Newsletter 156: Grief, Terror and Joe Biden

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one’s from April 2019, about the nightmares that come to your mind when you are a parent.

About three years ago, I made plans to take my son William to a Braves game. He was four years old then and just starting to get obsessed with baseball. He fell asleep reading the Cardinals media guide, the first thing he’d ask me every morning was if he could watch “Quick Pitch,” he kept tally of how many hits and all of his teammates had in T-ball. He’d caught the bug, a little earlier than I did as a kid, and it provided me near-infinite levels of joy. It still does, though he no longer asks if he can watch “Quick Pitch.” He just gets up early and turns it on.

This particular Sunday, we were heading to Atlanta to watch the Braves plays the Cubs, which is why we all decked out in our Cardinals best. (We need to let the enemy know our eyes are on them at all times.) The morning had gotten off to a bit of a slow start, and we were in a bit of a rush to get out of the house in time. We’d packed all we’d need for the game, the sunscreen, the sunglasses, the extra water bottles, all the little break-glass-in-case-of fiddles and dinwiddies you need when you’re going to be away from home with a…