Rain is my lover, my apple strudel. / It haunts my heels like a pedigreed poodle. / Beyond the seas or across the nation, / It follows me faithful on every vacation.

There are books that one needs maturity to enjoy just as there are books an adult can come on too late to savor.

Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.

This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.

Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art.