My wrist started buzzing.  It was my watch alerting me to the fact that my daughter was calling. I was somewhere between Harris Drive and G...

  Visible steam and foul language circled the air around his head, so we knew to make ourselves scarce. It T minus Go Time and "The Dad...

The house is too quiet.  Morning came and went, and the boy didn't wake.  The dog stretched out in front of his closed bedroom door, wai...

From the moment she covered her mouth and stared bug-eyed at the election results that sent her to Congress, I have loved watching Alexandri...

"How was your drive?" Harrowing. How could it not be? We had ventured away from home for the first time in months. Just for fun? A...

What was I thinking?  A Streak? Forty-one days of consecutive running? One hundred miles in a month? Injury-prone me with the lingering spec...

Summertime rules I don't remember summertime rules or chores that I didn't give myself. Once in awhile I'd clean my room or mow ...

Thud.  Should have been ready. But I wasn't. I had put off washing dishes only to get pelted. As the soft, cylindrical pillow of pretend...

The words tumbled out of my mouth the way all the worst words usually do: Horses galloping out as the barn doors are swinging shut. Yet agai...

Outside. A golden patch of lawn crunches underfoot. Its short, thick blades crackle and break, looking like the freshly strewn straw of a ga...

My children never want to talk about politics. They don't like being in the same room with it, let alone the same car. Especially not ...

We've been watching so many movies.  Some of them – those with crowded restaurant scenes or lavish family gatherings at least – a...

For years I followed nursing home ratings. How many complaints had been filed? How many investigations completed? What percentage of t...

At precisely 6 p.m. on one of the days that end in Y, I was standing on my porch, with my kids excitedly hopping around me, raising a gl...

As small parts tumbled out of the box and onto the deck of the front porch, the tension in every muscle of my upper body ratcheted just one...

The dog's ears casually rise to attention as I move through the house. She furtively glances my way without shifting from her place in ...

"Let go," the teenager instructed as we rounded the corner. For a moment, I didn't register that she was talking to me. H...