Public Ponder

Flight Switch: A Scary Story With An Unexpected Ending

Once in a while things work out for you and you know a higher power had a hand in it. This happens to me whenever I fly. Sometimes it’s super obvious, like the time I switched to an earlier flight from...Read More →

Making Sense of an Autism Diagnosis

Remember when autism used to be the rarest of conditions? When it would conjure up either Rain Man or the one autistic person you’d ever met in your life? For me, it was the boy at the beach who walked...Read More →

26 Lessons About Love, Sex, Parenting and Money From 30 Years of Marriage

Thirty years of marriage. How is it even possible? “It really has felt like two minutes — underwater,” an acquaintance joked the other day about his similarly long marriage. Seeing as I’m very slow when...Read More →

Jealousy: I Was Decidedly NOT Jealous

It all started 21 years ago when we immigrated to the United States and joined our local YMCA, where I enrolled in yoga classes with an instructor I shall name Kate. I would come home raving about them...Read More →

Time for a Marriage Break?

Do you ever wish you could mute your spouse when he’s (my spouse is a “he”) telling the same “joke” he has told 137 times and which you’ve made abundantly clear is not funny AT ALL? Have you fantasized...Read More →

There’s Biblical Eve; Then There’s Mitochondrial Eve

All humans alive today are descended from one, I repeat, ONE woman who lived in Africa between 140,000 and 200,000 years ago. She’s known as our mitochondrial Eve. This, I submit, is the coolest and...Read More →

The Gift of Uncertainty

Uncertainty is not all bad. Far from it: it can be a gift that forces you to actively write the story of your life. Imagine this hypothetical life: You’re born into a well-to-do family. Your father’s ...Read More →

I Am DONE With COVID-19

Covid hits home I’m done with this stupid pandemic, especially when it intersects with birthdays, Catholic mass and Diego’s autism, as it has during the first month of 2022. My son Diego is obsessed...Read More →

Seven Big Ideas on the Astounding Benefits of Tiny Habits

I was reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, and suddenly it hit me: the person I know with the best habits is autistic and intellectually disabled. He reads at a first-grade level and his myriad...Read More →

Process Over Outcome: A Perfect Focus for 2022

Last December was the first time I reflected long and hard on the year that was about to end. The year 2020 was an eventful year if there ever was one, and I came up with seven different lessons or...Read More →