There’s a kind of wisdom you can only get from sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of receipts, a calculator, and a cup of lukewarm coffee that’s long past its best hour. It’s the kind of wisdom that whispers, “You don’t really own anything, you’re just renting it from the government one tax…

I stopped and talked with a mom today. She had that kind of look, equal parts frazzled and glowing, that only parents in pumpkin patches seem to have in October. You know the type: hair a little wind-tossed, a paper cup of cider in one hand, and the expression of someone who’s been negotiating peace…

I was driving home from the grocery store yesterday, minding my own business and arguing with the price of eggs, when I saw a sign nailed up by the roadside that declared in bold, hopeful letters: “Cash for Old Phones.” Now I am a simple man. When a sign speaks plain English, I take it…

There are moments in human history so profound that time itself seems to hold its breath. The summer of 1776 was such a moment. We Americans like to think our Republic was born with a single stroke of a pen on parchment, with a few bold signatures beneath a stirring declaration. But that’s the shorthand…

Dad told me that when I turned twenty-one, the world would seem to start speeding up. I thought he was joking, like one of his “dad wisdoms,” which came from Reader’s Digest or whatever he overheard at the barbershop. But now, standing here at sixty-five with my shoes on the wrong feet and my car…

I am known to my wife as a “pack rat.” She says it the way a preacher says “sinner”—with conviction, but still hopeful for my salvation. I, however, prefer to think of myself as a preservationist of fine artifacts—protector of useful, maybe even valuable things that haven’t yet realized their potential. Mary doesn’t buy that.…

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, which was a fine time to be alive if you didn’t mind being mostly unsupervised and slightly damp. I’m still a country boy at heart, and always will be. You can put a person in a city, but you can’t take the redwood shade out of their…

I should’ve known better than to make promises before coffee. That’s where I went wrong. Kyle was a little over three years old, all energy and opinions, and I’d told him we’d go to McDonald’s for lunch and let him run wild in the play area afterward. He’d been talking about it since breakfast, and…

There’s nothing quite like being jolted awake by a smoke detector at one in the morning. It’s like having a fire drill in your pajamas, except you’re the only student, and the building you’re supposed to evacuate is your own house. At first, I thought it was part of a dream. The sharp, shrill beeping…

When I first woke up, I thought I was dying. It wasn’t a dramatic thought, at least not at first. I’d come to, groggy and stiff, with a strange sticky sensation on my hip and a smell that could have been sweet despair. For a moment, I thought the inevitable had arrived, and I was…