When I first heard that he was leaving, I assumed I’d simply continue without him. In that sense, parenting is a bit like the Oregon Trail. Jason’s frostbite or broken axle didn’t preclude me from keeping calm and carrying myself to Europe. But I didn’t keep calm. After learning that Europeans don’t believe in summer camp, I panicked.

I ran through countless scenarios in my mind, combing my memory for a time and place where I’d felt totally in control as a mother. There wasn’t one. From the moment I had a baby, I’d been supervised. Even that first night in the hospital with Sid, I remember a nurse swaddling him in her arms while I looked on longingly from my bed. I wanted to hold him so badly, but felt completely powerless. She seemed to be enjoying herself, and I didn’t have the self-assurance to cut in.

I wish I were a Davey Crockett mom who knew how to fish, hunt, and send out smoke signals. Or, at the very least, a Betty Crocker mom who could whisk and bake without setting off the smoke alarm. But I’m not, or at least I never have been. I wanted my summer curated by a professional. I wanted structure, instruction, and a camp counselor who wasn’t going to Canada.

But he was. He did. And after the first two weeks, I had shingles.

Somewhere between spring break and the final few days of fourth grade, Sid told me he had a crush on this little girl, Nancy. He had no interest in calling this girl on the phone or even having a playdate unsupervised. It was just something he wanted her to know. He confided in me that on the last day of school, they’d made a pact to reveal the name of their crush.

“So? What happened?” I probed eagerly.

“I didn’t tell her.”

“Why not?” I asked, confused.

Sid shrugged and turned away. “I got scared,” he admitted. “But I did tell her that if the school was on fire, she would be the one person I’d save.”

“What about your brother?” I gasped.

“BRO! It’s hypothetical!” He shook his head and stared at me with the unparalleled ennui of a ten-year-old talking to his mother, whom he calls Bro.

I spoke to Nancy’s mom, who confirmed that Sid’s feelings were requited. She liked him, too. Who wouldn’t? He was my son, and he was perfect.

Nancy’s mom informed me that they, too, would be in the Hamptons, but Nancy was unfortunately going to sleepaway camp for the first three weeks. I told her to keep in touch, and we promised to make a plan with the kids once Nancy returned.

On our second-to-last weekend out East, I agreed to take the boys to the Sag Harbor Carnival along with my assistant Caroline and my nanny Erica. Remember that part earlier where I told you I was alone? Well, forget that now.

We planned to go on Thursday, but when the boys got off the bus, they were behaving like two cokehead Chuckie dolls and promptly lost the privilege.

Friday was their last shot at whiplash and cotton candy. When four-thirty rolled around, they bounded off the bus as best of friends. Their performative brotherhood was so over the top that I started to fear they were the worst actors I’d ever met.

“I love you, Laz,” Sid cooed.

“I love you, Sid,” Lazlo purred back.

When we arrived at the carnival, the place was packed with screaming tweens, funnel cakes, and shell-shocked parents holding newly acquired pet goldfish. Sid carried Lazlo on his back through the crowd like a silverback gorilla shepherding its infant through the Congo.

“We are going to do every single ride together,” he declared proudly, looking to me for validation.

Lazlo was on cloud nine, like a co-dependent spouse willingly suspending his disbelief to live out his deepest fantasy, if only for one night.

It was still light out when we arrived. After a week of rain, the sky was clear and the breeze coming off the water was salty and warm. It was one of those nights in July when it felt like summer might last forever.

Or perhaps it had, and I’d just been lost in some alternate universe. Was it 2024 or was it 1989? From where I was standing, either answer could have been true. Classic rock blasted as a mini roller coaster whipped backward and forward on its tired-out tracks. The lights from the bumper cars glowed with 80s movie nostalgia as we waited in line for wristbands.

I gave Sid my phone and told him that if he got lost, I’d call him. Lazlo jumped up and down impatiently, waiting to measure himself against the height requirement placards guarding the entrance to each ride.

I scanned the line ahead, only stopping when my eyes fell on her.

With a pile of coffee-colored curls and covered in blue and green snow cones, there she was. Nancy- back from summer camp.

When she recognized me, she froze like a deer hanging over a hedge fund mantle.

“Sid. Nancy’s here,” I said, delighted.

Sid looked up from my phone in disbelief. The blood drained from his face, and I felt his stomach drop out of his body. Mine did the same. I tried to stay present as I watched his breathless free-fall into total euphoria.

Nancy quickly spun around and pretended to be talking to her girlfriends. Sid put my phone to his ear and pretended to be on an important work call.

“Buy. Sell. Buy. Sell.” I almost heard him say.

I felt outside myself, but also blessed to witness what would become a core memory of his childhood and devastated by its significance.

I remembered being his age. I remembered the first time another person made me feel dizzy with dopamine. It was 2024 and also 1989, all in one fleeting moment. I could hear the opening guitar riff from Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” as a hundred MTV screens exploded in my mind.

Everything was about to change.

“Go talk to her,” I managed to blurt out.

Sid handed me back my phone. “Don’t film.”

As he walked away, I suddenly felt my cheeks getting warm. My eyes welled up with tears, and I couldn’t stop them from coming.

“Jenny? Are you okay?” I heard Caroline ask.

“Yes.” I started laughing and crying. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

Nancy’s parents looked over at me. I waved sheepishly and continued bawling.

“Jenny? Do you want your sunglasses?” Caroline subtly suggested.

Nancy’s mom started to approach, or maybe it was her dad. To be honest, I was weeping too hard to tell them apart.

“How’s it going?” he/she asked.

“GREAT! This is so cute,” I covered.

They looked at me sideways, no doubt thinking: Relax, lady. It’s not like they’re getting married.

“I can chaperone them while you guys wait in line,” Nancy’s dad/mom said.

Lazlo looked at me, heartbroken. “I thought Sid said he was going to go on every ride with me.”

“Yes, sweetie. He’s gonna include you. And if not, I’ll ride with you.”

The disappointment on Lazlo’s face was obvious. He looked over at Sid as he disappeared into the crowd with Nancy and one of her girlfriends.

When I reached the ticket booth, they informed me that the line I’d been waiting in wasn’t for tickets but for some kind of giant slide. I’d been standing there for half an hour only to learn that the carnival only accepted cash, and I had none.

“Do either of you know the PIN number on my ATM card?” I asked Erica and Caroline.

They shook their heads no.

Lazlo started to cry. “You said we could do all the rides.”

My eyes connected with Nancy’s mom’s, but I was too ashamed to ask her for help. I didn’t want to look irresponsible, poor, or helpless. I wasn’t close with her or her friends, who were also moms at my school. They preferred Jason, who had been class mom and, in my mind, judged me for my lack of involvement.

I remembered when my mom used to drop my sister and me off at SeaWorld for the day. We had a summer pass that was cheaper for her than hiring a babysitter. We used to take packed lunches, but when we got there and saw all the other kids with nuggets and fries, we became envious. Since we didn’t have wallets, we’d wander around asking people if they had a quarter so we could call our mom, eventually scoring enough cash to afford a Shamu sampler.

I looked at Erica and Caroline, on the verge of suggesting this same plan.

Luckily, Caroline offered a better idea.

She walked up to a dad standing a few feet behind us and offered to Venmo him if he paid for our wristbands. I hid behind a tree, mortified, until he said yes.

After nearly an hour, my tears had subsided and we were able to rejoin Sid and Nancy, her parents, and several others from our school at a flying-car ride.

“Can I go with you, Sid?” Lazlo asked excitedly.

Sid looked past Lazlo like he’d never seen him before in his life.

“I’m going with Nancy.” He shook his head.

I shot Sid a look, then turned to Lazlo.

“I’ll sit with you, Laz. I love flying cars.”

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The other moms huddled around the perimeter snapping pictures as Lazlo and I loaded into our seats.

Spinning in the air, we went round and round like two hands on a clock. Every glimpse I got of Sid was obscured by the other cars flying between us. Each time I reached the spot where he’d just been, he was already on the opposite side.

I was chasing him, both figuratively and literally. Both felt like losing battles.

I tagged along as Nancy, Sid, and their friends bounced from ride to ride. Lazlo even managed to get himself invited on a few.

Finally, it was time for Nancy to go home.

“Bye,” she smiled at Sid, a full foot between them.

Nancy started to move toward him for a hug, but Sid missed the cue and held out his hand for a high five instead.

“Bye,” Sid said innocently.

I felt her disappointment, knowing full well she’d spend the rest of the night replaying the perceived rejection in her head.

I remembered being Nancy, waiting for Tad Deeter to walk over to my house and apologize for not wanting to build a fort with me after school. I fantasized about him showing up with a single rose and asking me to slow dance to “La Isla Bonita” on my front porch.

Tad never showed up. And even though I learned years later that he was gay, there’s a part of me that is still waiting.

The moment Nancy was out of sight, Sid was back to being Lazlo’s biggest fan.

“Can we please do another ride together? I’ve been missing my bro all night.”

Knowing full well he was lying but desperate to believe him anyway, I agreed.

The three of us boarded The Sea Viking. I was in the middle with both boys on either side. The boat started moving, building higher and higher with each swing. From the sky, the carnival looked like nothing more than a smattering of lights, empty soda cans, and cheap stuffed animals. Sid held my hand tightly, unaware of how badly I needed him, unaware of how soon he wouldn’t need me. It was happening. It always was happening. My kids were growing up, just as I had. Life was moving forward like a roller coaster with no tracks.

The Viking pushed on, higher and higher, until my stomach was in my mouth. Tears once again filled my eyes as I clung to the sides of the boat, giving in to the tingling, unnerving sensation of loving so hard and being completely, utterly out of control.

“Mom, why are you crying?” Sid asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m just happy.”

Lazlo gripped my leg as Sid smiled back.

There was nothing left to do but raise my hands and fall.

Later that night, I was overcome with this intense sense of disappointment and loneliness. Not because I didn’t get what I wanted, but because the best part of a gift is often wondering what’s inside. I rushed through the whole thing, trying to get all the answers and missing my own party. I think about this birthday a lot, because it taught me a lesson I’ve continuously had to relearn over and over throughout my life.

I was in a rush to grow up, a rush to graduate college, a rush to land a TV show, and a billboard outside my ex-boyfriend’s apartment. I spent most of my twenties alone in dark rooms listening to Tori Amos and journaling about how misunderstood I was as a privileged, blonde girl whose dad paid her rent. I refused to go out with people my own age because what would be the point? They were just as lost as I was, and frankly, not additive enough to the story.

(One time I went out. I hated it.)

Everywhere I’ve ever been has felt a little temporary, like a waiting room I’m trapped in before an operation.

I thought I’d never survive the years when my children weren’t sleeping through the night. I thought every weekend would be spent trapped inside the hellscape of the Tribeca red park playground. But those moments are behind me, and what’s tragic is that while I was in them, struggling to get out, my life was happening anyway. My kids were growing up, and I was standing in memories that I can now only access through pictures.

When you’re young and ambitious, or maybe just middle-aged with ADHD, it feels impossible to appreciate anything while you’re in it. The highest highs of my life have all hit like pennies disappearing into a bottomless well. I’d wait- maybe a moment or two for the sound of something landing, but before it ever did, I was on to the next. Hoping that the next thing would finally be the one that cured me- the one that made me feel worthy and validated in a way that has always evaded me.

I leave for Italy on Wednesday, which sounds soooo Eat, Pray, Love considering the current state of my life. But I’m not going to find myself or sleep with some beautiful Italian stranger. I already have two half-Italians at home.

I’m actually just going because a friend invited me to her birthday party. It also happens to be my birthday as well.

It’s unlikely I’ll see clowns, or Coors Light, or my mom getting buzzed in a corner, but if I come across a piñata, I absolutely intend on beating the shit out of it.

My life stopped making sense recently, or maybe it actually makes more sense. Maybe this was something I’ve always known was coming, not because I wanted it, but because it was always predetermined. It’s a script I didn’t write- just frantically tried to name, shape and control.

It’s humiliating in a way, how little free will we have in this lifetime. How things happen to us, no matter how hard we try to avoid them. How certain things can undo us despite every instinct telling us not to touch them.

I was always afraid as a child. Of being kidnapped, of being left in the dark, of alien abductions, men with goatees, trash compactors, windowless vans, Victorian dolls, and math. I lived on high alert, convinced that if I stayed vigilant enough, if I carried an industrial-sized staple gun in my backpack, I’d be able to protect myself from whatever harm was coming.

It’s easy to feign discernment. To perform maturity. To avoid the wounds that raised us. To sidestep landmines because they look and feel too much like our mothers. But destiny has a way of dragging us toward ourselves whether we consent to it or not. It’s happening anyway. The real question becomes: how hard do we protest? How long before it takes us, regardless?

My birthday is in two weeks. It’s not a significant birthday except that it will be one I will never forget, as it will split my life into two halves, and me into two women. One who desperately wants control, and another taking a baseball bat to every practical decision that has come before.

I’m not at the part of my story where I’d classify this as an evolution. I’m in a place where I’m being dismantled from the inside out. And maybe the most shocking part is that I don’t want it to stop.

I’m in the windowless van now, abducted by aliens, surrounded by Victorian dolls, whispering, “Yes. This. This is the thing you were trying to avoid your entire life.”

So I bargain with myself, I loop back and forth, weighing which unbearable weight feels heavier: naming the chaos inside me, or suppressing it and praying that it reabsorbs.

When I was in the first grade, I didn’t speak. My teachers called me shy. But I wasn’t shy, I was just afraid of saying the wrong answer. And I had a lot of wrong answers.

I learned early that love and approval were contingent upon saying ONLY the things people wanted to hear. That listening made everybody fall in love. That telling my mother she was beautiful always got her to look up and see me.

Silence has never felt peaceful to me. It’s felt like a form of torture, like holding water in my lungs at the bottom of a swimming pool.

It’s hard to say whether my need to be understood is actually a form of connection or just a compulsive attempt to finally earn love and safety through entertainment. But it’s my forever struggle, trying to share my stories while simultaneously protecting the people inside them who never asked to be exposed. It’s part of why I started writing fiction- to avoid the inherent violence of taking a shared experience and branding it as my own. But even fiction isn’t innocent. It’s just a softer way to strangle somebody with your version of the truth.

I know there are more evolved ways to walk through the world. I know I should find less aggressive ways to cope. But every time I try to swallow my feelings, I choke.

I’m not a stay-at-home mom; I have a job, a dog, and twelve to fifteen things I’m considering buying off the Real Real at all times. But none of that seems to matter, because as a mother of sons, the red pill and the blue pill both lead to the same place: OBLIVION.

I used to find it insane that my mother-in-law fell apart when Jason told her we were getting married. Now, I understand it had nothing to do with my cat allergy or whether or not I touched her lasagna. I was eating her son, straight out of the fridge, without even asking for a plate.

Not long ago (read: last week), I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without my kids following. They still need me to fall asleep, go to school, interpret the world, cut it up into small, digestible bites, and spoon-feed it to them before seven-fifteen am each morning. We have a short hand, a long hand, and a second language that Jason still luckily doesn’t understand. But these baby remoras, these emotional vampires- the most emotionally high-maintenance men I’ve ever dated are growing up. And eventually, I will lose them.

When I was young, I was every mother’s nightmare. I dismantled boys by accident, I destroyed their lives, wrote about it extensively, then got personally offended when they no longer wanted to be my friend. I said, “I love you,” when I didn’t mean it. I sometimes kissed people just to make them go away. I’ve never been broken up with. I've never been into someone who wasn’t just slightly more into me. But now karma is going to make me pay in spades!!!! Most likely in the form of some crazy bitch who is going to weaponize my flaws in therapy and melt all my jewelry. Her mom will be the one to watch the grandkids and join them for family vacations. I’ll be the lonely old woman wandering the Grove on Fairfax, waiting for my five pm table for one at the fucking Marmalade cafe.

Several months ago, my eldest was texting with a girl, she was twelve, but I could already tell my brand of toxic. She was bossing him around and using big words, and he was utterly spun. I complained to Jason that I wanted to intervene before he got hurt and that she wasn’t even hotter than me. But Jason insisted I let him make his own mistakes. And objectively, he’s right. But as a mother, you want to shield and protect and fiercely defend the thing you’ve devoted your life to shaping. There is so much anticipatory grief wrapped into motherhood. It will trigger even the most well-adjusted of women. But the abandonment we eventually endure as boy moms is uniquely cruel because it begins as worship. They arrive obsessed. Dependent. Adoring. They think we’re magic. We think we are magic.

We spend years being the center of their emotional world, only to slowly watch them build one without us. If we do our job correctly, they leave. That’s sort of the evolution of all things. And maybe that is the harder pill to swallow. Maybe the tragedy of sons is also the gift: the temporary delusion that you can be all things to another person. That there is no competition for their love, no caveats to their devotion.

Today, they’re still little. They still crawl into my sweaters and into my sheets. They still need me to open milk cartons and operate on invisible injuries. I’m still in it, but also somehow outside of it, fully aware I am living through the longest goodbye of my life. I pray that at least one of them is gay.

But what struck me about this documentary and all the UAP short-form vids that have been targeting me on Instagram as of late is how all these people have a similar story. In the documentary, Bob claims he read top-secret documents about religion, where the aliens we’ve been in contact with refer to us as “containers”. Containers of what was never made clear. Maybe souls, maybe Botox, maybe simply bags and bags of Bjorn Corn.

Tennessee congress member Tim Burchett suggests that if we knew everything the government was hiding about extraterrestrials, we wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

Personally, I’m already up at night stressing about the terrestrial shit they have told us. But still, what could be so destabilizing that it breaks people at that level?

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I had imagined something closer to a Turkish bazaar: rows of watches to rummage through, dealers shouting, a little fraud, and the constant risk of missing a diamond in the rough. One dealer warned I’d need to look at each case three times to catch everything. Another compared landing the best piece to winning a Cabbage Patch Kid in a fistfight outside a Toys “R” Us in 1986. Even so, it felt easier than pacing Forty-seventh Street hunting for legitimate deals. I’d spent the past year trying to find a real New York hookup, only to realize that even when I thought I was paying wholesale, I wasn’t.

.

At one point, I had my eye on three pieces from a New York dealer named Rubin: a ladies AP Cobra, a Royal Oak with a bright green factory dial on leather, and a Patek Ellipse ladies mini on a gold integrated bracelet. The prices didn’t seem outrageous, but when I sent photos to my mentor, Dobel, a UK dealer I'd bought half my collection from.

“Jenny, those are not dealer prices.” He wrote.

“So I shouldn’t buy?” I asked.

“Buy them if you like them, but there’s no margin,” he said.

I was so embarrassed after wasting two hours of Rubin’s time that I had my assistant, Caroline, call to cancel the deal and my wire.

After that, I knew the only way past NYC middlemen was to go to the conventions myself.

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lace trim cami - under a leather blazer and jeans

ribbed lace cami - same but different.

color block skirt - I love the pop of red here for a dinner.

white trouser with a good leg - these barrel leg trousers with a cream silky top and a white pump. HOT

silky jacket day to night - I love that this is a tomboy silhouette but its silky which makes it fem.

fun jacket with jeans or black pant - I love the white ruffle, can also pair this back to the white barrel leg trouser

the best black silky pant - dress it up with the ribbed lace black tank and a leather blazer, or wear a basic white t and the silky bomber.

you'll never need another black shoe - I wear these with everything. surprisingly so comfortable.

the sexiest jean to own - YSL does jeans right, but they don’t have stretch so size up.

under a blazer with a black lace bra - I love when a sheer black top pops out of a structured blazer. wear this with the YSL jeans

grey trouser - I didn’t know how much I needed them until I had them

pop of color - imaging this with a chartreuse green v-neck sweater. giving YSL

great green sweater to wear with it - long the 3/4 sleeve

great tank for under jackets - again, a good tank makes an outfit

Love this color with navy - I love the cut of these elevated muscle tanks

calfhair everything - wear this with white trousers

black leather trench with everything - going to throw over everything

great elevated-basic long sleeve

long black skirt - I recently became a skirt person…

black kick flare trouser - make a classic trouser a little more casual for nighttime

silky going out top - love this color

green sheer turtleneck - with jeans or a suede skirt

calf leather camel skirt - don’t sleep on Massimo dutti

sueded burgundy skirt with a burgundy button down

red wedges - for a monochromatic look or a pop of color with jeans

camel colored jean - great with a leather jacket for an easy but cool outfit

sexy LBT - under a jacket or with trouser shorts

a comfortable boot - I can walk miles in these

slip on slide - goes with everything and is so comfortable, basically a slipper

The next day was Sunday, and all the shops were closed for something everyone kept referring to as “Family Day.” Which, if you had my parents, you’d understand why this concept felt a little abstract.

Jordan, along with her client and close friend EuJing, a crazy-rich Cartier lover from Singapore, took me around the city. The three of us set out to explore the one place I remembered from the trip I took years ago with my brother-in-law: his “secret cashmere store,” located not so discreetly inside the Peninsula Hotel.

After searching every corner, I determined that Cashmere & Pearls had sadly shuttered its doors, making way for a not-so-secret Chanel boutique.

We then headed over to the Rosewood for afternoon tea. EuJing paid, so I don’t want to talk too much shit about the service. However, I did find it slightly alarming that they served someone with a shellfish allergy a lobster finger sandwich. When Jordan asked why it had been placed on her plate, the waiter calmly replied, “Just eat around that one.”

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The first trip was in 2011. A bougie pre-kids vacation with my sister and brother-in-law. I had no kids, an eating disorder, and long dark hair extensions that I eventually cut out of my own head with garden shears by the end of the trip.

The second time I came was for a travel show produced by Queen Latifah—or maybe it was Missy Elliott. That trip, I was only concerned about gluten, in the throes of depression over the loss of the love of my life, my late poodle/husband, Mr. Teets, and on the precipice of my second book launch.

This time, I’m at a different life stage, on a different kind of journey. I have two kids, two dogs, and a peptide regimen that rotates weekly. I’m happier, I think. Or at least, more secure as a woman. But once more, I’ve found myself on the other side of the world, feeling a deep sense of loss and a familiar urge to cut my hair extensions out with garden shears.

Yet, by most accounts, it's been my most exciting visit yet.

For the last two years, I’ve been buying and selling vintage watches, mainly AP, Patek, and Piaget. Quite often, the piece is abroad, and I’ve had to import it without ever seeing it in person. Usually, it works out fine. The only issue has been, that I’ve been paying retail for these pieces. I hate paying retail almost as much as I used to hate gluten.

When I think about it, my irritation isn’t necessarily about price as much as it is distance. I want to be as close to a product’s origin as possible. I don’t want middlemen in life or in business. By the time something reaches retail, it has already passed through too many hands. Each one smooths it out a little more until whatever story it once carried has been polished away. What started as someone’s watch eventually becomes inventory. And maybe just as much as that, I hate the feeling that I’m standing outside the room where things actually happen. Retail always feels like that to me. I don’t want to be the person buying whatever finally makes it to the glass case. I want to know how it got there. I want to know who owned it, who sold it, and who traded it three times in a week over drinks somewhere in Milan. I want the introductions, and the awkward dinners, and the strange friendships that form around these objects. Because the truth is, the closer you get to the beginning of something, the more alive it feels. I want relationships. I want stories. Ideally, I want a dying old man with a wrist full of Cartier and no living relatives.

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Hope you join me!

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Nobody has talked more shit to me than my Uncle Manley.

For most of my childhood, my sister Samantha and I were scared to death of him and his brash humor.

We were raised with more subtlety, where our parents would smile sweetly to our faces and

then get on the phone later and ruthlessly judge us behind our backs. Not Manley. He

believed in transparency.

He’…

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Jason and I had been together six months. I was twenty-eight and certain of only one thing: I was not ready to be someone’s mother.

That pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Now, nearly nineteen years later, I’m on the verge of having a twelve-year-old, and I feel that same vertigo of unpreparedness.

For all the competence and confidence I’ve gathered since then, for all my fluency in Gen Alpha slang, this age feels daunting. It was when I started remembering everything — when my father could no longer convince me certain things hadn’t happened, and my mother could no longer insist her breasts were real.

That was the year my parents’ divorce settled into my bones. It was when I started talking to boys that I began to understand both my strengths and my vulnerabilities as a woman. It was when the sugar coating wore off. Nothing tasted quite as simple after that.

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Shopping for women is easy because we want and need everything at all times. Shopping for men, on the other hand, is about accuracy. And accuracy is stressful, because if you miss by an inch, you’ve missed entirely. Maybe this is sexist. Maybe you know men who delight in surprise scarves, whimsical totes, or a scented candle they didn’t personally research on Reddit. I don’t. I never have. And frankly, I’m sick of pretending this is a personal failure instead of a structural one. So I’m going on record: shopping for women feels like love, while shopping for men feels like homework.

And the reason it feels this way is simple. Women are not shopping for a single perfect object. We are shopping for accumulation, for texture, for story. The joy is not in the precision but in the abundance.

Show me a pile of random tchotchkes, and I’ll show you a woman who is going to fucking love them. For us, there is never enough. Ergo, nothing needs to be THE PERFECT THING. We are just adding to a growing collection of finds that will continue to evolve over time. The stakes are low for us because the pile, is the point.

Men tend to insist they want nothing and then, somehow, manage to be underwhelmed by the nothing adjacent thing you give them. Has anyone else experienced this? You ask what he wants. He says “nothing.” You get him something anyway. He thanks you politely, radiating a mild disappointment that suggests you failed a test you were never allowed to study for.

WHY. Just tell us what you want already. No better yet, let us tell you what you want. WE are experts in this field. You are not.

Here is a thoughtfully curated list of things I would love if I were the man in my life.

1. OUR LEGACY Carlson Straight-Leg Jeans

2. TRUDON Ernesto Candle

3. COS CHUNKY PURE CASHMERE CREW-NECK SWEATER

4. Apple AirPods MAX

5. FRAME Wide Leg Trousers

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She could murder me, I suppose. This is a reasonable concern. But I seem to be at a point in life where getting taken, emotionally, financially, or otherwise, feels less stressful than waking up each morning to another Instagram infographic announcing the end of the world. My reasons for going are not, despite appearances, a cry for Liam Neeson’s attention. They have more to do with chasing a plot and, ideally, getting a deal.

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Warm water spilling out of a handheld showerhead hit me straight in the chest as I lathered my body in soap. I balanced a bottle of shampoo in one arm while scrubbing my head with the other. Looking down at my rubber Havaianas, now covered in suds, I laughed at how unmistakably this was not the Austrian spa vacation I’d imagined for Christmas.

While I was gone, my assistant, Caroline, sat with Lazlo as he continued his marathon of aggressively age-inappropriate documentaries. To stop his crying, I’d given up on parental control and let him roam my Netflix queue freely, clicking on whatever caught his interest. The poop cruise. A murder in Monaco. The second Woodstock. Anything to help him forget that he couldn’t eat or drink and that there was a tube running the length of his torso.

Lazlo was waiting impatiently for me when I returned.

“I’m so thirsty,” he whispered, still convinced the tube in his throat was somehow hindering his speech.

I offered him ice chips, but he was over ice chips. He was over all of it. He wanted to go home.

“I’m missing all of Christmas!” he lamented. “Will I at least be home before Christmas Eve?”

I wanted to tell him yes. I wanted to tell him we would. But I didn’t have an answer, so I reached for another distraction.

“What do you want to watch next?”

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Jason lowered himself into a chair with a groan that said, “My back’s fine. Thanks for asking.” As concerned as I wanted to be about my husband, his discectomy was a Dunkin’ Munchkin compared to Lazlo’s appendix. I loved him, but triage is ruthless.

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After forty minutes, the electronic double doors opened, and Dr. Hanke walked out. She told me Lazlo was fine and the surgery a success, but that he had had a perforation, meaning the infection was already in his abdominal cavity. We would, unfortunately, have to stay a few nights for IV antibiotics and observation.

I was standing next to him when he started to come to. He was groggy but no longer in pain. I told him we would have to spend the night at the hospital, and he instantly looked devastated.

“What about the elves?” he asked, panicked.

I shot Jason a look. He texted his sister, who was already on her way.

“DON’T FORGET TO BRING THE FUCKING ELVES!”

When Chiara arrived, she walked in with a trunk full of supplies, as if she were sending me away to a Jewish summer camp.
“The elves are in your vanity case,” she whispered as she slipped by.

We stayed in the post-op room until shortly after eight, waiting for an upstairs bed to open up. When one finally did, we were escorted to the third floor. Most of the rooms on the third floor are small, built for short stays, with no bathrooms or showers to speak of.

By some stroke of luck, we were assigned the most magnificent suite in the building, room 316, a huge corner room with floor-to-ceiling windows, sweeping views of the East River and East 34th Street.

If I planned to shower, I would still have to do it like a college freshman at Hedrick Hall, but for one or two nights, I figured I could skip it.

Once Jason and his sister left, and I managed to get Laz to sleep, I turned off the lights and folded myself into a ball on the pleather love seat in the corner of the room. The air was still, broken only by the steady beeping of monitors outside our door.

With nothing left to manage or decide, I turned toward the window.

Across the river, the Coca-Cola sign, red and unwavering, glowed steadily in the dark. Cars moved along the FDR beneath it, small and distant, their urgency muted by glass and height and exhaustion.

For the first time since Friday, nothing was asking anything of me. No decisions. No instructions. No directions. The surgery was over. The worst part had already happened, and we were on the other side of it.

I watched the sign until everything else fell away.

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I don’t write about sick kids. Ever. Not incidentally, not in passing, not as part of the scenery. My writing simply does not include them.

This is probably superstition. In my second book, I made a stupid joke about having another child and developing a thyroid disorder. Both of those things happened. I’m not implying that I’m a witch. I’m just saying that I probably am.

Three days before we were supposed to fly to Austria for Christmas, Jason pulled me into the bathroom and told me we needed to cancel our trip. He’d been having excruciating back pain and had decided to have an emergency discectomy. The pain was so severe that he was going to spend the night in the hospital before his operation the next morning. As sad as I was to miss out on all the hot cocoa and kaiserschmarren, I was relieved to know this would not be the Christmas Jason’s snowboarding passion landed him in a full body cast. A discetomy I could deal with.

That night, Sid slept out, and Lazlo had a friend over. Around three in the morning, Laz woke up with a stomachache, the same kind of stomachache every other child in his class had come down with in the weeks prior. His forehead was warm, but not alarmingly so. I tried to give him Tylenol, but he refused.

We walked to the bathroom, where he proceeded to vomit and have diarrhea. We went back to bed, then we did the whole routine over again. And again. And again. By six a.m., I gave up on sleep and just started making coffee.

I cancelled soccer, and I encouraged both Jason and Sid to spend another night out of the house. My sister-in-law, Chiara, stayed to help out. Since she’s a preschool teacher, she’s immune to illness, so we decided she would be fine, and by “we,” I mean me.

Laz spent all Sunday curled up on the living room floor while Elf on the Shelf movies played on the TV. I tried offering him chicken broth, a couple of saltines, even against my deepest principles, Gatorade. Everything came right back up.

On Monday morning, he wasn’t fully awake before he was screaming in pain. The sharp stabbing above his navel was now at an eleven, to the point where he couldn’t sit down. This felt different. I needed to take him in.

Without grabbing a jacket or even my wallet, I scooped him up and headed to urgent care.

When we arrived, the attending physician suggested a suppository.
“No,” I said. “We’re past that. I want a CT scan,” I insisted like I was a season regular on ER.

I don’t know why I thought it was his appendix. He was the opposite of constipated, and the pain wasn’t yet migrating to his lower right side. I just knew my kid, and of my two kids, he wasn’t the emotionally high-strung drama queen. That was Jason.

The doctor started Lazlo on an IV and administered pain meds. I don’t think he blinked. We were then brought to a neighboring office for a CT scan. I hovered above the lab tech as he snapped pictures, hoping to see a glowing, still intact appendix, or at least make out the chalk outline of where one used to be. Unfortunately, I saw nothing.

After the tech gently asked me to unhook my fingers from his back, I stepped into the hall and waited. It took less than ten minutes for the radiologist to read the scan and tell us that it was, in fact, his appendix.

We had two choices. We could go home and treat it with antibiotics, or we could go to the ER and have it removed.
“In Europe, they are more relaxed about this kind of thing,” he confided.

“Well, where I come from in Scottsdale, Arizona, we remove organs first and ask questions later,” I replied, already helping Laz off the exam table.

Jason was still in his hospital bed, eating breakfast and waiting for me to pick him up when I called him on FaceTime with the news.

“Change of plans, I can’t pick you up this morning,” I said, plainly. “I’m on my way to NYU to take Lazlo’s appendix out.”

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The entire world shuts down for the holidays. Shuts down. As in:
No emails.
No progress.
No buildings open.
No “I’ll get that back to you today unless something urgent comes up.”

And this is the precise moment when my brain looks around, panics, and begins clawing at the walls like a cat being lowered into a bathtub.

I’ve come to understand that for me, when forward momentum stops, my nervous system goes into freefall. Holidays, slowdowns, forced pauses-they feel less like rest and more like having the brakes slammed on while I’m still going 80 mph.

I don’t enjoy downtime. Or rather, I only enjoy downtime if I know that somewhere, someone else is awake, caffeinated, and getting shit done. I need that reassurance that the world is still spinning and that progress is still being made.

But when the whole planet collectively decides to put on pajamas and cuddle up by the fire? I freak the fuck out.

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