I met a pretty woman the other day. I couldn’t guess her age…45 to 55, trim, well turned out. With my usual tact I blurted out, “You’re PRETTY!” She responded gracefully, as she is in a career where she often works with small children. “Thank you!” I asked her if she always intended to hold…
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…
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…
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…
My daughter is obsessed with why everyone’s house is better than ours. When I tell her “Yes, but ours in paid for! And we have wall to wall laminate!” she isn’t impressed.I tell her the truth.“Well, most of your friend’s parents make more money that we do. So we have a smaller house! But it’s…
“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…
(originally published in April, 2013) Spring Break can eat a bag of DICKS. Seriously. I…I had the worst damn week. I’m absolutely bereft over what this summer is going to be like. My daughter. Oh my daughter. She is a good girl. Willing to please, loving, positive. She is unbearable. I think it’s my…
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