For the first time in a long time the newspaper didn’t arrive that morning. Was not waiting at the foot of the stairs. Never got spread across the kitchen table. So it seemed a cosmic fluke or unhappy coincidence that by noon that day the word was out that our newspaper had been sold.

The Press Democrat, owned for 26 years by the New York Times, had gone to an obscure media group named Halifax. My first thought was why would a bunch of Nova Scotians want a paper in Sonoma County? When Halifax was identified as a Florida group I thought uh-oh.  Florida — conservative, anti-union. Not good.

But the sad part was that our newspaper – I say “our” because I worked there before and after the Times took ownership – had grown into an important paper under the banner of the Times, the mother of all newspapers. And now mother had left us on some Halifax doorstep and disappeared.

What would happen now? Would the new owners bust the union? Turn the paper into a Tea Party bulletin, a rah-rah chamber of commerce pro-business sheet?  Or let it be what it is?

I worried about the people inside, former colleagues and friends, family really. Some with young kids. Some a few years away from retiring. Married couples dependent on one employer. Had this been happening when my husband and I still worked there and had kids at home I would have been in the ladies room throwing up.

Back in 1985 there were also rumors that the family-owned paper was going to sell. When we heard the New York Times was the new boss we hit the bar across the street and started celebrating. If you were going to be taken over by a newspaper chain this was the best.

You have to understand this was a big deal to newspaper people in Santa Rosa California. It allowed the hometown paper to think bigger, shed its provincial image and take on a more sophisticated world view. There was more investigative journalism of local issues. Reporters and photographers went out of town to explore national and global subjects.  I had a great time. The new publisher invited me to write a twice weekly column and said I could write about whatever I wanted.  The Times news service put my column on their wire and I was getting letters from readers in Chicago and Seattle.

Our business cards came with the prestigious NYT logo. We were not the New York Times of 43^rd Street, more like a second cousin to the Gray Lady, but we were a New York Times paper. That meant status not only for journalists but the community as well to have the local paper connected to the Times.

Not that it wasn’t mutually satisfying. The Press Democrat was a good investment.  Sonoma County wasn’t just a nice place for Times execs to come visit and sample the wine, the paper made them proud (winning the Pulitzer among other awards) and we made them lots of money.

And when tough times hit the newspaper business and advertising revenue started to decline the Press Democrat made sacrifices, freezing salaries, squeezing staff, nudging retirees.

And now, in a move to presumably save the mother ship, the Times decided to cut off the distant cousins.  Business-wise that probably makes sense and wasn’t a shock but the cold and quick way it came down was. News of the sale was leaked to an online media blogger which hurried the official announcement. Employees were told by New York via email that Halifax would be deciding their futures. The staff, the paper, its readers and the community were unceremoniously dumped.

The New York Times was a good company to work for. It’s still a great paper to read. Same for the Press Democrat. Both almost always hit our front steps every morning. But I still feel jilted.

When I flew from Boston to San Francisco I was the only one reading a newspaper in my row. At least I could wrestle it into fold-able parts without competing for elbow room, but I was disappointed because I had seen many people buying papers in the terminal. And it was an early morning flight, the traditional newspaper reading and coffee drinking hour.

I’m always on the look-out for other newspaper readers. Those who still get their news from print. Hard core types. Purists, we might call ourselves, those who consume news the way God and Gutenberg intended.

A lot of people are prematurely nostalgic for newspapers.  “I used to read newspapers all the time,” people of my generation will say, with the sentimental reverence you might attach to an old Chevy or a Mounds bar.

But then I’ll run into someone much younger who is, as we say, on the same page.   Writer Anne Zimmerman, in her 30s and of that generation that generally leans online, said she actually prefers print.    Zimmerman, author of a delicious new biography of M.F.K. Fisher’s early years, An Extravagant Hunger, compared reading on the web to reading a newspaper in print.

“When I’m reading on the web I skim. My attention jumps around and it’s more of a fact-finding mission than a real enjoyable learning experience.”

Actually, it turns out that print people may have an advantage.  New research by the University of Oregon concluded that people who read in print remember news stories better and in greater detail than those who gulp their news online.

My whole writing career has been in print so I have a personal and professional loyalty to words in black and white that you can hold in your hands. My best argument for reading an actual newspaper is the unintended information you get from a random sighting. You’re reading about the latest political bloodbath or checking to see if the Giants are out of their slump and your eyes slide over to a story you never knew you needed or wanted to know about. And there it is – a little gift.

I had a pile of papers waiting for me after vacation, including two dailies, the Sunday edition of a third paper and two weeklies which could not go into the recycle bin until I went through them. Otherwise I would have missed a new report on migraines, a review of a new BBC series and a story quoting poet Mary Oliver on the need for solitude. I surely would have missed the story about my local librarian opening a Brazilian wax business.

The working mother who squats in the field, gives birth, bundles the baby to her breast and goes back to the job might envy the high-tech working mother who enjoys such luxuries as a portable hands-free electric breast pump. Perfect for the career woman’s busy lifestyle, it allows her to pump while on her computer, putting on makeup, blow drying her hair, making dinner and doing laundry. There is also a car adapter in case the pump battery fizzles while on the road.

Oh, the wonders of modern maternity I thought while sitting in a circle of professional women at a baby shower. It was for my daughter, a full time writer and first time expectant mother seeking advice from her experienced multi-tasking peers. That’s where I first heard of the no-hands pump from a mother of twins who employs it during conference calls and while dashing in a cab across Manhattan to a meeting.

There were no games, as decreed by the mom-to-be, no women putting clothespins between their knees and dropping them in milk bottles. No spinning pencils on a string across the belly to determine the baby’s gender. Of course today’s expectant couples can discover  early on if they’re having a boy or girl.  What’s top secret, I learned, is the name. It is not okay to share potential names and even grandparents-in-waiting will not know until the baby pops out and the parents rip open the envelope and declare, “And the winner is Ezekiel.”

Parents not wishing to burden their child with too common a name can go to a handy website and track the most popular baby names. So far, for 2011, the top four baby boy names are Jacob, Ethan, Michael and Jayden, just in case you wondered. In the early 1970s when I gave birth we had to wait until the last push and the nurse to proclaim “it’s a girl.” But we started blabbing name choices as soon as we found out we were pregnant.

Maternity trends evolve. When I was a working mother I didn’t have a breast pump that you could charge with your car battery.  That didn’t matter because I didn’t nurse. Breast feeding was an alternative but not as routinely expected as it is today.   Natural childbirth was newly in favor and that’s as earthy as I got. My pregnant daughter just now realized that she was a bottle baby. Poor kid thought I was an all-organic mom.

Among her shower gifts was a diaper bag with special compartment for iPod and smart phone. And a stylish nursing cover to layer between her and the public while feeding baby, which everyone in the room but me seemed to know as a hooter hider.

She got a lot of good advice. Someone told her about an app she can get to tell her which breast the baby last fed from. Someone talked about hiring a night nanny, who comes in for occasional night duty to relieve sleep deprived parents. Another mother offered the name of her baby sleep consultant.

But the best advice she got is not much different from what mothers of every generation have told each other. Enjoy it all. Don’t panic. Trust your instincts. Babies don’t break very easily. Take a nap when the baby sleeps. Meditate when the baby sleeps. Slip off for a 30 minute hot bath at the end of the day.

I liked this one, too:  Figure out which restaurants and stores have diaper changing tables in the men’s room so daddy can share that chore.

And oh yes, buy wine in bulk.