I was driving my seven-year-old son, Nick, and his friend, Ryan, home from our swim club. Ah, I loved the easy days of summer spent poolside. A little chit-chat with other moms, a short nap and time to flip through trashy magazines.

The only thing I didn’t like about summer was the incessant need to shave my legs and other more difficult to reach areas. As a woman of Italian heritage, daily summer shaving was another mark of summer. I’d never started fussing with my brows or upper lip – too much maintenance.

Ryan interrupted my hairy thoughts.

“Which of my moms do you think is more masculine?” he asked.

Odd question. But Ryan has two mothers and I guess he needed to work through a number of questions.

“I don’t think either of your moms is masculine,” I answered. Neither mom fit any butch stereotype.

“I know,” Ryan said. “But if you had to pick, which one would it be?”

“Cynthia,” I responded. Cynthia wasn’t masculine. Nor was she a girly girl. Neither was I.

“I’m probably more masculine than either of your moms,” I added. I’m trying to let Ryan know that his moms fit into the world of ALL mothers.

“Yeah,” Ryan responded. “Especially because you have that big, dark mustache.”

Out of the mouth of babes.

OK, -- time to add lip waxing to my hair removal activities.

By Marianne Lonsdale

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My excuses flowed like a quick moving stream. I had planned for a month (it was written in HUGE red letters on the kitchen wall calendar, on the second Sunday in March) to attend a Writing Mamas meeting, but I almost didn’t come.

My husband thought it was because of him – that maybe I felt guilty leaving him to the kids and no planned dinner and bedtime. I hadn’t actually thought of that, but then I added it to the list.

“No,” I told him, “I have to read two chapters in my textbook by tomorrow for the class I’m taking, and I’ve got to drive my mom to the airport tomorrow early. And then there’s Ethan’s state report, and …”

The excuses kept coming.

Even as I got into the car with Peter following me, I continued to babble my river of reasons I didn’t have time for this writing group.

Somehow I made it, across the bridge, over to the other side.

The other side of my life.

The other side of me.

Who am I to call myself a writer?

But I’m here now, and as unprepared as I am, writing with one of my son’s dull pencils without an eraser, I’m so glad I made it.

By Maria Dudley

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It has been more than a week since my brother-in-law, David, suddenly passed away.

I can't stop thinking about him.

I see him in the coffin -- talk about a bad make-up job. Where do these people learn that skill? Or better, where CAN they learn that it is a skill? When my stepfather died he was so overly made-up that he looked transgender. I make no judgements, but I knew him -- this was a man who admired John Wayne and would not have minded going out looking like him instead of the lead character from "Hairspray."

I joke, because so did David. He was one of the happiest people I have ever met. His body in repose was in contrast to the smiling picture that stood beside him. He was so alive in that photo. So lifeless in that box.

Judging from the overflowing church, the words that were said about him and the loud sobs that were heard -- he was deeply beloved.

On top of his coffin was a beautiful spray of flowers that said, "Daddy." They were from his only child, his daughter, Tiffany. Theirs was, in my mind, the perfect father-daughter relationship. She was very much daddy's girl. Having never been one myself, and always desiring that role, I would listen with longing to their playful, easy banter. The love between them was evident.

There is a deep bond between mother and daughter, as well, but David adored his daughter, and she, him.

Tiffany is also a dutiful daughter. Her parents asked that she get her undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford in four years, so it would cost less. She did so this past summer at only 21 -- and with honors. She would do anything for them, and they for her. That is why Tiffany took so much control in the planning of his funeral, from the perfect music to the heartbreaking PowerPoint photo presentation on the fifty-inch plasma TV. This was, afterall, the Silicon Valley. The funeral had to be high-tech. It was a daughter's final act for her father and she was going to do it right.

At the funeral, his brother, Sam, gave the most eloquent speech one sibling could give to another. David's boss, a high-ranking company titan, spoke extemporaneously, took a deep breath, said he was going to cry, and did.

As did everyone else.

When my husband, John, had to leave his mother to go to the front of the church to greet guests before the ceremony, I nudged my stepson, Jay, and whispered, "Comfort Grandma." Jay rose, at 15 not quite five feet, seven inches, but he stood more than six feet tall as he gently put his arm around her shoulder and patted it.

When John returned he took his son's place, while Jay joined my six-year old daughter, Mimi, and me, in the second pew. I nudged John and whispered, "Comfort your mother." (Why do mothers and wives always have to tell their sons and husbands what to do -- even at times like this?) John put his arm around her shoulder and patted it, in the exact way his son had.

One man came from as far away as Singapore and spoke about what a good person David is, was. It is so hard to speak in the past tense about a person who is still very much alive to you. Who you still want to be alive with you.

David was one of the last people I thought would pass so soon. He was such a great guy who touched so many lives in such a positive way.

Though I only knew him for 10 years it is hard to imagine even a month without his happy countenance.

David did something I think most of us hope to do.

He left footprints.

By Dawn Yun

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I didn’t know I was a gorilla until I saw it in my mother back in 1963.

Patty Green was spending the night with me and we were listening to the radio at about two in the morning. As KEWB channel ninety-one blasted rock and roll, and we heard the Dave Clark’s Over and Over and Over Again, and I decided to shriek the radio knob up five decibels when Dave repeated Over and Over and Over about fifty times.

Patty and I laughed hysterically about this when suddenly MOM slammed open my bedroom looking like a giant gorilla let out of her cage. She stood larger than life in the doorway, snorting from frothing rage as she hyperventilated and looked through bulging sleepiness. Her lurking stance reminded me of a jungle mother ready to kill her young. Patty immediately closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, and I closed my top eye as I lie there, watching Mom determine her next move.

Mom stumbled past the foot of my bed and over to my new ivory plastic clock radio with the red calligraphic dial face. She reached over and pulled the plug out of the wall and waved it in my face, spitting through her teeth, “If I ever hear another word out of you, you have had it.”

Say no more, Mom, I’m with ya, got the picture, watch me be quiet as a mouse.

Meanwhile, Patty convulsed with muted guffaws and almost wet my bed. It was a childhood moment I hold fondly in my memory because I discovered my heritage.

By Pru Starr

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“We’re putting on a play and I’m a tree!”

My mother sounded like a child in her first school play. Her friends and family had been pushing her to go to the Thursday afternoon Yiddish theatre tryouts for a year. This week, she finally went and to her delight, she was given a part in the performance they were planning; a Yiddish translation of Goldilocks. My high school English teacher, who was once a basketball player, is donning a blonde wig and playing Goldie. Some of her friends are in the group and it was the sort of thing she liked to do. Mom is not a card player or a shopper, but more of a literary, lecture going, book-reading type.

My father died last year.


We had the unveiling a few weeks ago and I keep wondering if this is why my mother finally let herself go to the Yiddish club. The rules of mourning in Judaism have time restrictions for the survivors. One week of shiva, sitting at home, one month of limited social activity and one year before dating or starting anything new. It’s been a year and maybe that’s why she feels she can be part of this now.

Before kids (BK) I was an artist of sorts. Not the kind that makes a living from her art, but I was serious about engaging in creativity. It was a major part of how I identified myself and what sustained me in this crazy world.

I could not keep up my potting and writing while holding a job and raising kids. I had to make choices and prioritize. Now that the children are older and the focus of caring for my parents around my father’s illness is past, I have been able to come back to myself. The timing has been exactly right for this return to a part of me that was put aside so I could do things for others.

Now it is my turn.

It might be the same for my mother. Before she got married she was involved in a theatre group and wrote poetry. That was sixty years ago. Perhaps she, like me, is finally able to go back to a part of herself that she put aside so very long ago so that she could put others before her own needs.

Now it is her turn

By Gloria Saltzman

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It’s Mother’s Day and I’m lounging with the Sunday paper, which, appropriately enough, is filled with stories about mothers. As I read one about a group for adventurous moms, this sentence makes me do a double take: “Although most of the women used to work full time, about half now have the luxury of being full-time moms.”

I read it again. It’s that word “luxury” that bugs me. Here’s how a dictionary defines it: “something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary.”

Maybe I need to cut the writer some slack -- she probably wasn’t setting out to diss us stay-at-home moms. Still, I find it disturbing-- not to mention ironic--that a Mother’s Day article refers to our role as a luxury.

Since when did a woman’s decision to stay home and care for her children become something nice but unnecessary, like getting a manicure?

I know I’m incredibly lucky that I don’t have to work full time; that I get to take my daughter to school each morning and greet her with a hug when she races out her classroom door every afternoon. My decision to stop working full time was more than a little selfish -- I didn’t want to miss a step of her journey from child to adult. But I also chose to stay at home because I believe raising my daughter is the most important job I’ll ever have.

I feel for mothers who would love the same opportunity but can’t afford it; who have to witness many of their children’s milestone moments through the eyes of others. And I sympathize with moms who have made the choice to, at least temporarily, trade fulfilling careers for a job with no pay that sometimes seems so much harder to do well.

I doubt that they consider being a stay-at-home mom a luxury.

By Dorothy O’Donnell

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The funny thing about motherhood is that there is no warning when some mommy challenge is on its way.

They just sneak up and surprise you, like it did to me this past Friday when I picked up my son from preschool. It was 101 degrees outside and my head felt foggy as I noticed my sons’ red cheeks and wet hair from perspiration. I was trying to take a sip of water to cure my headache. It was then, with my two boys playing in a shaded spot we’d named the “magic tree” that my four-year-old used “the word” for the first time.

Gun.

He had broken a stick and said, “I’m going to shoot something with my gun, bang, bang!” My mind raced. What is the appropriate response to this? Before I could say anything, he turned the stick/gun towards me and said, “Now I’m shooting you!”

There was no malice or anger in his voice, just amusement with this new activity. I told him that we never aim guns, real or not, at people, only at non-living things. He asked if he could shoot the sky.

“No,” I replied, thinking back to the posters they have in L.A. bus stations around New Year’s urging people not to shoot their guns into the air as stray bullets can kill. I explained the physics of bullets and why we didn’t want to aim up.

Although I don’t like guns and think they are too numerous and easily accessible in our country, I loved shooting BB guns when I was young. My granddad would let us shoot them into the pillows in his living room. Maybe not the safest thing, but we had a great time doing it.

As my son got into the car, he said that he was going to shoot the seats. Not knowing what else to say, I told him, “I don’t like hearing about shooting. We can send each other love and energy instead.”

I am, after all, an energy practitioner. But I was aware that my words fell flat.

On the way home, he asked me to tell him stories about the magical train forest. He enjoys interjecting “train crises” – “Mom, look out, there’s a broken bridge!”

“Oh no,” I replied, “What are we going to do?” He sat for a moment and answered, “We’re going to shoot sticky balls from the gun!”

Shoot sticky balls at the bridge? Of course! They would fill in the gaps in the bridge, like glue, so the train could continue. At last, something I could agree to. Happily, I told him that it was a great idea.

Thankfully he hasn’t mentioned guns since. Maybe I should start preparing for questions about where babies come from. I'm hoping those questions will be easier.


By Kristy Lund

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It was the summer of nineteen eighty-four when I headed to California for the first time. I’d decided to end my three-year relationship with the wrong guy about the time the nose of my Delta DC-10 lifted off the ground for San Francisco. I was two weeks shy of twenty, and on my way to a summer internship with a Fortune 500 company, where I could pretend to be worldlier than my North Carolina license revealed.

I’d be one of ten interns working in air-conditioned, corporate cafeteria comfort in the Palo Alto office park.

During the first week, I scanned the list of interns for potential romantic encounters. Of the four men, two were fellow Tarheels, and my summer roommates and were automatically disqualified. That left a Creighton University student named Steve from Nebraska and a University of Michigan student named Kevin who was from Hong Kong. I wrote him off, assuming the language and cultural barriers were too high to warrant further review.

Little did I know, Chinese Kevin had grown up in Hong Kong as an American “expat” (a term I’d never heard growing up in Salisbury). English was his only fluent language, as it is for most kids born in Virginia. I can’t give you all the details, but six summers later; I added his name to mine and entered a similar world of mistaken identity.

People I’ve met only on the phone don’t think I notice the double take when we shake hands for the first time. I imagine the same wave of assumptions passes over faces as each of my solitary frames comes into view: I grew up in the South, I live in San Francisco, I have a Chinese last name, and my office is down the hall from the washer and dryer.

I wonder how many people have written me off for any of these reasons.

By Kimberley Kwok

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My bathroom houses a miniature library of periodicals, from the literary to the political to the lifestyle-you-wish-you-had-but-don’t. For those private moments behind closed doors, my favorite leisure reading is Sunset magazine.

But not for the usual reasons. My home improvement skills end with changing light bulbs. I use the water shortage as an excuse to let my garden go to seed because I can’t tend to another living thing beyond my family. I don’t care for wine, let alone wine pairings. I am too poor for a kitchen makeover of $30,000, not counting the sweat equity. I am too outraged by budget vacations where the lodging options start at $219 a night--midweek.

Who has time to cook?

What I love about Sunset is that it has been quietly on the vanguard of gay rights for years. Readers are just as likely to find Craig and Jeff and their golden retriever in the sun-washed kitchen of their lovingly restored farmhouse as they are Tom and Judy sipping Chardonnay with guests on their new deck. A recent issue features Janie and Virginia and their eco-friendly paint company. As the reader drinks in room after room of sumptuous color in the photo spread of their Portland digs, it’s clear that these women are not just business partners.

While hate mongers fan the flames of bigotry among those who fear differences, Sunset quietly broadcasts that we are all the same. Well, almost the same. The couples in Sunset just have more disposable income and fewer dust bunnies on their gleaming hardwood floors than the rest of us.

As I read in the privacy of my own bathroom, I think of how irrelevant it is what others do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Besides, Craig and Jeff, Janie and Virginia, Tom and Judy probably aren’t doing much of anything. Like everybody else, they’re too exhausted from hauling dirt and lumber around, not to mention cleaning up after all those fabulous dinner parties.

Let’s hope the sun is setting on hatred and intolerance. Meanwhile, I’m going to grab my Sunset and fantasize about a better life to come--new kitchen cabinets, the perfect peach, and love and justice for all.

By Lorrie Goldin

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I can remember being four, attending dress rehearsal for my first major recital. I was lying on the floor with my chin in my hand, pink tights sagging at the knees, hair in pigtails on top of my head, and dialing a telephone that was a prop in a dance number. I kept looking in the mirror and I loved what I saw, and even more how I felt.

From a young age I loved to dance.

I danced as a teenager with hopes of getting the hell out of the small town that I grew up in just like my dance teacher had. The biggest problem was that I wasn’t good enough.

I got a biology degree instead and continued to dance as a hobby, even “starring” in a ballet recital in college. When I moved to San Francisco, I rode the Hip-Hop dance craze because it didn’t require the same kind of skill or dedication as ballet. I danced on weeknights and weekends when I wasn’t busy being a scientist.

As life progressed and I got married, pregnant and moved to Marin, my Hip-Hop class availability evaporated. Additionally, I wasn’t one of those pregnant ladies who continued to dance with a baby in my belly, flashing a smile and striking a pose.

I was more the exhausted pregnant lady spread out on the couch with a bowl of ice cream. Honestly, I did not enjoy being pregnant because I let it stop me from doing the things that I loved.

In fact, with both pregnancies (one due to high blood pressure, the other to early and constant contractions) it was recommended that I just sit on my ass at some point or other for multiple weeks that I was with child.

After the first baby arrived, I was transformed into a full-on mom and I didn’t have the time, or the energy to keep dancing. In fact, after my little one was six months old, I had just begun to contemplate getting back into dance and, wham -- I was pregnant again. Then, like the movie “Groundhog Day,” I was doing the constant mom thing again, but with an additional toddler in tow.

Another couple of years passed painfully, slowly and I still wasn’t dancing.

I was losing a part of myself that I had loved. The freedom, the movement, the music, the skill, the smile…all missing from my life…all missing from me. I finally realized that it was time to rescue my sanity and I would start with something I loved.

I would return to dance.

But you cannot just be absent from Hip-Hop for five years and expect to look even mildly coordinated when you jump back in.

Trying to dissuade my extreme nervousness, I dug out my old clothes and tried to make my un-hip Marin Mom look a little more “street” and tied a bandanna around my head. I was ready, psyched, looking good, and I trotted out to the living room.

“You look like a pirate.”

My heart sank.

Although this was a great thing to my four-year old, it was not really the kind of feedback involving terms like “fly” or “cool” or “hip” that I sought. I looked in the mirror and saw that my son was right. I could no longer carry this look off and I removed the inappropriate headwear.

Actually, he saved me from mortification. All those teens would have been staring at the old lady wearing the Halloween costume. In fact, what used to be “fly” isn't even called fly anymore.

I'm not giving up. I've decided to incorporate the old and current me. I have my “Gap” girl Hip-Hop look going strong.

When I spontaneously dance now -- I feel free and I feel me.

By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

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"Happy Mother's Day! Want a cup of tea?"

I awake to see my oldest daughter, Kate, standing in my bedroom doorway.

"Annie and I are making breakfast for you. Do you want to sit outside?"

"Kate, give me a minute! I'm not quite awake." I can't help but smile at her eagerness to get me up.

"Take your time. I'll be back with your tea."

I used to dread Mother's Day. I remember year after year waking up and knowing it wasn't a day off. Usually I had to help my girls, Kate and Annie, get ready for a soccer game or a gymnastic meet. When they were younger, I had to make breakfast, gather their equipment and prepare their snacks.

Normally, I didn't mind this routine, except on Mother's Day when I was driving the girls somewhere, and listening to radio ads like, "Take Your Mom to Brunch!" That'll be the day, I thought.

Plus, I was a single mom, so there was no dad around to coach the girls to do something special for Mother's Day. No cards, flowers or breakfast in bed.

Each year, I'd try a new approach. When the girls were around either or nine, I'd say, "Hey guys, how about making a card or picking some flowers from the garden for Mother's Day?"

Sometimes they'd respond. Sometimes they wouldn't.

When they were older and driving I'd say, "Hey guys, how about going somewhere for Mother's Day?"

"We've got it handled," one of them would say and the hours would pass and no plan emerged. Finally, I'd salvage the day and take us all out to dinner so at least I wouldn't have to cook.

Ultimately, I got proactive and figured, if I wanted to do something special on Mother's Day, I'd plan it myself and they'd have to come.

"This weekend is Mother's Day," I declared one year when Kate and Annie were still in high school. "And we're going hiking."

"Where are we going?" Kate asked. Before I could answer she turned to her sister, "Hey, Annie!" Do you have your walking stick?" They both started laughing. (My friends gave me hiking poles for my birthday one year and the girls never let me live it down.)

"How about Tennessee Valley?" I tried to ignore their teasing, but I had to admit they were funny. "Come on, I know you guys like this hike, and we can take a picnic." Kate and Annie kept on laughing, but I knew we had a date.

Kate pops her head into my bedroom. "Ready, now?"

I turn over and see my beautiful twenty-three year old daughter standing in front of me again only this time with a cup of tea and a bouquet of pink tulips and lilac.

"Breakfast is being served in the garden," Kate announces as she sets down the tea and the vase of flowers. She leaves before I can even get up.

I slowly get up remembering the times I wondered if I could make it as a mom and if the girls would grow up OK. Somehow, we all made it through. They now have jobs and make their own money. And, yes, they can even plan a Mother's Day outing, complete with flowers, tea and breakfast outdoors.

It doesn't get much better than this.

By Marilee Stark

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Last night was Mimi’s big ballet performance at the Civic Center. She was a cowgirl who carried a bucket. A spear, a bucket -- a kid has to start somewhere.

She was excited because she would get to take a bow at the end, awash in audience applause. When she was in “The Nutcracker” in December, for some reason, children in the first act were not allowed to take a bow at the end. She felt gypped. This time, she would feel the love.

My husband, John, and myself, sat in the audience, watching each group of dancers. Every so often I would put my hand on his knee and ask if he was alright. He said yes. I watched, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Jay, our son, had already been told.

How would I inform Mimi?

I had been playing telephone tag with my sister, who is a psychologist, to learn the best way to talk to our six-year old. I wanted to do this right. The ramifications could be devastating.

I watched her “Rodeo” performance from beginning ballet to advanced seniors. The dancing and music sometimes lifted my mood, but just as often the music faded from one score to another, and so, too, did my spirits.

It was all so sad. So surreal. So unexpected.

We stayed through the second half watching the junior hip hop team dance to “Good Vibrations,” a combo jazz/tap performance of all “All Shook Up,” which morphed into “Jailhouse Rock,” “Hound Dog,” and ended with five fathers all dressed as The King.

We left at intermission. Elvis, of course, was still in the house.

On the ride home I thought, ‘What do I say to Mimi?’ while out loud I bellowed, “YOU REALLY ROCKED! You were a star. And you’re dancing, girlfriend -- you were awesome and we are so PROUD of you!” My words overcompensating for the very different ones I would soon say.

Mimi’s pigtails moved up and down, as she smiled and wiggled her shoulders.

In the house I took Mimi by the hand and said we needed to talk. “Am I getting a time-out again?” she asked, fear flooding her face.

“No, no, this, this isn’t about that.” I sat in the rocking chair. The one I used to breastfeed her in when she was a baby. “Come sit in my lap.”

She sat and played with my fingers. I turned her face so we were looking into each others’ eyes.

“I have some bad news, sweetie. "You know your Uncle Dave?”

She nodded.

“Baby, Uncle David died this morning.”

“That’s surprising,” she said. Her words stunned me. The were so – adult. Her gestures were not. She curled into the fetal position in my lap, laid her head under my neck and said, “I’m really going to miss Uncle Dave. He was a really nice man.”

“He was the nicest man. He truly was.”

“Where is he? If he’s dead.”

Whew, boy! The big questions. Well, we’ve talked about death a lot in my family, since it’s happened so often. I didn’t expect it in my husband’s. I didn’t anticipate my niece calling at 12:05 that morning to tell me that her father had a sudden heart attack. When the phone rang that late – I knew someone had died. I call them the death night calls. This is at least the fourth one I’ve received. Still, I never thought it would be David.

“Is Daddy sad that his brother died?”

“Daddy’s sad. We’re all sad, baby. But Uncle Dave is in heaven and Uncle Dave is always around us whenever you need him. Always remember that. Just like Grandma Rae is always around.”

“Maybe they’ll be together," she said hopefully.

“May-be,” I said, kind of hoping not, ‘Perhaps it’s better if he gets used to his new surroundings first,' I thought. 'Mom can be a little overwhelming.’

We hugged for awhile, and then Mimi slipped out of my arms. In the living room, Mimi was sitting next to her brother, their shoulders touching, she practically in his lap, both deep in concentration, playing Game boy. My husband was outside watering the plants. I watched them and thought of David. Gregarious, sweet, menschy David. I wanted to cry and went downstairs, not wanting the rest of the family to hear me.

We all mourn in different ways.

By Dawn Yun

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Mrs. Mary Lou invited me to visit.

She lives in Tiburon and wanted to discuss plans for her daughter Vici’s birthday breakfast, a daunting preparation for the eighty-one year old woman. I offered to manage the breakfast because Vici, is my dear friend.

As the three of us sat together at Mary Lou’s long wooden kitchen table drinking tall glasses of lemonade and ice water, we discussed Vici’s party and then another episode in Mary Lou’s life became more important for her to share.

“Do you know what I saw shopping the other day?” Mary Lou began her tale about a completely bald twenty-five year old woman walking around, apparently recovering from chemotherapy. The young woman’s right breast was missing and she wore a tight, spaghetti strap tank top. The woman’s husband also walked proudly and respectfully beside her. “She had the prettiest face, and her husband was so nice to her,” Mary Lou observed.

Vici and I acknowledged the true sadness of the cancer story, and so did Mary Lou. “She had the prettiest face” was her last comment. Vici and I later drove home together and Mary Lou’s second- layer story came out.

“Your mother sounded affected by the young woman with the mastectomy,” I said.

“There was a completely different story going on there than the story Mom told.” Vici went on to explain that she recognized Mary Lou’s real intentions for telling the story. The one her mother didn’t want me to know.

Mary Lou silently told her daughter the second story. She was unbelievably shocked at a bald young woman with such a pretty face who dared to walk in public with only one breast exposed in an immodest tank top for the world to see. The young woman’s appallingly brazen cancer and showing only half of her female gifts was an obscene intrusion to the public arena.

She had no right to devastate other shoppers in this manner. The woman’s tasteless choice of exposing her bald head while she showed one breast through a tank top was ghastly inappropriate for the city shops and streets. The woman’s saintly husband also made her egregious demonstration of survival even more shocking. What man would possibly stand by a one-breasted woman? She wasn’t really a woman anymore. She didn’t deserve her man because she no longer lived up to her end of the partnership. Her husband needed another woman with two breasts, and the cancerous one should never leave her home to venture outdoors ever again. She was truly damaged goods and the world certainly didn’t need to be shocked right there with one breast missing and all.

Thank God the woman had a pretty face, because at least she had one redeeming quality left to offer the world. She dared challenge our society’s images by exposing us to her horrible private hell that shouldn’t be witnessed by passing strangers.

Who did she think she was?

The beauty illusion was missing. Two breasted dignity was missing. The regular everyday was missing, and still her husband loved her. The woman didn’t deserve his love anymore, and Mary Lou didn’t think she should have it. The man needed to move on, find another beautiful face with two breasts and forget the ruined one.

Vici told Mary Lou’s familiar second layer story with no heat behind it. These were the attitudes she grew up with. Mary Lou was a wife for fifty years and the best homemaker who raised four children in wealth and comfort. Mary Lou still knows how men should be men and how men should treat women. All three of Mary Lou’s sons followed their father in this regard and grew up believing that a man’s firm hand was truth and made families strong.

Mary Lou believes that women are objects for their husbands to possess. As long as women keep up their end with beauty, body and appearances for appearance’s sake, marriages are solid.

Vici managed to develop her own beliefs despite her mother’s convictions.

Mary Lou has mastered the art of two-layer stories her entire life and hides behind society’s paradigms and she doesn’t get past their myths. Her sympathy toward the woman when she told me the story was two layered because I am not family and don’t need to know the truth about women. Since Vici grew up with double stories, she sees her shallow mother. In her eyes, Mary Lou has it all figured out.

Saying is only one thing, but believing it is something else.

For her, human decency is at stake because values are shifting too severely. Women must remember that their breasts are currency. Cancer is simply a private inconvenience.

Mother and daughter silently understand each other and do not agree. The birthday breakfast will occur and the pretty faced, bald headed, one-breasted woman with the kind husband will be forgotten.

Two layers spoken by one.

By Pru Starr

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This was the worst Mother's Day ever.

No gifts from my kids. No card from my husband. No break from routine.

The house was a mess and no one else wanted to help so I spent the morning scrubbing toilets and folding load after load of laundry.

Just like any other Sunday.

But it wasn't any other Sunday. This one was supposed to be special.

My husband wanted to rebuild the backyard fence so he spent the day in the yard cheerfully oblivious to my disappointment. I did my part, though, to guarantee the day's failure. I yelled at my kids when they refused to do their chores. I huffed at my husband when he sauntered through the kitchen ignoring the piles of dirty dishes that covered the counters.

By late afternoon, I gave up trying to find a silver lining and locked myself in my bedroom and cried.

Relief came, finally, as darkness fell and I put a pillow over my head and ended the miserable day in sleep.

I woke the next morning promising to put the horrible holiday behind me. I checked e-mails and saw three from women to whom I had sent cards the week before. Two are writers and mentors to me and to other women who write. Their e-mails told me how surprised and touched they had been to receive my cards. Their happiness at having received them made me smile.

The third e-mail came from an acquaintance that had placed for adoption the only child she'd ever given birth to. That was decades ago, but she’s talked with me about her son often, probably because my own two sons were adopted. I knew Mother's Day must be hard for her -- no woman ever forgets a child that had once been hers whether born to them or not. She, too, thanked me for thinking of her on Mother's Day and her gratitude put a lump in my throat.

When I returned home from work that day, I saw the envelope that had arrived in the mail a few days earlier. I absentmindedly opened it and was surprised to see a card there, this one from one of my son's birthmothers. The card said simply that she couldn't imagine her life without me in it.

I'm grateful to have her in my life, as well.

I'm grateful to all of them, the women, and the other mothers who reached out to me. Their notes of appreciation reminded me of the love that surrounds me every day. Love I too often take for granted. I took for granted the love of my kind husband and my adored sons on Mother's Day. That's why I let their disappointing performances hurt me so much. I shouldn't have let that happen. I should have taken myself out somewhere, enjoyed the day knowing their love was there whether they took me out for brunch on one particular Sunday or not.

It came a day late but my gratitude allowed me to put the happy back into Mother's Day.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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MAKE ME AN OFFER

I am sitting in my parked car while participating in a neighborhood wide garage sale. It is a beautiful spring day and I have enjoyed reading a great book in between my few sales. My kids have been surprisingly self-sufficient: making periodic pilgrimages to the other sales and basically leaving me alone.

Their most recent score is a giant rubber hand that looks like it was chewed off and buried for six months. “Only two dollars!” Paul announces. He confides his plan of placing it on Eric’s chest while he sleeps.

It has not been the busiest garage sale but I can’t say I mind since it was a last-minute arrangement. Yesterday, a neighbor approached me at a weak moment after I had just consumed a rather large espresso drink and as optimistic as I would be all day exclaimed, “Yes! Of course! Count me in!”

Garage sales always sound like a good idea at first.

I realize it was eight years ago when Paul was barely sitting up that we held our last group of sales on the block. I see the same boxes of merchandise still in the front of my garage. I routinely examine them when I make my monthly donation runs and at each survey I conclude that most of this stuff is too good to just give away and so it stays.

Maybe this is the year it goes?

As I looked closer I noticed the different boxes. The pending hand-me downs next to the carton of items in need of repair. Of course there is also the cache of clothes I cannot part with for sentimental reasons. I save them in hope of passing them down to somebody else who can appreciate them. I stare at an unworn sweatshirt with the attached tag stating its value at twenty-five dollars (marked down from fifty dollars!). I bought it eight years ago before it even fit Paul. It never suited him but I held onto it and I packed it away so well that by the time I found it again for Eric he was too big for it! Maybe when my sister has a baby?

I come across one of my “single girl” boxes containing remnants of my previous life. This one has some great costume jewelry and even though they are not gold and gemstones they are still without a doubt more “valuable” than the other items laid out on the blanket in my driveway.

In my former life, I managed the costume jewelry department of Macy’s Herald Square in New York City. I acquired some incredible pieces during my time there and over the years I compulsively supplemented my extensive collection. I always stored my jewelry in antique jewelry boxes and displayed them in one apartment after another throughout my single years. I have moved these boxes within boxes more times than I can recall and the last move was nine years ago when we acquired this house. By the time this box landed with a thud on a shelf in our basement it had already been years since I had graduated from costume to fine jewelry. Now my favorite every day pieces are eighteen karat and platinum, and I keep everything in one jewelry box that stays in our safe.

This box I just came across is filled with earrings. Each pair escorting me back to another time and place. I am twenty-five and my hair is short and red. I can see myself in the bar mirror swinging my head when I laugh and my long earrings tap against my neck. I touch each pair and admire them. The colors that went so well with my red hair would clash both with my long blond locks and my “grown up” lifestyle. I would never wear this jewelry now but I also can’t seem to let it go.

What is my youth worth?

I could not bear to calculate all the money I had actually spent. The last sale I tried to get $10 a pair. I did not sell a single one because I would not come down in price. How could these people not see the value here? Unlike just about everything else I could do without, these things were truly worth something to me. I could no more replace those earrings than I could the years I wore them. I packed them away again unwilling to waver.

This year I lay them out in pairs with a small sign: “make me an offer.”

In the early afternoon, as I finished reading another chapter in my book, a young mom looked past my assortment of placemats and admired my fabulous earring collection. She commented on how well behaved my boys were as Eric tried to sell her two-year old some of his own outgrown baby toys. Maybe she was buttering me up, but it worked. But really it was hearing "you have great taste” that got me.

Validation!

She chose some of my favorites and as I wrapped them up for her I told her about the different artists and explained how some of them were engineered. I was letting go of more than clutter: it was letting a part of me depart. I am never going to be the woman who wears that jewelry again.

I could finally let go of the idea that someone had to pay a certain amount in order to justify why I had held on this collection for so long. The money I got from the earrings she bought would barely cover a week’s worth of mochas. But the way she held each one up for her husband to admire made it all worth it. I am glad that somebody else will get to appreciate them. That is worth more to me than money.

By Cathy Burke

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The Red Jacket

I was cleaning out the hall closet the other day, and I came across a red winter jacket I bought for my daughter when she was two. I bought it at an outlet store for $18, so I didn’t mind that it was three sizes too large.

When she first put it on, the jacket came down to her ankles, and the sleeves covered her hands. The hood came up over her forehead, and almost covered her eyes. She beamed at me in her too-large jacket and she looked so sweet and happy that I couldn’t bear to put it away until next year.

It was so big, it looked like a stadium coat—the kind that people wear to football games at night, and winter outdoor concerts. That image did not fit my wide-eyed girl, so I told her it looked like a fire chief jacket and that became its name.

She wore that jacket in every kind of weather, but the most fun she had with it was jumping in puddles during a rainstorm. The winter that she was three, I bought her red ladybug boots to match the jacket and she splashed in the gutter almost every day.

If I think back very hard, I can remember kicking my feet through the gutters as a kid and making huge sprays of water almost like a work of art—the water arching through the air in sheets and globes. I remember how badly I wanted to catch a globe and keep it, but I never could.

My daughter however, preferred stomping. She started with a small puddle, not too deep, and she would step on it hard—squashing it—giggling to see the water squirt out the sides of her feet. She would move cautiously and analytically to find the next biggest puddle and she would do it again. Pretty soon, she felt confident enough to tackle the big ones, the ones that needed two feet and a running jump.

One day I actually had my camera with me. It took some practice to figure out how to time the shot, and I finally realized that I had to push the button before she left the ground or else I would miss the photo entirely. In the end, I got several photos of my daughter completely airborne in her red jacket, staring down gleefully at the water below her, her boots lined up for a perfect landing. The look of anticipation on her face is priceless.

I stood there in the hallway, staring at the now too-small red winter jacket, remembering the joy it had brought, and I could not bear to give it away.

Not yet.

By Lianna McSwain

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I was cleaning out the hall closet the other day, and I came across a red winter jacket I bought for my daughter when she was two. I bought it at an outlet store for $18, so I didn’t mind that it was three sizes too large.

When she first put it on, the jacket came down to her ankles, and the sleeves covered her hands. The hood came up over her forehead, and almost covered her eyes. She beamed at me in her too-large jacket and she looked so sweet and happy that I couldn’t bear to put it away until next year.

It was so big, it looked like a stadium coat—the kind that people wear to football games at night, and winter outdoor concerts. That image did not fit my wide-eyed girl, so I told her it looked like a fire chief jacket and that became its name.

She wore that jacket in every kind of weather, but the most fun she had with it was jumping in puddles during a rainstorm. The winter that she was three, I bought her red ladybug boots to match the jacket and she splashed in the gutter almost every day.

If I think back very hard, I can remember kicking my feet through the gutters as a kid and making huge sprays of water almost like a work of art—the water arching through the air in sheets and globes. I remember how badly I wanted to catch a globe and keep it, but I never could.

My daughter however, preferred stomping. She started with a small puddle, not too deep, and she would step on it hard—squashing it—giggling to see the water squirt out the sides of her feet. She would move cautiously and analytically to find the next biggest puddle and she would do it again. Pretty soon, she felt confident enough to tackle the big ones, the ones that needed two feet and a running jump.

One day I actually had my camera with me. It took some practice to figure out how to time the shot, and I finally realized that I had to push the button before she left the ground or else I would miss the photo entirely. In the end, I got several photos of my daughter completely airborne in her red jacket, staring down gleefully at the water below her, her boots lined up for a perfect landing. The look of anticipation on her face is priceless.

I stood there in the hallway, staring at the now too-small red winter jacket, remembering the joy it had brought, and I could not bear to give it away.

Not yet.

By Lianna McSwain

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My youngest child just turned one. Colby’s official transition to toddlerhood – marked by a family BBQ and several renditions of “Happy Birthday” – wasn’t all sweet smiles and cupcakes. Behind the excitement and celebration was a lingering sadness. The truth is that Colby’s first year ended before I was ready to move on.

Grief wasn’t an ingredient in my older son’s first birthday. Each new development – from crawling to Kai’s first song – was as sweet as his very first cupcake. Only recently did I recognize the finality of each milestone. This leads to scary questions such as: If I’m not ready to move on now, how will I feel when my boys leave home? After all, if the first year can pass like a turn of a page, college is little more than a magazine article away.

To try to reassure myself, I imagine myself thirty years from now looking back in time. What advice would I give myself? Having only the benefit of imaginary hindsight, I can only answer with what I already know. I need to enjoy my kids and collect good memories along the way.

Instead of grieving the moments that have already passed, I can focus on enjoying the kids now. Often that means while I’m kitchen-cleaning, appointment-making, money-earning, bill-paying and other life-doing tasks. If these next few years zoom by faster than Colby can empty out the kitchen cabinets, I better remember the details.

Some of my favorite memories are the slow, ordinary ones – Kai pulling a chair to the sink to wash his hands, Colby crawling down the stairs backwards and the boys kneeling side by side sorting blocks. These are the kind of moments that just don’t fully register in my memory unless I make an effort to really pay attention. These are the candid photos of memories, the moments in between vacations, events and celebrations.

Next time I start mourning Colby’s lost baby days, I’ll focus my nostalgia on the upcoming “firsts” already lining up for their turn in front of the camera. For now, I’ll hold onto the memory of Colby toddling toward me, holding out a piece of used Kleenex like a prize, his six-toothed smile so wide that his eyes and nose crinkle together like a Shar-Pei puppy.

If I don’t hurry up and slow down -- I might miss what comes next.

.By Maya Creedman

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My bathroom houses a miniature library of periodicals, from the literary to the political to the lifestyle-you-wish-you-had-but-don’t. For those private moments behind closed doors, my favorite leisure reading is Sunset magazine.

But not for the usual reasons. My home improvement skills end with changing light bulbs. I use the water shortage as an excuse to let my garden go to seed because I can’t tend to another living thing beyond my family. I don’t care for wine, let alone wine pairings. I am too poor for a kitchen makeover of thirty-thousand dollars, not counting the sweat equity. I am too outraged by budget vacations where the lodging options start at two hundred and ninety dollars a night--midweek.

And who has time to cook?

What I love about Sunset is that it has been quietly on the vanguard of gay rights for years. Readers are just as likely to find Craig and Jeff and their golden retriever in the sun-washed kitchen of their lovingly restored farmhouse as they are Tom and Judy sipping Chardonnay with guests on their new deck. A recent issue features Janie and Virginia and their eco-friendly paint company. As the reader drinks in room after room of sumptuous color in the photo spread of their Portland digs, it’s clear that these women are not just business partners.

While hate mongers fan the flames of bigotry among those who fear differences, Sunset quietly broadcasts that we are all the same. Well, almost the same. The couples in Sunset just have more disposable income and fewer dust bunnies on their gleaming hardwood floors than the rest of us.

As I read in the privacy of my own bathroom, I think of how irrelevant it is what others do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Besides, Craig and Jeff, Janie and Virginia, Tom and Judy probably aren’t doing much of anything. Like everybody else, they’re too exhausted from hauling dirt and lumber around, not to mention cleaning up after all those fabulous dinner parties.

Let’s hope the sun is setting on hatred and intolerance. Meanwhile, I’m going to grab my Sunset and fantasize about a better life to come--new kitchen cabinets, the perfect peach, and love and justice for all.

By Lorrie Goldin

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When it comes to board games, my family used to be fair-minded, good sports. On a rainy weekend afternoon, my eight-year-old daughter might cheer if her brother rolled a Yatzee. My twelve-year-old son might slip me a stack of pink bills when, almost broke, I landed on my husband’s Park Place. Meanwhile, my husband, the banker, pretends not to notice.

But then my daughter received Clue for Christmas, and everything changed.

As soon as we opened the box and held those tiny weapons in our hands, the mundane but menacing rope, the utilitarian yet dangerous lead pipe, the handy yet deadly wrench, a fiercely competitive pall descended over us, clouding our judgment, turning us into cut throat, board game Crime Scene Investigators.

Each of us devised a sophisticated method for tracking the clues in hopes of getting an edge on whether a distraught Miss Scarlet fired the fatal shot in the wood paneled library. My husband favors a spread sheet, my son a detailed list, and my daughter a bar graph. I stick to the official note pad that comes with the game augmenting it with a customized assortment of abbreviations and codes.

After each player’s turn, a moment of tense silence follows. Scribbling and the shielding of notes ensue, followed by glaring at one another. A single game leaves us all mentally exhausted, the losers grumpy and the winner smug.

Despite the intensity of each game, none of us were conscious of the pitch at which we played until one day my son returned from a friend’s house. At dinner, in an utterly surprised tone, he announced, “Today I found out that not everyone plays Clue like we do.”

I cringed inside with embarrassment. Our aggressive, over the top approach to what is supposed to be a friendly, family past time revealed itself. We were family game night frauds. But would my son recognize the clues and draw the obvious conclusion: despite appearances, other families are more stable, less manic and better adjusted when it comes to board games – and who knows what else?

Would this evidence lead him to suspect a broader truth about his parents -- that we don’t always behave well? Would our authority dissolve, his confidence in us shatter? Had we been found out? Was the jig finally up?

Rather than immediately confess, I listened to my son recount his afternoon. His friend suggested they play Clue, and my son asked for a spare sheet of paper to construct his suspect list. When his friend shrugged his shoulders, looked puzzled and asked why he wanted extra paper, my son demurred.

“I got the feeling that they just don’t play Clue at our level, so I skipped the paper,” he explained.

I breathed a sigh of relief at my son’s self restraint, reassured that we had at least set a good example in that regard, that all was not lost.

Then he added, with a gleam of family pride in his eye. “I won anyway.”

By Tina Bournazos

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T'was the night before Mother's Day, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a--oh, wait there is a child stirring, she wants water, again! (She spilled the first cup...)

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that someone would fold them and put them away where they belong, they've been hanging there a week!

The children were nestled all snug in their beds, (except the child who just spilled her second cup of water!) while visions of sugar-free plums danced in their heads. And Papa in his cap, and I in my 'kerchief, had just settled our brains for a long winter's... (What rhymes with 'kerchief?)

When out on the roof there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. (And tripped over a toy truck left on the floor -- must I always put the toys away?) Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutter, and threw up the sash.

This sash is dirty! That reminds me, I have to do the laundry in the morning.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the luster of midday to objects below, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

What? A miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer? Am I seeing things -- again? I MUST BE SLEEP DEPRIVED! I have GOT to go to bed!

"Happy Mother's Day to all, and to all a good night!"

By Lisa Nolan

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I feel like I'm moving away from my kids. I used to think about them all their time. Every experience, I saw through their eyes. Now, I'm so absorbed teaching rambunctious high school students biology, I forget about my two children, until I pick them up at 4:00

I think about how after I gave birth to my son, and how afterwards, time just seemed to stop. My hospital room was filled with the golden light of sunset, and I just stared at his face. I stared at my children for almost ten years. I did other things, but they were my focus. When my daughter awoke sobbing in the middle of the night, I could often recognize the events she described. "Oh, that mean red truck was only the fire truck we saw on our walk today,” I would tell her. … Now, I am as baffled by her dream images as she is.

I liked the young child phase of my life. Only now do I realize that it was a limited interlude, like college. I remember after I graduated from Berkeley, I continued to live in town. I would stop by the coffee shops I used to study for exams in, and as soon as I could, I applied to graduate school. Gradually, though, I realized I didn't want to study genetics anymore. I wanted the freedom, intellectual challenge, and intense friendships I experienced during college to continue.

Now, I feel yearnings to have a third baby. It would be so wonderful to have an infant grasp my finger again, or stare with complete devotion as I nurse him. I'd love to see another child wear my daughter's flower embroidered dresses, or sing the Thomas the Train song.

But then I think I don't want a third child in our family. Our sibling dynamic is tough enough. I'm 44, and my body, finances, and patience are wearing thin. What I really want is to go back in time.

One advantage of my new job is I'm around interesting, educated, ADULT colleagues again. One afternoon, Eric the physics teacher, explained time travel. It turns out the only way we can even theoretically travel in time is forward. If we travel near the speed of light, time will go slower for us. Remember the first “Planet of the Apes” movie? Taylor and his astronaut friends traveled for a few months at the speed of light. They came back to Earth two thousand years in the future. (Of course Taylor didn't know he had returned to Earth until he saw the Statue of Liberty, but that's another story.)

I pointed out to my physicist friend that in the third Planet of the Apes, the two chimpanzee characters go back to the 1970s. Eric rolled his eyes. "We can slow time, but we can't make it go in reverse.

There is no going back, in theoretical physics or life.

By Beth Touchette-Laughlin

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In the spring of 2001, a few months before our wedding, my soon-to-be husband Tim and I rode our bicycles to San Diego. The trip took nine days. We started from our house in Tiburon, rolled over the Golden Gate Bridge, and skirted San Francisco to pick up Highway One. We pedaled through Half Moon Bay and down the coast along Big Sur, where the road has no shoulder and the cliffs dropped off inches from our wheels, straight down. We passed Moss Landing, Monterey, Cambria. Santa Barbara, Malibu, L.A.

The final leg of the trip we took the ferry to Coronado, fitter and leaner than we’d been in our lives. I was so infused with endorphins that I shouted to the other waiting passengers: “We just rode our bikes from San Francisco!”

One shouted back: “What did you eat?”

“Anything we wanted!” And I held up the king-size bag of M&Ms I kept stashed in my back pocket as proof.

We took almost nothing. Two pairs of biking shorts and jerseys apiece. A change of underwear. A pair of jeans and a T-shirt for Tim; a black tank dress for me. Flip flops. Sunscreen. At night, when it got too dark to ride, we checked into whatever motel was close and washed that day’s gear in the bathroom sink. The next day, we bungee-corded the damp clothes to our panniers and let them dry in the sun.

Tim and I met on a bike ride. That one was four-hundred miles over five days. We were both single and looking for someone who didn’t mind spending six hours at a clip on a narrow leather saddle hunched over a set of handlebars, someone else that obsessed. Our wedding vows concluded with the Irish Blessing, the one that begins “May the road rise to meet you,” and ends, “May the wind always be at your back.” We held hands as the justice of the peace read the words aloud.

These days, if I’m lucky, I squeeze in thirty minutes on an exercise bike two days a week. I can’t believe I’m the same girl who rode her bike to San Diego, who gorged happily on king-size bags of M&Ms. But the fact is, training for a big ride requires enormous chunks of time, which I no longer have. I’ve got two kids and my priorities have shifted. On most days, I don’t regret my choices for a second.

Occasionally, though, I’ll see a pack of cyclists speeding along the side of the road. And somewhere in the middle of it, I’ll spot a girl—head down, riding in the draft—who reminds me of myself. I imagine myself on the bicycle, exhilarated and focused, legs mashing down on the pedals. Nothing is ahead but open road.

Jessica O’Dwyer

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I might as well be cradling my first newborn now that my son has turned thirteen. I have no idea how to parent this teenager.

I'm unsure how to guide him through the demands a teenager faces these days. Take, for example, the huge amount of complicated homework assigned at his junior high school. He is expected to do far more work than I was at his age and the consequences of his failing to do so are severe.

More than half the students at his school are in GATE classes so the advanced placement program originally designed for a handful of truly gifted students has become the norm. And worse, receiving anything less than an A grade on their work is considered failure.

Pity the B-average student.

A friend of mine believed her son would learn best by being left alone with his assignments. She didn't nag him to finish nor punish him when he failed to do so. A bright boy who was GATE identified in the first grade, he nonetheless forgot to pass his work in or lost it in the black hole that is his backpack.

Despite test scores proving his high intelligence, his C-average grades prohibited his entry into his two choices for public high school. He recently learned he was assigned instead to the large, urban campus identified by school and government officials as “troubled.”

That seems like a high price for a thirteen-year-old boy to pay for a mediocre report card.

I compare that to the mother of my son's classmate who shared with me last week how exhausted she was after staying up until three that morning finishing her son's science project. That was the same science project that sat at open house next to the one my son completed without my help. I studied the two projects propped up on poster board and noticed how neat and mature the other boy's presentation was. The vocabulary in the narrative attached to it was beyond anything I'd ever heard him utter.

What could possibly be fair about the grade his project would earn compared to that given to my son?

Yet, I feel certain sympathy for the other boy's mother, a compassion that comes from knowing she was doing what she thought her son needed.

I struggle constantly with such questions -- how much to guide my son, how much to pressure, how often to leave him alone.
The world is different than when I was a teenager. The life skills my son will need to succeed are different than what worked for me. My mother tells me she faced the same concerns when I was a teen -- the world I came to age in was different than the one that saw her transition to adulthood. She, too, had to feel her way through my teen years and trust that I would survive her imperfect parenting, which, of course, I did.

It's just the way of things, I suppose. Society evolves as humanity's time on the planet lengthens. No generation is identical to any other. No era of childrearing foolproof.

And so I offer my son what I promised him the first time I held him in my arms -- that I would parent him with everything I have: My instincts, my common sense, my unconditional love. I promise again that I will do my best -- my imperfect, often-flawed best.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

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“Split these two decks and shuffle this half.”

Mom faces me, a solid seventy-four year old figure, elbows bent, both hands moving and shuffling fifty four cards. Her long gray hair is twisted messily into a ponytail clipped up on the back of her head. She’s worn the same Indian print skirt for three days.

“The dirt won’t show. . . Twenty for you, I like to see you count them in fives and turn the last one over.” Once Mom gets going with “Spite and Malice,” the cards control the moments.

She’s going to whip me and I’ll owe her money. Oh, the pain. . . Where’s my wallet?

As she moves from Ace to Queen there’s no turning back. “If you take your hand off what you put down, it’s too late.”

How does she know I have the two? There are 110 cards here and she’s only got six in her hand.

“Hot shit!” Mom pulls a run from out of those six cards faster than I can fan my cards neatly. She plays her cards and I watch her conjure up a need. “Come on, four…” She picks her card up off the deck and says, “See that four?”

It is a four. Luck or what?

When I forget to look at my fat stack and notice the card I should have played, my heart sinks and I gulp down that dumb feeling like a slapped child. Mom slaps down her cards.

“Sorry about that.” She gives me that look.

She’s loving every sting of the cards, every run and turn of her twenty stack moving nicely down to ten, five and three.

Mom sits among her random stacks of paper that she’s moved from a brown paper bag back to the table time and again. She’s using half a paper towel to blow her nose. I’m watching her.

She whips me with her logical mind. I’m defenseless.

As she snaps down her Ace, Mom looks up at me. “We didn’t play cards when you were little, did we? I was working and on weekends, you were with your friends.”

Why didn’t I play with her? Why didn’t I know the moves? What else don’t I know?

I shrug and reach for my wallet. Mom sees me pull out sixty-five cents from the coin section and place it in the silver chalice where we’re holding all the winnings.

“Give it time.” She shuffles the deck and then spreads them on the tabletop. “Help me mix them up.”

I come back to my seat at the dining room table and together we stir face cards into the numbers.

“This game is so well engineered. We can play it all day and not get tired of it.” I watch Mom gather up the cards from the table and put them back in their clear plastic bed. She uses her best cards for me.

I know that.

By Pur Starr

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After a community meeting, a fellow mother asked if I could give her a ride home. As we walked to the car, we spoke mama stats: she had two boys, five and eight years old. I belong to the boy club as well, ages two and four.

I always feel a bond with other mothers of boys. I asked how the five and eight-year-old stage is. The prognosis was good. I like it when people with kids older than mine say it gets better. I dislike those people that tell you it's still hard, just different. I don't mind if you lie to me, just tell me it gets better and easier, please!

As we get to my car, she says, "Cute!" as I have a butterfly pasted on the butt of the car. But as I look in the passenger seat, I realize there is a few days' worth accumulation of definitely not cute stuff. I know she's a mom, so I remind myself not to worry too much, but I tell her it's going to take a while to clear the seat so she can actually sit on it, hopefully finding a place for her feet as well.

I take off the first layer - everything we needed for a dinner at our favorite Thai food restaurant that night. A cooler-type bag of supplemental dinner options for the kids, two jackets of mine, one for each of the kids. I throw them into the back. The next layer was from my art class the day prior -- paper bags laid out to protect the seats from wet paint and a box of art supplies. They find their spot, sitting in the empty car seats in the back.

I'm finally down to the final layer. This was from three days prior when I got to my son's preschool in the morning and realized it was freezing cold and wet, and my son was in a short-sleeved shirt. This fact should have been noticed before we left the house, but somehow escaped my mommy radar until that moment. So I emptied the diaper bag, which had been recently organized, and pulled out all the extra clothes until I found a long-sleeved shirt for him to wear, pulling it over his head and finished dressing him in the parking lot.

As I tossed back the tighty whities (thankfully clean, these were from the spare clothes) of my four-year-old, along with unused diapers, jeans, shirts, and socks, she said honestly, "I guess you don't drive with other people very often."

I laughed. "Only my kids."

I love it when people are honest with their thoughts. I wish I was more often.

By Kristy Lund

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It was Valentine’s Day and I dragged home my cards in a paper bag, as my brother, Russell, did his.

We dumped them on the table to show my mother. My brother must have gotten thirty of them! I think I received maybe eight, and started crying.

“I got more than you did! I got more than you did!” Russell taunted before he left, probably to annoy the dog.

My mother asked me what was wrong.

“Russell got a whole bunch more cards than I did,” I said, trying to wipe away my tears.

My mother carefully picked up a few of Russell’s cards and then inspected mine.

She could see the difference.

“Dawn, it’s true. Russell did get more. But they all look the same. None of them look very special. And look how tiny they are.”

She held up one of mine.

”See how big this one is? And look at it? Somebody cut out the heart by hand, and glued a doily on it. And drew more hearts. And look, he wrote his name so nicely. Gary.”

My mother held up each of the few cards I had received. I could see she was right.

“Maybe everyone in Russell’s class sent one to him. Probably everyone got the same cards. But if you look, none of them are very great. You may have gotten less, but each person really wanted to send you that card. Each one is special. And each one was made just for you.”

She was right.

I looked at every one of my cards and suddenly each was special. There was effort and thought put into every one. It didn’t matter how many I had received because the one’s I did get were the ones people really wanted me to have.

That’s the first time I learned the lesson less is more. It’s been a mantra ever since.

Today, with my own children, I try to apply this lesson to their friends.

“You don’t have to have a hundred of them. But you do need to have a handful that no matter what, you can always count on and who will always be there for you and you for them, no questions asked.”

Jay, my fifteen year-old “gets” it. Mimi, my six old, is still learning the importance of social skills and loyalty.

Neither has a zillion friends. But the ones they do have – are true.

“Less is more,” I tell them.

“Wouldn’t you rather have a million dollars than a dollar in your piggy bank?” asks Mimi. Oy! This kid!!!

“In that case,” I tell her, “you’re right. More is more. I would prefer the extra ka-ching.”

“But you’re young. Sometimes things are hard to explain. Just remember that in most cases, less is more. It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality. That’s what counts.”

By Dawn Yun

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Birth Plan

When I gave birth to my first son six years ago there was a push to create a birthing environment that the mother had control over.

I had no experience giving birth so I read voraciously on the topic to stay educated. In each book I read, the author suggested I have a “birth plan” that detailed what I wanted to take place during the birthing process.

So, being the overly-analytical and organized person that I was prior to having kids --- I literally wrote the plan:

1) Play relaxing music,
2) Arrange pillows brought from home around back, belly, etc.,
3) Walk around the hospital in early labor to minimize the pressure and pain; possibly get in the bath,
4) Assume “natural” birthing position,
5) Get epidural when pain becomes too much, breathe, relax, have my husband hold my hand and rub my feet.

I brought the paper to the hospital to share with the nurses and doctors the night before giving birth when I was checked in to be induced due to high blood pressure. I re-read it just before I packed it into my hospital bag and thought it looked great.

However, early the following morning, after the induction process began, I quickly started to mentally cross things off the plan:
1) Forgot to bring relaxing music that I wouldn’t be able to hear anyway because of all the people running around and machines making noise in the room,
2) Pillows from home were now useless even at home because of weird smelly hospital substance that made me feel like vomiting when they were near,
3) Walking would be tough with this IV attached to me for testing positive for Strep.

So far I was zero for three. The odds were not in favor of the plan. I had two more key plan expectancies and these were the ones that really mattered.

Then the pain started.

By early afternoon I finally rated the pain a “three” on a scale of one to ten which enabled me to get the epidural. Bring on plan item four. I absorbed the pain by moving into the natural birthing position. With the nurse’s help, I scooted down the bed for awhile which was slightly helpful for the pain (or it could have been the epidural finally kicking in). No telling how long I was in that position, but it was suddenly having the opposite effect of relief. Oh shit, now plan item four was looking to be a bust, too. I needed to be “topped off” with epidural as the staff termed it. I was thinking, 'Screw the fact that you left any room of drug liquid gold to top off in the first place.'

Go to plan item five, go to plan item five! It wasn’t working. Nobody was helping me relax. I must have been immune to this stupid drug and my husband was chewing somebody out because I was screaming in a LOT of pain.

Where was the foot rub?

The nurse kept telling me that there was no way the epidural wasn’t working and kept testing my feeling with a piece of ice on my leg. Raised to be polite, I humored her. “Can you feel this?” as she touched my leg gingerly with the ice. “Yes.” Touched my belly, “Can you feel this?” Less patiently, I responded, “Yes.” By now I wanted to rip the ice out of her hand and shove it in her eye.

Where was that stupid plan?

I should have written more rules like if the staff doesn’t believe you, let every measure be taken to make them believe. Again, “Can you feel this?” Okay, now it was just annoying. I had to make her stop in some way that didn’t get me sent to jail immediately after my baby was born. I lifted one supposedly numbed leg and then the other. Finally, she stopped with the ice.

Did she not read the plan? I put it on the bedside for everyone to refer to. Holy shit this was hurting.

Finally, the anesthesiologist showed up and tipped me forward noticing that the “natural” birthing position carefully listed as plan item four ripped the epidural out of my back.

Just in time to push.

I hate the plan which I now hope is stuck to gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe or maybe my husband found it and burned it in the smoking room when he went to yell at the staff and begged the anesthesiologist to put me out of my misery caveman style by hitting me over the head with his medical encyclopedia.

As he and the doc discussed my condition in front of me while I was trying to get this huge baby out, the possibilities of a C-section due to 1. depleting oxygen to my baby, 2. size of said baby, 3. size of mother who had been in labor so very long 4. and who knew what else? -- I wrote my own number six.

I looked the doctor in the eye and said, “Get it the fuck out!”

A big needle was administered, not over my head, but right where you never want to think of a big needle going into or a bowling ball coming out.

For my second birth I wrote the following plan:

1) Please get it the fuck out -- however you can.

By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

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You’re the mother of a gap-toothed, tow-headed, nine-year-old boy and you’ve been trying to pull this off. You realize there’s something un-Good-Mother-like, even un-American about you. But here’s your secret confession:

You hate baseball.

It wasn’t so bad in the T-ball years, those clueless little five-year-olds in baseball gear; the sheer novelty of it all in the low expectations. The ball set lovingly on the T-ball stand that the miniature players hacked away at. It was all so cute. Then the next year, you knew what to expect, how to not get snookered into bringing a dozen balloons for Opening Day Parade, wrestling them into your car -- only to get rained out. The following week you’d repeat the whole ordeal and eighty dollars later, you’d made your contribution to baseball.

A veteran now, you know how to elbow in and grab that sign-up sheet, scribble down your contribution of a dozen donuts.

Done!

Even still, four years later, something is rising up in you -- rebelling against the prospect of another season. You try to give yourself a break. It’s spring, the beach beckons and by now, you’ve been a sport spectator every Saturday since last fall. Soccer, floor hockey, indoor soccer; all keeping you bench-bound, often in freezing gyms with those other mothers who actually know the game-rules, and who appear to be interested.

You never played a single team sport as a kid. Your mother never sat on a bench to watch you do anything. Instead, she mostly sat on the couch and read, soundlessly turning pages and munching on a bowl of crackers. Occasionally, you or your sisters would make a bid for her attention, trying for conversation. She’d blink, like she couldn’t quite place you. She tried to look interested as she thrummed her fingers on the pages of her book, which lay open, calling her back. She licked the salt from her fingers, nodded, put another Wheat Thin on her tongue and sipped Tab, her Holy Communion.

You gave up and read beside her.

Somehow, your son has found his way into a little pack of five sports-minded boys. They are inseparable, playing together every recess and weekend. At first, when Sam was invited to join the group’s teams, you were all for it, hoping to save him from your childhood fate of being the shy, odd, teacher’s pet. Gradually, you realized the mothers had their sons in not one, but three simultaneous after-school activities. Football, gymnastics, chess, newspaper, math mania. The sheer logistics overwhelmed you. Not to mention the various articles of uniforms that needed to be purchased, washed, remembered. Or the making of team shirts, banners, coach’s gifts, engraved trophies, end-of-season parties. You wanted to go back to the toddler days when he happily covered himself in mud so he resembled a miner.

Your husband, God-bless-him, is not working this weekend and is at the game to give you a reprieve. “How’s it going?” you ask, trying for cheerful and low-key, when you call to check in.
“Oh, we’re fine,” he says. Then there’s yelling in the background and he’s screaming,

“Go, Sam! High-five!”

Your son just hit the only homerun of the season and all you can think of is, “Shit.” I am so screwed.

You drag yourself back to the field for the impromptu celebration, thinking how you’re sick of raising kids like hot-house flowers-- constantly taking their temperatures to judge yourself: OK or failing. What about our happiness? you want to ask these parents, sitting here placidly putting everybody else’s needs first. On the bench, you try to act like you’re following a play, alternate between discretely checking your watch and mild hyperventilation. Your hands hold your book like a prayer.

Your fingers strum the pages.

By Mary Beth McClure

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It's raining. Oh shit, its raining.

The kids painted croquet set is outside. I should go get it, but it’s dark and I'm tired and don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to do what I should.I feel the panic of one moment at Emily's birthday party today when we sang Happy Birthday.

I was fine during the party until we sang and blew out the candles. Just for a moment, my voice cracked and I looked at her. She was smiling, unsure of what we were doing, looking at the little bits of fire.

My body felt like it was melting into the floor, that pit of terror peeking open, remembering how close we were to not having this happen. And a rush of wanting to hide filled me like stepping on glass. I didn't want to turn and see all those kind people who love us and held us together when she was fighting for her life. I wanted to get away from the permanence of her heart condition.

I wanted to be alone and scream. This wanting to hide from a painful truth, is a silent part of most days. We moms are good at getting support, letting friends hold us, dealing by bonding. But I have a darker side in it, too, a childish rage full of deep loneliness where I stand on a different part of the river from my friends with healthy kids.

It’s a room without a door and very little light, no perspective or even compassion. Some of me is unhealed, tied to old places of mute aloneness and uncertain of the value of really agreeing to love another person.

In the black chill of this rainy night, after a raucous, bright party full of delightful people, I choose not to go rescue kids’ toys from the storm, not to seek comfort for myself, not to talk to my sweet, sweet husband. I am not the grownup who needs to be here to raise my child in the uncertainty in which we'll reside. I'm not that kind of mother. Is this one of the secret truths of motherhood? Even what we can't do, we do anyway?

My heart lives outside of me, tied to little beings who can't promise they will live to adulthood. And I have to stay, dragging the ugly parts of myself along.

By Avvy Mar

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I remember the moment I realized my son was no longer a baby.

I was watching him pull himself up on the couch and attempt to walk its length. He made noises as if he could talk, and when he got to the end of the couch he grabbed the toy he was after and stuffed it into his mouth.

I howled, “Great job, Julien! Way to go.”

Then I looked at him, standing on his little legs, all stretched out. He was nine months old. I thought, “He’s not a baby any more. He’s on his way to toddlerhood.”

Something in me felt sad.

This happened again, recently. At two and a half years old, our son must have had a growth spurt. Suddenly, his one-piece pajamas don’t quite fit him anymore. His body reaches almost to the full length of his crib, much of the baby fat on his face is gone, and he’s become taller and more slender. I watched him pretending to cook with pots and pans and realized, “Oh, my God. He’s not a toddler any more! He’s a kid.”

Again, something in me felt sad.

Three months ago he was sucking on his pooh bear. Today, he’s trying to feed it, put it to bed, and set it on the potty. A few months ago he whined for what he wanted. Now he says, “Please, Mama,” and “Please, Papa.” He knows how to operate the TV control, drink from a cup, and pull his pants down to sit on the potty. Watching his progress and seeing his personality deepen has been exciting. My husband and I are filled with exhilaration and joy.

As he reaches a new milestone, he leaves an old one behind.

I am sad for the loss of the old.

Every moment now is cherished; knowing that each moment counts. I snuggle him close to my heart, feel the warmth of his soft skin and bathe in that, just as I used to bathe in the scent of his hair as a baby.

I remind myself, “I am lucky to have this. Life is really, really good.”

By Cindy Bailey

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