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Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'

The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.

I remember three- and four-week-long snow days, and drifts so deep a small child, namely me, could get lost in them. No such winter exists in the record, but that's how Ohio winters seemed to me when I was little - silent, silver, endless, and dreamy.

Although I love snow, it messes things up terribly around Seattle, with all of our hills. I worry about my loved ones driving.

Adolescence is a difficult time at the best of times, and especially in a smaller town - there's all these different energies going on.

One of the problems we have is children are not in school long enough in the day and during the year.

Make no mistake, adolescence is a war. No one gets out unscathed.

Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them. Adolescence is not about letting go. It's about hanging on during a very bumpy ride.

Having children truly ends adolescence. We are all either parents or children: responsibility-takers or those who demand from others.