I became hysterical and frightened and begged for sedation. And that was just the first prenatal visit.

Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.

A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.

If anyone knew where they were, I'd send the ISDBB (Incredibly Stupid and Dumb Beyond Belief) award to the two guys who tried to break in to the Ohio penitentiary.

There would have been more 'I love you's' and more, 'I'm sorry's'.

Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.

I became hysterical and frightened and begged for sedation. And that was just the first prenatal visit.