I was afraid, not necessarily of him in particular, but of men in general — of what men do when women disappoint them. When I was in high school, I broke up with a boy who later slit his wrists. After he cut himself, he decided to walk to my house, more than five country […]
Whether she identifies as a boy or a girl hardly matters, as long as she never feels trapped in a place or a persona that no longer fits. Today my daughter is wearing blue camouflage shorts, a white collared shirt and a necktie with thick blue stripes. It’s the beginning of third grade and this […]
It may not come from the people we expected it to come from. It may not be found in the places we expected to find it. But it always comes, right when it should. Five years ago, I sat at my computer on a snowy winter evening and scrolled through the Craigslist personal ads, wondering […]
Commitment is not a circle of diamonds or a bouquet of peonies or a fancy ceremony in a chapel. And what we invest in symbols can easily disappear, says Wendy Fontaine. The salesman brings a ring that isn’t at all what I want. It’s too big, too expensive, and sticks up too high on my […]
Among other accusatory and downright rude questions from both strangers and acquaintances, Wendy Fontaine is mostly tired of having to answer where her daughter’s father is. My 6-year-old daughter, Angela, has always been good at making friends at the playground. She meets kids her age at the swings or on the slide, says hello, and […]
Wendy Fontaine never told her daughter Angie what to call the new man in their life, but to Angie, he’s “Dad.” My daughter, Angie, spent the last few weeks of first grade learning a Native American language of pictures and symbols that tribal members scrawled on cave walls and animal hides many years ago to […]
Would people think she wasn’t as powerful or strong if she no longer referred to herself as a “single mom”? Angie and I were playing hide-and-seek at the playground on a Wednesday afternoon when three helicopters starting circling overhead, a sure sign of trouble in our neck of northern Los Angeles. One of the dads […]
