Today we begin a new semester, and I’ll begin this semester with a new essay from me, published earlier this month in Virginia Quarterly Review: “Good For You: What Makes a Happy Family?”

Here’s a snippet to account for the picture of the Buddha above.

This past summer, not long into a fairly strenuous hike in the woods of Kamakura, Japan, in the moments after climbing into a giant ancient Buddha, I told my son, who was complaining about the steepness of the slope, that the hike—and its strenuousness—would be good for him.

My wife looked at me. Ever since I’d found myself at a loss for words on Mother’s Day, imagining another child but not knowing why, we’d been trying to stop saying this.