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For a generation raised to be safe rather than strong, the thought of children can be terrifying.For a generation raised to be safe rather than strong, the thought of children can be terrifying.First rule for surviving Michigan winter? A daily walk with my kids
I walk with my kids every single day.
Or at least I try to walk with them every single day. Sure, there are some days we miss; soccer practice or a doctor’s appointment might get in the way every once in a while. Then there's weather (light rain is doable; torrential downpour less so) and illness.
Though our winter walks aren’t as pleasant as our other walks, it doesn’t mean they aren’t as important. Our winter walks are good for the soul and good for the spirit.
But as long as none of those things occur, our two oldest kids and I get our daily two miles in.
Tramps like us
We are blessed to live on the edge of a small town in Northern Michigan, so getting out and into the natural world isn’t too difficult. We walk out the front door, about 10 minutes down the street, and have our choice of trails and cornfields to traverse.
In the spring, it’s soggy. The cool damp air filled with the smell of nearly blooming flowers, the patter of light rain on the leaves above, the sound of mud squishing beneath our boots. There’s a certain way spring smells. It’s fresh foliage. It’s new life. Refreshing.
In the summer, the walks are so nice. We walk in the late afternoon, when the sun is hot and the shadows are growing, before the mosquitos are out and after my work is done for the day. By the time we get back home, dinner is just about ready to be put on the grill.
Our walks in the fall are glorious. There’s something about those first days of chilly weather. They are so refreshing after the sweaty heat of the summer. They come slowly and gradually over a few weeks in late September. Slowly the shorts are put away, the corduroys are brought out, jackets are zipped up, and out we go for our walk in that beautiful world of orange, red, and yellow.
Cold comfort
The winter walks are tough. The cold is unrelenting, the snow is deep, and the wind is almost always strong. In our region of the deep North, we don’t get much sun in the winter. Almost every day, the sky is a mix of gray, cobalt, and steel. It’s not uncommon for us to go a week or more without a single glint of sun.
So on these days — and these are our current days — we bundle up nice and tight with sweaters, snow pants, heavy jackets, balaclavas, and mittens and head out on our daily walk.
I would be lying if I said the walks these days are easy like the walks on the warm days. We talk a little less on these winter walks. It’s hard to properly articulate one’s thoughts through a scarf or a balaclava. It’s hard to hear kids’ voices over the whipping of the wind. It’s also just not that pleasant to converse when you are standing in the middle of a frozen field and the temperature is hovering around 11 degrees with a windchill of -6.
Frozen moments
Though our winter walks aren’t as pleasant as our other walks, it doesn’t mean they aren’t as important. Our winter walks are good for the soul and good for the spirit. The cold makes us strong, and as is the case for most things that make us strong, there is a part of us that hates the process.
But it’s good for us. The cold and the walk. It’s good to make yourself do hard things, and it’s good to start doing them at a young age. And it's good to do them in each other's company.
That’s actually the most important thing of all. That’s why I do the walks in the first place, so I can be away from my computer and my phone. So I can spend time with the kids, just walking.
Sometimes I think about how my kids will remember their childhoods. How will they look back on these days? How will they think about mom and dad when they are on their own? What stuff will they remember, and what stuff will they forget? What things will stick with them and characterize us, their parents?
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Winter's tale
I can’t predict it and neither could my parents. I had a great childhood, but I don’t remember that much of it. Sure I remember a lot. But do I remember 18 years' worth? No. Some stuff just sticks with us, and some just doesn’t.
Nevertheless I would love it if my kids remember our afternoon walks together. It makes me happy to imagine them in their 30s, reminiscing about their childhoods to their own kids:
“Dad always used to walk with us every day. It was so cold sometimes. He was crazy for that. But it was good for us. I remember walking with my sister — your aunt — a few steps behind your grandpa, trying to keep up. We would throw snow at each other, goof off and fall behind, and then dad would turn around and tell us to hurry up because we have to get back for dinner.”
Someday my kids will break away to take their own paths. At times, that day seems a long way off; other times, I'm afraid it will be here in the blink of an eye. Until then, we'll keep putting one foot in front of the other, together.
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The birth rate will go up if Americans prioritize having and raising their own children, not because they have foreigners to change diapers.Is the laundromat the last bastion of public life?
The world is vast and varied — different foods, cars, buildings, beliefs, and political systems wherever you go.
Yet somehow, laundromats are always exactly the same.
In an era of technologically dehumanizing isolation, I find myself seeing beauty in the most mundane moments of human connection or human commonality.
Universal, they stretch from the northern Atlantic to the southern Pacific. Where there are people and where there is civilization, there is laundry and there are laundromats.
Watching the washers
I remember waiting in a laundromat in northern France. It was right across the street from the Super-U. It was long and thin with tall windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It was late November, the low sun was warm on the seats next to the windows, our clothes turning back and forth behind the tightly sealed window facing us. The silence of the warm carpet, our winter coats unbuttoned though still on, as we waited for our clothes to finish before walking back to the apartment.
In Chicago, my laundromat had long rows of metal machines. They loaded from the top and took six quarters per cycle. You slipped the quarters in the little slots and only once all six were filled could you push the metal slider forward. A few seconds later, the machine would start.
There were boxes of overpriced dry laundry soap next to the front door and a few benches next to the bathrooms that were always occupied by people staring down at their phones. I would wait in the corner, leaning against a rumbling dryer, looking up from my phone only when someone got up to move their wet clothes from washer to dryer. I would see wrinkly shirts, knotted sweaters, socks, pants, and skirts as they shuffled their clothes to another metal machine.
When I lived in Jerusalem, I washed my clothes at a laundromat close to Kikar Tzion. It was usually quiet, though never entirely empty. There was always someone else there talking quietly on the phone, listening more than speaking. Sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in French. The walls were covered with posters and printouts with little tags with phone numbers that could be torn off and slipped into your pocket if you were interested in whatever they were selling.
Metal machine music
Last week, our washer broke. On Saturday night, I took three loads plus two kids out in a snowstorm to the laundromat to get the laundry done.
It was empty, with the exception of the guy at the front desk who greeted us kindly as we stumbled in knocking the snow off our boots on the long black carpet. There was a TV in the corner, a couple tables with chairs, long lines of big, silver machines, and a few teal seats that looked like they were made in 1982. The kids and I loaded up the machines, poured in the detergent we had brought from home, and began listening to the low hum as the clothes began to spin.
The sound is always the same in every laundromat. There’s never loud music on a stereo; if there's a TV, it’s always muted or very quiet. Even the people waiting for their socks and underwear behave as if they're in a library, talking in low voices by the rumbling machines and spinning heat.
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On the scent
The smell too; it’s always the same. All laundry soap all over the world has that same detergent-y scent. Soft, flowery, and lightly chemical. Detergent in Italy and detergent in Israel may have different names from detergent in America or detergent in Iceland, but they all are basically the same. The world is big and there are so many people, but all their clothes smell the same.
At the laundromat, people wash their most intimate garments in public, together. They carry their laundry baskets in and wash the things they only show their significant others right next to the things that someone else only shows theirs.
We never acknowledge any of this, and this is why we all hurry to put our clothes in, or change our clothes over, when we are at the laundromat. We all have a secret to protect, and we are all stuck together, in public, with the spinning machines, the low hum of the heat, and the smell of chemical flowers.
Together alone
This is part of why we are all fairly quiet as well. It’s like we don’t actually want to acknowledge that anyone else is really there washing their clothes right alongside ours. We may make small talk, but we don’t say much.
Laundromats are almost something like holdovers from a more necessarily communal time. Waiting and watching the people sitting and their clothes spinning, I have thought about how all the women must have washed clothes down by the river, or wherever it was they did laundry, in the ancient days.
In an era of technologically dehumanizing isolation, I find myself seeing beauty in the most mundane moments of human connection or human commonality. The things we share even if we don’t dwell on them. The things we do together even if we are alone. The spinning machines, the private garments we want to keep to ourselves, the smell of the detergent, the quiet as we wait.
Life hack: Look into the eyes of a newborn baby
Recently I’ve been thinking about the fact that we can’t predict anything.
Yeah, we can predict the weather this afternoon, kind of — though the meteorologists seem to mess up about 50% of the time. Sure, we can be fairly certain that an asteroid from outer space isn’t going to come careening toward Earth, smashing our house to 1,000 pieces while we sleep, I guess. I’m not too worried about that one.
Many babies are born with grey or light blue eyes; it’s only over time that they morph into the color they will be for the rest of their lives.
But the reality is, life is more unpredictable than it is predictable.
Plan check
That’s the truth, and it’s hard for us, I think. We want to know what tomorrow will bring. We want to plan, and we want to make sure we are prepared for whatever is coming. We want to build civilization, and in some pretty key ways, building civilization requires planning.
Civilization itself is a form of predictability, or an attempt to increase predictability. Running water, reliable medical care, stores stocked with meat and eggs, traffic lights that are coordinated in a complex system so as to ensure drivers don’t crash into one another other, and electricity that doesn’t go out every other day. These things are predicable things, and life is better — much better — because of them.
But we can’t predict everything.
Answers and questions
Last week, my wife gave birth to our third child and our second daughter. We didn’t find out the sex ahead of time. We always wait to be surprised, and it was a surprise. Finally we had an answer to the most pressing question on our minds: Is it a boy or a girl? But there are so many more questions, and I have no idea what the answers will be.
Holding her in my arms, looking down into her little eyes, I wonder what color they will be. Many babies (of European descent) are born with grey or light blue eyes; it’s only over time that they morph into the color they will be for the rest of their lives. Our son has brown eyes; our other daughter has blue eyes. What will she have? I have no idea.
I look at her little hands and perfectly soft cheeks, and I wonder who she will be. I have no inkling. Not a single clue. She might be anyone. Her personality could be anything. Is there a seed of it already in her? There must be, but I don’t know it. I don’t know her yet.
There, in my arms, is this little person who might become anyone and anything. I have no idea what she will find funny, how she will be difficult, what she will be interested in, who she will marry, where she will live, how many children she will have, and 100,000 other things that make up a person. I don’t know any of it, and I have no way to predict any of it. All I can do is hold her, care for her, and try to steer her along the way.
A newborn baby is a metaphor for life.
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Predictably unpredictable
When I look back at my life, there is no way I could have predicted any of it. No way I could have told my 28-year-old self where I would be today, what I would do for work, who I would be a father to, where I would live, and how I would feel. I just couldn’t have.
If I go back even further than that, it gets even more obvious. Eighteen-year-old me thought life was going to be one way, and it turned out not at all that way. Some stuff turned out harder, but most turned out better. Nevertheless, however it turned out, I couldn’t have predicted any of it.
The same, of course, goes for all the various social, cultural, and technological developments marching through our society today. I don’t think anyone in 2005 could have accurately predicted AI in 2025. I doubt anyone in 1995 could have predicted the cultural or political debates we are having in 2025. No one could have predicted the years-long ordeal known as COVID.
Serenity now!
Accepting the chaos and unpredictability of life doesn’t mean giving up on any kind of planning or attempt at establishing order. Those things are good; they are a part of civilization after all, remember? Coming face-to-face with the reality of life as something unpredictable means accepting the things we cannot change. It means internalizing Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer.
While it may be hard at first for us to accept the unpredictability of it all, it’s more than OK once we make it through the process of reckoning with the uncontrollable. It feels like looking out at the vast horizon and seeing endless possibilities. Like rolling the windows down, setting your arm on the edge of the door, and pressing the gas. Like letting go and letting it all happen. Like looking into the eyes of a newborn baby, knowing that for her, life has only just begun.
Like something beautiful.
Do you really have ADHD — or do they want to medicate you into conformity?
Everybody has a diagnosis these days.
Not just adults — kids too. It doesn’t matter if you're 8 or 38, there's someone somewhere waiting to explain away whatever's different about you.
Perhaps you find your work excruciatingly boring and hard to care about precisely because it is excruciatingly boring and hard to care about.
It's not a quirk of your personality or a flaw in your character or a wound in your soul. It's a illness. Never mind that the symptoms are vague or the evidence that it's a discrete medical condition are lacking — a pharmaceutical cure will fix it.
Just pop this pill, and you will be like everyone else. Isn’t that what you want?
All the rage
All the kids these days have ADHD or autism. Which often makes me wonder if any of them do. Or if these conditions exist at all.
Autism certainly seems real in its extreme forms, but I am not at all convinced that it's at the far end of a continuum. I don’t really think being a little “on the spectrum” is a thing. Those people are just a little weird and need stronger guidance on how to get on in life.
I have a friend who was an engineer at Google. He told me half the people he worked with claimed to be “on the spectrum,” and according to him, it was all bull. They didn’t have medical problems; they had personal problems. They were guys who never learned how to interact normally, so they just ended up being kind of weird and rude.
As for ADHD, it's so obscenely overdiagnosed that it's essentially fake at this point. The market has been so oversaturated by ridiculous and erroneous diagnoses that whenever I hear about another kid with ADHD, it tells me more about the doctors and the “system” and less about the kid.
Boys will be boys
Are some kids better at sitting down at a desk for three hours at a time? Sure. Are more girls than boys better at doing it? Yes. Is there a gender factor here when it comes to diagnosis? Absolutely.
Boys don’t learn the same way girls do. But much of modern education ignores this fact. So when boys fidget or get bored, it gets chalked up to ADHD. This is more or less common knowledge by now. So the only thing a boy being diagnosed with ADHD tells me is that he doesn't get enough recess.
Of course, there are extreme cases. There are kids who genuinely don’t seem to be able to focus at all. Something like actual ADHD exists in a small number of boys, but that doesn't negate the broader truth: Instead of seeing people as individuals with different strengths and weaknesses, we decide to overmedicate when someone isn’t exactly like everyone else.
My mom worked with special ed kids. Some of them had mild disabilities, some more extreme. In some cases, it was clear they would need supervised care their entire lives. But in other cases, it wasn't clear just what, if anything, was wrong — besides a certain learned helplessness reinforced by doctors and parents.
Pill and chill
Nowadays ADHD diagnoses aren’t just for kids; adults are getting in on it too. Believe it or not, an increasing amount of men and women, especially women, in their 30s and 40s are discovering that they too have ADHD — a discovery that inevitably “explains everything.” My wife sees reels on Instagram all the time, along with ads selling various solutions.
What's that? You couldn’t focus at your computer, clicking on an excel spreadsheet, sending pointless emails for seven hours at a time? Shocking. No, you don’t need ADHD medication. You need to do something else with your life. Perhaps you find your work excruciatingly boring and hard to care about precisely because it is excruciatingly boring and hard to care about.
Overmedicalization and overdiagnosis is a deep problem in our society. Not just because the result is an increase in prescription drug use, but because the individual human being is lost or suffocated a little bit at a time. Everyone is different. Everyone has skills, and everyone has weaknesses. Everyone learns in a different way, and everyone focuses on different things too.
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Free agency
Some people are just a little awkward, a little weird, a little absent-minded, or a little dry. Sure, they should try to meet society halfway in some reasonable sense — but that happens through early teaching, parental guidance, community expectations, and personal effort, not through a pill you pop every day. For most of the 20th century, we relied far more on those nonmedical supports.
All the pill-popping flattens our individualism and undercuts our own agency as humans. It presupposes that one cannot make oneself better, one cannot work to act right, and that one doesn’t have any control. This is a lie. Yes, of course, there are people who suffer with truly debilitating problems who need medication, and they should get that medication. But it is a small fraction of the population. Most people can make themselves better when they set their minds to it.
Don’t get me wrong. I'm not anti-psychiatry. I'm not into alternative medicine or any of the hippie stuff. I’m not denying that there are people with problems who are helped most effectively with medication. I’m thankful for the blessings of modern medicine and the advancements we continue to see every year.
But we have a problem with overdiagnosis in our country. We have a problem with losing sight of the individual. We have a problem with people who want to give up their agency and turn it all over to a pill, and we are worse off because of it.
My kids make me sick!
I never used to get sick.
Every once in a while, sure. But it wasn’t really a regular phenomenon. It also didn’t really matter that much when I did. Yeah, I had work to get done and grocery shopping to do. But when I was a young single guy without any kids, getting sick just didn’t really impact my easy life that much.
I’ve also tried avoiding the illness at all costs. Washing my hands constantly. Staying away from the kids a little. Hugging them gently rather than wrestling like a madman.
Couch bound
Before that, when I was a kid, I loved getting “sick.” Those scare quotes are key. I didn’t actually love getting sick so much as I loved staying home from school because I was sick. That was fun. One day home from school was cool. Two days home was crazy. Going to sleep after the first day home sick, it was glorious knowing that unless a miracle occurred in the middle of the night, there would be yet another day of sitting at home on the couch watching TV.
I remember one year I got mono, and I was home for more than a week. I swear it may have been two weeks. I remember secretly wondering how long I could go with it. “What if I didn’t go back for a month?” A kid can only dream of something so beautiful.
Mono was a serious illness, I guess, but I don’t ever remember really being sad about it. Getting out of school was worth far more than the pain of a sore throat or a feverish head.
Germ magnet
Now I get sick a lot. Well, maybe not a lot, but a lot more than I used to in my 20s, and I certainly don’t like it like I did in my early teens. Now I know without a shadow of a doubt that as soon as I start seeing frost on the grass in the morning, I am going to get sick. And then a month or two after that, I am going to get sick again. And maybe even again after that if I’m really unlucky.
It’s not because I have developed a debilitating disease that results in an unnaturally sickly disposition. It’s because I’m a dad, and my kids are young, and young kids touch stuff in the stores and then stick their hands in their mouths, and then three days later one gets sick, then 24 hours after that another one gets it, and then my wife, and then finally me. Whatever it is runs through the house like a steamroller, and we all get squashed.
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Amor fati
I’ve tried a variety of different tactics over the years. I’ve tried giving up right from the start. Knowing that I’ll get it eventually, I accept my fate and just sort of live life with the sick kids. It feels pretty good psychologically. I’m not worried or stressed out about how I can avoid the illness. I don’t end up over-monitoring my body, trying to discern if I am getting sick or not. I just sort of march toward the cold in a blissful state.
I’ve also tried avoiding the illness at all costs. Washing my hands constantly. Staying away from the kids a little. Hugging them gently rather than wrestling like a madman. Backing my face away as they cough without covering their mouths, then telling them in a frustrated tone, “You need to cover your mouth.” Trying my hardest to prevent the unpreventable. It’s not a great feeling, and I always end up getting sick anyway. But at least I tried. That’s something, right?
Getting sick is just a part of having kids. I know that now. It can be mitigated by hounding them about washing their hands with hot soapy water and not touching their mouths in stores, but it can’t be eliminated entirely. It’s an inescapable fact of family life. If someone gets sick, everyone gets sick.
Family fever
It’s an allegory, of course. When you have a family, you can’t get away. You can’t separate or isolate. You are no longer just yourself. You are everyone at the same time.
We have our separate bedrooms and separate closets, but we share the same space. We have our own plates and silverware, but we share the same dish. We have our own inner thoughts and our own personalities, but we share the same name, the same blood, and the same familial predispositions that are part nature and part nurture, the ones that can’t really be untangled or even really figured out.
We make our kids into the kids they are in ways we can see and in ways we intend, through the prayers we say and the manners we demand. But we make them into who they are in other ways too. Some we don’t see, and some are unintentional: the phrase a kid says that sounds just like mom or the curse word a kid says that makes you realize you really do need to stop swearing.
We make them, and they make us. I’m different now from what I was before, and it’s partly because they made me that way. When you have a family, you are not only taking on the responsibilities of raising kids but also accepting that you aren’t alone anymore. That nothing in life will be tidy (literally or figuratively) like it was before. You are trapped together, you turn yourself over to no longer being yourself and only yourself.
For better or for worse. In sickness and in health.
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