We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals.

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up.

You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.

What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.

Taboos are falling across our culture like dominoes. What was unspeakable yesterday dominates talk shows today.

It is, I suppose, the business of grandparents to create memories and the relative of memories: traditions. We want to lodge moments, like snapshots, in the fleeting video of time.

Our 'mistakes' become our crucial parts, sometimes our best parts, of the lives we have made.