I say this as someone who firmly believes that the true privilege of being in a family is that you get to know five, six, seven different people occupying the same body over the course of a lifetime. And that the best days are almost always ahead of us.
I really do believe that; it’s the whole point of what we’re doing, after all. If at the end, we’ve raised two kind and contributing adults (who retain some of their inner-childhood magic and still enjoy being around us), we will have succeeded in our mission. Eye on the ball: That’s why, when I was younger, I was unfairly smug when parents mourn the loss of innocence, like when Bob Odenkirk recently said he’s jealous of “anybody who’s still got little kids at home.”
But now is also all we have, so I take my fellow parents’ nostalgia for these good-old days to heart. And instead of rolling my eyes at their truisms that “the days are long but the years are short,” I do my very best to internalize them and be present.
Because I (a realist and a crier) know that one day, I will look back on this season and wish I could have had oh so much more of it. And that the things that frustrated me about our life in this moment will fade into laughable insignificance.
The failed seedlings and overgrown garden, the whining while we handed out block-party flyers, the front steps I didn’t paint for more than a year, the fights over who gets to “ride in the front” of the cargo bike, the basement full of junk I never seemed to properly purge, the taxes I was perennially behind on…
All of these annoyances will be nudged to the background, probably by some Apple Photos time warp reminding me that, during this time, your mother and I passed the evenings by sharing TikToks with each other of Pokémon as imagined by an AI David Attenborough. (Because we like the things you like.)
Luckily for you, this is what I’m thinking about on an August afternoon when you jump from the top bunk into the glass light of your ceiling fan and leave a trail of bloody footprints down the stairs as you hurry to tell me, half excited, “Dad, you’ve gotta see this!” (Meanwhile, my friend in Berlin texts me that he just got into Berghain.)
This is what I’m thinking about when 4-year-old hands reach for mine during a dance party of our own in the kitchen. “Twirl me, Daddy,” you say. “This is a lovely song.”
This is what I’m thinking about as we construct a pair of castles out of Magna-Tiles, and you both say, “We’re done building, let’s just play now.”
I remember my own stickball games with my mother in the driveway and the wooden rubber-band guns my father made me in the garage. And I know that my time with you is now (and middle school is coming).
So I silence the timer I militantly claimed would signal the transition to bedtime — so that we can play a little longer now on this summer Saturday night.
When it finally is time to brush teeth and get jammies on, you do it cheerfully. Right up until the final snuggle, when the screams begin: “I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED!” Soon these morph from bloody murder to a matter-of-fact declaration: “I POOPED!”
I walk in to find you angelic and smiling. I also discover that the ribbons in your doll’s braids have been untied and tangled beyond reasonable repair.
“I make a lot of mistakes,” you say.
“Me too,” I say.
But my last words ever, I hope, will be, “We had fun, didn’t we?” Because when I am old, I will wish for this time back: when we were making a home together.
Life Inside a Singular Artists’ Enclave in Brooklyn, in “The Candy Factory”
By Cory Jacobs and Jason Schmidt for The New Yorker (archive 🔗)
Best line: Some forty years ago, Ann Ballentine, a real-estate agent with an eccentric sense of style and a knack for fostering community, bought a building in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. “I was first standing over here when I said, ‘I love this,’ ” she says, gesturing to a particular spot in her apartment, a space filled with stained glass and potted plants and jewel-tone rugs. In the years that followed, she rented out the units in the building to artists of all stripes.
Inside the Candy Factory, as the building is still called, painters, sculptors, musicians, industrial designers, and filmmakers work next door to one another, connected by creative fellowship and personal ties. The ecosystem of the residence has yielded all sorts of collaborations, including a romantic partnership and an organ donation.
To Study Viking Seafarers, He Took 26 Voyages in Traditional Boats by Franz Lidz for The New York Times (🎁)
Best line: “In the spirit of experimental archaeology, Mr. Jarrett piloted nine different modern vessels, built in the styles of those used a millennium ago.
Most of the journeys were undertaken in 30-foot fyringer, square-rigged, open clinker boats, built in the tradition of Afjord, a small Norwegian municipality where Viking-era boatbuilding techniques endured into the 20th century. Fyringer, the smallest boats in Mr. Jarrett’s fleet, were favored by both fishermen and farmers. “Most scholarship has focused on the large, impressive longships, which were not designed for long-range sailing and did not represent the realities of everyday life in the period,” Mr. Jarrett said. Longships, he reasoned, give a skewed image of what sorts of sailing trips would have been possible.”
The 50 Best Dive Bars in America by Hannah Hayes for Huckberry
Best line: “Conjuring criteria, administering purity tests, listing virtues and faults—perhaps there’s an ounce of usefulness in scrutinizing the qualities of the genre. But debating lighting levels, cocktail sophistication, or degrees of patina and popularity? That all seems, well, lame. And beside the point. A great dive isn’t just a bar, and a dive isn’t great without its people.”
These Texas High Schoolers Had Two Days to Build a Tiny Home by Ronda Kaysen for The New York Times (🎁)
Best line: “Fascinated by how gravity moved water through pipes, Joseph had wanted to be a plumber as soon as he took his first construction class his freshman year at Belton. His older brother was a plumber, and told Joseph that if he learned all he could from Carrillo and went to Texas State Technical College in Waco, where Carrillo once taught, he could go even further. Maybe, one day, he would be a master plumber. Plumbing became his varsity sport, a skill none of his peers could match, especially not the ones headed to four-year college.”
'Buildings should contribute to your life' – at home with photographer Tif Hunter
By Lily Le Brun for The Modern House
Best line: “Converting the derelict barns into liveable spaces was not without its challenges. About a month after buying them, Tif got a phone call from his new neighbour telling him that the roof had fallen in; one of the ancient trusses in the oldest barn had collapsed. Nature moved in fast. By the time they had managed to secure it and protect it from the weather, grass and plants were flourishing within. But as Tif says, “It's had a life. All its bumps and bruises are a thing of beauty to me.”
Seth Putnam is an editor and writer in Chicago. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in a 1920s home that is the epitome of a work in progress.
"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." —Mary Oliver