PAULA NEAL MOONEY

In 1978, Christina Crawford shocked the world by releasing Mommie Dearest , a tell-all book that detailed the beatings she endured at the well-manicured hands of her famous mother, screen legend Joan Crawford. “She ought not do her mother like that,” my mom said as we watched a news report about the autobiography. I took note – not of Mommy’s lack of sympathy for Christina’s plight – only of her disapproval towards a daughter who exposed her mother’s ugly side – especially after that mother had died. Back then, at age 9, I intimately related to the perplexing state of living with a woman crazed with rage yet filled with a supreme love that prompted her to preserve my every hand-written report card and softly intone endearments like “sweetheart, lover, doll-boxy.” At 37, I now reside in the completely confusing, all-consuming state of blind devotion felt by any protector who would undoubtedly rip a mangy dog limb from tail that threaten to bite the same defenseless children she takes he...

I saw her in my pediatrician’s lobby: blonde and good-looking, too much make-up covering her 30-something magnetic face and slight jowl. Fighting time. As she leaned over to read to toddlers milling about, I surveyed the scene – and the dad who honorably gazed away from the fleshy humps uncovered by her deep V-neck. Another fair-haired lady threw her guarded glances. This kind of vixen pops up often in my observations, student of human nature that I am. One surprised me with a honeyed lilt in her voice and never-before-seen smile in her eyes as she joked with a married man, ignoring the wife at his side. A different one angered me with her pink-bowed, charcoal-black unmentionable (with an intriguing cutout design, I must say) on display above her belt loop for all of Chuck E. Cheese to see. Truth be told, I readily spot her type because I once was her – a vamp more concerned with the stomach-flipping advances of the male species than the soul-nurturing companionship (or glaring rage a...