In The History Of Life,

The Most Rewarding Part About Being A Dad Is Just Looking At Children Who Didn't Exist At Some Point. The First Time You Saw Them, They Were The Size Of A Quarter, In A Sonogram, And Now They Can Pour Orange Juice And Yell At Each Other.

I've Come To Realize That Making It Your Life's Work To Be Different Than Your Parents Is Not Only Hard To Do, It's A Dumb Idea. Not Everything We Found Fault With Was Necessarily Wrong; We Were Right, For Example, To Resent, As Kids, Being Told When To Go To Bed. We'd Be Equally Wrong, As Parents, To Let Our Kids Stay Up All Night. To Throw Out All The Tools Of Parenting Just Because Our Parents Used Them Would Be Like Making Yourself Speak English Without Using Ten Letters Of The Alphabet; It's Hard To Do.

Sometimes It Works Out Well, And Certain Household Responsibilities Fall Naturally To Those Who Like Doing Them. For Example, My Wife Likes To Pack Suitcases, I Like To Unpack Them. My Wife Likes To Buy Groceries, I Like To Put Them Away. I Do. I Like The Handling And Discovering, And The Location Assignments. Cans - Over There. Fruit - Over There. Bananas - Not So Fast. You Go Over Here. When You Learn Not To Go Bad So Quickly, Then You Can Stay With The Rest Of Your Friends.

Upstate New York In The Middle Of October. You Can't Get More Beautiful Than That.

The Consumer Mentality - We Like Something, What Other Flavor Does It Come In? We Like That Tv Show, Does It Come In A Book Form? Does It Come In A Capsule? How About A Soup?