The real drug, I came to believe, was love.

I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes.

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother "worked" at anything besides raising her children.

When I was 12 years old, I read Nancy Drew mysteries and biographies of Madame Curie and Florence Nightingale and books about girls who love horses or go to nursing school. I belonged to the Girl Scouts and got A's in school and rarely disobeyed my parents. I still kept a collection of Barbie dolls in my room, and I almost never spoke to boys.

Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead... that I'd finally found my sport.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.