Posts Tagged ‘Fatherhood’
Funland
Twenty-two years ago this weekend, I left Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with two grand in my pocket, a hot bike lashed to my VW Rabbit, and a tiny bit of blow in my nose. Back then, we mocked the families we served at Funland, checking out the young, hot, sunburned moms as we strapped their panicky…
Read MoreBaby Brain
I’m 38,000 feet over Albuquerque, New Mexico, when the newborn in 8B begins crying. I can hear it all — including the woman behind me whining and sighing to her husband — despite my noise canceling headphones. A baby’s shriek is a difficult sound, to be sure. Still, all I can think is, ‘Lighten up…
Read MoreTuesday In The Park With Maggie
It was a cinematic, spring afternoon. The sky was unwaveringly blue, shot through with bleached-lemon sunlight, all framed by the piercing, green canopy of a long-slumbering Central Park. A cool breeze blew from the northwest, scattering pollen like snowflakes on a blanket of fresh grass. In the middle of it all, my eleven-month-old daughter…
Read MoreThe Cruelty Of The Curbside Cab Line
Few things bring out New Yorkers’ lesser selves than the Penn Station taxi line during an Easter downpour. It’s also one of just a few scenarios capable of adding insult the injury of a late train and an exhausted ten-month-old. We were nearly three-hours behind on a one-hour trip by the time we stepped off…
Read MoreLearning To Walk Again
Maggie took her first, tentative steps last week, slowly, deliberately and clumsily wobbling across the bedroom from her startled mother to her amazed father. She waved like a homecoming queen to steady herself, then collapsed on her bottom. Abbi and I were flabbergasted. Maggie was nonplussed. Still, it was a colossal milestone for all of…
Read MoreBears Have Thick Fur
When I woke up, the sheets were peeled back, my wife was gone, and in her place a small, toy bear was blurting out to the blurry, inky night, “I’m a bear!” Abbi burst into the room. “It just turned itself on,” she said in a whispered-frenzy. “And it won’t turn off! Maggie’s wide awake…
Read MoreMy Sunshine
Difficult to tell for sure, but I think today’s the day it clicked for Maggie. “Oh, that sound I keep hearing from the speakers is Daddy.” Maggie’s a handfull. I mean, she’s actually quite fun: short on tears, long on giggles and squeals. But she’s super-curious and uber-wobbly. Maggie’s primary passtime is unloading her bookshelf…
Read MoreNothing Is Cool
“Are you cool?” The year is 1996, and — while I’ve finally ditched my pleather pants, green lame shirt and blue fingernail polish — I most definitely am not. Nightengale Bar is sparsely-populated. My band, Benjamin Wagner Deluxe, is set up in front of a mirrored wall and killing time before our enviable set time…
Read MoreWhat We Talk About
My buddy Rick recently hipped me to his blog, Past His Prime In NYC. Like me, Rick moved to Manhattan in his early twenties. And like me, Rick is married, and a dad. And like me, his blog often explores the discrepancy between what was and what is. His most recent post, “You Won’t Believe…
Read MoreLessons Learned From Rocky I – Rocky III*
It’s clear to me now that my expectations were wildly outsized. Abbi, Maggie and I had ten days at The Kellers’ Brays Island home with all the trimmings: running, swimming, golf, fishing, big screen HD movies, and a fridge full of special-ordered Cisco Brewers Wales Tale Pale Ale. Our Christmas Eve flight from LaGuardia to…
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