William Butler Yeats has been famously attributed the observation, “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” When my wife reads this she’ll suspect I was the subject. However, it is a funny observation and Ireland is known also for humorists.  Maybe the Irish sense of…

A rocking chair, four books, and a stuffed dog had her almost to the snow globe. Her fingertips caressed the base as she tried to creep near enough to close her whole hand on it. She’d almost had it once when the chair rocked just right. As she strained to reenact that moment he came…

Once my old man found me mocking up a shaky tree fort, took initiative, and eventually constructed something sturdy as a pole barn -I bought his house; my kids climb on the thing to this day. Another time “we” built a model rocket. In candy apple red. With a glassy clear coat. I spent most…

I keep a stuffed toy at my nightstand. Not for my comfort exactly, for the comfort of a kid sleeping in a different room. Sounds odd, I know. In the course of a room cleaning, tunneling into a pile of pillows plus other random items in the corner, I realized he was reluctant to uncover…

There’s a way round the “don’t like it/never tried it” debate. Food tastes better off other people’s plates. Known fact. Our palates are mysterious this way. Science only goes so far, after which metaphysics take over to do things like make the Elsa yogurt tubes taste better than all the rest (especially the Sven ones)….

I missed my post last week for a few reasons. For one, I’m working on recipes for a deadline (poor excuse, I know), and the other because I was wrestling with my first bullying experience from a parental perspective. Boys around the age of my son, six, are enjoying their first freedom on playgrounds, gymnasiums,…

One night when my boy was a newborn, and I was bouncing him to sleep, it dawned on me that a kid should be brought up having a stable of classics that he or she can sing by heart. The epiphany was spurred by my inability to recall any song at all in its entirety….

“Can I put the marshmallows in myself?” my son asks and my daughter echoes, “and could I have a spoon?” He sips from a cup with a little cubby at the bottom for cookies. A prized piece of food paraphernalia, he painted it himself. The intense care with which they deposit marshmallows is bittersweet: I…

I confess: I’ve taken pride in food I’ve gotten my kids to eat. When I recognized, in my daughter, my fondness for cheese, I took it to the limit. She’ll bite at Bucheron, but she tapped at a second smear of Teleggio. My son craved spicy stuff since the womb –the wife regularly had me…

My son asks a lot of questions. Some are impossible to answer. Some only difficult. This holiday season his questions have centered on religion. Many of his friends and teammates are Jewish. Some are of a Christian denomination other than his own. I do my best to describe the differences and tell the stories behind…

Source: Salted caramel! or salting the earth?