Home alone with a wakeful newborn, I could shower so quickly that the mirror didn't fog and the backs of my knees stayed dry. The one-minute hair conditioner was too slow for me.

I could still remember how having a two day old baby makes you feel faintly sorry for everyone else, stuck in their wan unmiraculous lives.

There seems to be a hole in the culture where mothers went. Then, when their kids went off to school or stopped having ear infections every three weeks, they emerged from the mother zone, and like everyone else, they forgot where they'd been. Amnesia surrounding motherhood is the rule, not the exception.

Motherhood is like Albania- you can't trust the descriptions in the books, you have to go there.

When a couple turns domestic, for the first while having to talk about the need for aluminum eaves troughing and other matters only gets in the way of the relationship. Then, magically, these negotiations take the place of the relationship.

Like an animal, cancer sleeps, prowls, hibernates, turns surly or placid.

The first axiom of the family vacation is that someone, possibly everyone, will get sick.