Solis looked up from the phone and, for a moment, the physical world became overwhelmingly concrete. We call it a terror peek. On a day when we asked a therapist for help, it brought us back to one of the most important questions in our family: Where is the adult? Dad’s here.
Tag Archives: Plural Family
Nothing Was Wasted
Yesterday, Dad was afraid he might not know how to provide for his children. Today, we are discovering that provision, vocation, healing, and family may look different than we thought—and that when a life changes completely, nothing good has to be wasted.
Dad Is Afraid
On Dad’s Day, fear finally becomes speakable. As we make chicken noodle soup, remember childhood, prepare to return to therapy, and face an uncertain financial future, we begin asking what sustainability really means for a plural family/system shaped by trauma, recovery, co-consciousness, faith, and love.
There You Are
A four-year-old’s dream about waiting to be born leads us into a morning of Face-to-Face, wolf-pup smiles, missing ears, John Lennon, turning wheels, and the practice of attunement: seeing, listening, returning, and delighting in finding one another.
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?
Nothing Is Counting on This
What does functional multiplicity look like when nobody is asking us to perform? On Han’s Day, a frightening morning gives way to Braided Bridge, where a two-foot wheel on a Heidelberg press turns quietly beneath the memory of a 700-foot Ferris wheel we once hoped could help solve the housing crisis. Maybe the best things—the true things—really do start small.
You May Think You See a Person Losing Their Mind
A jagged Wednesday becomes a portrait of how a plural family holds itself together. Plans fail, the bedroom becomes unusable, memories and outside messages unsettle the day, and the family keeps adapting—through listening, boundaries, prayer, Greek salad, quesadillas, Hilda, making the bed, and one brother reminding Daddy: “I think you should be with Luke.” Along the way, an ordinary question about whether nine people sharing one physical body have quesadillas in their stomach or their stomachs opens onto something larger: anatomy, family, and the interior ways we know one another.
Then How Does Anything Get Done?
Yesterday we wrote that nobody in our plural family is THE ONE. Today, Solis’s Day answered the obvious question: Then how does anything get done? Groceries, garlic, an unmade bed, a four-year-old’s stew, fear, changing plans, and eight sons who keep showing Daddy what happens when everyone belongs and being heard can actually change what happens next.
You Are Not the One
Yesterday was input. Today is processing. For a plural family/system, moving forward means more than making a plan—it means making sure everyone has been heard. As we begin imagining the next twenty years of our shared life, perhaps the most important question is also the simplest: Who haven’t we heard from yet?
We Take the Treehouse With Us
Functional multiplicity is not about making plurality disappear. For our family, it means staying connected enough to live, work, contribute, and find one another again when we become scattered. On Jude’s Day, we took the Treehouse with us—and discovered what becomes possible when all nine of us have something to bring.
