Long before the children’s mother came along, I wanted to marry Queen Elizabeth. Or Mrs. Clark. Or Dianne Blouin. Dianne was an angelic presence and the sister of my classmate Michael. She was 12, older by two full years and clearly out of reach. The best I could do was get a photo of Dianne.
What if I had married the Queen? Read More »
It was this morning and we had just left the kids at school. And we (my cousin and her husband, along with my wife’s cousin — the three of them visiting from Canada) were at the club, in the entranceway going in, and he (a Swiss gentleman living in Uganda) was, by chance, coming down
Friends and family Read More »
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 6, 2015)
CHARLESTON, S.C. ✦ We’re in the ocean, waves crashing at our knees, salt on our lips, my daughter and me and all these poets in my head.
My daughter (today she turns 12) laughs and dances and spins in circles and says, “No, Daddy, don’t take any more pictures. Just come and run with me. Enjoy the moment.”
We’re stuck in this brokenness together Read More »
The best time to talk to your nine-year-old boy about women’s plumbing and these sorts of sexually delicate territories is when he’s asleep. This is what every trying father discovers after said boy lays splayed on the living room floor pretending he’s having a baby. Yes, my son Jon was in obvious pain – it seems no epidural
Sexually delicate territories Read More »
“Daddy, it’s The Giver!” Liz said when we found the DVD for a thousand shillings, about 40 Canadian cents, at a hole-in-the-wall movie stand across the road from the edge of the university. At home, we saw it even worked, never a guarantee with these sorts of Ugandan movie outlets. For those not familiar with
“If you can’t feel, what’s the point?” Read More »
When you’re an 11-year-old and a boy in your class asks you to go out and it’s the day before Valentine’s Day and he even gives you a rose, what’s a girl to do? This was the situation yesterday for Liz. Of course, it takes great courage for a boy to muster all it takes
What’s better than wine and stronger than death? Read More »
(Christian Week, February 2015)
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ “Love is better than wine,” is how the writer of the Song of Songs put it. “Love is stronger than death.”
Solomon, said to be the wisest of men ever, is credited with the words that resonate with meaning even now, almost 3,000 years later, even in our time, as insecure and fickle an age as any.
Better than wine. Stronger than death. Read More »
It’s a beautiful morning in Africa, not just because the sun is rising and the birds are singing and the monkeys jumping, but because my daughter too is singing. She has been working on this piece for weeks – it’s an Adele song – and I will never tire of hearing it because there’s a
Singing in the heart of Africa Read More »
