Salon Premium: Endless love; “The men are deeper, and the sex can be sweet as well as hot. But dating at 41 is no less exquisitely confusing than it is at 21… I still wish I had a boyfriend, and it wasn’t great getting dumped twice in a long, cold, war-poisoned winter. But it’s finally spring, and the energy of those affairs — and even of the dates with my fellow lonelyhearts seeking love on the computer — has been transformed. They’re all there in this newest burst of dumb hope, lust, curiosity, vague spiritual hoo-ha, and random affection for humanity. Wherever that sap flows from and whether or not you call it a form of love, I’m grateful for it in my constantly humbling life.”
Salon Premium: The sins of the father; “Why, almost 50 years later, is my mother still protecting the man who abused us both?… She was an old woman and I was not going to change her. But I had not let her go to her grave with my secret or her own. I was quiet for a bit and let myself feel sorry for the little girl that had been my mother, the child who was abused by her father but had needed to protect him in order to feel loved.”