For decades, we performed the responsibilities of adulthood. Then one of us began asking whether he had ever grown up at all.
Tag Archives: Childhood
When We Speak, Who Is Being Heard?
When someone sees and hears the adult, do they recognize the child who may be speaking?
The Life We Are Trying to Make Room For
After an end of employment, we finally had more time to be together. But on Dad’s Day, we discovered that writing about our life had begun taking time away from living it. A county envelope, eight children waiting for their daddy, and an evening holding Luke helped us remember what we had been trying to make room for all along.
Take Care of Your Kids
A Greek salad, a childhood photograph, and a second therapy session that changed how we understood our future. We arrived afraid that our family would be judged. Instead, our therapist recognized all nine of us, challenged a terrible lesson learned in childhood, and gave us permission to spend six months recovering. Sometimes the most extraordinary gift comes in the simplest words: “Take care of your kids.”
The Scale of a Five-Year-Old
When Daniel showed us a five-year-old trying to operate adult-sized machinery, we remembered a time when childhood really had become too large for us. Then came Granddad’s enormous hand beside our little one, and a world of meals, routines, kindergarten and being held. Perhaps safety begins with being brought back to scale.
It Was Good, and It Was Too Much
Eight children and their dad went together into a beautiful world on a Sunday. Canticle Farm, Spanish Mass, community, service, families, music—and by late afternoon, we were at our limit. Maybe being realistic doesn’t mean learning to endure somebody else’s version of life. Maybe it begins by designing a life around the nine plural people who actually have to live it.
If We Cried Today, It Was Over the Red Onion
A therapist said they couldn’t work with us, and fear rushed to fill the blank space. On Hope’s Day, we returned to a principle our family knows well: err on the side of life. We called our children by name, kept Daddy’s appointment with his sons, ate cucumber sandwiches, and let tomorrow’s Greek salad marinate.
The Cloud of Unknowing Has Bean and Cheese Quesadillas
On Han’s Day, we went looking for something profound from our ten-year-old spiritual animator. He wanted bean and cheese quesadillas. In the Cloud of Unknowing, we are learning to stop inhabiting painful places and frightening futures, to receive what is given without grasping for certainty—and to let a ten-year-old simply be ten.
Nine Lives Here
Solis’s Day, a seven-year-old’s question—What are we supposed to be doing?—becomes a question about work, authority, safety, uncertainty and belonging. An almanac entry from a plural family learning that there are nine lives here, and practicing how to live like there are.
Watching the Wheels
What happens when the tools meant to make life more accessible begin demanding more of the life they are supposed to serve? From an iPhone Shortcut to a Heidelberg press, a 700-foot Ferris wheel, songs remembered from childhood, and an afternoon spent holding our sons, we found ourselves asking a different question: What is the work of our life—and what happens when we stop chasing the wheels and simply take care of our children?
