Recent Columns

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.

Several girls appear to be flat out in love with my son. They’re in his class. He’s 7. Two have proposed. The third has asked him if he’s ever kissed a girl on the lips. This unfolded when Jon was class VIP the other day. He was in front, in his VIP chair, answering questions […]

Dear Hannah –   It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than three years now since you came into our family, into our home, into our lives.   I can still picture the moment a few months before that when we first met, when you reached up to me and tapped me on the […]

So, Jon is his class VIP all week, which gives him great power and prestige.   For one, he can bring things from home to give a picture of his off-school life. So he brought Sam, his rabbit.   Sam, you’ll recall , is one result of our place turning into a sort of funny […]

And now the conclusion of the Great Underwear Caper.   Faithful Reader will recall that I recently found six helpless, yelping puppies in the middle of the night after I went onto our garage roof and nearby water-tank hill in my underwear   After this rescue, and under the threat of our cat, these six […]

Friends, this is the first official post of the new DADDIN’ IT TODAY! (not to be confused with Psychology Today, Christianity Today or the prestigious medical journal Babes Today). This is simply an outgrowth the very, very, very popular Single Daddin’ It, which is still expected to go viral sometime before Greece goes bankrupt (although […]