Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble.

I'll tell you the truth - I went to a women's college, Barnard, the most selective college for women in America today. If there's one thing I came out of Barnard with, because it was a women's college and a great institution of higher education, it was fearlessness.

The best thing about Sassy Seats is that grandmothers cannot figure out how they work and are in constant fear of the child's falling. This often makes them forget to comment on other aspects of the child's development, like why he is not yet talking or is still wearing diapers. Some grandmothers will spend an entire meal peering beneath the table and saying, "Is that thing steady?" rather than, "Have you had a doctor look at that left hand?

Barack Obama is the kind of guy who likes to do things by inches, he's the kind of guy who likes to build consensus and compromise.

There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.

I think that after a while you realize that your husband can't be all things to you and certainly you don't want the kids to be all things to you, because that would be a terrible weight for them; and that where you really find solace a lot of the time is with your girlfriends.

The dark aftermath of the frontier, of the vast promise of possibility this country first offered, is an inflated sense of American entitlement today. We want what we want, and we want it now. Easy credit. Fast food. A straight shot down the interstate from point A to point B. The endless highway is crowded with the kinds of cars large enough to take a mountain pass in high snow. Instead they are used to take children from soccer practice to Pizza Hut. In the process they burn fuel like there's no tomorrow. Tomorrow's coming.