I'm Very Much A Believer In Knowing

We Have A Game We Play When We’re Waiting For Tables In Restaurants, Where You Have To Write The Five Things That Describe Yourself On A Piece Of Paper. When I Was [in My Twenties], I Would Have Put: Ambitious, Wellesley Graduate, Daughter, Democrat, Single. Ten Years Later Not One Of Those Five Things Turned Up On My List. I Was: Journalist, Feminist, New Yorker, Divorced, Funny. Today Not One Of Those Five Things Turns Up In My List: Writer, Director, Mother, Sister, Happy.

Suddenly, One Day, There Was This Thing Called Parenting. Parenting Was Serious. Parenting Was Fierce. Parenting Was Solemn. Parenting Was A Participle, Like Going And Doing And Crusading And Worrying.

Never Marry A Man You Wouldn't Want To Be Divorced From.

Maintenance Is What You Have To Do Just So You Can Walk Out The Door Knowing That If You Go To The Market And Bump Into A Guy Who Once Rejected You, You Won't Have To Hide Behind A Stack Of Canned Food. I Don't Mean To Be Too Literal About This.

There's A Reason Why Forty, Fifty, And Sixty Don't Look The Way They Used To, And It's Not Because Of Feminism, Or Better Living Through Exercise. It's Because Of Hair Dye. In The 1950's Only 7 Percent Of American Women Dyed Their Hair; Today There Are Parts Of Manhattan And Los Angeles Where There Are No Gray-haired Women At All.