Brooke Jones went through two years of infertility before finally becoming pregnant at 34.

Always an anxious person, her worries rose "to another level" as she went through her pregnancy, delivery and early parenthood during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If someone so much as coughed near Jones, it could send her into an emotional tailspin. And that ...Read more

Suze Leonie’s "Yonah and Devorah’s Traveling Music Theater" takes readers on a haunting journey through grief, family secrets and creative reinvention. At the heart of this deeply introspective novel is Eli Schmidt, a young man who, after his grandmother’s death, finds himself grappling not only with her passing but with a family legacy ...Read more

One of our granddaughters announced she is going to an ice cream parlor on her honeymoon. I thought it would be good to get that on record in case she changes her mind and starts talking about a Caribbean cruise or backpacking through Europe.

She is not engaged.

She doesn’t date.

She is 6.

To the best of everyone’s knowledge, she has ...Read more

Some authors can tell a sad story but render it beautiful. That’s what Bobi Conn observed when she started reading books while in graduate school at the age of 27.

I would take it a step further and count Conn herself among those authors.

Conn documented poignantly the harsh realities of her own life growing up in the foothills of the ...Read more

Dr. Priya Soni remembers the childhood hand-washing lessons her mother taught. She didn't just make Soni wash her hands before meals, or insist she clean up after playing outside.

Soni's mother, a microbiologist who ran her own lab, had her wash one hand and then put both in a petri dish to illustrate the difference good hygiene made in ...Read more

Here’s how death works:

Up there, you’re not allowed to leave your residence or contact other dead people — although you’ll be afforded any leisure pastimes or hobbies that may interest you. No one said death wasn’t boring.

The only exception is if your phone rings and you are contacted and called to Earth by a living descendent for ...Read more

My mother grew up in a beset post-Depression family that saddled her with too many responsibilities, including, from age 9, tending her three siblings while her mother worked nights as a nurse and slept days.

Among her siblings was Aunt Cathy.

Aunt Cathy was always considered "off” by my hardened grandmother, though I always wondered if she ...Read more

Our youngest daughter called the other day sounding harried. “I’m in the middle of cooking and I’m short an egg. Is it still OK to borrow an egg from a neighbor?”

I didn’t know what to say. Miss Manners never covered this one. Then again, Miss Manners probably never paid more than 75 cents for a dozen eggs.

It used to be fine to ...Read more