Love, Actually: Living Off My Father’s Inheritance

My father is preparing for his imminent demise. He is choosing to prepare for this by preparing his children for his imminent demise. This holiday season marks the second time we have been summoned to the house for a “family meeting.” Last year, I, personally received a letter in my mailbox in New York City. [...]

A Thank You to the THING

When I was in my 20s, I used to hear about the THING that would happen to me when I was in my 30s. The THING would cause me to put away such childish notions as “it’s me against the world” and the rather irrational theory that modern day feminism translated into a complete refusal [...]

An Age of INFORMED Decision Making

1. After three months of dating Bernard, he sent me a tentative text message. Although I have spent the last three years bemoaning the emotional ambivalence of people who send text messages to initiate serious conversations, Bernard’s text was completely clear; it left no room for misunderstanding. I have been doing a lot of thinking [...]

Love, Actually: Dialogue 4

Recently, a student came to me in tears. Two years prior to Bev’s teary conversation with me, she had engaged in a teary conversation with her mother. An honorable 13 year old, Bev sought to be open and honest with her mother. “I like girls,” she’d admitted timidly. Her mother dismissed her feelings, repeatedly reminding [...]

Becoming the Man I Want

Several years ago, Oprah gave me some sound advice. Her show on that day was built loosely around the much-loved topic: How Single Women Can Get the Man They Really Want. There was the requisite audience of fabulous women in their 30s and 40s lamenting on how they had EVERYTHING – jobs that brought them [...]

Fruitless Thoughts

In his memoir, The Discomfort Zone, Jonathan Franzen chronicles the woes and follies of growing up comfortably middle class in 1960′s America.  The impressively written collection of essays covers a lot of big ideas about traditional family structures, the reassuring boredom  of suburban life and oddly enough…the downward spiral in which our country seems to [...]

Love, Actually: Lesson Learned

Several months ago, I enrolled myself in an independent study course.  I was going to learn more about love.  In all its forms.  From those who had been treated fairly by it and those who had been repeatedly burned by it.  I would engage in a series of conversations about love with friends, my only expectation [...]

Love, Actually: Dialogue 3

In her award winning novel, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison shares an unfortunate observation about love.  Love is only as good as the lover, she warns. Sobering thought, if ever I read one. So, if the love an individual gives to another is only as good as that individual herself, then how are any of [...]

Love, Actually: Dialogue 2

I have this theory about men and love.  Specifically, men and love gone bad.  I am no expert, but I do believe that for men, a broken heart signifies the genesis of many years of dark and dangerous behavior in romantic relationships.  A brokenhearted man once confessed to me that he had managed to “compress my feelings [...]

Love, Actually: Dialogue 1

I am a very smart cookie.  I have only been on this planet for 34 years and in that time I’ve figured out several of life’s indecipherable mysteries.  I have solved a few of those puzzles the universe throws our way simply to confuse us beyond our senses while it points and chuckles over in [...]