Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceilingone afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.

Families don't always realize that mother is exhausted, because mother is always exhausted. Exhausted is what looks normal.

One life stamps and influences another, which in turn stamps and influences another, on and on, until the soul of human experience breathes on in generations we'll never meet.

It's an old trick now, God knows, but it works every time. At the very moment women start to expand their place in the world, scientific studies deliver compelling reasons for them to stay home.

The truth invariably arrives several years after you need it.

Divorce is the psychological equivalent of a triple coronary by pass. After such a monumental assault on the heart, it takes years to amend all the habits and attitudes that led up to it.

Raising boys has made me a more generous woman than I really am. Undoubtedly, there are other routes to learning the wishes and dreams of the presumably opposite sex, but I know of none more direct, or more highly motivating, than being the mother of sons.