There is a time to separate from our mother. But unless we are ready to separate-unless we are ready to leave her and be left-anything is better than separation.

Lust is what keeps you wanting to do it even when you have no desire to be with each other. Love is what makes you want to be with each other even when you have no desire to do it.

For some it takes a lifetime to find true love, But for the lucky ones a lifetime is merely enough to share the love they've found.

If we are the younger, we may envy the older. If we are the older, we may feel that the younger is always being indulged. In otherwords, no matter what position we hold in family order of birth, we can prove beyond a doubt that we're being gypped.

We can glut ourselves with how-to-raise children information . . . strive to become more mature and aware but none of this will spare us from the . . . inevitability that some of the time we are going to fail our children. Because there is a big gap between knowing and doing. Because mature, aware people are imperfect too. Or because some current event in our life may so absorb or depress us that when our children need us we cannot come through.

Not listening is probably the commonest unkindness of married life, and one that creates - more devastatingly than an eternity of forgotten birthdays and misguided Christmas gifts - an atmosphere of not loving and not caring.

Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace. Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place. The pleasures of an ordinary life.