Davis Schneiderman

Even Anna Jarvis lamented the "Hallmark Holiday" that had taken over her grand idea.

Jarvis, the founder of the carnation-and-card-soaked occasion for gifting otherwise known as Mother's Day, spent her later years railing against the commercialization of "the second Sunday in May" (a phrase she trademarked in the early 1900s).

I began to suspect that watching Return Of The Jedi with my daughters was a bad idea when my youngest daughter, Kallista, 4, answered a question from Athena, 6, as to whether we would ever see Jabba the Hut again:

"No, Athena, Princess Leia didn't want to be a slave...

In their defense, I was a miserable baby.

You see, I cried. Not merely when I was hungry or tired or soiled or generally displeased about the inaccessibility of my favorite small toy animal, a wide-eyed tiger. No, I had colic: intense and frequent crying, nay screaming, doubled down with...

The best stories are the ones we write by living.

This is especially true, I find, as I push into my late 30s and my two daughters push from the early bloom of babbling babyhood to the flowering of their first school years.

Think of the scene at the start...

Imagine.

No, not the future where the entire Internet becomes internalized into our teeth and physical structure as I prophesy here.

And no, not that one day -- that one very busy day -- where you forget to check Facebook for a few hours and maybe even...

Dear Mark,

We don't know each other, but we go way back.

I first became aware of the Wahlberg family when some of my female schoolmates took an interest in your brother, Donnie, during his time in the boy-band New Kids on the Block. I was heavy into Led...

Yes, of course, the Internet has democratized punditry beyond the rarefied spaces of news studios. Add this change to the rise of blogging and the collective mood-index service also known as Twitter, and my next statement has never been more true: Everyone is a critic.

So, why listen to the...

While my wife and I were waiting years to adopt our first daughter from China, my father became someone else. It happened in the space of a few hours.

In December 2005, he felt unwell and proceeded to walk out of his St. Louis office. He fumbled for his car...