Over the years the dogs had taught me so much. How a walk can show us the world. How sometimes just showing up is all that matters, and sitting quietly by can give the best comfort. How a simple smile could change a day, and a life. And how messy a life could really be. Now Wojo was giving me one last lesson: how to let go.

Let’s face it. Summer break is no picnic for families, especially when both parents work.

Gone are the days when that last week of school ushers in some water-colored daydream, replaced instead with dread as wide-open days filled with idle children beckon.

Now parents need a spreadsheet to plot out activities and a line of credit to ensure that the kids don’t slide down a slippery slothful slope towards delinquency.

"Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world." Sending some bookstore love on this Valentine's Day.

I have a problem with lines - the waiting part, specifically. You'd think that after being on this planet for more than a half-century I'd be over it. But a trip to the grocery store the other day reminded me that I still had a long way to go to line acceptance.

On seeing cardinals as visits from loved ones who've passed (with art from my favorite watercolorist, and sister, Christine McCloskey Chittenden).

Not many folks enter courthouses happily – except perhaps for a marriage or an adoption. But today my family gets to do just that as we gather to witness and celebrate the public swearing-in of my brother, Tom McCloskey, as a judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey.

All the world's an Order Muppet or a Chaos Muppet, and that explains everything, according to Slate's Dahlia Lithwick in this fun Sunday read. 

Summer heat is coming, and so are the reading lists. Here are a few of my choices, particularly enticing in these disruptive times.

Alicia Hart can tell you more about the brain than you may ever care to know. For the past six years, she has traveled from the frontal lobe around and back again, learning how information is processed, where sequencing and problem-solving occur, and how fear originates, all in an effort to see the world through the eyes of her seven-year-old autistic son, Ewan. The maternal instincts that guided through her older daughter’s formative years – the ability to anticipate fear, for example – were useless when it came to Ewan.