Dear Family, Full disclosure: I am beginning this letter on Thanksgiving morning. I will not finish it until sometime next week (prior to my self-imposed month-end deadline). The delay will owe in part to some choir-related stuff in the coming week that I will probably want to record for posterity. But I am beginning now…

Dear Family, As many of you know, my house, where I have lived for longer than I can remember, is just a fence jump away from the woods. (Well, it’s less a “fence jump” and more a “gate open,” as our backyard fence does in fact have a back gate, but the former sounds more…

Dear Family, My media consumption of the last two weeks has been unusually saturated with Taylor Swift music since Hannah, Emma, and Emma’s mother, Julie, took me to see the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie. I realize now what my sisters have been freaking out about all summer. I actually cried when Taylor came out…

Dear Family, Now that all my children are grown and two of them are writing their own monthly missives, it at times occurs to me to wonder what I’m supposed to keep writing about every month. But then I remember that, while many of these letters make at least passing reference to my children’s (and…

I have recently begun to greatly appreciate the contributions and impacts that teachers have on my life and general state of happiness. You’d think that I would have realized this earlier, given my plan of the past three years to study to become a secondary education teacher, but my motivation to become a teacher really…

Dear Family, Attendees of Carrie’s wedding in Portland earlier this month may have heard something about a boorish (and possibly inebriated) guest who, only seconds after being told for the tenth time in two hours that the dessert table was still off limits, angrily thrust his right paw into the center of a large plate…

Dear Family,  If you are reading this, you may have noticed a couple of things. First and foremost, I have not written a letter since April. I swear I’ve been meaning to, but I only ever manage to find the motivation in the middle of a month, at which point I think, “Well, I should…

(Image above: Me in a field of flowers on Y Mountain) Dear Family, A few of my Willis relatives expressed a desire to stay updated with my life while I’m away at college. I’m flattered that you all still want something to do with me even when I’ve given you the perfect excuse to forget…

Dear Family, A week or two ago, a fellow member of our neighborhood’s informal cycling club was depositing his only child – a girl of extraordinary academic and athletic achievement whom Grace has known since elementary school – at a certain prestigious university in Pennsylvania. He shared with our group of mostly middle-aged dads (and…

Dear Family, I have a complicated relationship with the Fourth of July.  This has nothing to do with patriotic ambivalence. Notwithstanding the insanity of our road system, too many d@mn cars, and the lack of a viable political party where I feel I belong, I feel fortunate to have been born here. I am grateful…