Eat, Darling, Eat 

One of my mother’s best qualities was her willingness to embrace new ideas, to live in the moment, even as her contemporaries clung to traditional standards and practices. She hiked her skirt lengths up or down when fashion decreed minis or midis (the former was her forte, since she had the best legs in the world). When I wanted to blast the stereo...

The kitchen was my mother’s lair. Not because she loved cooking. Just the opposite. She hated it. She almost took pride when she announced to family and friends that she was the worst cook in the world, bashing all stereotypes of a New York Jewish mother.

The results of her cooking ranged from sufficient to inedible. There’s the time we all remember...

That Friday night

in Primark

had to be the worst.

Blue plastic handle

of the basket

dug into my crook.

The weight of size six leggings

tops and tees.

Three hundred euro

on clothes I am already burning

ceremoniously, at the end

of Summer.

This poem was sparked by despair, four years ago, the night before my daughter Molly went into treatment for orthorexia, an...

T’was the night before Thanksgiving, and I awoke from sleep at 2 a.m. to the aroma of greens, sweet cornbread, and oven-cooked baked beans with lots of brown sugar. I walked downstairs into the kitchen to find the greatest cook in the world, my own personal chef: my mother.

My mama ruled in the kitchen, at our home in the Avondale neighborhood of Ci...

I was down on my knees cleaning the baseboards in my kitchen after having washed the walls above the stove, cleaned out the cutlery drawer, and given every glass (wine, water, highball, lowball) a once-over. My critical eye had not left one thing unattended, including the need to wipe down each slat on my blinds.

Why the hell was I doing this, and d...