When my daughter Sally turned 8, I bought her a new wooden canoe paddle and burned her name into the blade. With the gift came a promise: In July she and I would take a three-day canoe trip on the river that flows past our house. We hung the paddle over her bed. Sally was excited. In fact, we both were,...

“Daddy, why did the lady give you money?” asked my daughter Marie back when she was 5. We had just crossed a toll bridge and Marie was trying to make sense of the transaction at the booth. I would’ve liked to answer: “Don’t you know? THIS is where money comes from. Whenever grownups run low on...

It was midnight. Three other fathers and I were sitting around a campfire, talking, drinking illicit beer and staring into the flames. We were on a YMCA Adventure Guides camp-out. Our kids were asleep in the cabin, their marshmallow-smeared faces glued to their pillows. Out by the fire one of the guys...

“Tell me a story about The Green Man Goes Trick-or-Treating.” When my daughter Sally was 3, that’s what she’d demand every night at bedtime for about a year. The Green Man is a weathered bronze statue of a soldier that stands on a big rock about two blocks from our house. I’d tell Sally bedtime...

“Wendy!” I said, “What happened to your dress?” It was a cute little green-velvet number that my wife Betsy had bought for our 7-year-old to wear in the school concert. Up near the nape of her neck, there was a ragged hole big enough for a butterfly to sail through. Wendy reddened, tears welled in...

Well, here it is February, the month of Valentines, and time for the annual report on my daughters’ love-lives. The girls are now 7, 10 and 14 years old, and they are all in love. With a 15-year-old named Pete. I’d been hearing about Pete for a year or two, always as an object of fun among Marie and her...

I pressed a button on the answering machine, and an imperious voice demanded:  “Sally, this is Amanda. Call me right away. It’s important.” Hoping to delete the child, I pressed another button. But the machine lacked the power for the job. Amanda is the queen of the fifth-grade. But she is not a...

When our daughter Sally was 4, she spent an afternoon playing at a new friend’s house, and when my wife Betsy went to pick her up, the mom asked, “Do you live on a farm?” “No,” Betsy said, “Why do you ask?” “Sally told me you did. And that you have three ponies – named Betsy, Rick and...

Ever wonder why world-famous photographer Ansel Adams took pictures mostly of mountains, deserts and lakes? It’s because trees, sand and water don’t fidget, pout, drool, grimace, whine, or have milk-mustaches that only show up in pictures. Still, almost any child can be clean and well-behaved for the...

When my daughter Sally was 4, she didn’t need the ghosts and goblins of Halloween to wreck her composure. She was wary of cats, frightened of dogs, and terrified of thunder. The heavy artillery of a fireworks display, even viewed from far away, would cause her to cower and weep. And at night she wouldn’t...