Author: Daddy Coping in Style

Baring My Design Soul

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I’m an actor. I’m accustomed to auditioning and repeatedly sharing whatever talent I have and often baring my soul for complete strangers. Nevertheless, presenting my design baby, my complete focus, my sudden passion for this diaper bag project was the most terrifying “audition” of my life. Sharing one’s art is never, ever easy. Lemme tell you more… https://www.ecknox.com/blog/2018/4/23/chapter-7-baring-my-design-soul

Major Strides, Minor Paranoia

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So it’s been a bit since I stopped to reflect on my family and wonderful trials of parenting. Luckily, I haven’t had major dramas to sort out, all year. How magical is that? But something cropped up, recently. The other night, my older, gender-fluid kiddo went to bed seemingly without a care. Later, my partner poked his head in and kid crying in bed. Though I was in another room, my antennae snapped to. I knew something was up. I poked my head in right as older peanut explained why he was crying to my partner. As an avid reader of my blog, you might recall (ahem) that we had a bit of bathroom anxiety at the beginning of the year, which my kid admirably solved for himself. But unbeknownst to us, he’d been using the girls’ room for the past few months. From what we were able to decipher through the 1stgrade sniffling, our kid peed in the bathroom and another girl (we’ll call her Anna) was “in” the bathroom. For some reason, that …

How are you? For reals?

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Maybe we need a different kind of check-in? I had this thought while reading an obituary for Anthony Bourdain. It seems everyone, including his mother, said, “He was the last person I’d expect to take his own life.” I suppose we hear this all too often. Is it always the “least likely” to end their lives? Not particularly. I’m probably fortunate to count only one dear friend who took his own life. When I got that news, I wasn’t at all surprised; saddened, for sure, but not surprised. This all makes me think of a moment after the death of my mother. Months after the funeral, a friend called to check in and said, “I don’t know – do you want to talk about your mom? Is it too depressing so long after the fact? On the contrary, I was relieved to talk about her. Of course in the month after a family member’s death, that’s all anyone talks about with you. But soon thereafter, we Americans resort to our regularly-unhealthy relationship with death. We …