ArcaMax

I'm planning an overseas flight with my kids this summer, and I have a bad feeling.

Not because of COVID (though that promises now to, forever, be a problem), not because of tensions between Turkey and Greece (though that could get ugly fast) and not because I've seen post after post warning that travel this year will be hellacious.

It's ...Read more

I got my first gray hair at 16.

It wasn't entirely unexpected. My dad -- who also went prematurely gray -- had dyed his hair since I was a child.

Even so, it made me nervous to find that silvery strand, seeing decades' worth of hair dye in my future, stretching out in expensive hair salon appointments as far as the eye could see.

I decided, ...Read more

When summer approaches, some diet, hoping to get their bodies swimsuit-ready. Me? I'm getting my stomach prepared for summer food.

Winter might offer soup, casseroles and chili, but it can't hold a candle to summer's riot of tastes.

From appetizers to dessert, summer's got it all. There are drinks -- iced tea, sweetened or black, and cold beer...Read more

The post appeared on Facebook, the last refuge of those with no other options.

"Our community is desperate," Kimberly Endrizzi wrote in her plea. "We have kids drinking expired formula because it's better than nothing."

She described how her 4-year-old son Greyson has a rare metabolic disorder called phenylketonuria, or PKU, and needs a ...Read more

Either parenting has gotten exponentially harder in the last two-plus years, or I've developed in that same time Olympic-level complaining skills.

I'm willing to accept the latter possibility if everyone else accepts the former.

I'm also willing to accept that it's gotten harder to be anything in this country: a neighbor, a co-worker, a person...Read more

When I finally gave up on what had been both a herculean and a Sisyphean effort to breastfeed, resigning my lanolin and breast pump to mere props in my nightmares, I wanted to know more about alternatives to breastfeeding.

I asked my dad, who grew up in the mountains of Greece with no electricity and no weekly pediatrician visits, what did ...Read more

Everywhere I go, I see tulips.

In the Midwest, we had a godawful April.

The umbrellas barely had a chance to dry from one rainstorm before the next downpour started. Day after day: wet, cold, miserable.

Half of the people I know (including half of the people in my house) got COVID last month. The few who didn't succumb caught a weekslong ...Read more

Our children are anxious, and they're getting more so every day.

Even before the pandemic, anxiety among the kids in our country was increasing at an alarming rate, and the situation has only gotten worse.

I'm not a psychologist or a researcher, but I am a parent, and it's incumbent upon me to give my kids the best chance at mental health.

...Read more

In one of my favorite fantasies, I'm old.

I'm sitting at my kitchen table, wrapped in a well-loved but somewhat ratty bathrobe, leisurely sipping coffee and taking bites of buttered toast slathered in cherry jam. Outside, the sun shines and birds chirp.

I flip through a fat newspaper, passing up all the stories that look too depressing or too ...Read more

COVID isn't over, and it never will be.

Even if the disease goes the way of smallpox (which isn't as gone as it used to be), there will still be bloody arguments about masking, vaccines and whether it's OK to make anyone take even the tiniest protective measure for another human being's welfare. These conflicts haven't been resolved, and never ...Read more

I was driving my kids to their swimming lessons the other day when I listened, a bit amused and a bit horrified, as disagreement escalated into full-fledged debate over what they clearly considered a crucial point of contention: Do leprechauns wear brown boots or black?

They agreed that leprechauns always wear green clothes (of course) but, in ...Read more

I like to build fires.

When it's chilly but not bitter, overcast but not raining, there's nothing more satisfying than dragging out our rusty, hand-me-down fire pit and making a blaze.

I gather armfuls of twigs, grab a couple of large logs from the garage and twist up some newspaper. I use an old blue lighter that I keep on the back porch for ...Read more

On my right hand, between the first and second knuckles, tucked away inside my fingers, sits a tiny bump.

For the first four decades of my life, I had no idea it existed.

Even now, I don't know what it is: beauty mark, mole or some other kind of miniature flaw. It doesn't much matter anyway, as small and insignificant as it is.

But in the ...Read more