Ed. — From the Sunday, April 11, print edition.
BACK BAY — This is the sort of thing that looks wrong as the written word, so please try to get past the next bit:
I disliked kids until I had a few of my own.
Now, I’m not about to gush or overstate things here. My kids are as okay as any kid with me as a parent can be. They can be pains, but they come by this quality honestly. They can be pretty great, too, but that’s because I married well.
Over the past year, we’ve experienced some of the same struggles other families have had during the pandemic. The worries about money, feelings of isolation clashing with being on top of each other in the house, the absence from and return of school to our routine, so forth and so on.
But we’re blessed. We have issues as a family, and we lost a loved one to the virus, but we know we’re not alone. At my best, the people I love keep me tethered to the reality that problems often are temporary.
One example was just this past week, simply taking a break to watch a movie with my wife when I thought I was too busy. Just sitting together after the kids were asleep and watching a good story — I was not too busy for that. I needed it.
Another moment: realizing my youngest just wants to spend time with her dad, driving around in the truck, going into the outdoors even county dwellers sometimes forget to enjoy. Looking around together.
“I just like hanging around with you, and going around Virginia was fun,” she says.
We didn’t go all that far, but I guess everything can seem like an excursion around the whole of our fine commonwealth to a kid cooped up at home most of the time.
And I try to enjoy hearing my middle child talk about the artwork she labors over on the computer, even when she speaks in detail I can’t understand. It is meaningful expression for her. She wants to share it.
“Because they’re cool, and it’s boring if you can’t show anyone,” she says.
And, in a very recent pandemic project, I’ve grown to appreciate my eldest child’s sudden interest in baking. This has been a real thing for two months — baking projects so frequent we’ve had to set limits.
They’ve been great – cakes, pies and most recently, a multilayered carefully constructed cheesecake with three citrus flavors for her grandmother’s birthday. Our 14 year old really seem to enjoy this new interest, too. Why, kid?
“Some questions just don’t have answers,” she says, teenager that she is.
I hope you are well and getting through this. I hope you are staying connected. I need to do better at this, but I’m trying. I hope we remind each other. If you see me looking a little more doughy than usual, I’m trying to be a supportive dad.
One of the great things about doing a community paper is how readers feel comfortable reaching out by telephone or email or even when I am delivering. Usually. I think I’ve mentioned this here in the past, but I hear a lot about the crossword. Like that time a couple years ago when I ran the wrong solution.
I remain very, very sorry.
From time to time, I like to check in on the puzzles I run, which are edited by Margie Burke of The Puzzle Syndicate in Washington state. I like working with Margie because she is super cool and really accommodating to our somewhat unusual publication schedule. I plan to continue our current crossword and sudoku puzzles because people like them and they are not the same as those in The Virginian-Pilot.
I do the crosswords sometimes, which I find challenging but not impossible to complete in a sitting. For real crossword fans, I used to have to tap out of The New York Times puzzle come Tuesday. You should know what you are dealing with here. I am not much of a sudoku fan, but I added that puzzle a while back and have had some positive feedback from readers.
I’ve thought about adding another puzzle, especially with the season starting up and our page count probably going up for the summer. We have to pay for these puzzles, so I can’t get too wild here, but I was thinking of adding something if there is interest and I can carve out some space.
So my questions to readers are: How do you like the puzzles we have? And is there anything else you’d like to see?
Reach me via jhd@princessanneindy.com or (757) 502-5393 with thoughts.
Some good news to close out this column. Our circulation numbers in March were overwhelmingly strong. We are going to be close to 4,000 copies per edition soon. This was my goal for 2020, but there was this whole pandemic deal right after I expanded to the Oceanfront, and you know the rest. Last year was a hoot.
I thought we’d hit that number in July of this year, but it may come in April now because circulation rises with the season. Pickup numbers alone do not mean money, but it’s how I make the case for advertising, which is how we pay for journalism.
I’m grateful to Jane Bloodworth Rowe, Jimmy Frost, Veni Fields, Lisa Versprille Burkett, David Hollingsworth, Shelly Slocum, Farmer John Wilson, Rabbi Israel Zoberman, Rick Friday, Joe Heller and Margie, who I mentioned a moment ago. The Virginia Mercury allows us to run Roger Chesley’s columns.
My better half, Cortney Morse Doucette, keeps letting me do this, and she’s good company at the movies.
Thanks for a good spring.
And thanks for reading.
© 2021 Pungo Publishing Co., LLC