It is true for my family and many others: Adoption has made us infinitely richer in the ways that matter most.

I mourn for the kind of dad I didn't have; I rue my first broken family while taking joy in the one that I've made.

Children are weird. I was going to say 'most children,' but I think this a rare universal law.

Every Christmas, I cook an elaborate Mexican dinner.

Among this country's enduring myths is that success is virtuous, while the wealth by which we measure success is incidental. We tell ourselves that money cannot buy happiness, but what is incontrovertible is that money buys stuff, and if stuff makes you happy, well, complete the syllogism.

I know I've had a charmed experience of being a parent, with healthy kids, a helpful partner, access to good day care, and great public schools.

One of the many American ideals that make no sense at all is that we're all a million rugged individualists marching in lockstep. We dress accordingly, at least the men. If it's always been thus, I yearn for the halcyon days of the man in the gray flannel suit because at least that guy had some flair.

Form ossifies into genre through repetition.

If writing really is empathy, then understanding your place in society might actually help you achieve it.

It comforts the adult conscience to remember that, amid history's grave injustices, there were still great lives.

History is a story like any other, but black history is a story so devoid of logic that it frustrates the young reader. The young readers in my house, told of slavery and segregation, asked in disbelief, 'What? Why?' We - the parents of black children, the parents of all children - still need to tell that story.

I think it's a not-uncommon experience for gay boys, young men, and even older men to spend a lot of time in the company of women.

For a long time, I thought that I was an enlightened parent by virtue of being an enlightened person. What a fool.

Every sense has the power to transport us through time, but it's taste I find the most mysterious, and writing about it often results in tortured metaphors.

Children's books deal in idealized worlds, so they're a document of how our notion of ideal worlds has changed over time.

Subtlety doesn't work with kids.

I have a theory that because my kitchen is small, you can't preheat an oven and deal with dough at the same time, although maybe it's just that I'm a bad baker.

Fashion has underscored the interchangeability of men for a long time, maybe from the outset.

Is deciding what you like an instinct, a sense that arrives as swiftly as my autoimmune response to cat dander? Or is it the result of reasoned consideration, the way wine tasters swish pinot noir around in their mouths, spit it out, and reach for complex metaphors about chocolate and tobacco?

Time is a finite resource.

Does a bona fide chimichurri have cilantro in it? Who cares? Cooking for your family, unless your family includes Joel Rubouchon, is liberating in that regard.

That a friendship ends doesn't mean it was weak from the outset; that it ends says nothing about its importance.

With respect to parenting, biological age is not, for men, the concern it is for women.

I don't want the staggeringly wealthy Elton John and his family to represent the standard of gay fatherhood any more than straight people want the stunningly beautiful Angelina Jolie and her family to represent the standard of heterosexual parenthood. Stars are outliers; stars are exceptions.