David Minerva Clover

I mess up and do things very differently than I want to sometimes. When that happens, I have one rule for myself: I stop and apologize to my kid.

I don’t want to deprive my child of these magical Halloween memories, I just also want to light candles and talk about our ancestors.

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.

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?

There’s just no getting around it, and other than one half-hour spell where he sat with a good friend of ours while both of his moms took a swim, one of us had to be with him the entire weekend. And let’s be honest, because I’m “boob mom” and he was nursing even more than normal, it could never really be divided 50/50. All of that was fine, but it was often just fine, and there’s just no denying that it was a very different trip than it would have been without a kid.

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.

Babies, while awesome in so many wonderful ways, do not give a single shit if you really need another hour of sleep. If the baby is up, you’re up. So we were up.

Straight people, it isn’t that you aren’t awesome; so many of you are! It’s just that, while you enjoy the numerous advantages that your straight privilege allows you, I’d like to celebrate the little things that make being queer totally rad.

It is worse to be fat shamed because thin shaming is often just fatphobia in disguise. Let me say that again for the people in the back.

After the solstice, the light very slowly begins to return, and every day is a little longer. Yule is a promise: winter sucks, but spring will come again.