Kindergarten didn’t work out so well for me. The classroom didn’t offer enough tables and chairs. Literally. The students rotated each week from the chairs to the floor and back again. Much later in life I learned this was true all over America when the Baby Boomers hit school. They weren’t ready for us. I…

For a while I wrote lifestyle pieces for newspapers. It was a great way to see myself succeeding in print and to feel that Mary Tyler Moore moment--twirling in the street while "You're gonna make it after all!" is sung in the background. When this essay was published, a reader identified with it so much…

In March 2012 we took Maggie back to China for the first time since she left there in 1997. I assumed landing in Beijing would signal our arrival in another culture. I was wrong. It began at gates C 18 and 19 at the airport in Chicago. One carry-on only means one to Americans, who carried…

When the nanny handed our daughter to us on a summer day in China, I thought the journey was finally finished. Here she was—happy and whole. I smiled until my husband gave me the orphanage report: “Baby found forsaking on steps of leather factory. ”Suddenly I realized she would always live with a missing piece. She would…