My son, 9, is crying right now because a kid at the pool keeps telling my son that he’s a girl.

My son—who grew his hair past his shoulders during the pandemic—has had people mistake him for a girl probably 500 times in the past year. My son has always identified as a boy & has also always loved pink clothes & bright sparkly clothes. He’s known for his pink suit and floral sneakers.

He doesn’t feel like it’s an insult to be called a girl; he says it drives him crazy that people have gender stereotypes that

Today I had the honor to escorting my 104.5 year-old friend Ruth to vote.

She was born before women had the right to vote.

Her 1st vote was for FDR.

Her dad died of the flu during the pandemic of 1918, when she was 2.

This is her voting story today. Here she is with her walker, crossing Broadway towards Lincoln Center where she’s lived since the Nixon administration.
A voting official led the way (along with my son.)

CNN: “No, Mr. Toobin, sir, we hired you to be a master DEBATOR.” I mean “debatEr,” of course, but I got so excited about my terrible joke that I shot it off prematurely

Raise your hand if you’ve had a miscarriage or been a partner to someone who has had a miscarriage 🖐

Sharing grief makes us human

If you don’t have unequivocal compassion, you are less than what it means to be human In my stage solo show, I talk about my miscarriages.

The audience is silent except for a few people crying. Every show. Sometimes there’s a small audible gasp. I have seen couples reach out to grab each other’s hands.

It is a communion.

“Everything’s urgent to a Democrat”
—Daddy Warbucks 😂😂😂 “I’m a Republican! I’m a businessman! I love money and power and Capitalism!”
-Daddy Warbucks

BREAKING: Protests against the new lock on my bedroom door in my Upper West Side home have been intermittent since dawn
(Thread)

I woke to chants of LOCKS DON’T MATTER And these demands in writing

Our children just discovered a lock newly installed on our bedroom door and I just received this note Update: they are taking a bath together right now, caballing in low tones.

Me, over sound of tub running: PROTESTS MUST BE PEACEFUL AND RESPECTFUL

A little story about ignorance and how it can go either way:

Today I went to the post office to buy the beautiful new 19th Amendment Forever stamps.

I asked the woman for three pages of “the new suffrage stamps,” and she nodded and came back with a page of Ruth Asawa stamps. “These?” she asked?
“No, the suffrage ones, please,” I answered.
She screwed up her face a bit—I could see her face, because she was wearing a face shield. “What is that word you say—?”
“Suffrage?” I said, again. I thought maybe she couldn’t hear me because of my mask.

The second chapter* of my 8 yr old son’s romance novel is here!

Please settle in for The Dark Horse, Chapter Two, & find out how our heroine Maria and BOTH her suitors-Union soldier Tom & Confederate soldier Benjamin-are faring.

*see a previous tweet for Chapter One Chapter Two

Maria and Tom gazed at each other for several moments. Finally Tom said “Why don’t we have our picnic!” And Maria didn’t hesitate to agree. They ate in silence for a few minutes and listened to the grass swaying in the warm spring air.

My 8 yr old son is writing a romance novel.
It’s called The Dark Horse.
He asked me to share Chapter One.

I find it compelling; I hope you do, too.

If you enjoy this & are breathless to know what happens to Maria, Tom, & Benjamin, please lmk so we can all read Chapter Two! Chapter one

It was a dark and stormy night. Maria was watching the fire. Abruptly she heard a knock on the door. She hesitated to open it. Finally after 30 seconds she opened the door. And who was standing there? Tom. Let’s just forget about Maria and Tom for 30 seconds.

A short thread about a great man, #JohnLewis

John Lewis was the speaker at my 25th college reunion. At my alma mater, the 25th is a big deal, so my class got to sit on the stage with him.

My then 5 yr old son sneaked with our babysitter into the Yard past a guard who said... this event was only for current graduates and their families. My kid thought it was worth breaking the rules to go hear the first speech he would ever witness. He sat across from John Lewis, across the Yard on the steps of Widener Library... enrapt.

For what it’s worth, I live in NYC and, during the Before Times, would pass by Trump Tower on 5th Ave with regularity.
I distinctly remember having to stop at the SE corner of 57th and 5th standing right beside Eric Trump who was carrying a green NakedJuice, & I tried to contain

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1281181304088739840

...my disgust that he was part of the First Family of our country. He was in a tan suit. It was awful to stand near him.
It’s been awful to walk past that building since late 2016, & the police presence and road blocks around it have been such a metaphor for the utter disruption

Here’s Bill and I chuckling at all the folks who don’t realize ya really can’t #DefundNPR since it’s like 2%. gov’t funded.
But they wouldn’t know that, because they’re not smart enough to listen. *Here are Bill and I...[deep apologies to my grammar crowd]

So there are a few things you should know before you decide to introduce your kindergartener & 2nd grader to Sondheim in Mom School.

The first is that Into the Woods is the obvious choice until you realize that every single metaphor goes over their heads. The second is that it is unbearable to watch “Hello Little Girl” with your 5 yr old daughter on your lap, blithely sucking her thumb.

The third is that they have no idea how genius Meryl Streep is, but they will NEVER understand how genius Bernadette Peters was on Broadway.

Hey y’all. Let’s take a stroll down Headshot Lane.

Yesterday, we passed a GIGANTIC Confederate flag just outside of Orlando.

I’m talking massive-bigger than you could even imagine an American flag over an RV sales lot.

I gasped (prob shouldn’t have been surprised) & my husband’s eyes bugged.

Our kids asked, “What’s wrong?” My 7 yr old son said, “That’s the flag from the Southern states in the Civil War.”

We told him he was right & talked about the Civil War.

We talked about what it now means to fly that flag.

We talked about how powerful symbols are.

A story in 3 acts.

A 7 yr old’s “Decoration of Indepedence”

1. IPad
2. Stay up late
3. 2 or more sweets
4. MORE! The Founding Mother refuses to sign this Decoration, resulting in an empassioned expression of outrage over the indignity of being denied such sugar-fueled, technology-based Indepedence

A little thread both about working on a famous, excellent tv show & about personal pronouns...

I’ve been on @CBSSunday for a decade, doing stories as well as commentaries. A Sunday Morning “Opinion” piece involves, well, expressing an opinion on a topic. These commentaries are brief-between 2 & 2.5 minutes. I promise you it’s harder than it seems to introduce a topic, ideally with some history, nuance, & levity, & then to provide a novel and/or trenchant POV about it.

It’s always more challenging to say less, isn’t it?

Thread about the most special Mother’s Day gift I received:

My niece has two white dads & is African American. She is 9, & she’s also my goddaughter.

While her classmates made cards for their moms, her 3rd grade teacher worked with her to create something for me. Here’s the card on the left. You can see in photo on right that her teacher took the time to white out wherever the sheet said “mother” & “child” & replaced it with “aunt” & “niece.”

I’m at Ebenezer Baptist with my half Jewish kids for Easter service and WE ARE HERE FOR JESUS My 4 yr old keeps calling The Bible “the memoir”

Thread/
It’s end of year, so it’s time for Tennyson’s “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” Written in 1850, it’s as urgent&moving as ever.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.