One of the blessings that comes with parental territory is that children tug you into experiences you're pretty sure you'd never otherwise contemplate.

One of the blessings that comes with parental territory is that children tug you into experiences you're pretty sure you'd never otherwise contemplate.

If the very thought of taking off all your clothes in the middle of the Washington Mall during a school holiday makes you blush, you haven't even begun to dream what it feels like to publish a book.

In a society that prates about, but seldom practices, communication, the craving to be listened to, heard, understood - which originates with the first terrified wail, the circling arms, the breast, the consolatory murmur - is hard to assuage.

That's the trouble with honorable mentions: they let everyone know you applied and didn't win.

Poor and afflicted and oppressed people have faces, and we are required to look squarely into them. We can't love what we won't experience.

physical disability looms pretty large in one's life. But it doesn't devour one wholly. I'm not, for instance, Ms. MS, a walking, talking embodiment of a chronic incurable degenerative disease.