Some days parenting feels like nothing more than a series of bare-knuckle bouts in the gladiator pit of life. Some days it feels as if all you do is pick up the crumpled, inside-out socks of Satan’s spawn. Somehow we manage. We wade through the muck putting out fires. We fan the embers that need…
Tag: families
This Woman’s Work
When my first son was a baby, just learning to goo and gaa and blow little baby raspberries, he would look at me all goo-goo eyed and say: “Dada” “Mama” I would say to him, making sure to enunciate. “Maaa-Maaaa”. He would bobble his giant baby head and smile and say, yet again, “Dada”. I’d…
A Tale of Two Valentines
My body has always been map of freckles and moles and what, as I was growing up, my mother euphemistically and gently called beauty marks. As a girl, I hated them. Passionately. I dreamed of miracle lemon juice bleaching cures and the day when I could wear enough pancake makeup to cover them up. I longed…
It Takes a Village
When Hilary Clinton published It Takes a Village back in 1996, it didn’t make it onto my nightstand reading pile. In 1996, I didn’t have kids. In 1996, I wasn’t married. In fact, in 1996 I hadn’t even met my future husband. In 1996, I was finishing my degree, had just moved to Brooklyn, and was…
Wine and Cheese (Doodles) 