I suppose your husband and mother-in-law might be fine with you discussing them in print, but you have no right to use your young son as "material". I know I would have resented seeing myself described as you do in your article when I grew. Having your mother speculate on something as private as your sexual orientation, or describing your physical interactions with him in erotically charged language, when you are too young to voice an objection, let alone consent, is just wrong.

I read the whole article, wondering what spectacularly inappropriate anecdote she'd blurt out. This one wasn't too bad, actually. A lot of mental masturbation, self mind-f*cking. Whoopdedoo.

I guess as long as she gets the page hits, they'll keep paying her to write this stuff.

that reinforces my impression that Ayelet Waldman is, in layman's terms, a FREAK.

I hope Salon's remittance goes directly into some kind of trust fund to pay for her poor kid's future psychotherapy.

pleeeaassseee pleeeeeease take her awaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy

For all the reasons they^^^^ have said, plus: she's RUINED Michael Chabon for me. I'll never read another of his books, EVER. I won't be ABLE to - just THINKING of him married to HER makes me ILL.

Oh, ICK. Just... ick. I get the point about the changing relationship with the mother-in-law, but were all the salacious bits about how delicious her son is, and how they share "movie kisses" and whatnot, really necessary?

I always feel like I need to take a shower after I read Ayelet Waldman's pieces. I also need a reminder why, exactly, Salon finds her opinions relevant enought to publish.

Maybe her articles do get a lot of page hits, but I PROMISE that 85% of them represent people who are thinking "Oh God, what's that frightening woman on about this time?"

I love reading Ayelet Waldman's columns, yet dread reading readers' responses because of the cabal of Ayelet-haters. Will you all give it a rest? She's telling it like it is for her, and her task--to be entertaining and emotionally honest-- is a lot more worthy than your knee-jerk-vomiting-noises response. Get your own columns in Salon and tell us all how well-adjusted and normal your lives are. Whatever. I'll stick with reading Ayelet Waldman.

This is the first time I have felt inclined to send a letter about any Salon article. I agree with the recent writer who said that Ayelet is being emotionally honest, but having said that, the only reason I finished the article was because I couldn't believe by how twisted and inappropriate it was and wondered if it was going to have a sane ending (which it didn't). This is also the first time I have read one of her articles and as I gather it was typical of her, the last. She clearly demonstrates how she generates all the sturm and drang in her life, and sprays it without compunction on all around her. Brave to show herself as such a distasteful, self-indulgent person, but I prefer to read the commentary of more admirable and striving people. It's not the movie-kisses that put me off, I've seen that friends' children who grow out if, but her obsession and frank intention to be a hellish mother and mother-in-law in future which she is well equipped to achieve. Not pleasant, and as another reader said, unkind to her son who will likely find this online in future.

If Salon is going to continue to publish Ayelet's schmaltz, then I am calling on all Salon readers to urge her to attend some sort of hardcore anti-sentimentality seminar. Otherwise, I will cancel my Premium subscription. This is not journalism, it is poo. Syrupy poo.

For a brief moment, I couldn't decide if the author was just unusually honest, or a stark-raving bitch. But now I realize she's an honest, stark-raving bitch.

This is the first time that I have read anything by this author - and hopefully the last. Seldom have I found anyone so creepy and distasteful within just a few paragraphs.

Of course, creepy and distasteful can be quite interesting - but this effort (and probably this woman) lacks that redeeming value.

In spades.

...and the one thing I'll give you credit for is for being as overtly, publically insane as my own mother.

Ayelet -- please get professional help before you pen your next Salon piece. I am worried about your son.

At age one:

When he said my name I kissed him, rubbing my lips against his soft, rubbery mouth and tickling his sun-warmed belly.

So that is how this child learned to give his mother "movie kisses":

He pressed his soft lips to my neck, nuzzling under my chin, breathing deep as if he wanted to inhale every molecule of the fragrance he had missed in the four hours of our separation. He placed his palms on my cheeks and kissed me on the lips, languidly yet gravely, like a very small, round-cheeked lover.

Would that be accepted if the child were a girl and the parent a father?

~

Note that I didn't say "wife." Those of us who raise our families in Berkeley would never make assumptions about our children's sexual orientation.

Actually, Waldman wished her son would be gay in an earlier column so he would never leave her. Which she expands on here:

I make jokes about how I hope Zeke is gay so that he will bring home a lovely young man, rather than a nubile young girl who will cast a disparaging and dismissive eye on my crow's feet and thick waist. This young man would be my friend.

Does anyone think there is something wrong when mothers fetish their children as lovers? In print no less? Have children no right to privacy in the pages of Salon? Or is the outrage so profitable in page views we can sacrafice the Chabon-Waldman boy?

~

Pieces like this make Salon readers into unwilling enablers of relationship that most reject. This occurs with every Waldman piece, but Salon editors continue to publish them. Why?

~

I think he probably wished I'd just give it a rest.

Don't we all.