A few years ago, at the dinner table, I told my son, who was nearly six at the time, about a week-long day camp. I thought he would love it—he would get to take apart an appliance and make it into a brand new invention—something he already loves to do with his grandfather on a [...]

I remember this vase in my grandmother’s house. It sat in the glow cast by the light on her bedside table. I marveled at the swirled colors, trying to imagine how they might have been created. The story of the vase, as I recall, goes back nearly six decades to my father’s childhood. For some [...]

A family tradition that has grown to be a favorite in our house is the family reading party. Once or twice a month the boys and I gather together on the bed, the sofa, the floor, or a comfy chair and do nothing for the entire day but read. The reading party is always a [...]

It was a hot, hot day. Heat radiated from the ground as I scanned through the prickly vines for the plumpest, ripest blackberries. The air was thick and still, my blackberry bucket was heavy on my arm, and the bees buzzed out from the stack of hives beside me, nuzzled up to the blackberry blossoms [...]