I’ve laid down two toothbrushes and a tiny travel pack of Colgate. And two fist sized jawbreakers on sticks. The cashier starts to chuckle and I slam my hand down a little too hard on the pine wood counter. Every goddamn thing in this place is pine wood that looks like it’s been lacquered with…
I just spent the last hour, at my 8 year old’s desperate request, translating a true story (taken from one of my earlier pieces) of weird and brutal murder, into a tale worthy of her next Show and Tell. And finding pictures. And let me tell you, it is HARD to find pictures that are ok for…
LE is shuffling out of the pink froth of little-girlhood into the kaleidoscopic colors of kid-hood. So she doesn’t dress-up anymore, in flouncy pink skirts with clashing wrinkled leggings and a broken Barbie tiara. But she got a toy microphone for Christmas. Along with a Belinda Carlisle CD and…a Lady Gaga CD. I put them…
Jane-Anne knocked on my door on the morning of the 24th. I open my window and looked at her, confused. “You know the rules!” I say to her and her husband. The two of them are huddled on my front walk, taking their sweet, lovable dogs for a walk as they do every day, rain…
Yesterday, as I hid in flannel sheets to find a nap I didn’t really need, I realized why I think of myself as such a mediocre mom. It’s because I thought there would be a lake. All I’ve ever had is a river. My life has been a river. No, let’s have the proper visual.…
I am a Girl Scout co-leader this year. I didn’t want to be. I’m brutally lazy. I like to lay down at meetings. My body rejects order and organization like a transplanted monkey liver. But there was what Gus calls, “a power vacuum,” and I was the only one to fill it. Then he…
Every parent has a few gaudy tail feathers to shake at the world regarding the brilliance of their children. LE could ride a bike a 5, cross any monkeybars with ease at six. She doesn’t lie, she bathes and dresses her brother, and always says thank you. And stuff. Shake shake shake… But there’s…
Listen, you can look down on me all you want. But I say, if you were in the same situation, YOU would have grabbed that Playboy out of the Burger King garbage can, same as I did. Not this one…but that’s the general idea. Maybe it was the long buried reflex all bad children…
I’ve been gone, neither reading you or writing me. I’ve been trying to do my for-pay articles like a grownup, which means writing even when I don’t want to or when the research is tedious. (It’s surprising hard to find a picture of an Ephedra bush that is not copyrighted). And, well, that’s going…
LE went to a sleepover. Gus told me, “Don’t think about it.”He didn’t mean, control your emotions, mama bird, dry your tears. Lord no. It was his response to my tenuous observation that everything was…so much more calm and easy and nice with her away. Cripes. No constant questions, no hearing “mama?mama?mama?mama?” repeated until I get…
You're Doing It Wrong 