There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role–hero, heroine, or villain…. Unlike the slight implications of quotidian dilemmas that confront the average citizen in other areas of...

We’d been assured it wouldn’t be painful, though she might experience ‘discomfort,’ a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn’t yours.

Pregnancy had seemed a reasonable excuse for letting her metal-smithing tools languish, but that accounted for only eighteen months of the last twenty-six years. Motherhood wasn’t the real problem, though it took him a long...

It isn’t very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A...

A carpet of despair which lay underneath the levels of fury.

For that matter, all this, is there a God? Corlis — I don’t care!””Huh,” I considered. “I guess I don’t either”.”Most people don’t! All they care about,” he added grimly, “is being right”.

I can’t imagine that I’m supposed to get over it , like hopping a low stone wall; if Thursday was a barrier of some kind, it was made of razor wire, which I did not...

I have no end of failings as a mother, but I have always followed the rules.

Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.

…trying to be a good mother may be as distant from being a good mother as trying to have a good time is from truly having one.