General Archives
Our Hat
In the evening in the fall, when I put my grey Chicken hat on to leave for Bonfire, ACe runs to the door because he knows where we’re going and there is no place he’d rather be. When we get back from the dust, and the smoke, and the sweat, and the dirt and I toss my hat somewhere, he curls up with it, doubtless savoring the scents and sense of Bonfire as he drifts off to dream of tomorrow’s next Bonfire adventure. I know how you feel, buddy.
To be so lucky
Saturday morning, I rode my bicycle to Aggie Bonfire. I take great interest and great pride in the work these young men and women do, and so it is an honor and a privilege to be able to visit them and see how far they have come, and how far they are certain to go since my days in the woods. I could have taken the truck, and I often do. I’ll back it up to Load Site and prop the purpose-built speakers on the bed box and crank up some tunes for the guys as they do their exhausting work. Between loads, the assembled meat-at-rest may sometimes begin the insistent repetition of “Story… Story… Story…” that builds momentum like a locomotive until one can’t not spin a yarn (or two). And, at times, I may actually do a little honest work. (There are few things more motivating to a spry young college kid than the prospect of being outworked by a soft-around-the-middle geriatric like myself.) Continue reading »
You dirty raaaat…
Found these sorting through a few hundred baby photos. Continue reading »
Do something adventurous with my life
I screwed up yesterday. And I’m pretty bummed about it. Continue reading »
The evidence keeps piling up
I am beginning to believe that I am, in fact, a father.
Just yesterday, while I was out on the lawn talking with a friend of ours, another friend and his significant other were standing with my wife, admiring our new daughter in her arms. I looked over to see my wife laughing sweetly, our sleeping child bouncing with her mother’s chuckles. But that wasn’t the epiphanic moment, exactly. Today, my wife told me that when I caught her laughing so lovingly, our friend had just said “Dion and [Joshua] look like twins.” To which Candice replied, “Yeah, but [Joshua] has put on some weight recently.” Our friend’s expression in reply was, reportedly, “so you see my point.”
If it needed any more elucidation, on Mom’s way home from staying with us to help for our first few days, she called to make sure we knew about the colossal HEB that just opened on the edge of town. There were pumpkins, cheap gas, half-price Blue Bell ice cream, and it was huge! Then she suggested that we make a field trip of it. Literally. A “field trip.”
The consequences of neglecting my bike, and finding a way to enjoy even life’s simplest necessities. These are the more-subtle reminders that I may, in fact, be a dad.
* Some of the names may have been changed to protect the “jolly.”
There is so much to share and so much learned since last Sunday. I am plugging away.
The real audacity of hope (or anything else for that matter)
I found this under the wipers of my truck one morning not too long ago. It is fair of you to wonder why this anonymous someone would expect to find an audience in the unknown owner of an old pickup. My guess is that it would probably be the “Just Married” still scrawled across the back window, but that’s just a guess. We haven’t been able to bring ourselves to clean it off in the ten months we have been married, which makes for interesting spectating when my very-pregnant wife is struggling in and out of the cab. But I digress. Continue reading »
This wouldn’t have happened
To answer yesterday’s question, in part, none of this would have happened. Continue reading »
What if I didn’t?
Yesterday was a great day, an extraordinary day. Plans were made. Great things would be done! I didn’t do a single one of these things. And it turned out to be a banner day for it. Continue reading »
If I had any more cute in my life…
…my heart might just explode.
