Tag: Fathers

  • Short Story Review: “Rate Your Happiness” by Catherine Lacey

    (The short story “Rate Your Happiness” by Catherine Lacey appeared in the April 13th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Tobias Nicolai

    When I finished reading Catherine Lacey’s “Rate Your Happiness” I was reminded of driving a car with a manual transmission. Especially when you don’t put the car in gear and still step on the gas which causes the engine to rev really high, but you don’t go anywhere. In this story, the narrator calls this “meaningless motion” and they’re right. And it’s also very frustrating.

    I understand that the theme of this story was existing in atrophy, and motion that leads to nowhere. Unfortunately, having a protagonist that doesn’t make a decision or choice leaves the ending of the story empty and unsatisfying. There is one sentence in the last paragraph which I think attempts to bring about a conclusion: “Louise returned to the street with real intent, finally carrying her contradictory desires with total clarity…” but I have to say that this sentence is being asking to do a whole lot of heavy lifting for this story. It implies that Louise has made a choice to accept who she is when it comes to how she has reacted to the situations the story has presented. Yet, is it truly a choice when the character is only acknowledging that they don’t make choices? Though an interesting philosophical question, it doesn’t work narratively.

    What “Rate Your Happiness” presents is something that feels akin to the first one or two chapters of a novel. There are a lot of moving parts here, and Lacy does a good job of balancing them in the narrative. No one idea, theme, or character dominates, and it all flows and ripples over each other creating the feeling of a very real and complicated character in the protagonist of Louise. In fact, I enjoyed all the characters that were presented in this story, and wanted to see and hear more from them.

    Like I said, if this was the first chapter of a novel, I’m hooked and I want to see how this plays out. As a short story, the engine is revving up, but we didn’t go anywhere.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Stressful, Blue to White, and I Gotta Run

    ODDS and ENDS: Stressful, Blue to White, and I Gotta Run

    (I will sing, sing my song…)

    Man in blue tracksuit frantically running out of the Sakura Heights apartment building door.
    Word Press’ AI creates some awful images, huh?

    You know the one thing in my life that I had no idea would be stressful; Planning a kid’s birthday party. I thought planning our wedding was bad. I had no idea that birthday parties for 10 ten year old girls causes me to lose sleep at night. I wake up in a cold sweat scared that I have forgotten some detail. My stomach churns at the idea a kid will come to the party and not have a good time, or will be excluded for whatever stupid reason, and then it is my responsibility to make sure EVERYONE HAS A GOOD TIME! Seriously, there should be a list for new parents of all the shit that will stress you out that you have no idea on God-s Green Earth are stressful. Making memories here…

    So, it seems my default colors right now is white and blue. I say all of this because as I start to “Spring Clean” and de-clutter my closet, I’m tossing shirts which are old, and have holes in them. What I am left with is an amazing spectrum of blue to white, all in an Oxford style. I have written a couple of times, how in my middle age period, I have taken on a Classic American/Oxford/New England/Ivy League look. It feels comfortable, defined, and at the same time casual on me. The draw back here is that I seem to have boxed myself in color wise. I do have some Nantucket Red pants, but really, I seem to have dropped the ball on having a splash of color in my life.

    Ah… It’s almost 11am, and I need to run to the grocery store. It’s a busy day and I have a lot to do.

  • Spring Break Broke Me (Unedited)

    I take full responsibility for my actions. Let’s start with that.

    The kid has been on her Spring Break for the past week, and on the whole, I have enjoyed the time we have spent together. The older she gets, the more fun she is to talk to. She very smart and a very opinionated kid, which makes conversations with her enjoyable because she is very passionate in what she believes in. She’s at a fun age when the world is brand new and just waiting for her to explore it. I didn’t try to over schedule her, but we did some fun stuff like spend an afternoon at the Whitney Museum, and we shot some arrows over at Gotham Archery in Brooklyn.

    But I did make a mistake with this Spring Break; I fell out of my routine. This was the kid’s Spring Break, not mine. For some reason, I got it in my head that I was also going to enjoy some “time off.” Unfortunately, this was a miscalculation, as you see, when you are a stay at home parent, you never really get a day off. Your job is to keep the family on track and moving forward. This I lost sight of.

    What I ended up creating in myself was a feeling of anxiety, and the sense that I was letting “everything” fall behind. Everything was taking longer to do, and thus created situations where I wasn’t able to complete the tasks that were important to me; mainly writing and catching up on my reading. But if I took time for myself, then I started feeling guilty, and then those feelings rolled up into a ball angst, as I wasn’t doing enough for my family.

    I chalk this up on bad planning, and too high of aspirations, on my part.

  • Playing Sports (Unedited)

    My kid is on her school’s soccer team, and she loves it. We love it too, as it is the best way for her to burn off the huge amounts of energy that she has in reserve, and it keeps her off a screen. I don’t know if she will be a life longer soccer player/fan and honestly, I don’t care. I like that she’s playing on a team, and doing something physical.

    If you are not aware, I come from a very competing family. I wasn’t blessed with the athletic gene (though I wasn’t too bad at tennis) but playing and winning at games was a big thing in my family growing up. Lots of board games and wiffleball in the back yard. With two older brother who were nine and seven years older than me, it was difficult to beat them at sports as a kid, but that didn’t stop me from trying. My oldest brother played baseball, and my other brother was all about basketball. I tried my hand at both, but didn’t have the skills. I could through a baseball well, but couldn’t hit to save my life. As for basketball, I don’t ever remember feeling that I was coordinated enough to be good at it.

    My father had a rule in our house, which was we had to play a sport up until we turned sixteen. After I washed out of Little League, and junior high basketball didn’t have a place for me, my father suggested that I take up tennis, which was a sport he played. I took lessons once a week for two years, and I got kind’a good, but not that good. But my father’s point did sink in; you have to stay active and physical, or you will just go pot.

    So, I guess I am keeping the tradition alive. Going to keep her in a sport until sixteen, when she can decide for herself if she wants to continue.

    When I turned sixteen, I stopped the tennis lessons, and committed myself to my high school’s theatre department. Which, in a round about way, is also a team sport.

  • Middle School (Unedited)

    The kid started middle school. There has been a great deal of upheaval and change in our little apartment, not to mention the world. I am happy that the kid is growing up, and she is very excited about staring middle school, and leaving elementary behind. For her, she likes a challenge, and going new places and meeting new people, and middle school is that. Her only complaint has been that she wants to get at the learning and new classes, and the first day is just dull; learning the rules, and where things are.

    I will tip my cap to my kid; she is so much braver that I was at her age.

    I was terrified to go to middle school. Everything that everyone had told me was that the 9th graders ate the seventh graders alive. There was nothing in middle school I was looking forward to. It was all awkward and mean and rough, and embarrassing, and every school nightmare I ever had wrapped up into one.

    The funny thing was that the night before middle school started, my kid had trouble sleeping. She had butterflies in her stomach. Though she was excited about starting middle school, there was still a little nervousness to it. As I was talking to her, trying to help her relax and sleep, she asked me if middle school will be the worst time of her life, because me and her mother had told her some stories of how difficult it was. That and she’s seen enough tween TV and movies that have also painted middle school as a grinder box crucible of adolescence.

    I was prepared to attempt to paint the rosiest of pictures for her that it was this fun place, and only a few bad things happened to me, but that would have been a lie. And then it struck me; there was a silver lining. I told her that middle school was where I discovered theatre and performing. It was the place that where I first started reading great books, books that open your mind, and help you start to see the world in new and fresh ways. But most importantly, middle school was where I made some of the first truly great friends of my life. People I bonded with over books and movies and music. People I that are still in my life today, who I can’t fathom not being intertwined with to this day. I told her that middle school was the start of the process that made me the adult who I am today. The person I am proud to be.

    Don’t know if it did the trick, but she eventually got to sleep.

    And maybe I’m getting old and looking for silver linings in awful memories, or maybe those sharp edges and rounding off as the years go by.

    Nope. Middle school was the worst. I just had the best friends imaginable, which is how I survived.