There Is No Break Coming for Parents — Ever

The summer after I turned 30, I drove to Los Angeles from Toronto in order to — I don’t know — find myself? I took an old silver Saab all the way there, and somewhere along the road from Amarillo, Texas, to the California desert, the gas gauge stopped working. The empty light still occasionally came on, but I had no idea if I was five or 35 minutes from being stranded on the side of the road. I was mostly diligent about keeping the tank full, but one weekend I pushed it to the limit and found myself a scary amount of miles away from the nearest gas station. I was camping in the middle of nowhere and had to make the solo drive through a winding valley to a gas station, a drive I’d never made before, let alone on an empty (possibly very empty) tank of gas. I white-knuckled it for what felt like a thousand years through a treacherous stretch of lonely highway and spent the entire time promising every god in the universe that I’d never drive with an empty tank again.

I’ve thought a lot about that moment in the past three or so years, about making it farther than you ever thought possible on what you assumed were fumes and a prayer. I can tell you now, anecdotally, how hard that drive was, but that word doesn’t really do justice to the paralyzing fear and anxiety that took over my entire body — how it felt not to know if I’d make it through — and only once I was safely on the other side did I realize how scared I’d been.

Anna Delvey is certainly keeping busy during her house arrest. We wouldn’t call this a “rant,” but Tom Brady is clearly going through it right now. Doja Cat continues to bring the looks at Couture Week (if you missed her Swarovski crystal moment, see it here). Also at the couture shows: Anne Hathaway cosplaying as Andy from Devil Wears Prada … again. A fun addition to the nepo-baby discourse: the U.K. edition. John Waters was right about people who don’t read. And see the winners of the 2022 Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest.

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