My brother Michael is the middle child in our family. If you are a middle child or have one, you know what that means, and I’m so sorry. Mike doesn’t always make the greatest decisions. Sometimes he doesn’t even

To my daughter After a week-long bacchanalia, we gather on a patch of graveled dirt. Exhausted from nights of sleeping on the floor, you realize this is the end of the road–the last gasp of high school. At your

The urgent phone call comes when you least expect it, and suddenly you are running out of your house—dishes in the sink, mail half-opened, shoes untied—to drive as fast as you can to the hospital, to sit with a

I once heard someone give a talk about our origins. About how we’re not from a stereotyped place, but rather from a locality. We live local, learn all the customs and internalize all the rules, take out the trash