Married life

Real men go grocery shopping

A Jesse Watters Fox News segment flashed across my timeline recently, and I took it very personally. In the segment, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff were at the grocery store. “What kind of husband goes grocery shopping with his wife?” Watters asked, smugly. The answer: every kind of husband. I go grocery shopping with my wife sometimes. I also go grocery shopping without my wife. Also, my wife goes grocery shopping without me. We need to buy food. Most of the time, we buy food at the grocery store. If one or both of us is out on errands, or even doing something fun, and we need groceries, we’ll stop on the way home. Some cursed days, I find myself going to two or three grocery stores. My wife has a way of springing the multi-store trap on me.

Home to mother: Long Island, by Colm Toibín, reviewed

From our UK edition

Colm Toibin’s new novel starts with a bang – or rather, the results of one. It is only on the second page that an Irishman arrives at Eilis Fiorello’s house and threatens to leave his wife’s love child on her doorstep, it being also the doorstep of the father, Tony. ‘If anyone thinks I am keeping an Italian plumber’s brat in my house and have my own children believe that it came into the world as decently as they did, they can have another think.’ As a sequel to Brooklyn, it makes sense that Long Island is quick out of the blocks. Which is exactly what Eilis and Tony are out of, having moved with the entire Fiorello family to the sweeping developmentia of Lindenhurst. There is no privacy. Patriarchy governs.