CONTENTS

      Introduction: Shotgun Memories

1    Grandma’s Baby

2    Extreme Makeover

3    Suite Memories

4    The Teenagers Are Coming

5    I Used to Have Money, Now I Have Teens

6    Baloney Detectors

7    Squeeze the Day

8    The Thief

9    Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Son

10   In Sickness

11   From Hollywood to Iowa

12   Saint Bernard

13   One Ring

14   A Few Good Words

15   Middle-Age Memories

16   About Time

17   The Twenty-Five-Year Itch

18   I Proposed in a Chain Letter

19   The Great Big Marriage Quiz

20   Day of Rejoicing

21   The Longing

22   Hows Your Stuffometer?

23   The Trouble with Success

24   Mondays with James

25   Brad, Britney, Bill, and Jim

26   Doubting Dad

27   The Winding Road

28   Great Escapes

29   Freedom 82

30   Caregiving 101

31   My Shark Hunter

32   Bumper Cars and Harpoons

33   Regrets, I Have a Few

34   Dying Young

35   The Move to Nunavut

36   The Slow Good-Bye

37   While I Was Watching

38   The Mailbox

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments