I was alone in our house for a whole week. This almost never happens. I homeschool four young kids and run a law practice in this house. It’s filled with voices, motion, and way too much stuff. I move to the clink of the million dangling intentions that hang from…

After breakfast, Margaret and the baby lolled in the hospital bed like duchesses. The baby, who was tentatively named Alice, slept with her rosy mouth open. She was Margaret’s fourth. On the side table, the heavy ceramic plate was clean and the milk glass empty. …

The dog appeared at dusk, trotting up the grass track through the pasture — nose low, tail 45 degrees, ears half-mast. She had the economical gait of the professional vagabond, the switchblade alertness of an assassin. …

On Thursday, I came home from work to find my elementary age kids in my bed eating Pez leftover from Halloween and playing video games on their Kindles. This threw a switch in me from the default “Thankful for Antibiotics and Not Dying in Childbirth” to “Modern Life Absolutely Intolerable…