epilepsy dad

  • The Razor

    The Razor

    For years, we joked about the chin hairs.

    He had a few long ones, and every so often we’d threaten to pluck them and he’d laugh and pull away. Then the patches started coming in. Random pockets of teenage fur expanding like a land mass reaching for each other across the ocean of his face.

    Recently, one of his friends started shaving, and before my son went to Arizona I mentioned we’d get him a razor when he got back. A few weeks ago we got haircuts, so it was the perfect time to bring it up again. He said yes. I ordered one that night.

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  • Getting His Old Man a Win

    Getting His Old Man a Win

    For weeks, the pattern was the same.

    We’d sign up for a Rocket League tournament in the evening, usually the duos, just the two of us. Before we started he’d say some version of “I’m going to get you a tournament win tonight.” Then we’d lose in the first round and he’d be devastated. Not just frustrated the way you get when a game doesn’t go your way. Actually devastated. Because he wasn’t just trying to win. He was trying to give me something.

    He’d already won a tournament with his friend. He knew what it felt like. He wanted me to have that.

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  • He Just Knows

    He Just Knows

    There’s a term for the feeling that you’re not as good as people think you are. That you’ve fooled them somehow, and eventually they’ll figure it out. That your success is luck or accident rather than skill or effort. Impostor syndrome is real. It keeps genuinely talented people from putting their work into the world, from taking the seat, from raising their hand.

    My son doesn’t have it.

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  • Spikes on the Seismograph

    Spikes on the Seismograph

    I got feedback from the editor a few weeks ago.

    The notes were better than I expected. The voice is working. He found no places where it breaks. He called it a strong draft and said he didn’t have a long list of major overhauls. For a first editorial assessment on a memoir I wrote alone over several years, that landed well.

    But one note stayed with me.

    The arc flattens in the back half. The first seventy or eighty pages have urgency and momentum. After the new normal is established, readers lose the driving question. He wanted to feel spikes on the seismograph. Major moments, framed with more intention, so readers stay invested.

    I knew exactly what he meant. I’ve been reading spikes on a graph for twelve years. Just not a seismograph.

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  • What He Can’t Tell Me

    What He Can’t Tell Me

    I came across a post on Instagram recently. It said something like: no one talks about the grief of giving medications to a child who can’t tell you how they feel.

    I’ve been thinking about that. Not for the first time.

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About

I’m Dave. I write about raising a son with refractory epilepsy.
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