He smiled over his Sunday morning oatmeal, plain and steaming, his grapefruit cut into halves. Smiled with his eyes. Gotta remember, always with the eyes.

“That’s your problem,” pointing at his wife’s sausage and pancakes, drenched with syrup.

“And that’s yours!” She pointed back, at his grapefruit, her well-rounded face slinging condemnation.

“It wouldn’t hurt you to get up off your ass once in a while, either, and exercise.” He suddenly realized he was no longer smiling. Remember, always with the eyes.

One of my daughters today was approaching tears, when I almost blew up at her. I didn’t actually yell at her, I hope, but I felt my temperature and voice rising in unison.

She was upset, because we didn’t have an extra pool pass, so that she could go to the community pool party today, which our apartment complex throws for its residents each year. She’s an innovator, like her old man, so she quickly found a solution to her dilemma. She discovered that you don’t actually need a pool pass to get into the party—you only need a pass if you actually want to swim; and you can probably get around that rule, too, because it’s the end of the season. And so she went to the party with her friend and her friend’s mother.

But before that happened, for a few seconds there, she was standing in front of me, with that desperate, pouty, life-is-falling-apart face that feels like a wood rasp rubbing through my heart. And that made me sad and upset, not because we thought she couldn’t go, but because she so desperately wanted to go.