Many married women (and married men) insist that having a best friend of the opposite sex is perfectly healthy. In fact, they say that opposite sex friends make better friends because they bring very different perspectives to the relationship. But …

My mother loves people by feeding them. She stuffs them with good food-meat, usually, with potatoes and dark gravy. The kind of gravy that has become a lost art, perhaps because we spend less time cooking, less time learning our …