Editor’s note: Congratulations are in order for Scott Lax, winner of First Place for the 2011 Ohio Professional Writers Communications Contest. Click here for more details. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “There are no second acts in American lives.” That […]
Fears of a Father: A Meditation on Love
Few writers save Stephen King, Anne Rice and other authors who thrive in the literary genre of horror writing, enjoy writing about what scares them. Most writers seem to prefer writing about what they like, be it real (food, sports) […]
Signs You Have Postpartum Father Exhaustion
Those of you who have followed this column know that Lydia’s and my son, Finn Scott Lax, was born on 1.11.11 (in Labor Delivery Room 11). And you know it was, and remains the greatest event of my life, one […]
Bordeaux – A Wine for the Generations
A month before my son Finn was born, I went to see my old friend Jim Mocny. I was the sometimes “honorary Mocny brother” in a band he used to have with his brother Richard. If Rich couldn’t make a […]
Finn in the World
12.25.10. Are we having a Christmas baby? This is partly what’s on my mind at about 1 AM on Christmas morning as Lydia begins to have contractions. More on my mind is that she’s been vomiting from the flu all […]
Listening to Wine
Those of us who read about wine have likely read a number of experts offer this confusing bon mot: That the only thing that matters in choosing and enjoying a wine is if you like it. That advice usually comes […]
Letter to My Unborn Son, Part Two
Dear Son, F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of my favorite authors, wrote, “In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” It’s a little after three o’clock in the morning as […]
The Wine Column
Just as I came to writing and to fatherhood later in life, so too did I drink from my first truly memorable bottle of wine as a more ripened man. I was in my mid-forties, judging from the bottle that […]
Cool Apps for My Son (But You Can’t Buy Them)
We all hear a lot about cool apps these days. By apps, of course, I mean computer applications. “Applications” isn’t very tough to spell out, but as are many words these days, it’s abbreviated for a technological culture that’s in […]
Letter to My Unborn Son
Dear… Well, son, you’ve heard your name, but for readers of this column, let’s save that information for when you’re born. Yours is a name we think you’ll like as the years go by. It’s something of a family name […]
The Long and Winding Road to Your Ultrasound
To paraphrase Sir Paul McCartney, another older dad who’s also played some rock and roll in his day, it’s been a long and winding road to Lydia’s ultrasound. I’m sitting in a room in MacDonald Women’s Hospital, not far from […]