12-year-old in White House deserves a little understanding

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OK, all you professional communicators out there - television anchors and personalities, reporters, columnists, entertainers, satirists, humorists, big shots and little shots alike - raise your right hand and repeat after me:

"I will lay off Chelsea Clinton for the next four years. I will not say or write or even intimate anything negative about her. I will not undermine her, ridicule her or go for a laugh at her expense, either in print or on film.

"I will treat her as if she were my 12-year-old daughter, tenderly, aware that 12 is a tough age to be and that 13 isn't much better, and 14 and 15 are no prizes either, and even an unintentional comment, even a pair of seemingly harmless words such as `frizzy hair' can make a young girl sob and inflict a wound that hurts for a lifetime."

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Look what she found in a little shop of wonders

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NEW ORLEANS - This time I walk to Decatur Street to find it. It used to be on another street, in the middle of the French Quarter, just around the corner from the Place D'Armes, where we have stayed every other time we've been in New Orleans.

This time we are lodged at the Prince Conti and when I ask how to get to Beckham's Bookshop, I am told the small store I remember is closed, but that there is a bigger shop not too far away.

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In wedding book, half a story

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I probably looked at the book five years ago. That was the last real "occasion." Twenty years married then; a time for reflection.

Tomorrow it will be 25 years.

I unearth it now from among a pile of baby books and children's drawings and saved holiday cards and report cards and diplomas. It is, surprisingly, in good shape, discolored only around the edges. The square photographs, rimmed in white, the rust-colored pieces of scotch tape, the prices on the back of the congratulations cards - 15 and 25 cents - these are the things that date it. I carry it into the kitchen, thinking how strange it is that this book is a quarter of a century old.

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If Clinton is to succeed, we must work with him, not buck him

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This is what we want from Bill Clinton: We want him to turn the country around, to heal the wounds and bridge the divisions and make us all one nation under God again.

We want him to fix the economy, clean up our cities, put an end to crime, banish illegal drugs, reduce unemployment, repair our schools, invest in education, build affordable housing, find a cure for AIDS, create a universal health-care system, secure nuclear wastes, refurbish our highways, reduce pollution, be fair to Haitians, stand tough with Saddam Hussein, deal with Somalia and talk sense to the Serbs.

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Cooking `miracle' turns sour

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After The Miracle, I envisioned myself a cook. For days when I looked into the mirror, I saw Julia Child. I dreamed about scallions and leeks. I pored over the food section in the papers. I cut out recipes. I actually thought about subscribing to Gourmet magazine. I believed I was a changed woman.

The Miracle had convinced me. I'd had a dinner party, and it had been a success. The smoke alarm hadn't gone off. No one left the table with stomach cramps. I didn't have to serve Tums for after-dinner mints. I'd done the impossible: I'd cooked a meal people had actually swallowed and enjoyed.

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Education: The great divide

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It's the first capitulation. Totally understandable. Maybe even warranted. But it's a surrender, nonetheless, of ideals and perhaps even goals.

President-elect Bill Clinton has decided to send his only child, Chelsea, to private school. Who can blame him? Who, in his position, wouldn't do the same? He is the president. She is his daughter. Why shouldn't she have the best?

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Starting a new year demands a whole new beginning - I thought

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I used to be compulsive about New Year's Day. About all beginnings: beginnings of days, weeks, months. I figured if I could somehow make everything perfect on this one day, on this first day, then the rest of the days would obediently follow.

If I didn't get the light on the way to Dunkin' Donuts on a Sunday morning, and I did get a parking space, and the line was short and not long, and they had powdered lemon donuts honey-dipped sticks, then the week would be wonderful. If not, well…

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News in a blender

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The positioning of the trivial with the tragic distorts both, takes what is important and what is fluff, puts them into a blender and mixes them up. Makes it impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Newsweek is a perfect example. On the cover of the Jan. 4 issue there is a photo of two young girls crying, and this headline: "A Pattern of Rape - War Crimes in Bosnia." Open the magazine, though, and what do you see? A two-page spread for asprin-free Bayer Select. People in pain, now pain-free because of Bayer. A page later there is the table of contents, which is itself a mishmash of serious and frivolous:

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Greats of the 20th century

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A little house-cleaning before the new year begins. Way back in September, I wrote a what-do-you-think column. Who, I asked, has made the greatest contribution to the 20th century?

People I had already spoken with had mentioned Gandhi, Pope John XXIII, John Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jonas Salk, Henry Ford, Mother Teresa, and Albert Schweitzer. I gave my vote to Walt Disney. But I wanted to know what you thought, and I asked you to write. And you did.

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A Child's Joy

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She was just a baby, maybe a year old, sitting in the back seat of a car traveling along Route 128 a week ago. I never saw her before and I'll probably never see her again. I know nothing about her - not her name or where she lives, or where she was going, or whom she was with, though I assume the woman driving was her mother.

I only glanced at her as I was speeding past. But the glimpse made me smile and pause and reflect. It makes me smile still, days later, because she was so full of naked wonder that it was like walking along a street in the cold past a store whose door opens briefly and blankets you with warmth.

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Unexpected part of Yuletide

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I called it my Protestant tree because we bought it at the Episcopal church instead of at the Knights of Columbus and because a few hours after I'd decorated it, with strung popcorn and cranberries and hand rolled-gingerbread men and frosted cookie stars and angels, the tree fell, crashing to the floor.

I wailed and moaned because never before had I gone to such effort for a tree. Never before had I strung cranberries or popcorn, or even sugar cookies. The effort was entirely new.

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Unexpected part of Yuletide

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I called it my Protestant tree because we bought it at the Episcopal church instead of at the Knights of Columbus and because a few hours after I'd decorated it, with strung popcorn and cranberries and hand rolled-gingerbread men and frosted cookie stars and angels, the tree fell, crashing to the floor.

I wailed and moaned because never before had I gone to such effort for a tree. Never before had I strung cranberries or popcorn, or even sugar cookies. The effort was entirely new…

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Shopping's traditional too

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t's all so trivial. I recognize this. It doesn't matter that Christmas is a week away and I have so little done. No gifts for my son, my daughters, my husband. Not a present under the tree. No cookies baked. Only a handful of cards written.

Who cares. Is everyone healthy? Yes. Is everyone going to be home for Christmas? Yes. Do we have a roof over our heads, heat, lights, running water, a telephone and cars that start in the morning? Yes, yes, yes, yes!

Then why am I feeling great waves of get-me-a-paper-bag-I-can't-brea

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No more noodle necklaces

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My daughter, the 21-year-old, calls them "noodle necklace gifts," the Christmas presents you open every year that you have to pretend to like.

"You know how in school little kids make necklaces out of noodles and bring them home and wrap them up and give to their mothers on Christmas day and mothers act as if they're the best present ever?"

I know. We all know. A noodle necklace from a child is a great gift, a combination of ziti, glue and love. But a noodle necklace from a boyfriend or a husband, a grown man who's supposed to be perceptive and warm and considerate - this is a whole other story.

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Happily ever after is make-believe - even for a prince and princess

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You read the statistics and look around and count the number of couples who are no longer couples, who live miles apart or in the same house, who pledged to love one another but are now indifferent strangers, and you know there is no happily ever after.

But you believe in it anyway. A lifetime of love songs and fairy tales can't be undone by other people's unhappy lives.

"It'll be different for us." That's what every bride tells herself as she walks down the aisle. "Our marriage will always be loving and romantic and ideal."

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Safe streets everybody's fight

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It wasn't fear this night. It was more subtle.

It was dark and late and I didn't know the neighborhood. I was in Providence. What did I know about Providence? The walk from the theater to the parking lot was just two blocks, but who knew what lurked on those blocks?

So I asked someone to walk me to my car. I felt foolish making the request. And yet, I wouldn't have walked alone.

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