Last night, after drinking gallons of watered down apple juice and milk, LE pushed her small belly against the fabric of her nightgown. It rounded out and sloshed. “Mama,” she said, with true sadness, “I look fat.” It had the effect of a starting pistol, cleaving the uneasy anticipation and sending me on a…
“Mom? Do grown up’s bottoms get wrinkles? From the water? Like fingers?”I stand up from the slight stoop I was in to towel off my hair after switching places in the shower with LE. I consider the lovely view of my dimpled rear my daughter has been observing from the floor of the shower, and I say, “Yes.…
You’d think being responsible for someone else’s life would make you really uptight, but it has the opposite affect. You spend your days tending to someone else’s feces. In the before-time, you could enjoy the luxury of disgust, and silly fears. It was an indulgence, you know, to run screaming and flapping around when you saw a spider.…
When you look at yourself in the mirror, your brain smooths out the reflection for you. It automatically smears Vaseline over the lens of your mind and what you see is familiar, workable, fine. Every woman carries a gauzy camera lens and soft lighting in the toolbox of her mind. But then those surprises. Tagged…
That’s it. I quit. Hands in the air, quit. It’s official. Everything…EVERYTHING is going to harm your child. Including swaddling them. You know, swaddling. The thing that nearly every civilization in every era of history has done for all of time? Yeah, now we need to worry about THAT, too, according to The…
LE has been taught that it’s ok to ask me questions about people. It’s ok to notice that someone is very fat, missing a leg, dressed differently, a different culture, or mentally challenged. And we can talk about it. The only rule is that she has to wait until they are gone to ask me. In…
Pee sticks. The only time, hopefully, taking a pee will change your life. Well, my pregnancies were just terrible. There was something squirming through the hormones of pregnancy that infested my brain chemistry with a deep mental sickness. The result was so horrible but so nebulous I can’t describe it so I rarely try. It’s the feeling you get when you’re alone in…
Daughter of Mine, this isn’t how I planned it. Why aren’t we dancing in eyelet cotton dresses together, our bare feet pressing wildflowers? Twirling with our long curly hair dancing free in the sunshine? I DID lug my Wildcat 1972 portable record player last summer into the weedy clay of our yard, but you weren’t really into Creedence and asked…
Amelia is very efficient mother, good in all the ways I am bad. That’s why I like her as a friend. I don’t feel threatened that her daughter’s braids are tight and straight and that her children always have clean dishes and don’t ever have to use tupperware lids and left over fast food…
That’s it. I’m taking a stand. My kids aren’t sexy and you’re not going to intimidate me into pretending they are, perverts and mass media. We are so afraid now. On my Pinterest, one of my most commented-on pins is whether or not this little girl is “too sexy” and “dressed inappropriately.” Or whether or not she’s just cute…
You're Doing It Wrong 