“It is the peak of baby.” Newborns don’t speak. One year olds are closer to little children than little bundles. The exact midpoint, the six-month period, is the best time of babyhood. “Wait until she turns six months old,” I’ve told people. “The beginning is fun, but that’s the age when it all comes together.” I knew it, I believed it, I saw the pictures of our first child around the key point in her infancy, yet it is always amazing…
I had not yet returned to my post, but it was always on my mind. Last year, on my birthday, I wrote a list of goals that I wanted to complete by today. I memorized them, and it wasn’t until I sat down to type this year’s version that I revisited what I had promised myself. I knew, all along, that two things would happen. First, I would not write my goals for this upcoming year. Turning 29 only mattered…
I am not an artist. I am not a poet. As much as I enjoy writing and I consider myself a good writer, even using that term is a stretch. I wanted to write nothing. I wanted everything I had poured onto the keyboard for the last 24 hours to stand alone, unaltered by anything I could add to it later. At various points in the evening, I had to force myself to stop thinking about what I could share and…