Spying in plain sight
On Christmas Eve when I was flying with my family to go on vacation, I gave myself a treat. I re-read a book that I loved as a child: Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. Reading a beloved book from childhood has been hit or miss in recent years. I had wildly happy memories of […]
The nature of the beast
This is my first dog, Genji, in 1999, when he was a few months old. When he wasn’t gnawing on nylabones or other chew toys, he spent some valuable hours chewing my Swedish wood clogs and a couple of pairs of underwear from the laundry hamper. His other pastimes included digging into my husband’s armpits […]
I wanna know what love is
“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations and yet fails so regularly as love.” –Erich Fromm Last month I began reading this book. It’s a challenging book, a short, dense, mid-century tome, written by a European psychoanalyst and social theorist. In short, despite the title The […]
Keepin’ it real, friend edition
The other day I was driving my 10-year-old daughter home from swim practice, and we passed the home where a family we knew used to live. “Do you remember Q, the little girl who lived there?” I asked. “No. Yeah. Sort of,” she answered. “What happened to her anyway?” “Her family moved away,” I said. […]
Friends of a Certain Age
The New York Times ran a piece last summer on the difficulty of making friends in adulthood. It generated such a response that they newspaper ran a second piece with a selection of readers’ comments. Clearly the subject of authentic friendship is something that needs more attention than most of us give it. I’ve talked […]
Déjà Vu
Earlier this summer, I decided to screen some of my favorite blockbuster movies for my kids. I only got as far as watching E.T. with my son while my daughter was at camp. Ever since my mom began showing my kids Hitchcock movies a few years ago, I’ve been thinking that it’s part of my […]
Gazpacho and Love
It’s past midsummer here, and even though we live in the middle of Los Angeles, my husband I have a bumper crop of tomatoes. We grow tomatoes, strawberries, basil, and other herbs in Earth Boxes in our backyard. And blueberries in a wine barrel on wheels. It’s my small nod to having grown up on […]
Keeping it real (estate)
Exactly three years ago my husband and I entered the uniquely grownup, age-accelerating experience of buying a home. I have posted this before, but early summer and all the “for sale” signs around town when the weather turns warm always remind me of it. And I’m finally at a point where I don’t start to […]
Private Matters and Choices
What did the old fashioned feminists and political moderates used to say? That abortion ought to be safe, legal, and rare? Also, that it was a private matter, one for a woman (and in the case of a married woman, she and her husband) to discuss and decide. I remember the conservative politicians in the […]
Read More