The ideal memorial is written from distance, a generous calculation of merit that proceeds honorably without abandoning accuracy. I have to apologize right now for being unable to give you that—Adam Yauch was a part of my childhood, an ambassador to America from our New York, which is now gone, as is he. (via Postscript: Adam Yauch : The New Yorker)

When Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys died this week, I resisted the urge to memorialize him too quickly, or mourn publicly the way we all do now online after celebrity deaths, but I needed to write something. The Beastie Boys are as responsible for my musical tastes as anyone, right up there with Public Enemy (don’t tell anyone, but Wu-Tang is kind of a distant third—I only carry on about them because of the nickname).

Like Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in the New Yorker piece quoted above, they were a part of my childhood too. I watched the video for “Fight For Your Right” in grade school with my older sister and her friends like it was some samizdat forbidden object. “You mean those guys really go around throwing pies in everyone’s faces?” I grew up with them as they evolved into one of the most creative hip-hop groups ever (I got chills listening to “Pass the Mic” again this morning), but the sheer breadth of their music—hip-hop, punk, funk, all played with equal skill—turned me on to everything else I love today.

Ill Communication was the soundtrack of college. I wish I could be paid an hourly wage for how many times I listened to “Get it Together,” and Hello Nasty is the only album I ever waited in line to buy at midnight.

I was lucky enough to see them in concert once here at the United Center in Chicago, but the time I missed them may be my greatest Beastie Boys memory. I had tickets for a tour with Rage Against the Machine in 2000 that was cancelled when Mike D wrecked a bike and broke his collarbone. It’s funny what memory can do; I’ve seen Rage in concert a couple of times too, and the combined show I see in my head almost feels real.

You can’t call his death shocking or unexpected. Dude had cancer, and now that I work at a hospital I know how depressingly common that is. But the sad fact is that the Beasties were still at the top of their game. I suppose I’m mourning the end of the group as a whole as much as MCA himself. He was the conscience of the group, the one who initiated their maturation and disavowal of their knucklehead early days, but it’s hard to separate the three of them. I really hope Adrock and Mike D choose to end it now. Their last album, Hot Sauce Committee, was as good as anything they recorded, and the thought that it was their last record is comforting. At least they went out on top.

I’ve been listening to Beastie Boys music for the past day now, all their proper records plus the dozens of weird and bizarre remixes I collected over the years. But I don’t really need to hear it again. That music is part of me. I can turn it on in my head whenever I need it.

The payback hit its peak on the following Thursday night. Debbie was spending her second night unable to get out of bed, and I was trying to put both kids to bed at the same time. Sadie was feeling better by then, but unfortunately couldn’t shake her most troublesome symptom of being three years old. Carter was still running a fever, and both of them were in a contest to see who could be the neediest.

It was extremely windy outside, and the aging power lines in our neighborhood couldn’t handle it. Slowly, the lights in each room flickered, dimming lower each time until finally, a transformer at the end of the block blew and the house went black. The crying started in earnest, and my night had just begun.

Parenting is a grind. I know that’s not revealing any great secret, because anybody can tell you how hard it is. But you don’t really accept that until you’re staggering through the steady, day-after-day work of it. Getting dressed in the morning. Walking the dog. Breakfast. Packing lunches for school. The drop-offs. The pick-ups. Walking the dog again. The dinner and the homework and the baths. The bedtime stories interrupted when your seven-year-old has an urgent question about how to calculate a week into dog years. Meanwhile, you’re doing all of this while you and your spouse both work full-time and do all the other things to keep a household running. It’s death by a thousand sippy cups.

All of this makes some mighty good excuse-making when you also fancy yourself as a writer. I look at this website and see that I haven’t written anything new in months, and my best explanation is to shrug and say, “I have kids.” And really, there’s not much more to it than that. But underneath that very valid reason is the creeping feeling that it’s also a cop out, a persistent reminder that I’m not really as committed to this writing thing as I make myself out to be.

I went to the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas the weekend after we were all sick. Now that I have a job in social media it was technically for work, but I’d been looking forward to it as a much-needed break for myself. This was my third trip to SXSW, and while I spent most of the time at panels related to my job, I knew from past conferences that I should take a break and pick out a few just for fun.

On the second-to-last day of the conference, I attended a panel on personal storytelling hosted by Kahlil Ashanti, an actor and comedian, and Michael Margolis, an entrepreneur and writer. Their main idea was that since we’re constantly sharing our lives online anyway, we need to learn how to tell our personal story in a more compelling way by writing about what matters to us the most.

This panel touched a nerve with me, especially since I’ve been floundering with my personal writing here. Besides making excuses about not having enough time, I worry that my schtick has worn thin. At a certain point, most parents realize that nobody wants to see every single snapshot of their kids, or hear every story about how they mispronounce “movie” as “moobie.” So why would anyone want to read my 1,000-word essays about buying my son a baseball glove?

I think about this a lot, and I’ve considered starting a new site to write about something else like sports or politics or books. But it never feels right, mostly because it’s not what I care about the most. In the storytelling panel, Kahlil called this the Give a Shit Factor. “If you’re telling us something and it doesn’t mean the world to you, we’re not going to care,” he said.

I don’t write about my family because I want to share our story, the way you might want to share your opinions on baseball or politics. I write about my life because I’m trying to figure it out for myself. That’s not to say I don’t ever want to write about other things, but even we I do write about something like my childhood idol or a murder that happened in my hometown, the story is partly about me too. I take what little time I have left at the end of each day to scribble something down and hope it helps me understand my world a little better. Without that personal element, I’m wasting my time, and I’m probably wasting yours too.

When I get this way, thinking about how hard it is to manage all this, I always come back to what David Foster Wallace said in his commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 (known as the “This is Water” speech):

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

The week after I got back from SXSW, I started to feel sick again. I soon found out that I had strep throat too, the real payback for getting everyone else sick the first time. I missed another day of work and felt positively awful until the antibiotics kicked in. I was probably more of a baby about it than I want to admit, but Debbie took care of me just like I took care of her and the kids before my trip. But what else would we be doing? The alternative Wallace described, that unconscious fear that comes with belonging nowhere and being needed by no one, is just too frightening. We have no choice but to grind it out, day after day, and in the process understand ourselves just a little bit more.

The first time, he was looking at a laminated piece of orange construction paper Sadie brought home on the last day at her old day care before she started preschool this fall. Her handprint was pressed onto the page with purple paint, and one of her teachers had written something on it about how fast she was growing up and how much she learned at school. She brought home lots of “arts and crafts” like that where the kids smeared some paint around and the teachers dressed it up into a keepsake. Debbie asked him why he was crying and he said, “I just remember all the good times when we played together after we picked her up from school.”

Carter came with us only about once out of every five times we picked up Sadie from day care, but he’s right. He did have fun horsing around with the little kids when he came along. We told him that he didn’t have to be sad because we’d have a lot more good times, and he cheered up. “I’m not crying because I’m sad, it’s because I’m happy,” he said.

About a week later he and I were sitting on the couch together before dinner. We have an Apple TV hooked up to our TV, and I set it up to show a slideshow of family pictures when it’s not playing videos or music. I was reading something on my phone, and then I looked over and saw him crying again. He said it was because he was looking at all the pictures on the TV from when he was little: snapshots of us at the park, going to ballgames, vacations at the beach. Again, he insisted that he was crying “happy tears,” but I reached over and hugged him and didn’t want to let go.

I’m not surprised he’s developing a sentimental streak. He gets it directly from me, just as I inherited mine directly from my dad. The longer I sit and watch those pictures float by on the TV screen, the more likely I am to choke up too. Carter has been playing with my old baseball cards lately, pulling out old Fleer and Score sets from 1989 and sorting them into teams on the floor of his bedroom. It’s enough nostalgia to make me lightheaded and have to sit down every time I walk by and see him clutching a stack of Terry Pendletons and Pedro Guerreros. And while the inscription on Sadie’s poster was cheesy in a Hallmark card kind of way, when presented on a milestone day with her little handprint in the middle, it got to me too. I’d be worried about my qualifications as a parent if I didn’t get choked up at the sight of my three-year-old’s palm preserved for posterity. But I’m surprised that Carter is feeling it so acutely already.

Most of those pictures he saw on the TV that night were from before he started school, back when I was still at home with him full-time, hanging out at the park all day, going to lunch at Manny’s and visiting Shedd Aquarium once a week. It was quite the life. Now that I’m back at work at and he’s in first grade, with homework and a little sister who knows how to push his buttons, life is more complicated for both of us.

I can see why he would look back get a little nostalgic. I miss those days when it felt like we had all the time in the world too. But it’s greatly oversimplifying the matter to say that it was easy and carefree back then. That time had its own set of frustrations that I’d rather not revisit, like changing diapers and waking up three times a night, to name a few. Nostalgia is tricky like that. We don’t take pictures of all the temper tantrums and food-stained clothes and put them into slideshows.

He probably doesn’t understand why he was crying, but I worry about what’s going on in his head. Is he just experiencing a normal emotion that runs in the family, or is he truly unhappy when he compares his life now to what it used to be? The rational part of me knows that it’s the former, but if there’s one thing parenting is good at, it’s making sure you feel like you’re doing it all wrong. It’s dangerous to try to make sense of the emotions of a six-year-old, but I worry that somewhere among all the work, errands, chores, and maybe trying to squeeze in a little time for myself, I’m screwing it up for the kids.

Last week I saw Jonathan Franzen speak at a panel for the Chicago Humanities Festival. During a question and answer period at the end of the talk, someone asked him about if the ending of his last novel, Freedom, was supposed to be happy or sad. “Things don’t turn out the way we want them to,” he said. “I would prefer to complicate the question.”

One of the great accomplishments of Freedom is that it resists that kind of categorization into happy or sad. It’s complicated, with an ambiguous ending and ambiguous characters who muddle through it every day, like we all do. Walter and Patty Berglund are both heroic and loathsome. They make mistakes. They hurt the people around them, but they show an immense capability for compassion and humanity too. Books like that don’t make sense until long after you put them down and think about them, if they ever do.

Though he doesn’t know it yet, I hope Carter is learning the same thing about life. Sometimes it’s happy. Sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes it’s a little of both. It probably won’t ever really make sense until it’s too late, and in that way, it’s like reading a good book. It’s complicated.

For such a big city full of huge appetites (and huge bellies), the deli lineup in Chicago is surprisingly thin. The classic Jewish delis are either take-out style groceries like Ashkenaz or antiseptic, yuppie facsimiles like Eleven City Diner or Max & Benny’s. But what we lack in good places for lox and schmear, we make up for in one magnificent sandwich: the corned beef at Manny’s.

Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen in the South Loop on Jefferson near Roosevelt doesn’t qualify strictly as a deli. The “cafeteria” part of its name is more apt. They serve everything from short ribs to spaghetti and meatballs, and while you can get smoked fish and chopped liver, it’s not why you go there. Manny’s is best known for its heaping corned beef sandwiches, a pile of sliced meat so huge that the bread is a mere afterthought, something placed on top not out of necessity but mere custom, like a paper umbrella in a tropical drink. Throw in a potato pancake the size of your hand and a couple dill pickle spears, and two adults could split the plate and still leave fully sated.

The corned beef at Manny’s is so epic that I feel the need to offer this guide to ordering it properly. If you just want a sandwich, go to Jimmy John’s or *shudder* a Subway. Don’t waste your time at Manny’s, for this is the corned beef of statesmen. Mayor Daley was a regular there, hosting his “corned beef and a handshake” fundraisers. Our current honey badger of a mayor Rahm Emanuel frequents the place, and President Obama himself gets the corned beef and cherry pie to go when he’s in town. No, you don’t just saunter into Manny’s and ask for a sandwich. You conduct yourself with the gravitas it deserves, nay, demands.

When you first enter Manny’s, you’re confronted with a large menu board listing the selections for the day. You can disregard this sign for now. While the other food at Manny’s is delicious too—I personally recommend the beef stew and a knish with gravy—you can branch out later once you’ve mastered the corned beef.

Pick up your tray and utensils, and slide them down the aluminum railing in front of the steam table with the various hot entrees and sides. A man with a mustache will greet you and ask you what you would like. He might be black, he might be white, he might be Hispanic, but he will have a mustache. This is a recurring theme at Manny’s. Tell the man with the mustache no thank you, you’re here for the corned beef, and keep sliding your tray down the line.

At the middle of the line, another man with a mustache standing by a meat slicer will greet you. Take a moment to watch him work, moving the steaming slabs of corned beef and pastrami back and forth across the spinning blade, collecting the glistening, scarlet morsels for each meal with a fork. This isn’t mere food service, it’s craftsmanship. Look the man with the mustache in the eye and tell him you’d like a corned beef sandwich. Be assertive. He will then ask what kind of bread you want: rye or an onion roll. Personally I prefer rye, but it doesn’t really matter because the bread is secondary once you start eating.

At this point you should also ask for a potato pancake. Pickles come standard, and requests for additional spears are welcome, especially if you’re dining with children. The man with the mustache will also be happy to give you an extra plate if you’re sharing with others, just don’t ask him to split the sandwich for you. He’s standing next to a razor-sharp spinning blade, slicing the corned beef of presidents. Hasn’t he done enough for you already?

Once you’ve collected your offering, keep walking down the line toward the cold sides and desserts. What you choose here is up to you, but keep in mind the sheer quantity of meat you’re about to consume. Barack Obama might order the cherry pie, but I bet Michelle doesn’t let him eat the whole thing at once when he brings it home. The point here is to enjoy a meal, not rupture your colon.

Next come the drinks. You’ll see different types of Coca Cola products, lemonade, etc, but the only acceptable thing to get is a can Dr. Brown’s cherry soda. True, most of the time the can isn’t very cold, but you can get a cup of ice if you’re going to be picky. Besides, you’re missing the point if you get stuck on this.

Turn the corner, and at the end of the line a woman in a hairnet (and possibly a mustache) will tally up your order and hand you a receipt. Do not attempt to pay the woman in the hairnet, and don’t lose this receipt. You’ll need it to pay at the cash register by the door as you leave. I like to think the woman in the hairnet is there to judge your food selections. If you’ve done it right, she’ll hand you the receipt and give you what we’ll call “the Chicago nod.”

Eating the corned beef at Manny’s could take up another 1,000 words of instructions, so I won’t go into details now. What I can say is that there’s no wrong way to do it. You’ll quickly realize that you need to eat at least half the corned beef with a fork before you can attempt to pick it up like a proper sandwich. Yellow mustard is supposedly the standard condiment, but I prefer the horseradish or brown mustard for a little kick. Take your time. Enjoy your meal. No one is rushing you. They even have Wifi at Manny’s now if you want to post a snapshot of your meal on some trendy social network.

When you’re finished, leave your tray and another man with a mustache will bus the table for you. Pay your tab at the cashier, leave a big tip, and grab a pack of gum or some Mentos for the road. Walk out onto Jefferson Street and listen to the throb and hum of your city. You’ve just eaten the best sandwich of your life.

Watch me read this piece at Tuesday Funk, a monthly reading series at the Hopleaf in Chicago

I.

My son Carter is reading Harry Potter at six years old. I’m not saying that to brag (okay, maybe a little), but it’s important to the story. He made his way through the first three books pretty well, but I know that each book in the series is progressively longer and more complex, especially for a six-year-old, and as I expected he started to slow down by The Goblet of Fire. He finished it with an assist from me, reading together each night before bed, and insisted on starting The Order of the Phoenix right away. After a few weeks though, he had stopped reading it on his own and started asking me to read other books with him at night. I asked him about it, and he admitted it was too hard. We still read it together at night but he spends most of his time now doing other six-year-old boy things like building Legos and driving his little sister crazy.

II.

My personal theory of parenting centers around the idea that if you want your kids to behave a certain way, you should lead by example. If you want them to be polite and gracious, let them hear you thanking the waitress and witness you holding the door open for little old ladies. If you want them to read, let them see you with a book in your hand, lost in its pages, and show them how important reading is in your life.

Educators and bookish folks are worried enough about getting boys to read that they have a special name for them: “reluctant readers.” In a recent essay in the New York Times Book Review, Robert Lipsyte wrote that a big part of the problem in getting boys to read is finding books they can connect with, that speak to their emotions instead of just pandering to their base instincts. “Boys need to be approached individually with books about their fears, choices, possibilities and relationships,” he wrote. “The kind of reading that will prick their dormant empathy, involve them with fictional characters and lead them into deeper engagement with their own lives.” I read this and thought about what happened with Carter and Harry Potter. My theory of leading by example has worked. He clearly enjoys reading, but I’m afraid that by letting him find his own way and pick out a book that was too hard, he’ll be discouraged from reading more. I managed to turn a willing reader into a reluctant one.

III.

Carter spends a week with my parents at the end of each summer, in the gap between the end of camp and the start of school. They live in the Indianapolis area now, so this year we met them halfway at a Chili’s in Lafayette, Indiana to make the exchange. I’ve learned to expect him to be ornery when he’s excited about something big like a holiday or a trip, but this time he was so bad that when we pulled into the parking lot I made my parents wait outside the car while I let him have it. The problem was that we were 100 miles from home and he was about to spend a week with his grandparents. I couldn’t deploy my best weapons like taking away toys or cutting off TV and the computer, so I spluttered like Yosemite Sam in impotent rage.

Disciplining my kids like that always sets off a cycle of guilt and self-doubt. Later in the restaurant, I sat there eating a Flintstone-sized slab of ribs wondering if it had done any good, feeling bad for sending him off for the week on such a bad note. For all its rewards, raising children does a number on your self-confidence. What possible lesson could Carter take away from that outburst in the parking lot of a chain restaurant on a freeway interchange? That he should shout and issue empty threats when he doesn’t get his way?

The problem with my method of parenting by example is that I don’t always set the best example myself. It’s getting harder the older he gets, now that we’re past “share with your friends” and “don’t throw sand.” Things like empathy and patience are difficult to teach when I struggle with them myself. That’s why I want him to read, to experience the inner lives of characters who celebrate and suffer, succeed and fail in their own ways so he can learn from their examples too. Books can teach him how to live when I can’t show the way.

IV.

I started a new job recently, a new career in fact. I took three weeks off between jobs and spent a lot of time with Carter. We had fun together hanging out, playing catch at the park and hitting up the 7-Eleven for daily Slurpees, but he understood that I was excited to get started. The night before my first day at the new job we were reading Harry Potter again. I finished a chapter, put the book down, and unprompted, he said, “Good luck on your first day at work tomorrow.” I don’t know if he learned to thoughtful like that from me, his mother or a book. I’m happy with any of the three.