Features & Essays

When I heard that HBO was doing a Sex and the City reboot, I, like many other fans who spent the late ’90s and early aughts clutching the show to their then much-younger bosoms (like so many oversized flower brooches), had one overriding emotion: despair.

I’m realizing that there’s one group of people who are completely mentally prepared for something like this. That’s people like me, who assume that the worst is going to happen at all times.

“Olden days again?” my seven-year-old sighs as he catches me curled up on the couch. “You were watching that yesterday.”
“This is totally different!” I protest. “That was 19th-century England. This is 17th-century France. Look at those dresses! How could you mistake this for working-class London?!”

I wouldn’t know a parsnip from a peanut, and I’d rather eat glass than shop for chicken necks. But my grandmother’s gone, and my mother’s not going to be around forever. Someone had to learn to make the matzo balls.

‘I could never be friends with her! She’s far too attractive!’ The perils of Mommy Group are startlingly similar to those experienced in high school.

Earlier this month, the rise in cases of the birth defect microcephaly — linked to the Zika virus — was declared a public health emergency. I didn’t need anyone to tell me what it was. I was too familiar with something much like it.

I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I haven’t spent that much time thinking about my bum hole. I haven’t pondered its health, longed for its refreshment or wondered if my pooping experience has been fully optimized.

“I have one rule,” says Dutch runway shooter Peter Stigter sagely. “It’s never right to hit somebody for a fashion show.”

Suddenly, as if all my ancestors are speaking to me at once and this was meant to be and I always knew it to be so, I lift two grubby fingers, position them on either side of the teasing, pulsating lump and squeeze.

How do the doyennes of good behaviour navigate some of life’s trickier moments?