Dadchester

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. Avocados are water in our household. When the faucets aren't working because I forget to press the button that closes the garage door and the pipes freeze (this happened this winter when it was 6 degrees), we can just subsist on avocado. At least that's true if you talk to the newest member of our family. She's starting solids, which means she's throwing food at her face like a painter working through all her personal trauma on a canvas. She's Jackson Pollack with a size 2 diaper. You can't speak to her because she doesn't speak, barely babbles, which worries my wife from a development standpoint. "Ga. Ga," she says, which seems like enough to me. Apparently, there's all these milestones that we're supposed to be watchin...

My teenage daughter says a lot of things that I don't understand.  Many of them I miss because she is talking so quickly, and I as an "old" am unable to keep up with the pace and the rhythm at which she fires off thoughts and ideas. Amongst other things, she has thoughts on Keeper of the Lost City, Olivia Rodrigo, Harry Potter, and Sephora. When I do hear her, sometimes I'm confounded. That's okay though. She gets good grades. She is generally kind to me, and when she isn't I ignore it and chalk it up to her being a teenager who can't drive and her being a person who had to grow under the guise of TikTok overlords and their unforgiving algorithm. My point is that I don't usually let this phase me, but it sometimes leads to arguments with her mother.  Last week, my family and I were walking the Rye Playland boardwalk. My daughter saw a kid flapping his wings and making dinosaur noises.  "Brah. That's so skibidi," she said loud enough so th...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. I wondered how long they'd been dead before they decide to sell her scarves. The estate sale, the far more depressing sibling to the garage sale or tag sale is my nightmares come to life. People walking through artifacts of the past. Things you never expected to be shown to the public are there. Things like an unused copy of Muzzy (Je suis la jeune fille. Je suis maligne) or the extensive stencil collection that was hidden in the attic. Or, for me, the scarves that smell like moth balls, all of them hanging in the center of the room off a rack near the winter coats.  This particular estate sale is packed. People have traveled from far and wide to see if they can find a record player (yes), a clock radio (yes), or plates with the face of the woman who died in her...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have  been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog.  The cardboard box sits on the stone path that leads to our house. It is large, upright, and mocking me with its bizarre commonness. From my view through the bay window, I see the box has a picture on it. Unfortunately, I can't quite make out what the picture is without my glasses, so I grab my spectacles off my copy of John Cheever's short stories on the bookshelf. Then I turn on the light dangling above the steps leading to our door. Am I seeing that right? Is the picture on the box a car seat? Yup. There's definitely a child, no older than four, sitting in an uncomfortable strap laden seat.  There were no car seats when I was growing up. Mom and Dad just put us in the van and hoped for the best. That's a lie, but I don't have the bandwidth to...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. When I think about childhood, I think about waking up on Saturdays in the fall, still in my boxers. Brown, yellow, and orange leaf piles plastered to the end of the driveway. They're probably piling up at Highlands Middle School. The radiator is working, sort of, it's making a sound but the heat isn't emitting out the way it should. I lift the sheets, then the comforter off, and I glide across the wooden floors. Pictures of ancestors and relatives I don't know are hanging. Down the stairs, through the kitchen, and then back up the other set of stairs to the room my parents called the yoga room. The name was aspirational. No yoga was done, though there was a yoga mat in the room that collected dust. My brothers and I called it the television room.  Th...

Disclaimer: I am a dad living in Westchester, New York. The names of all people, but not all places, have been changed to protect the innocent and me from the glares of my neighbors who are definitely not reading this blog. Greg Miller smokes cigars in a lawn chair on Saturday mornings. I don't know what his job is, something in the city, something that allows him to slow dance to music in the living room with his wife like he's character in a period piece about the 1950s. If I had to guess, and I don't, but I will, I think he probably works somewhere down on Wall Street. Takes the Metro North in the morning from Greenwich, even though he could take the Port Chester train, reads the New York Times on his way there, works, and then returns just as the sun falls in the sky.  Greg and Anne Miller have been together for 30 years. They have a child who went to Cornell because he couldn't get into Dartmouth, and they drive a Tesla and have one of those stickers that says that...