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Gardens of Guilt
I have a garden, which I’ve wanted for years. In New York I had to be satisfied with window boxes and urban tomatoes (they look pretty but oh, those airborne carcinogens, especially if the tomatoes in...
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World Prematurity Day . . . and turning thirteen
On the 18th of November, I officially become the mother of a teenager. Which seems weird because I’m only 25. And it’s doubly weird because in some bizarre harmonic convergence, the 17th of November is...
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In the suburbs no one can hear you scream
I live in the suburbs now. From the maelstrom of Union Square in Manhattan to the slightly more sedate “urban” experience of highrise in downtown Abu Dhabi was one shift. But in a weird way the shift...
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Birthday War Games
For a long time, when my kids were little, I refused to outsource the birthday party: I made a cake, invited the kids over, maybe used the “community space” in our building for games of some kind or...
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I’ve been fitbit
It started innocently enough. A friend of mine who just had her second child bought herself a fitbit, a little piece of digitized plastic that tracks how many steps you take in a day, the miles you...
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The HerStories Project
It’s been a big week out here in the ‘Dhabs, I have to say, starting with the Rain Day two weeks ago. What is this “rain day,” you ask? Well, my dears, that’s when the serene desert skies bust open and...
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UAE Bans Super Size Soda…you’re welcome
The other day The National ran an article about various health-care reforms being suggested by the UAE government. Among those reforms are—wait for it—a proposed restriction on portion sizes for fizzy...
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On Turning Fifty
So I’ve been fifty for an entire week and so far things are going pretty well. It didn’t look good there for a while, though, because I inducted myself into my fifth decade not only with a horrible...
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in which the universe sends me a metaphor about aging
About a week after I turned fifty (see how easily I said that?), I went for a walk on Saadiyat Beach, which is near my house, with a friend. Here’s a question: almost all the women I know like to go...
View Articlehow you know you’re raising a twenty-first century kid
Last night as Caleb was getting ready for bed, he told me he wished he’d played on our neighbors’ trampoline after school. I pointed out that he’d basically come home from school and rushed to his...
View ArticleUber: sweet rides in Abu Dhabi
A few months ago, I read about a new app called Uber, which worked a bit like a taxi service, except you order an Uber car online and can track its progress to you on your smartphone. Pretty cool, I...
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so I wrote a book…
Last year, at the tender age of 49, I was delighted to be included in two fantastic anthologies: You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth, edited by the brilliantly funny Leslie Marinelli of The Bearded Iris...
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parenting will make you nuts, but it’s not as bad as READING about parenting
…and when did “parenting” become a verb, anyway? Time was, back in the day, a parent was a noun, and what you did was “raise” kids or “try not to drown” kids or “don’t lose the kids in the mall.” But...
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happy birthday, gloria steinem. I wish you didn’t matter.
Gloria Steinem spoke at my college graduation back in 1986. At the time, as a graduate of a woman’s college, I thought to myself “oh good lord, her. Couldn’t they find someone more relevant?” It was...
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Ladies Night at the Ice Rink
The image of the veiled woman remains a potent symbol of the “mysterious” Middle East and the question of “do you have to cover…” is almost always the first question that anyone asks me when I tell...
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a decade of caleb
This face of joy is Caleb, at one, at Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island. He’d learned to walk at nine months, which meant that despite having a brain about the size of a walnut and a diaper the...
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Gender Gap in Silicon Valley…
So the other day I was reading The New Yorker — the actual magazine, not the tablet version. I hate reading magazines electronically. They force me to read chronologically, when for me some of the joy...
View ArticleTraveling While Female…
Hi there blogosphere…. I seem to have taken an inadvertent hiatus from blogging for a while … it’s the kind of thing like forgetting to write your grandmother: the longer you wait, the more it becomes...
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Commencement Time, or what does a dinosaur have to do with the liberal arts?
It’s graduation time all over the US and in Abu Dhabi, NYUAD students are readying themselves for the same ritual. And as students prepare to march across all manner of stages and listen to all manner...
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Whose Family Values Are They, Anyway? Happy Adoption Day!
I wrote this post almost four years ago. In that four-year time, gay marriage has become law in almost half the states in the Union and yesterday Tylenol ran a new ad that celebrated all the different...
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