Columns

We live in Malibu now. After seven years in the middle of Los Angeles, my husband and I decided it was time. Time to find a place where we could…

It’s a Wednesday morning in June, and my family has just dropped me off at the airport. I walk in, pulling a small rolling bag behind me and carrying a…

Recently, my husband let my daughter draw on his face with a felt pen. When she did it at age two, it was just plain funny. At six, though, not…

At about 7:15 on September 11th, 2001, Daddy Sparta, my police officer/soldier husband, called me on his way to work and woke me up. “Are you listening to the news?”…

Once upon a time, I used to be cool. I wasn’t cool in high school. Back then I studied too hard and was considered a geek. I wasn’t cool in…

I’ve just put on broth for chicken soup. The house is unusually quiet for 6 p.m., with Zoë at work on math problems and her little sister Cleo in the…

Empathy is a hard thing for a preschooler to understand. “Emi!” I snap as she deliberately shoves her baby brother to the floor while he walks by. “Nate was in…

Before we were a family there was just us. Just me and you, Husband, documented with a cheesy mirror we found in a gas station just outside of Reno. “Just…

The first day of my “Themes in American Literature” class began with uncomfortable silence. I felt (though did not see) the collective rolling of 64 pairs of teenage eyes when…

“He’s not one of the cool boys. The brown boys are cool, but he’s not.” Then-almost-four-year-old Taylor pointed at a magazine photo of Israeli-born hip-hop music exec Lyor Cohen posing…

Dar mucho, pedir poco. “Give much, ask for little.” This is the motto of the “motherhood medallion,” created in 1969 here in Spain to acknowledge the many sacrifices involved in…