When was your last colonoscopy? the tidy, compact gynecologist inquired, a man so devoid of sexual aura that he can stand fully clothed over your naked spread-eagled body without a hint of inappropriateness. Um, never, I answered as he fondled…
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Hope springs eternal –Alexander Pope The question of hope. Who carries the hope in the family? My old friend Tal who lost her son in a botched surgery says, “If you don’t have hope, you have nothing.” Sophie broke…
It takes months for me to find a good therapist. When I finally do she tells me my family is too “enmeshed.” As if I didn’t know this already. Still, I try the label on for size. I use it…
Because our son, Benjamin, is already four years old, because we’re not sure if there are going to be other babies, and because we don’t know just how to explain this to him, after midnight, we’re pulled to his bedroom,…
The hardest thing I’ve ever done is be a single mother. It saps almost everything and takes the rest—your energy, time, creativity, hope, and . . . did I say energy? Parenting is hard work. Single parenting is hard work…
“Where are we going?” Her every morning question. “Miss Patty’s house today.” “But I don’t want to go there! I want to stay home. Hmmp.” “Put on your socks—please!” “I can’t do it. I’m little.”…
My mother had two sisters she never told me about. When she mentioned her large family, she told me she was one of ten children. I boasted to my friends—ten kids! That was bigger than any family I knew. My…
This is the story my sister-in-law’s brother Andrew told over dinner: One night he, some friends and a fellow female student at Brown University went to a local bar hangout. The waitress brought them a tray of tortilla chips and…
I’m having the biggest ego trip in my life. Lucas, at one-and-a-half years old, sees me everywhere. He notices a woman in a magazine ad and squeals, “Mommy!” Same squeal with the woman on the back of the Cheerios box,…
– I was at the shoe store the other day and a father said the most refreshing thing to his five-year-old son. “You look like a pimp in those red shoes.” The child didn’t say, “What’s a pimp, Daddy?” But…