One Tough Mother

Gail Rosenblum reads from A Hundred Lives Since Then: Essays on Motherhood, Marriage, Mortality and More--7:30pm, Monday, June 6, at Magers & Quinn.

Gail Rosenblum has gathered a collection of her wry observations on a host of experiences ranging from home remodeling and a parent’s late-life romance to a child’s show-and-tell and the neighborhood book club. With self-depreciating humor, she reminds us of how difficult it can be to hire a babysitter, how frightful to take a young child on an amusement park ride. She describes her daughter’s first crush, analyzes the stages of an exasperating family holiday, and explores the complicated process of choosing the right dog. She evokes the sense of vanishing time as a parent watches her children grow up and the craziness and sense of loss that accompany even the most well-mannered divorce. Her irrepressible humor is never far from the surface, but readers will also be moved by her ability to expose the enduring significance of the most quotidian observations and events.

Gail Rosenblum is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, writing two to three columns a week on current issues, trends and the complexities of human relationships.--David E