in the right shoes

She laughed. It was the first time I had ever heard her laugh. I watched her face.
‘You are sweet,’ she said.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes. You are a dear. I’d be glad to kiss you if you don’t mind.’
I looked in her eyes and put my arm around her as I had before and kissed her. I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight. I was still angry and as I held her suddenly she shivered. I held her close against me and could feel her heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand and then she was crying on my shoulder.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said. ‘You will be good to me, won’t you?’

You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple the unemployment isn’t interested in purchasing the assets of the generation who just blew an enormous housing bubble and kept it from popping through quantitative easing and out-and-out federal support? Curious.

I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

It is reassuring that they see nothing that makes them uncomfortable. They can see my small scars and that’s it. Everything else is just Mommy, the same as she always was. And they know that I love them and will do anything to be with them as long as I can. On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.

It’s an instinct to keep the idea of mystery alive at a time when it seems to be in historically short supply.

DiCaprio and Mulligan, meanwhile, don’t seem like star-crossed lovers so much as a delusional man in love with a bauble of a woman. Maybe that’s intentional?