MIND
Empty Nesting: Coping Strategies
The day had finally arrived. After numerous late-night study sessions for AP classes, SAT prep courses, visits to college campuses, college applications, and trips to Bed, Bath & Beyond to furnish her dorm room, we were moving our only child into the University of Pennsylvania. Although we live close enough to meet her for lunch or drop off an essential item at midnight (which happened in the first few weeks), we had been aware for some time that it would be a major, but necessary, adjustment for all of us . . .

PERSPECTIVE
Excerpt from Empty Nest? What Empty Nest?
My children—two of them. anyway—are not happy. Ages 19 and 22, they still live at home (the 26-year-old is in the military). Although that fact may make them unhappy, their more immediate concern is that I’m writing this piece about them. They know me to be outspoken (think Larry David, but with less yelling) and so are worried about what I might say. They attend a local university, afforded a discount by virtue of their mother—an ex-wife—working there. An empty nest? That’s a dream deferred, and one likely to remain so for at least another four years (barring one of my books making the bestseller list) . . .

CULTURE
Time Traveler's Wife, Grief, and the Empty Nest Syndrome
Just went to see The Time Traveler's Wife after releasing my daughter to college in Vancouver, Canada, earlier this week. So here's the “Transitioner and Grief Examiner” in the throws of her own transition: the full effects of the Empty Nest Syndrome. (I'm going to have to practice what I preach!) As it turns out, this was just the right time for me to see this film as it reminded me of the fleetingness of life. None of us know how long we have to live—how long is our "stay" together here on earth. And, grief is tough. There's really no way around the pain of losing someone we have loved deeply, whether we've loved them for a year or 100 years! . . .

STYLE
Mom Style: Why Do Our Mothers Dress Like Children?
“Did fashion, which made sense when they were girls, alienate them with its outrageous displays and bad fits? Or is it something worse?” Krista Mays, 22, is one of six young women Glamour magazine rescues from the heartbreak of wearing the wrong jeans next month. Speaking with horror of the schlubby old jeans she’s being liberated from—high-rise, too-tight waist, tapered legs, dated bleachy faded denim—Krista says, “I felt like I was wearing Mom jeans!” We love our moms. So why is it that the worst thing you can say about an article of clothing is that it looks like something somebody’s mother would wear? . . .

Features . . .