Privilege of Parenting

Drift off and smell the jasmine

March 21, 2010

We can wake up and smell the coffee, and we can stop and smell the roses but this time of year in Los Angeles always enchants me with the seductive perfume of night blooming jasmine. I had never smelled anything like jasmine growing up in Chicago. There, lilacs, roses and geraniums rose above a palate […]

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We teased her a lot, cause we’ve got her on the spot—welcome back (Persephone)

March 20, 2010

Happy Spring! (And Happy Fall to Eva and the gang in Australia). At 10:32 a.m. in Los Angeles today, March 20th, the sun passes directly over the equator, marking the point of equal (equi) night (nox). Given that good parenting, as well as happiness for us parents (and readers, by this point I hope, trust […]

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The Long arm of the law

March 19, 2010

When my older son, Nate, was about three we still lived in a crumbling duplex in which the ’94 earthquake had loosened every last thing in the place. As a result, the old-school heating vents were no longer firmly attached to the walls and could be slid away like the old incinerator shoots we used […]

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Clock Change

March 18, 2010

At Monday yoga we were all talking about adjusting to the “time change,” when Moosh (a philosophy professor) said that if we were traveling at the speed of light there would be no time—a yogi after my own heart. It got me thinking about how I honored Einstein on his birthday, not knowing that it […]

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I never sang for my father, either

March 17, 2010

Today the river flows green in Chicago and my dad turns 84, and so I wish all a happy St. Patrick’s Day and I write to honor my father on his birthday. Although my father forbade singing, whistling and even humming in the house, I recall him really liking the film, I Never Sang For […]

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Leopold and Lobe, or “What are they thinking?”

March 16, 2010

Most readers of this blog would be way too young to know of the famous murder-for-no-reason done by a couple of rich Chicago teens, Leopold and Loeb, back in the 1920s. I knew about it because my dad told me the story with some personal interest since the case was broken by the identification of […]

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Brutus the Cat

March 15, 2010

Happy Ides of March. In honor of this day I though I would share a story that I made up long ago when my boys were little, in the off chance that some readers might have kids in the three to five or six range to run it by and see if they like it […]

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Happy Birthday to a Man out of Time

March 14, 2010

“To murder my love is a crime But will you still love A man out of time?” Elvis Costello (Man Out of Time) Today is Albert Einstein’s birthday, that visionary orchid who blew the whole space-time thing open for the modern Western mind. When we think about Einstein and E=MC2 we may think of mad […]

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Love Bravely

March 13, 2010

It’s a simple enough idea to say, but a little harder to live. We spend a lot of time and effort trying to get people to love us. We spend a lot of angst ruminating about how to be better, more loveable, more appealing… and we often worry about being found out as imposters and […]

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