• The Things You Do

    Getting Older

    Dear Xander, You’ve always been a lot closer to your mother than to me. It is a perfectly reasonable bias, admittedly; she is much more better-looking than I am, for one. And she does treat you better than I do on most occasions. I do envy your mother sometimes for the attention she receives from you. Perhaps it is because we spend so much time together, that I can’t help but use her as the superior parenting benchmark and wonder where I went wrong. One evening when I was giving you a shower, you taught me where I went wrong. I was just recovering from a gruelling bike training session…

  • The Things Your Dad Does

    Dear Dad – a Daddy Matters Father’s Day Special

    For Father's Day, the Daddy Matters Group posted a writing challenge for us to imagine what our kids might really say to us if they were to write a letter to their father. I thought it more fitting to have the letter written here instead of The Blogfather, though I will admit it does veer away somewhat from my usual letters to Xander. Anyway, this is what I imagine Xander might say.

  • The Things Your Dad Does

    Being Good

    Dear Xander, I was speaking to a few dads in a sitdown meeting when the topic of our children’s future came up. It was a complicated and heavy discussion, delving into such sub-topics such as our local government policies, its emphasis on meritocracy, and ultimately the need for our children to work on their academic lives even harder than any child has ever done in the history of our country, just so we can compete on level ground in what is currently a country growing a majority of foreigners who are equally, if not more, driven, talented and less materialistic. As the “impassioned” discussion wore on, I studied each father…