Author: Mark Myers

I am a husband of one, father of four daughters, a dreamer, a builder, a believer, and most enjoyably a writer. In 2015, I became a reluctant Childhood Cancer Advocate as we lost our youngest daughter Kylie to the disease. Kylie taught me to steal joy from even the worst of circumstances and I will always be on the lookout for happiness among the thorns of life. Join me for a generous helping of laughter and tears.

What I Learned in a DC Men’s Room

.Reading time 5 minutes.

I had an epiphany!

I know that sounds like such a liturgical word that men wearing robes with dangling crosses share from a pulpit. No, I didn’t have the “appearance or manifestation of deity” kind of epiphany. I had the “sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple or commonplace experience,” kind. And ironically, I had it in a men’s room in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, right across the street from the United States Capitol!

Like most men, I have always done some of my best thinking in bathrooms, but this one surprised me. Read More

She Kissed the Stage

.Reading time 6 minutes.

It’s the end of an era for us. The past six years have seen high school productions too numerous to mention. I have built some of the oddest things in an effort to make these plays look professional on a shoestring budget: A revolving 24 foot by 36 foot structure that ripped the curtain and nearly fell into the front row, prison cells out of PVC, and a toilet stall that doubled as a judges bench when viewed from the other side. But now we are officially finished with high school theatre because our final actress has kissed the stage.

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Her name is Kendall but her little toddler friend called her Cookie and it stuck. Cookie amazes me. She is a fighter, she is introspective, beautiful, bright, creative, and fiercely loyal. Cookie is an extremely hard worker and I have no doubt she will be successful at whatever she chooses because she will either kick down the obstacles or figure out an ingenious way to ignite them. One of my fondest memories is when mom picked her up on first day of first grade. She bounded out of her classroom and suddenly realized something had gone terribly wrong. She grabbed the doorway to stop her momentum and cried, “Wait! They forgot to teach me how to read!” Read More