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Parenting
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Thousand-Peso Suit
Still, I love that line by poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.” But my wife is not familiar with Rilke, and solving our difficulties is not a matter of my explaining things to her. I’ve been doing that for three years, in two languages, and neither of us has changed.
February 2008
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Lessons In Dying
Nothing lives forever, but it seemed wrong that a child should have to face death. Death was for people who had lived their lives, tasted happiness, made mistakes, and had a chance to make amends; it was not for babies.
December 2007
Readers Write
Airports
False-bottomed aerosol cans, the “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” a blue telephone-and-address book
November 2007
Readers Write
Too Close For Comfort
A fifty-dollar bill every Christmas, the enveloping calm of crystalline snow and limitless sky, a blip on a monitor
May 2007
Poetry
Our Son At One Year Old
At the close of this day we / have the bright idea of taking / him in the rowboat out on the / lake to view the moon rising
April 2007Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Passover Questions
I feel defined by loss, my shape delineated by the absence of those who used to surround me. The invisible membrane of love that held us together for so many years has become stretched, attenuated by time and space and death. But when I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still feel my son and my mother.
April 2007
Poetry
But I Can’t Talk Now
When I heard Michael was gone, I went downstairs / and sat at the kitchen table. / A half dozen oranges in a glass bowl, / leathery red pomegranates from the farmer’s market.
April 2007Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Father And Son
This was before autism was in the news, before one out of every 166 babies born in America was being diagnosed with some form of it. The movie Rain Man was my only point of reference.
February 2007
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