We owned what we learned back there; the experience and the growth are grafted into our lives.

The things we hate about ourselves aren't more real than things we like about ourselves.

We continually want to unmask our heroes as if there were more to be learned from their nakedness than from their choice of clothing.

My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.

We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

We each have a litany of holiday rituals and everyday habits that we hold on to, and we often greet radical innovation with the enthusiasm of a baby meeting a new sitter. We defend against it and - not always, but often enough - reject it. Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to.

She goes in with a prejudice and comes out with a statistic.