A few weeks ago my mother, Joanie, called me up all atwitter, as she often does after reading not one but two newspapers first thing in the morning. (Bless her heart, she is singlehandedly keeping the physical, print version of the newspaper alive.) “Guess what!” she chirped. “The newspaper says that according to the census,…
Parenting
Confessions of a Bad Mother
In the last two weeks I’ve been called self-satisfied, low-class, controlling, shallow, sexist, smug, priggish, crazed, repulsive, creepy, trashy, frivolous, provincial, disgusting, and just plain horrible. My crime? I pierced my six-month-old daughter’s ears at the request of my Nicaraguan husband, an experience I wrote about for the nytimes.com‘s “Townies” column. It was fun to…
Mini in Miami
Amalía and I are in New York, but we brought a little bit of Miami with us. Two little bits actually: the shiny gold studs in Amalía’s tiny ears. Read all about it in the post “Baby’s First Bling”, which I wrote for the Townies column of the Opinionator blog in the New York Times’…
Same Same, But Different
Almost exactly 10 years ago I had a cyst removed from my right ovary. It was discovered during my annual gynecologic exam, which I had scheduled early because I was about to move to Greece to oversee the rebuilding of my grandparents’ house, which had fallen into ruin after the Greek Civil War, an experience…
Motherhood’s Greatest Hits
A couple of months ago a young male friend asked me, “How has motherhood changed you?” I thought about it but I couldn’t quite put into words how everything had changed, and yet, thankfully, I still felt like myself. But I wanted to give him an honest answer, so I tried to think of some…
Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said “There are no second acts in American lives.” But I suspect that’s because he didn’t know much about Chinese New Year. Personally, I never miss a chance to celebrate it because for me, the lunar new year, which falls on a different date in late January or early February, is…