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.

I.

You can see the moon at night from my parents’ house in Poseyville, Indiana. That’s not unusual. You can see the moon from where I live in Chicago too, but here it’s more of an afterthought, a blip in the ambient light of the city competing with the street lamps and headlights of cars that pass by no matter the hour. In Poseyville the moon is the main event, lighting up the whole town and surrounding countryside. On a clear night you can drive without headlights, it’s so bright. I know this because I’ve actually tried.

Poseyville is a farming community of 1,200 in the southwestern corner of the state. My parents built their one-story, three bedroom ranch house with a two-car garage in 1973 for $33,000. It’s the house where I grew up, the only place I lived until I went away to college. I know living in the same house that long is nothing unique either, but after moving four times in the 12 years since I moved to Chicago, it feels like an accomplishment. For me, the concepts of childhood and home have always meant that one place on Cale Street with the big backyard and a basketball hoop in the driveway.

My parents retired last year, and they’ve decided to sell the house and move north to a suburb of Indianapolis. It makes complete sense. They’re both from the Indianapolis area originally, and except for me and some cousins in Seattle, the rest of my extended family lives there too. It will make visiting them easier, turning a six-hour drive through the bleak countryside of central Illinois into a three-hour drive through the slightly less bleak countryside of northern Indiana. We could make a day trip out of it if we wanted to, and it certainly makes a weekend visit more practical. In addition to the logistical advantages it makes life easier for my parents. Poseyville isn’t exactly a commercial hub (the nearest McDonald’s is at a highway interchange 10 miles away), and their new home will be within a few minute’s drive of every restaurant chain and big box store. As my mom pointed out morbidly, “What happens if one of us dies before the other? We don’t want to be stuck here with nothing to do. At least now there’s a Kroger five minutes away.”

II.

A few weeks ago I took my son Carter to Poseyville for one last visit before my parents move for good. He’s always enjoyed his time there so much. The big backyard where he can run in the sprinkler and the quiet streets where he can ride his bike on his own are such a treat for a kid born and raised in the city. My parents held back a stash of my old toys, Hot Wheels and Transformers that they had the good sense to save for the day they had a grandson, and he’s been very worried that they won’t make the move to their new house. For my part, I felt like I needed to see the house one last time before they go (and to reclaim the boxes of baseball cards in my old bedroom that my mom demanded I finally take with me before she threw them away). Once they leave Poseyville, I don’t know when I’ll ever go back. Sure, I’ll go back for a high school reunion someday, but one weekend every five or 10 years is a lot different than regular visits with the family.

On the last night in Poseyville I hung out with my friend Clint, who I’ve known since preschool. He and his wife just had their third baby, and I went to visit them at thier new house in a town called Blairsville about eight miles away. He picked me up at my parents’ house, and on the way out he drove me around town, pointing out where people we knew from school now lived. Nothing much has changed about the town since I left besides the shuffling of names on the mailboxes. As Clint said, “I wouldn’t say it’s dead, but it’s not really doing anything either.” He and I laughed about stories from the good old days and griped about how routine and predictable our lives had become, the kind of things old friends talk about when they realize they’ve become adults with responsibilities.

Clint will never move away from the area like I did. He doesn’t want to, nor does he need to. His entire family is there. He works for his family business running a general store in Poseyville. Just like it makes sense for my parents to move back to where they came from now that they’re retired, it makes sense for Clint to stay there. I made the right decision to move away and start a life in Chicago, but at least when my parents lived in Poseyville I could feel like it was still a little part of my life too. Now that they’re leaving that connection is gone.

III.

The morning Carter and I left, I did my usual last minute sweep of the house to make sure we packed everything. I made a point of taking one last look at my old bedroom in the back of the house, expecting to choke up as a wave of nostalgia hit me full in the face. Instead of welling up with tears though, I felt nothing. My old room isn’t the same. After I went away to college my parents replaced most of the furniture, bought a new bed, moved the bookshelf to the other side of the room, bought new blinds. They took down all the posters of baseball players and rappers I had Scotch-taped to the walls and repainted, and threw out the Nerf hoop over the closet door. The room that would have made me choke up doesn’t exist anymore, just like the town where I grew up. Clint is right that Poseyville hasn’t changed, but I don’t see it through the same lens. It’s not the same place as when we were playing army in the backyard or driving home from football practice. I’ve moved on, and now that the house where I grew up will soon belong to someone else, some other young couple starting a family just like my parents 38 years ago, it’s fixed firmly in the past.

After I left the house, Carter and I packed up the car and backed out of the driveway, the trunk loaded down with some 10,000 baseball cards. As I turned the corner away from Cale Street, I craned my neck to catch one a final glimpse before another house blocked the view. Then we drove out of town, headed for the interstate, and made our way back north, to home.

My first baseball glove sits on a bookshelf in my home office. I left it at my parents’ house when I went to college (I had been through a couple more gloves by then), but I reclaimed it when I moved out for good and left for Chicago. It’s dry and brittle, and the fingers are curved around the old ball I keep stuffed in pocket with the name of my Little League team—Poseyville I—written on it in Sharpie. The glove is a MacGregor G19T, branded all around with slogans like “Flex Action,” “Adjusta-wrist,” “Lattice Weave,” and “The Athlete’s Choice.” The lining inside is shredded from years of sweat and dirt and wear, and it’s a little small for my hand now, but it’s still serviceable. Baseball gloves are like that. The basic design and build is no different from one you could buy today, and with a little glove oil and a tug on the strings, even a 30-year-old model could be ready for a game.

I remember buying this glove with my dad, or at least I think I do. I must have been five years old because that’s when I started playing T-ball, the first games when I used it. We went to Gus Doerner’s Sports in Evansville, to the downtown location where they sold the serious equipment, not the shop in the mall where they just sold running shoes and apparel. The baseball equipment was in a basement that smelled like rawhide and fresh tennis balls. I remember looking out over rows of gloves laid out on a table and having no idea which one to pick. I didn’t even know which hand I needed. I’m sure my dad picked out my glove for me, finding one that fit my hand and his wallet. It had a Vida Blue signature stamped in the pocket. I didn’t even know who Vida Blue was, but I was fascinated that some player was famous enough to have his name inside a baseball glove.

I’ve owned four baseball gloves in my life: the Vida Blue; a Worth with no signature that replaced it when I was in Little League; a Rawlings Mark McGwire first base glove that I got when I was 13 and started to play the position exclusively; and another Rawlings McGwire model that replaced it. Of the four, I still have all of them except that first first base glove. It was also the one I used for the most significant moments of my baseball career, namely winning the sectional tournament as a high school senior, and I don’t know what possessed me to throw it out when I bought my latest one. I wish I had it back, if not for sentimental reasons then out of a sense of completeness.

I have no real attachment to the new one, a stiff burgundy mitt I bought when I started playing in a weekend league after I moved to Chicago. I used it for a season and a half of sweltering games on ill-tended fields at far-flung suburban community colleges before I decided to hang up my hardball spikes for good, and now I mainly use it in games of catch with Carter. I’ve never broken it in properly, and when I put it on my hand now I long for the fit of a well-worn glove that feels like an extension of my hand.

When Carter first started to show an interest in baseball, I gave him a red toy glove I’d gotten as a souvenir from a minor league baseball game. It was good for him getting the hang of using a glove while we tossed around tennis balls in the driveway, but this season I decided he needed a real one. He’s starting in a T-ball league playing with real hardballs this year, and I couldn’t send him out on the field with a bright red glove in good conscience.

We made our trip to the Sports Authority on LaSalle downtown, in the middle of the nest of River North tourist traps like the Hard Rock Cafe, the Rainforest Cafe, and the newly rebuilt, space age “Rock and Roll” McDonald’s next to which tour buses disgorge camera-laden families and packs of Midwestern teenagers on class trips to the big city. This particular Sports Authority store is known for the giant sign with fiberglass balls wrapped around its northeast corner, and the handprints of famous Chicago athletes like Michael Jordan and Frank Thomas pressed into cement molds along its walls. Buying Carter his first glove in the midst of all this somehow seemed less authentic. I ought to be able to take him to a musty basement full of promise like where I got my first glove, but it was the best option available.

I tried to tout this as a Big Deal for Carter and he was duly excited at first, but frankly by the time we got to the store he was more excited about lunch at McDonald’s later. When we got to the baseball department he goofed around with the catcher’s equipment and bats while I tried to interest him in the gloves. He couldn’t decide if he wanted a black or a brown one, so we settled on a Rawlings that had a little of both (but sadly, no player signature in the pocket). It cost only $15. I picked out some athletic socks for myself, paid up at the register, and the moment was over.

We had our first catch with the new glove at the park later that day. Carter insisted we play with a hardball, but I was afraid of hurting him so I couldn’t quite figure out how to throw it. The trick is putting just enough mustard on it to snap his glove without throwing a total BB that would give him a shiner if he missed and it hit him. I couldn’t figure that out that technique, and I couldn’t get the right distance holding back on a lob either. Half the throws went way over his head, and the other half short-hopped him. He spent most of the time running after the ball. I’ve had more productive games of catch with my dog.

The game ended in tears when he did miss one and the ball plunked him right between the eyes. Fortunately there was no lasting damage, but he didn’t want to play any more either. Carter’s supposedly magical day with his new baseball glove ended with me thinking I’d broken his nose.

I don’t remember anything about the rest of the day after my dad bought me my first glove either. Maybe we played catch and he gave me a black eye too, which would seem about right. Parenting has a way of throwing beanballs at your best intentions and ruining the Norman Rockwell moments.

I must have done something right with Carter though. The next day he and Sadie pounced on our bed at 6:15 a.m. like they do every day, but instead of asking me to turn on a cartoon or help him get dressed, he cut straight to the chase.

“When can we go to the park and play catch?”