Author: Timothy Willis

Dear Family: I picked up a pickleball paddle for the first time in my life at our family reunion at Oglebay earlier this month. Within about 30 seconds I felt like I more or less had the hang of it, and my brother Matt surmised that my tennis background would likely translate to my becoming…

Dear Family, At the end of 11 blissful days in North Idaho and Central Washington, where I don’t think it rained even once and the dew point hung out mostly in in the very comfortable mid-40s, Crystal and I were making our way to bag claim at Washington Dulles International Airport when I received a…

Dear Family, What felt like an unusually late end to the school year (brought about by a combination of excessive snow-related cancelations — some of these would more accurately be termed “snow-related deferrals” since they ultimately had to be made up for reasons no one understands other than it’s the law — and the fact…

Dear Family, I had just undergone a minor procedure at Adventist HealthCare White Oak Medical Center (a nearby hospital whose unwieldy name I can only assume was the brainchild of the same consulting firm that gave us “Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport”) and the post-op nurse asked me to rate my discomfort on a 10-point…

Dear Family, Family lore holds that a 1970s trip to see some Indian ruins while we were in Utah for a Willis reunion had to be cut short when some boy (perhaps me, perhaps someone my age with a similar temperament) threw a fit because a) driving for hours to look at old rocks you’re…

Dear Family, Earlier this month, precisely 15 years, 2 months, and 29 days after Crystal and I got into the business of being parents to teenagers, we finally left that chapter behind by celebrating Grace’s 20th birthday. We marked the occasion (sort of — technically we were a week early) by driving down to Lexington,…

Dear Family, For Christmas, I gave Crystal one of those overpriced “Adventure Bucket List” things they sell on Facebook to people with no impulse control. Maybe you’ve seen the ads. It’s basically a box of 50 large scratch-off cards — kind of like the lottery tickets they sell at gas stations, except instead of winning…

Dear Family, On or about Wednesday, January 8th, Hannah married Emma Porter during a small ceremony in their apartment in Orem, Utah. I never expected I would devote the first sentence of two consecutive monthly letters to announcing the marriages of two of my daughters, but here we are. Until relatively recently, I never expected…

Dear Family, Sophie married Luke Wonnacott shortly before noon on Friday in the Washington D.C. Temple. The rest of the month is kind of a blur. It’s New Year’s Eve and I don’t have a lot of time to write, but let’s see what I can remember. Apart from being a last-minute addition to the…

Dear Family, Crystal learned this month that if you need a good spine surgeon, it’s really helpful to be Roland Kent’s sister. If you are a faithful reader of my letters (and have a good memory) you already know that Crystal’s back surgery last spring — performed by a surgeon more conveniently located to us…