Category: Parenting

Essays about being a step-parent, raising my girls, and exploring the roles of parents in general and fathers in particular.

Important, but aimless

trevor

I’ve been spinning my wheels here for weeks. It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I have. Thousands and thousands of words. Actually kind of an embarrassing amount of writing. Like, I have the opposite of writer’s block and it’s becoming something of a problem because I’m constantly a little bit distracted by the things I’ve been writing. But I can’t hit “publish.” I can’t do it. And the reason why comes down to a real philosophical thing I’ve been struggling about with this blog. I’ve been trying to be topical for the past month…

Dear Stupid Blanket…

trevor
kids blanket patches

This is the story of my eldest daughter and a blanket that she’s had forever. It’s an old Indigo blanket. The kind that’s rolled up in a fleecy log near the checkout and you, like fifty thousand other germy consumers, absent-mindedly run your fingers along it and think to yourself, “This is nice.” It’s the kind of purchase that makes sense in a compulsive way, when you don’t know anything about it other than it feels soft when rolled up like a burrito in the impulse-buy line. It’s awful. My…

Happy Birthday, Little Fish

trevor
love make share family

Four years ago, I had no children. Today is my daughter’s eighth birthday. Today is my daughter’s eighth birthday. I still can’t quite believe it when I see those words on the page. It’s still surreal to me that I have gone from no family and no inclination to having one in my 20’s to being a father. Even that word conjures up a little bit of imposter syndrome, even though I know it makes sense. Step-father, autocorrects my brain. But that word is broken, too. That step- has got so many connotations. It’s Cinderella, it’s drunks,…

The Longest Paddle: A Story of Woodworking and Carving Out a Family

trevor
paddlemaking tools

When I finished cleaning my tools and putting them away after finally finishing carving my 6-year-old’s stepdaughter’s first paddle today, I had to wonder why it had been so long since I worked on it. A little background. My family has deep ties in Algonquin Park, and a lot of my family’s history has to do with rangers and guiding and paddling. Through Omer Stringer, we have ties to most of the major camps in Algonquin Park and to Roots through the Beaver Canoe brand. This is no brag; it’s…