Luci Is My Sky of Diamonds
Today is the tenth birthday of Luci, my youngest goddaughter. I couldn’t be more grateful to her parents Melina and Kurt Vanderpile for bringing such a radiant person into the world, and for allowing me in some small way to help facilitate her growth. She is one of the most loving and sweet-hearted humans I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing: What other child frequently and voluntarily sends hand-made cards via snail mail to her godmother? She is also one of the funniest. Just look at her romantically cradling this cannoli! (Also please note the cannoli on her nose. It’s a small but characteristically waggish touch.)
Astral Peony Projection
I keep wanting to write more but the peonies are abloom and I’m so immersed in their big color and fragrance that I don’t have the distance required for narration. A friend says that’s a good thing and I think she’s right. May’s soul time, all-at-once time, let-it-grow time. Chairos not chronos. Reception not reflection. I’m rhapsodically in love with everything, including you. But rather than say more I’ll just go to sleep to rise again with the birds. By my bed are vases of the deepest pink peonies to bathe my dreams. I’ll send you some, via carrier doves and a bedazzled tesseract. Don’t be surprised if you smell fuchsia when you wake.
Child-Free and Sans Regrets: TV’s Non-Moms
Mother’s Day is one of the more loaded holidays on the calendar. It’s lovely to celebrate your mom if she’s still alive and if you have a good relationship with her, and it’s lovely to be celebrated if you are a mom. But that’s a lot of conditionals, especially for the millions of adult women who are child-free. Whether you’re not a mother by choice or through circumstances beyond your control, the media isn’t exactly your pal this time of year. In fact, though I initially envisioned this piece as a list of films about adult women who are happily child-free, I quickly realized I might as well go unicorn hunting. Unattached women of any sort don’t fit into Hollywood’s idea of a happy ending.
Television does better by the ladies in this department, as in so many others. Sure, self-possessed, child-free women are still few and far between. As much as “Parks and Recreation” was generally a feminist paradise, April Ludgate’s change of heart regarding motherhood seemed an unnecessary betrayal of her character, and Leslie Knope’s triplets seemed tacked-on as a plot point. The distinctly un-nurturing Murphy Brown opted for single mamahood eventually (though that was revolutionary in its own right), and even Miranda Hobbes of “Sex and the City” couldn’t go through with her abortion. Christina Yang of “Grey’s Anatomy” did, and her fiery red-haired husband never let her forget it. Continue Reading →