Melissa Fleming

Fans of the Law & Order franchise will recognize Isabel Gillies as Kathy, Det. Elliot Stabler’s on-again, off-again wife on Special Victims Unit. As rocky as that onscreen union has been, Gillies’s real-life first marriage was much more dramatic. In 2004, the native New Yorker packed up their two young sons and left a promising acting career to follow her husband, professor DeSales Harrison, to Oberlin. A few months later, without warning, he decided he wanted a divorce amid rumors of an affair with a colleague. Coming back to the Big Apple a single mother of two, Gillies moved in with her parents and started to rebuild her life both personally and professionally. She returned to her signature TV role in 2006, and the next year she wed her second husband, journalist Peter Lattman. This year, she found catharsis—not to mention coverage in gossip columns and a spot on the New York Times best-seller list—when she released Happens Every Day, a memoir about the breakup. Time Out Kids spoke with Gillies about her writing and performing careers, single parenting in the city and finding happiness anew with her blended family, which includes her two sons, ages seven and five, and her six-year-old stepdaughter. What inspired you to write this memoir?Many things. I started it last year. There was the writers' strike, which coincided with my children being in school. My new husband and I were expecting, but I lost the baby. So suddenly I wasn't working, I wasn't taking care of the kids f

In search of an easy, fun culture fix for the kids? Then look no further than Central Park. On a recent Saturday morning, I took my two daughters—Beatrice, 3, and Addie Elizabeth, 4—on a whimsical walk through their favorite outdoor playspace. With map in hand, we set out to find and examine child-friendly works of art: Some could be climbed, others made music, and still others were just plain silly. To replicate our itinerary, you'll need about $20 for distractions and treats. 00:00–00:06 We begin our excursion by watching a performance at the Delacorte Clock in the Central Park Zoo. On the hour, two sculpted monkeys use mallets to strike the bell that tops the clock tower; and every half hour a parade of bronze animals, all brandishing musical instruments, bang out the beat of a nursery rhyme tune played on a glockenspiel. The girls shout out to their favorites—the penguin, kangaroo and elephant—as the animals spin around in their carousel. 00:07–00:10 On the other side of the clock tower, we spy Honey Bear, a charming bronze niche sculpture dancing upright amid a group of frogs. The girls count one, two, three, four, five little frogs squirting water. 00:11–00:31 We march past the petting zoo and up the hill to Balto, a bronze sculpture of a heroic sled dog perched atop a rock just west of Fifth Avenue at 67th Street. My elder daughter climbs on his back, grabs his reins and giddy-ups away with him—at least in her mind. My younger one dances around the natural schist bould