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Yesterday I was doing some editing and talking on the phone, when I was told to look at the news. A man had taken hostages at the Discovery Channel just outside of Washington, DC. There was a gun, and possibly explosives. I got off the phone. I put on CNN. I watched, and then had parenting duties.

I put the television back on a few hours later. It was over. He was dead. The hostages were released. Whether or not he had a family, I don’t know. For them, his death is a tragedy. For those who lived through the afternoon of terror, there will be a slow path to regaining a sense of normalcy, if ever.

Yesterday I read a friend’s writing about her pregnancy; she’s waiting on news. News that everything is alright. She’s scared. A new life hangs in the balance. She asked for prayers, and many of us added to that very private, very particular chorus of entreaties.

Last evening, my son gave me a paper to glance at. As a high school student, gone are the days when the subject matter is straightforward, or something I master from my own school days, or “just life.” But this was of interest – an extensive piece of research in the works, on Vietnam and the news media.

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Did you attend the Fletcher School of Diplomacy? No? How about the Parental School of Hard Knocks? The Dating School of Hard Knocks?

Any of these might serve as some assistance. You know – in those sticky situations when a friend needs to hear the truth. A hard truth. One that will hurt, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re backed into a corner and the only way out is to answer directly, hoping you find a way to do so without hurting your friend’s feelings. Or for that matter, burning bridges, or dramatically altering the shape of your relationship.

And to make matters worse, this isn’t about wearing the right dress, or acting in a certain manner in a social setting. It’s important. An issue of your friend’s long-term best interest.

Sound familiar? Run into this from time to time – not only in your personal life, but in your business life?

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I don’t know when it happened, exactly. Whether I flipped a switch, or the lighting changed more gradually, as if a dimmer had slowly illuminated a new space. But I recognize that it happened some time ago, and it feels like a natural process – inhabiting this territory where the focus is off my experience lived intensely, and outside of myself, more diffusely.

It’s not that I don’t want new experiences, or to live intensely any longer. That’s not the case.

But I’m not walled in by the confines of my memories, or my once-upon-a-time ambitions. By an image of what life should be like. It’s as though I scaled those walls and I’m somewhere else, beyond myself. Much of the time, anyway. In a place where I’m concerned with tangible contribution. With legacy.

Do we all reach a stage where our experiences take a back seat to something bigger – or at the very least – share equal footing?

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Bigger than life, flashy, flawed. Cagey, corrupt, capricious. We love our television heroes, and our anti-heroes. Big screen or small screen, we escape into fictional lives, finding points in common, or nothing in common at all.

Mad Men is the perfect example of this phenomenon, as the Emmy award winning drama (again, just last evening) continues to delight us with complex characters and sticky plot lines.

Feminist leanings, or simple ambition?

What’s not to love about Peggy Olson brazenly stripping to prove a point to a sexist art director? He insists on insulting her. He’s lazy. He’s rude. He sprawls on a bed in a hotel room where they’re supposed to be brainstorming, and he’s flipping through Playboy claiming that it relaxes him and that she is ashamed of her body.

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Unguarded

I have been writing from an unguarded place, and I do not do so often. I am uncomfortable here; my survival depends on privacy, and my own ability to maintain a certain distance from approaching realities in order to persevere – the clarity of facts and figures, debt and expenses, and the clock ticking, all too loudly.

Some days I grip the spotlight tightly. I aim it, though it is heavy and I would rather not. Its light is glaring, and I don’t wish to see what is laid out before me. But I must, and so I step out from behind the wizard’s curtain where I’ve created “appropriate” versions of my life. I step out to be heard, to speak my mind not because it is easier, but it may be healthier.

To those who counsel me to “look for the light” I say this:

The light that shines from within has not disappeared. But there is another sort of light. Hard truth. You simply do not like the view. And frankly, nor do I.

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Travel Day

It’s here. Again. A day of last minute laundry and packing, goodbyes, airports. The house, suddenly so quiet, as my teenager prepares to fly back to college. To begin his sophomore year.

It was an evening of more loads of wash than I can count, the heap of luggage in the living room finally emptied, in order to sort through and repack. There were more teens in and out. There was another party, but calmer than the last. There was an evening of my holding back tears, and holing up in my bedroom. Out of the way.

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Numbers do not lie

We’d been at it for several hours, side by side, each of us on our laptops. Spread on the small ottoman pressing against my knees were stacks of old tax forms. On the chair beside me, two more folders with notes and figures.

We actually began the process days ago, but I couldn’t continue, and my son, seeing that, let it go.

Leading up to this, there have been arguments and charged silences. There were those long months on my part, paving the way with every financial document we needed, going back years. It has been painful. But necessary.

Still, I was impressed at my son’s determination, his calm in the face of this difficult task, one we had to get through. Together. So there we were, flipping through forms, running numbers on a small calculator, and transferring the results to the virtual page.

At one point, we came to what seemed like a simple question. It involved basic arithmetic: Figure A – Figure B = Figure C. My son blanched. Now he knows a certain truth. In the numbers. And numbers do not lie.

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I am the face of the aftermath of divorce, the aftermath of layoff, the aftermath of defeat. I am the face of invisible illness, of piercing isolation, of daily hide-and-seek.

Would you know me if you saw me?

I am your neighbor, your colleague, your sister; I am the woman who yells at the cashier because I am breaking. I am the woman who apologizes afterward, and too often. I will nod and take my change and say thank you. You will not recognize me as the face of despair.

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Believe me, my kids are no angels. They try my patience, drain my stores of energy, gnaw at my sleep, and keep trashing the space I’ve been trying to organize for months.

Kids driving you crazy?

I adore my sons. I write about them often. They do me proud, they challenge me, they have good hearts. My elder has already been “launched,” and this past year with him away has tugged at my heartstrings. I was delighted when he came home from school, and again, after his two months working and traveling overseas.

But after yet one more night of partying during which my 18-year old did not adhere to the requisite decibel level for reveling (he and his friends woke me three times during the wee hours), you could say I was not happy with his behavior.

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The tale of 104-year old heiress, Huguette Clark, caught my fancy last week. Not only is this woman’s story rich with history, but it raises an extraordinary number of issues that are relevant to each of us as we deal with critical decisions in life: who to trust, minimizing family squabbling when we are gone, and very real concerns about dwindling capacities and solitude as we age.

These aren’t topics we like to think about, much less discuss. But they’re the stuff of a responsible adult life, especially when you’re a parent, and you don’t want to unduly burden your children.

Part of the fascination of the strange situation involving Huguette Clark, of course, is her colorful parentage, her remarkable 104 years, the enormous wealth – it is estimated that unoccupied homes alone are worth $200 million – not to mention the mystery that shrouds her whereabouts. The fact that the most recent known photo of her dates to 1930 adds to the exceptional nature of this story, as information coming to light about her attorney and accountant raise the level of intrigue – and concern.

The reporter who has covered this story for msnbc.com, Bill Dedman, has published an update. Apparently, a criminal investigation into the handling of Ms. Clark’s finances is underway.

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