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Growing up I believed I would be a mother someday. I played “house” and took care of my dolls, I babysat and changed diapers, I liked babies.

But what is the real reason I thought I’d be a mother? Because that is what society told me, overtly and covertly, deliberately and not-so-deliberately. At every turn the message was that if you were a woman, you would be a mother – the identities seemed intertwined.

To be fair, most women are mothers, but does that mean it’s just assumed? Isn’t it a choice?

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On October 31, 1969 police in St. Petersburg, Florida received a call about suspicious activity behind the Oyster Bar restaurant. Two men in a pick-up truck had driven up, unloaded a trunk, and left.

Police came to investigate, likely thinking this was nothing more than a Halloween prank or someone unloading junk they didn’t want. But upon opening the trunk they discovered they had a murder investigation on their hands.

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If you follow fashion, or even just the headlines, you may have seen the story last week about an uninvited guest at the Met Gala - fashion's biggest and most glamorous annual event.

Yes, a cockroach found its way onto the red carpet, spawning jokes, memes and knowing glances among New Yorkers - it was quintessentially New York.

This, and the fact that it's Mother's Day this weekend, brought a smile to my face. Mothers and New York cockroaches? Let me explain.

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Like many people, I took piano lessons as a child. It was something of a right of passage. My older sister and brother had both taken lessons, and we had a piano in our living room. As is always the plight of the youngest child, I was eager to do all the things my siblings had done before me.

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At the commencement ceremony for my master's degree, Sister Thomas Welder, president of the University of Mary, gave this advice to us graduates: "If you are somewhere, be there."

That was nearly 20 years ago, before the opportunities to distract ourselves grew exponentially, but I have always remembered what she said.

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I am continually fascinated by the cold cases from the 1970's and 80's that are being solved now with the advent of DNA technology, and specifically with genetic genealogy. These criminals thought they had gotten away with their crimes, and many did, because solving a case back then relied upon eyewitnesses or some direct link between the perpetrator and the victim. Thank goodness, even then, crime scene investigators had the foresight to collect biological evidence even though there was no productive testing available for it at the time.

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When I was about 7 years old I got a teddy bear hamster named Binky. This was after multiple, failed attempts to keep goldfish alive, so I am not sure what my parents were thinking, but I guess they had faith in me.  I don't recall exactly what led to my interest in getting a hamster, but I have vague memories of a friend or neighbor having one and the cool, tube-contraption hamster funhouse that was popular in the late 1970's. 

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