What, me a dad?
Jessie pushed back a length of her brown hair. “I want to have a child,” she said, “and I’m questioning the future of our relationship.”
That was bold. From baby books to all-or-nothing? If she wanted a baby and I didn’t, that left little room for negotiating, unlike compromising on a movie or a restaurant. My truck waited outside. I could get in and drive away. With the cash in my pocket and the stock I had in my own name from before the marriage, I’d be OK for a while.
My reverse mid-life crisis
by Roy Biancalana The most life-changing moment of my life occurred when I realized that nothing needed to be changed. I call this realization “my reverse mid-life crisis” because it is the opposite of what typically happens to men. Usually, when a man reaches middle-age, he becomes dissatisfied with his professional path and/or his partner, then he makes changes to find “it.”My life has been the exact opposite...
The forgotten language of fathers and sons
by Peter H. Putnam, Jr. In April 1998, my father is lying in a South Carolina hospital with a ventilator plugged into his throat. He has no voice. He once sang “Impossible Dream” in an impossibly deep bass voice, now this man has no voice. He lay prone, a child. He is no longer 6 feet tall, no longer the frightening, booming, hair-cutting, wisecracking, story-telling giant of my childhood. He is a a dying man in a hospital...
The Big Lie: How the truth changes us
At first, I was unable to bring the words out of my mouth. I choked on them. They struck me as completely silly. I broke down in hysterics. I couldn’t decide if I was laughing or crying. The I realized that I was doing both at the same time. It was clear that the words had reached deep into some previously hidden part of my psyche, touching a truth so profound and so imponderable that my rational brain simply couldn’t deal with it. I had found a truth, I began to understand, that had affected my life in many subtle and not so subtle ways. I had sabotaged all those jobs because I had no right to be there.
Acceptance is not approval
by Mike Hernacki I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery nearly all of my 64 years. This journey has been most intense for the past 15 years, during which I’ve learned many valuable life lessons, including the difference between acceptance and approval. I have a niece whose father died when she was a toddler. I’ve always felt fatherly toward her and stepped in when I felt she needed paternal advice or protection. There was always one...
Little Wings: Realizing I’d become a man
by Wayne Lee I’m lying on a padded table, watching while Dominic tattoos little Mercury wings behind my anklebones on both feet. It’s a few days before my sixtieth birthday, and this is my present to myself. I’ve earned these wings. I deserve them. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 21, back when I was a dancer. I’m not a dancer anymore—in fact, some days I can barely walk — but I wanted to remind myself that, by God, I can still fly....
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