Christmas came and went and as the sun set on the big day, we put our daughters on a plane to Houston to visit with my family. They’re there five days. It feels strange for a couple of reasons. First, there was a long stretch of my life when I didn’t so much as speak with anyone but my mother back in Texas. It was nothing personal, I just left home early in life and never really settled down until…
Until this week I never paid much attention to bullying. I’d never been bullied, I never bullied anyone, and so it was one of those things that make you cringe when you hear about it, but what can you do? Then on Monday our daughter was the victim of a cyberbullying attack at her high school. You can read about it here. When someone attacks a member of your family, your natural instinct is to lash out. To get revenge…
This isn’t going to be a fun post. I’m angry and need to vent. Today my youngest daughter, a freshman in high school, was cyberbullied. It was a brutal attack that had all the makings of a high school drama. The kind of thing I could see coming from far away. And the kind of thing as a parent in the age of social media, you fear. Let me start by telling you about my kid. She’s no angel. She…
Keep walking. This is my faith. Twenty-six years ago I had none. Since my epiphany, however, I’ve relied on faith to guide me on everything. And since last summer, it’s been tested. Hard. I woke up this morning in a panic. No, I don’t want to drink and I’m not suicidal. Those are extremes and frankly not options for me in any capacity. What’s happened to me since about August is different. I’m not being guided as clearly as I…
Two roads diverged in a wood when I was 16. Long before I ever read Robert Frost. I was on my fourth high school and was sitting in a classroom taking an SAT test. They said it was required to graduate, so I couldn’t skip that day. I had to graduate. Only, college was not something that we talked about in my family. I was the oldest of four children. The only male. I religiously attended the church of heavy…
We moved to Houston in 1980, before my sophomore year in high school. That summer I attended my first Major League baseball game. Driving up to the Astrodome that first time was like a waking dream—I’d seen that massive metal dome often on TV, but now I was inside watching JR Richard pitch. And later that summer, Nolan Ryan. And Joe Niekro. And on one magical night in October, I attended Game 5 of the NLCS where the Astros were…
