David Minerva Clover

Despite our relative insulation from homophobia, my wife and I are not unaware of the situation. There are plenty of people in this country who don’t believe that we have the right to exist, to be married, or to raise a child together.

Getting rid of all of your stuff is all well and good if you are childfree, but if you have the fortune (or misfortune) to have children, they literally will not let you.

I am at the bar, working on a piece about kids’ books, while my wife stays home to mind the baby. The lady next to me strikes up a conversation about this and that. Then she notices that I’m still casually clutching a copy of Guess How Much I Love You?

People might raise their eyebrows when they hear me say “snowperson” for the first time. But it makes perfect sense. A man is just a kind of person.

Once upon a time, the only thing to consider was “Does your kid watch too much TV?” But now it seems like nearly everyone can agree that kids these days spend far too much time looking at screens of all sorts.

None of us follows any one parenting philosophy to a T; we’re all making split-second decisions about what is and isn’t dangerous.

I learned binge-watching Mister Rogers that he wasn’t just being comforting, he was rephrasing many of the things I was hearing in therapy.

Teeth are inseparable from class in this country. I have gotten by in life largely by being able to “pass” as middle class, by being white and articulate and confident. People meet me and assume that I must have gone to college. Middle class people talk to me like I’m their peer. But I am not their peer. I will never be their peer.

But what I did write, and write constantly, were diaries and journals. I kept notebooks and three-ring binders filled with observations about my life that I thought were interesting. Sometimes I worried that these personal stories were too naval-gazing, but I still held on to them, hoping that someday someone would want them.

I’m a poor person. I live below the U.S. poverty line. And yeah, I deserve to make my own financial decisions. The reality is that I did not become poor because I ate a meal in a restaurant one too many times, and while it’s true that eating out less can affect one’s budget, refusing to ever eat out again won’t make me not poor.