in real life. Your home and neighbourhood, the bully at school, your parents … Everything but your younger sister, that is. It came up yesterday when I carried Jon on my shoulders along a dirt road here in Uganda. Am […]

So the owners called the other night. Actually they texted. Nobody calls anymore. They said I was getting too many friends, too fast. I said no, there’s a mistake, I only have three friends and two of them are our rabbits  — Sam and his live-in girlfriend. No, Friends, they said again, with a capital […]

He started with some small stuff, basic tricks like getting children to lay eggs, before he moved up to pulling a dove out of an empty newspaper and then making burnt money reappear. Yes, he had a way with the children — Liz, Jon and Hannah, along with 50 other kids and some adults — […]

It’s early in the morning on the elliptical with Handel’s Concerti Grossi Op. 3 – it’s always Handel’s Concerti Grossi Op. 3 on the elliptical in the mornings – playing as loud as possible with the windows open, one more reason I am such a top contender for the Neighbour of the Year Award. I’m […]

I wear a wedding ring that I bought for 10 bucks at a Native trinket shop in New Mexico a couple of years ago. It’s wide and tight enough and it looks pretty okay. It’s sort of silver in colour, even though the material, I suppose, is more like tin. It has a gnarled design […]

Swimming in December is one of the perks of living in Africa, and besides in phys-ed at school – where they drill them quite hard – sometimes we all go to another nearby pool where I took the kids for a break the other day. Liz was showing off her dives, how small a splash […]

Men like to blow up bridges. This inclination began in utero. It was there where every male, by some miracle and with careful planning, managed to blow up the bridge that connects one side of his brain to the other. This bridge, known as the hippocampus, is left intact in women’s brains because when they’re […]

I once dated a girl who told me that she didn’t like much of anything to do with the Narnia tales. It comes to mind, I suppose, since we’ve been recently talking about Narnia and my seven-year-old’s marital prospects. The girl couldn’t get how the Sons and Adam and Daughters of Eve could get along […]

We know little about them, these grandparents—if they came to babysit on Friday nights or if they maybe played checkers with the curly-haired, laughing boy while he grew in wisdom and stature.