The stories I shared were personal, and my family was comfortable with that, even though they were often part of the narrative.

They were observations from the softer side of life. From the part of me that reveled in private triumphs. The part that smiled when I dodged a right jab from adversity and cussed when I could not. Each month, under the banner “About Men,” I tried to make sense of my place in the world.

At first I found it awkward to tell these stories. (To be honest, I still do.) But there was a moment early on when I discovered that some of them touched a nerve. That some people could relate to them. Then it became a relationship with readers that lasted seven years.

Now, as I resume writing them, I wonder if those stories will still ring true. I am older but not wiser.

Often I wrote about being married to Mrs. G., who never relished the role of long-suffering wife. The ebb and flow of our relationship was a continuing story.

Once, she laughed when I asked her out on a date. Another time, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, we decided that doing the dishes was as good as a dozen roses. When I wrote that I deserved a new truck, she got hate email while I received tiny model trucks for Christmas.

Many of the stories were about fatherhood. My curse is that I’m too sentimental, and that came across when I wrote about my daughters. How we would dance in the living room when they were young. How I painted their fingernails and taught them how to burp.

Their growing adolescence scared me, and I cringed at the thought of boys. I knew this was the natural order of life, but ached for the time when they wouldn’t cross a street without holding my hand.

A lot has happened since I stopped telling those stories.

The newspaper that printed them became this one. Mrs. G. lost the career she loved and worked hard to reinvent herself. It was a rough time, and I should have been more supportive.

My daughters grew up. They graduated from high school and went off to college. Now, Firstborn is a high school science teacher. Her younger sister is a poet who will get her diploma next month.

And my mother died. When we scattered her ashes all over Oahu, we called it The Scattering Tutu Tour. We secretly put ashes on my father’s grave at Punchbowl, snuck onto the 12th fairway of Mid-Pacific Country Club to scatter ashes behind the house where I grew up and put the rest — except for a handful of ashes I have at home — into Kailua Bay.

When you’re a reporter, you often wonder whether anyone is reading what you’ve written. If you wrote about a homicide or a missing child, someone usually did. Writing about Christmas lights or the time someone stole your beer was an act of faith.

But the softer side of life has an audience. I learned this from a burly Honolulu police sergeant I met in Kakaako. He said the stories made him smile.

And I learned this from the cashier at the DMV in Hawaii Kai when I renewed my driver’s license. She read my application and then asked me: So how is Mrs. G?

She’s all right, I said.

We’re all right.

Just you wait and see.

Reach Mike Gordon at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.