Family Life

ONCE YOUR KIDS learn to drive, you can never be sure who or what will appear in your house on the morning after a social outing.Usually, our overnight guests turn out to be friends of our kids. But the other morning I came down to the kitchen and was surprised to see that our 18-year-old son had returned home from a night of revelry with a fish. And a fine-looking fish it was.In the refrigerator, a rockfish, or striped bass, was stretched out on the top shelf. It was a big fellow, about 3 feet long.

I HAD A MEMORABLE kitchen table experience recently. I spent an afternoon with my mom sitting at our kitchen table steeping myself in the fine points of pie making and in the small stories of our family history.We peeled apples and made pie dough while listening to a homemade tape recording that told what life was like around 1904 in my grandmother's hometown of Cahirciveen, in Ireland's county Kerry.At times the scene struck me as so homey and nostalgic it seemed like it should be in a Spencer Tracy movie.

I think our president needs to set a new course for the rest of his life. Maybe he could grow tomatoes. If nothing is more important to him than family - isn't that what he said Monday night? - then he should take the rest of his presidency off and, with his wife, move to California, where they'd be closer to their daughter while she attends college. The Clintons could put out a shingle - Clinton & Clinton - and practice a little law, spend their weekends in seclusion for a while, mending and healing, maybe take up some hobbies.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - Up at the Capitol - the old colonial Capitol - Thomas Jefferson was talking about property rights.He was talking about his owning slaves - even though he penned the immortal phrase "all men are created equal" - and about a bill he wants the Virginia Legislature to adopt that would overturn laws passing all property down to the first son - even though he is a first son.At least he looked like Thomas Jefferson, and this looked like the...

THE NATIONAL Partnership for Women & Families says television presents a distorted picture of the American family, in which work and family responsibilities almost never collide, child-care hassles are rare and resolved without a hitch, and ill and aging parents don't exist.Good thing. Or those of us with work/family conflicts, child-care hassles and ill and aging parents would watch even less of it than we do now.I don't know about the rest of you work/family-conflicted women, but there's an overstuffed chair positioned right in front of the television in my house, and that isn't an impression of my rear end in the cushions.

"Shadow Image," by Martin J. Smith. Jove. 384 pages. $5.99 (paperback original). Martin J. Smith delivers a solid, suspenseful tale wrapped around an Alzheimer's patient's "memory patterns" and a wealthy family's secrets in "Shadow Image."In Pennsylvania, the Underhills are "a force of nature," a socially connected and politically powerful family. The race for governor by their son Ford seems a smooth ascent until his mother attempts suicide. But memory expert Jim Christensen doesn't believe the matriarch was capable of attempting suicide, and is especially interested in Floss' drawings in art therapy that are helping her "connect with lost memories" and the snippets of family life she seems to remember.

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination and an increasingly conservative force among American religious organizations, amended its essential statement of beliefs yesterday to include a declaration that a woman should "submit herself graciously" to her husband's leadership and a husband should "provide for, protect and lead his family."The amendment, a 250-word declaration on family life, was adopted by a show-of-hands vote at the Baptists' annual meeting here as an addition to the denomination's basic theological statement of beliefs, the Baptist Faith and Message Statement.

As we approach Mother's Day, it is worth re-examining our understanding of what it means to be a mother.At first blush, the law seems an unlikely place to turn. Until recently, legal scholars have written little about the subject of motherhood. There is even confusion about how to define "mother" under the law. As Columbia Law School Professor Carol Sanger said, "'Who is a mother?' no longer has a simple answer, now that genetic contribution, gestation and stroller pushing may each be provided by a different woman."

Mary Ann Kuharski, a 53-year-old mother of 13, lectures her children constantly either in the kitchen of her Minneapolis home or in telephone calls to those who have left the nest.What is a mother for, if not to give advice spiced with humor and prayer, she asks."I am here to bring a message of life, hope and love," she said. "The idea is to change hearts and maybe enlarge them."Start with your own family, said the columnist for a Catholic monthly newspaper and author of two books on family life.

BOSTON -- ''I like to think of it as the empty drawer syndrome,'' says my friend, reaching for the right, light, touch.She and her husband have just delivered their youngest to college and returned to a home that seems as neat as a stage set for a life they are no longer leading. Suddenly, storage space.They have been transformed by time into a household the census bureau describes as a married couple with adult children. But is that still a family? What kind?I tell her about the television ad in which a husband and wife dance around the kitchen, phone unhooked, deliriously happy to be making stir-fry dinner for two, now that the kids are gone.