I have a 10-year-old girl. She's a joy. She's work, though. I'm tired by the time she goes to bed. I try to read when she goes down but my attention doesn't last. Thank goodness for When I First Held You on my nightstand. It's a collection of luminous essays by men on parenthood that are easily read and terrifically illuminating.
In his essay "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory," Ben Greenman writes, "If fatherhood is remembering things that did not exactly happen, it is also forgetting things that did happen." The essays in this collection, edited by Brian Gresko, are full of remembrances and half-remembrances of parenting in all its glory: failure, triumph, joy, tribulation, humorous bits and tragedies big and small.
Chris Bachelder, most known for his humor writing (Bear v. Shark), contributes an achingly beautiful piece about how kids grow up: "I know well that there might come a day, and it won't be long, when they will not be so eager to talk to me, their father.... They will become more interior, less transparent, their voices diminished by adolescence, by the virulent forces that strike at the mouths of young girls."
The diverse cross-section of today's finest writers includes Justin Cronin (The Passage), Peter Ho Davies (The Welsh Girl), Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog) and Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), and the subject matter is as varied as the writers themselves. Readers will laugh, or perhaps wipe a tear; parents will nod knowingly. --Jonathan Shipley, freelance writer