The Writing Mamas Daily Blog

Everybody Into the Pool

2009-07-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

I went for a three-day summer jaunt to Calistoga this past week. But instead of lounging in a mud bath and being massaged, I spent my time in the pool with two eight-year-olds, my daughter, Miranda, and her good friend, Marlena.

My sister, Kathy, rounded out our little family. It wasn’t a true nuclear family, more of an extended one, auntie, mommy, daughter, and friend. But we had a good time watching movies in the room, eating cupcakes for breakfast, not setting eyes on a vegetable or anything green. I even conveniently forgot everything on my “must-do” list.

It was as close to a wild weekend as I get traveling with my daughter. My sister, Kathy, is a firm believer in being in the moment. This means whatever the girls want, they get. Our bedtime routine includes eating huge bowls of vanilla and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in bed while watching a “Harry Potter,” movie.

“But,” the guilty mother part of me says, “what about brushing your teeth?” To which the rest of my family looks bored, yawns and goes to sleep, at midnight.

This should mean a wake-up call of say, 10 a.m.? Instead, the girls bounce out of bed at 7 and I, slinging the entire contents of the hotel coffee maker down in one gulp say, “Sure, you can watch another Harry Potter movie.”

Kathy and I are sitting on the bed in our little room, listening to the growing boredom in front of the TV.

“This is too scary.”

“Then close your eyes.”

“I don’t want to close my eyes.”

“I want to watch the movie.”

That’s when a brilliant idea comes to mind, “Let’s go swimming!” I say, emptying the contents of the second pot of coffee. Kathy smiles at me and says “I’ll take the next shift.” She slumps down and goes to sleep.

The girls and I get dressed and walk out to the pool. That’s when I realize this hotel was going to be a bit, well, problematic.

You see, at first we had stayed at the kid-friendly one but it filled up. So we moved to another hotel with a covered pool. No worries about sunscreen here. But the two hot tubs in addition to the large pool should have given me a clue. More adults, fewer children. And with more adults, well, more worry on my part. Are the girls bothering them? Will I have to keep saying, “Don’t splash, kids.”

Miranda and Marlena ran to the pool. They jumped into the deep end. The splash, wave and giggles caused heads to turn in the hot tubs. One gentleman took a big gulp of his wine. Another woman pursed her lips and shook her head. A different lady shook out her “People” magazine with Michael Jackson on the cover, furrowed her brow and pulled the reading material so it covered her face.

I wondered as I dumped the towels on an empty table and followed the girls in, if these people had ever been children. Did they remember the fun of jumping into a pool on a hot day? Did they play “Ring around the Rosy?” in the shallow end?

Or was it my fault that their silence had been shattered by the laughter and energy of youth?

I walked over to the cooler hot tub where the woman resolutely kept her face glued to the magazine. I could see the girls easily while I stood in the tub. Their play made me smile. I remembered something Barbara Kingsolver wrote in “High Tide in Tucson,” her book of essays.

"The way we treat children - all of them, not just our own, and especially those in great need - defines the shape of the world we'll wake up in tomorrow." I wondered as I watched the man drinking at 10 in the morning and the woman devouring information on Michael Jackson, how they had been treated as children. I contemplated if they had played and no one had paid attention. I questioned why the splash and shriek of joy was harsh upon their ears.

I made my decision and climbed out of the adult hot tub and jumped into the deep end of the kids’ pool. I joined in “Ring Around the Rosy” and as I saw my child and her friend smile, I reveled in my delight in joining them, and I remembered why I love these getaway days.

By Georgie Craig

My Pretty Pony Cry

2009-07-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

Driving home after an all-around blasé late afternoon, I find myself sneaking glances in the rear-view mirror whenever possible.

Behind me sits my three-year strapped in her car seat, her face morphing into what I can only call grade B variations of preschool drama. First, a stern look to the right. Then head pivoted to the left. At my next glance: her eyes are shifted upward with her mouth forced into a comical downturn frown. Next: a furrowed brow, yet placid mouth. And on. Each gesture clearly not bringing on the desired result, affirmed by the eerie silence from my usual chatterbox.

There’s been a dark cloud lurking across her little face all day, just waiting for any storm clouds to gather. And now preceded with a soft “hick!” sound a flurry releases in a warbled “I never had a purpu Pretty Pony!” followed by “Ooooh-hoooo-hooooo” soft wails.

“A what?” I respond, “You’ve never owned a purple Pretty Pony toy? And so you’re going to start crying?” I can’t help but call her on this illogic, but for my daughter my questions only serve as odd affirmation of this apparent injustice, and launch her into louder wails.

Of all the things to cry about…then it hits me. Why not? Why not just let it out and wail for the lack of some random plastic horse with a chroma-colored mane in your life? If that’s all you have to lament about, let loose!

And she does.

Starvation, deprivation, annihilation … it’s a wonder that daily crisis don’t send us all into a tailspin. All day we have the choice to tune into world events or tune out best we can, all the while juggling life in a global economic crisis. Gloom and doom: how can it not seep under your skin, infesting your membranes with fear and worry.

Day after day.

And, yet, we persevere as parents and continue to rally, until in my case, a random commercial shows say, a grandparent embracing her grandchild and whoosh, my tear ducts overflow. If I’m truly lucky I’ll get in some boo-hooing.

Yes, nothing tops a good cry.

Letting emotions out: how better to strengthen reserves so you can persevere during the true testaments to the psyche? And in a life of joy and sorrow there will be many, many testaments.

Now have yourself a Pretty Pony Cry.

By Maija Threlkeld

A Mother FINALLY Gets to Rock Out

2009-07-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

Just back from a concert. A ROCK CONCERT!!!! The first one since my daughter was born nearly eight years ago.

This is sad.

I wanted to be happy.

So I invited a bunch of friends to hear The Motels and Berlin at the Marin County Fair. It was my daughter's first concert. She spent the nearly 1 1/2 hour Motels' set draped across me as we sat on chairs under a big tent asking if it would soon end. I still managed to sing along to "Only the Lonely," and danced and wiggled underneath my splayed daughter.

Look when a mother has to rock, she's gotta rock. I was still doing my mother thing, but also my own thing.

I needed it.

Then we took the kids for rides and games at the fair. We returned to our already laid out blankets outside the seating area as I knew sitting still wouldn't work with the children. I arranged the patchwork of blankets so our sight lines were perfect, and we were in front. Berlin came on and I never stopped dancing and singing. It was like the ghosts of the '80s swarmed and invaded me. I was a possessed, crazed, long in need of a night of fun mother.

I noticed a number of us in the audience.

A kid accidently kicked over my glass of wine. I didn't mind because I was kicking up a storm myself. Mimi and I even danced together to a couple of songs.

Then the evening ended with a fabulous fireworks display. All the mothers agreed -- we have to do this way more often and while we love our kids, next time, we're going to leave them home.

Still, it was sweet to share this rock concert, her first, with my daughter.

It was my past mingled with my present. What a gift.

By Dawn Yun

Oh, Shit. An Eco-Friendly Bag that Can Not Be Reused

2009-07-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

When I used to think about shit in a bag, I would envision some evil teen schoolmate running away from a hated neighbor’s door, with the bag engulfed in flames on the door mat. Obvious signs of boredom in the sleepy desert town that I grew up in.

Now I have a different vision.

My husband and I were driving home from a day of trying to get our five- and six-year old boys proficient in skiing and most of the trip had been shockingly uneventful.

Then as we neared Sacramento, the traffic slowed, expectedly during rush hour and we were sandwiched among the many people trying to get home. Then, arousing me from a daydream about a hot shower and sleep in my own bed, I heard an angelic voice from the second row in the van:

“I have to go potty.”

“Pee or poo,” I said.

“Poo. I have to go potty. I have to go potty.”

The increasing urgency of pitch in his voice was not a good sign. It had been just one hour prior that we had to make a specific stop in the middle of nowhere to do just that. I had given quick wave to the pizza parlor owner as I hurriedly trounced my pajama-clad boys to the bathroom.

“You are standing. Didn’t you say you had to poo?”

“No. I’m all done.”

“Are you sure? Why don’t you try again?”

“No,” he said.”

I was catapulted back to the present traffic jam by his clearly less angelic tone. Like a contractor who had just counted zero from ten on the biggest demolition project of his life:

“It’s gonna blow!”

My husband is behind the wheel, howling and saying through choked laughter:

“I’m sorry. I know he’s in pain…”

The considerably more panicked voice from the second row:

“Hurry, hurry. It’s gonna blow.”

Looking around, I see a GPS screen, an umbrella, three empty single-serve chocolate milk containers, a pen and a package of saltines. Oh Lord, not even a cup from a fast-food break.

My husband says in a MacGyver tone:

“Dump the bag of food and use it.”

Mind you, this is my re-usable eco-friendly near-canvas bag. I picture removing my shoe as a receptacle and decide all other choices are grim. The bag it is.

“Stand up, unbuckle, get your pants down.”

I am breaking laws that I hadn’t even realized existed and have no idea how I am going to make up for the dichotomy of imploring to my children that they are NEVER to unbuckle their seatbelt in a moving vehicle.

“Get over here, bend over and go.”

My husband is trying to move to the side of the road, but nobody is letting our car in. I am trying to position the bag to not get any waste on me while contorting from the front passenger seat. I look up at my other son in the seat next to his squatting brother, and see both fingers shoved up his nose. He says:

“I’d gonna vomid.”

“Don’t you dare!” from the driver’s seat, still striving for the highway exit, so close in distance but so far away in time.

Wiped and strapped safely back in his seat, the smell permeated the van. I had to try as hard as I could to not think about the shit in the bag next to my foot. Someone should have told me years ago that these were job requirements of a mom. And as for Dad, I made him throw the bag away at the next pizza place when we were finally yet untimely able to exit.

“Windows down. I don’t care if it’s raining.”

By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

Holding Tight

2009-07-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

“When Mommy’s old and shrively will you carry me too?” I ask my four-year old son hoisting him onto my side while walking into Whole Foods Market.

“Oh don’t ask me that anymore!” he snaps back annoyed, before instructing firmly: “When you’re OLD and shrively I will, but not while I’m a kid.”

I chuckle to myself at the response. I remember the first time his solid frame led me to ask that question. His face took a contemplative look before he eagerly offered “Yes!” with a jubilant smile. I think he too envisioned the “big and strong man” he hopes to become.

He and I are running errands together having left his two sisters home with Dad. It’s a rare excursion out for just the two of us. When he requested that I carry him I was tempted to lecture about how he’s a big boy and can walk. Maneuvering a clunky metal shopping cart one-handed is just never appealing. I look at him from the corner of my eye, “Are you tired?”

“No,” he rubs his cheek against mine. “I just want you to carry me.” He leans his head in the crook of my neck before opting to keep his cheek pressed against mine as we continue on our way.

Together we meander down the aisles discussing what vegetables he hates, what apples to buy his sisters and what’s still on the list, all the while our heads leaning together, cheek-to-cheek. While we wait our turn in the meat department, I remind myself to take a moment to take in this moment. I feel William’s warm breath as he asks about the various meats, a butter-soft cheek pressed close and little arms resting on my shoulders. Tomorrow he may opt to never be carried but for now I have my little boy.

On the ride home he calls over the Jack Johnson music, “Mommy, I’m going to die the same time as you.” I repeat what I heard for clarification and he simply offers, “Yes.” I look back in the rear-view mirror and catch a glimpse of his content, smiling face looking out the window.

The next night while turning out the light I assure that I’ll come back and snuggle once he’s asleep. “Do other boys have their Mommies come back and snuggle?”

The question catches me off guard. Already feeling the pressure of peers? Just yesterday it seemed that he asked me to stay and snuggle. Wait, it was yesterday, so, “Yes,” I readily and assuredly reply.

“And ugh, I don’t need these things here anymore. Just give them to Grace!” he offers while flinging two stuffed animals off of his bed. I find myself actually feeling a pang of sadness for these once loved stuffed creatures, coveted Henry the bear and Telly the cat whose roles have suddenly shifted from loved ones to just things. But I take my cue and assure William that his little sister Grace will take good care of Henry and Telly.

For all that I love to watch my children stretch and grow I hold tight to these moments of a soft cheek pressed close and little hands reaching out. Life in this stage is a rhythm of holding tight to memories and continually letting go so my children can stretch and grow. And somewhere in this rhythm I will continue to find my groove by taking my cue from them.

By Maija Threlkeld

The Man in the Mirror

2009-06-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

First there was shock, then came the thought, "Who will take care of his children?"

That was what went through my head when I heard that Michael Jackson had died.

I immediately thought of the woman who bore his first two children and hoped it would not be her. She was paid to be a surrogate, gave up her rights and from what I've read about her would rather raise horses than those kids.

According to several news reports she said something that she certainly did not have to share. Not now during such a painful time for his children. She said that Michael was not their biological parent.

He was their father. They knew him as Dad. Fortunately, the children are with his mother and his family. Hopefully their nanny, who has helped raise them for most of their lives, will continue in that role.

There is something else about the death of Michael Jackson that has bothered me. My own guilt and judgement about him in life and the almost saintly quality I've given him now that he is gone.

Death does that. Bad memories often give away to good, and they are what remain.

His skin was widely believed to be bleached. Now journalists are saying he really did have vitiligo, which splotched his skin and turned it pale. He also suffered from lupus, a harsh anti-immune disease. Perhaps that is why he wore surgical masks and allegedly took a number of drugs. That and years of strenuous performing left him in pain.

One thing I never believed was the molestation charges. The dentist who said Jackson abused his son, actually used a truth serum on his own child during a root canal. Can you imagine? Why did Jackson pay up? He said it just wasn't worth it. Haven't we all felt like that about one thing or another? OK, maybe not to the out-of-tune scale of $25 million. But understandable.

And then like a modern Jean Valjean in Les Miserable there was the district attorney who was going to bring Michael down regardless of the facts. The infamous molestation trial. Michael in his pajamas. So many, including myself, thought he was faking it. But I have spoken to people who have been on trial or have had family members who have been and all said they were on medication for much of their ordeals. So, apparently, quite understandably now, was Michael. A weak case. One that should never have been brought, Michael won, but he lost so very much. The financial and emotional strain cost him his career, his credibility and he became the equivalent of a cartoon character. A freak. Someone not of this world.

He was none of those things. He was a devoted father. A loving son. A caring brother. A man who, literally, thrilled millions and helped create the music video genre of MTV.

Michael Jackson is an object lesson in glass houses and to look at our own reflections before casting stones. Only then might we put down those rocks, and cast aside our harsh words and too easy judgements.

Michael Jackson is now in the same category as Elvis. His father said he would be bigger in death than he was in life. He left a legacy far larger than that. He had three children, just twelve, eleven and seven. Far too young to be orphaned. They are what is most important about Michael Jackson. He was their parent. He was their father. He was his children's dad.

By Dawn Yun

Sucker Punched

2009-06-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

The three of us sat idly chatting while observing our young children practice their strokes during swim team practice. A pleasant enough afternoon safely protected from the sun’s harsh rays under the cool shade of a large patio umbrella.

A mild, uneventful afternoon watching our children.

Conversation meandered from good nutrition for our children to school volunteer activities, which led to my sharing the juggle of combining my work with the children’s schedules.

Somewhere in the midst of suggestions about daycare and nannies I asked one of the mothers, a former teacher, if she was considering going back to teaching sometime down the road.

She turned to me and replied confidently, “No, I enjoy being a Mom.”

I didn’t know how to answer.

My three-year old, dressed as Belle from Beauty and the Beast, snuggled against me before scampering off to find a friend, her yellow gown billowing about her. The “princess phase” is in full tilt at our home and I can readily recite the soundtrack from the Princess and the Pauper movie.

The kids and I laughed on the way home from picking up their third grade sister about Grace’s interest in all things girly. Grace delights in the attention.

Gazing across the pool I watch my six-year old’s determined arms as he swims toward his instructor. He knows that I’m rooting for him. Strong arms! Strong legs! When he gets out of the pool inevitably he’ll race to me, hugging his wet body against me, eager to share how much better he’s swimming.

I think to my third grader’s determination to complete her homework first thing after school. She’s right now busy at work on a book of illustrated poems, inspired by Shel Silverstein, whose work I shared with her class.

They are my love.

I enjoy our life.

I enjoy being their Mom.

But why should I have to justify that?

I breathe in the still air and offer as evenly as I can, “I enjoy being a Mom, too. I also enjoy my work and am glad to have it.”

No more said but inside the wind’s still knocked out of me.

By Maija Threlkeld

Stop-Light Memories of Soccer Games Past

2009-06-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

I was waiting at the intersection for the signal to turn green. Suddenly, I heard sequels of laughter from the car next to me. I turned and saw a Volvo station wagon full of girls in soccer uniforms. They were about eleven or twelve chattering among themselves. The mom driving was oblivious to the noise coming from the back seat of her car.

At first I was relieved it wasn’t me behind that steering wheel. I couldn’t imagine driving one more carpool to one more soccer game. For years I drove my two girls and their teammates to games all over the San Francisco Bay Area. I spent many a weekend at tournaments, but one of the perks of endless hours of sitting through those games was comparing notes with the other moms about the whereabouts of our daughters.

As our girls entered their teen years and boys and drugs circled their lives, we grew closer as a community of moms. We began to rely on those weekend morning soccer games to review events from the night before.

I’ll never forget the first time my oldest daughter snuck out of the house. It was a Friday night and I had come into her room around two a.m. to turn off the light. Much to my surprise the bedroom window was wide open and pillows were stuffed under the covers on the beds where she and a girlfriend were supposed to be sleeping. Two recycle bins were stacked on top of each other beneath the window. They were the stairs for the “escape.” I should have been furious but I had to laugh at the absurdity of their scheme. I felt like I was in a “B” movie. Fortunately, I lived in a safe, small town where I knew most of the families with school-age kids. On this occasion she and her friend had snuck out the night before a Saturday soccer game. My solace was in knowing I’d get the details the next morning comparing notes with the other moms.

Sure enough, it turned out that several of our daughters had snuck out and met up at a local park. Some of the girls had said they were spending the night at a friend’s house. Some, like my daughter, just jumped out the window. By the time we sorted out who said what to whom, we were laughing.

We discovered this was the best way to parent our teenage girls: throw out a big net and make sure all the girls were safely in it. We devised an appropriate consequence for their actions. We made a pact: each parent would ground her daughter for the same amount of time. No girl could then complain she had the “worst mom in the world” because as a community of moms, we had agreed on the punishment for all of them. We later discovered the girls weren’t upset by their fates. They were safe and they knew it. Much to our relief we had a system for finding them when they were “lost.”

The light turned green and the Volvo with the soccer girls sped ahead. I wished the mom good luck. I didn’t miss the car-pooling, but I did miss the camaraderie among the moms which developed, not because our daughters were “good girls” playing soccer, but because they were bad girls testing limits to be themselves.

By Marilee Stark

Music of a Different Sort for a Mother's and Baby's Ears

2009-06-27T00:33:00.000-07:00

We were all tired.

My four-year old was exhausted from a day of heavy play at Stinson Beach; my eleven-month old was pooped from missing his morning nap so that a friend could drive both our kids to the beach, and my husband and I were tired because we’d just run the Dipsea Race from Mill Valley to Stinson before playing three hours worth of Frisbee, sand castle building, and chase-the-crawling baby.

Both kids fell asleep the minute we got in the car to drive home, but I knew that my son needed more than the thirty-five minutes of sleep that the drive afforded. So I unloaded my husband and daughter at our house and kept driving sleeping Asa round and round the town of Larkspur.

I’d hoped I could pull over into a nice, shady parking spot, leave the car running, and sleep while he snoozed, but the minute we stopped moving, he’d wake up. My butt and quads and hamstring were all tight and achy and I desperately needed to get out of the sitting position, but even more than that, I needed Asa to get more sleep so he could make it through the rest of the day without crumbling.

So on I drove.

I was too tired to venture north or south; I knew that getting stuck in any kind of traffic would put me over the edge. Instead, I made myself intimately familiar with the back streets of Larkspur while listening to the Playboy channel on our new satellite radio.

Who knew there was such a thing as a Playboy channel? Who knew you could really say cunt, jizz, and tea bagging on the radio? Who knew I’d be driving my baby son around listening to callers complaining about their erectile dysfunction/ distaste for oral sex/ anxiety about a wife’s gift of a threesome?

I stumbled on the station while exploring the essentially disappointing selection that our newly purchased Sirius Satellite offered. And you know what? It beats the monotony of Alice 97.3 or the tired children’s mix of Baby Beluga, Get Your Jammies On, Slippery Fish, that’s for damn sure.

For a tired mother whose libido could stand a boost, listening to people talk about sex for an hour while cruising the suburbs probably isn’t such a bad thing. I just need to remember to change the channel before my daughter gets in the car; otherwise I’m going to have a lot of tricky questions to answer.

By Eliza Harding Turner

Gluten-Free Writing

2009-06-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

The great thing about writing is that you get to take life's challenges, and turn them into opportunities for assignments!

My article "Gluten Free Dining in the Bay Area" in June's Parents’ Press newspaper is an example of this. Having a three-year-old son who is gluten free, I've become a reluctant expert on where to dine without wheat. But I also learned a lot about Celiac disease as I researched this article, so it added to my conversation today with my son's doctor at his physical.

So now we get to decide if we want an official Celiac diagnosis, which would mean putting him back on gluten, having a blood test, and possibly an endoscopy, and if in fact he does have Celiac disease, or is just gluten intolerant, we would just end up back where we are now- avoiding gluten. I'm not sure if it's worth all that, but we'll see.

For now, I'm just grateful for all the food options we have that are gluten free.

By Kristy Lund

Top Ten Reasons to Clean Your Refrigerator

2009-06-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

10. Rewards sloth—the longer you put off grocery shopping, the easier it is to clean!

9. No moral quandaries about whether discards are suitable for Goodwill.

8. Potential for discovering medical breakthrough growing on leftovers.

7. Possibility for weight loss if growth on leftovers results in food poisoning instead of Nobel Prize for Medicine.

6. As productive procrastination goes, it is more gratifying than cleaning your sock drawer.

5. Discover container of leftover chocolate sauce, rear bottom shelf. Yum.

4. Uncover tonight’s Mystery Dinner to augment Found Dessert (see #5).

3. Unlike most household chores, does not need to be repeated for a really long time.

2. Out with the old! (May generalize to closets, hairstyles, and boxes of adorable infant clothes that no longer fit your middle schooler.)

1. Make way for the new!!! (OK, it’s a cliché, but applicable to untried recipes, a better wardrobe, and material for write ‘em fast blogs.)

By Lorrie Goldin

A Favorite Aunt Visits Her Favorite Niece

2009-06-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

My best friend, Amy, is visiting.

This coincided perfectly with my daughter, Mimi, seven, getting out of school. The two have been inseparable. It's such a joy to listen and watch them interact. Amy doesn't have children so she takes her responsibility of being a godmother and Mimi's favorite "aunt" very seriously.

That means some hard core silliness, tickles, playing with stuffed animals, and chasing each other. Mimi will affectionately lay her head on Amy's chest, while her aunt holds her close.

The loud moments are as precious as the quiet ones.

Amy has been my closest friend since we were both eleven. To see her being as tight with my daughter as she is with me makes me enormously happy.

Mimi has it all figured out. Amy, her husband, "Uncle Vinnie," Maggie, her cat and Mimi's other "aunt," and godmother, Cal, and her family (husband and dog) will move to California so we can all be together all the time.

Amy can't move. She likes where she lives in Washington state, she has clients and her husband has a job. Cal would love to move to California but circumstances at the moment dictate it will likely be a few years before that becomes a reality.

I wish both lived here, too.

While Amy remains I revel in the pristine love between her and my daughter, as she delights in everything Mimi says and does. I observe this close-up and at a distance. Mimi is so easy to love. She's a sweet girl, with a kind heart, a fun disposition, and a fast mind.

Of course, I do enjoy that while Amy plays with Mimi I get a bit of a respite from parenting. But it is only momentarily as Mimi comes bounding over to share the love, which I love.

Mimi is my greatest gift. My absolute joy. She makes me smile.

While children can sometimes be pains in the ass -- be honest! -- the vast majority of the time they are our greatest source of pleasure.

There are only has a few more days left with Amy. Mimi will treasure each one. When we take her to the airport on Saturday, my daughter will cry. The memories she will have, that all three of us will hold, shall last forever.

By Dawn Yun

When It Comes to Accumulating Things, Less Really is More

2009-06-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

Why is it that every day my daughter expects something new? From a stuffie (stuffed animal) to clothes to a piece of candy.

It is the something/anything syndrome.

I am trying to teach her that we are in a recession. Her pronunciation of it is difficult enough. Though it is the explanation that counts.

Money. Have to save. People are losing their jobs. No Daddy still has his work. Yes, Mommy is still bringing in money, too, however small it may be.

Mimi does get it. The problem is that she still wants it -- something/anything.

No, has become a very big word in my vocabulary: as have -- be appreciative, be grateful for what you have, not for what you don't, maybe for your birthday.

Confession: I want things, too. The worst the recession gets, the more I want, even though I've never needed less.

My car is perfectly fine. It is a 2001, in decent shape and has only 60,000 miles. Yet, I will have a new car before the end of the year. This week I will test drive the new Prius, in black, and the Honda Insight. I feel as though I have to make up for our family's lack of ecological karma, what with two SUVs polluting the planet. Plus, the inside of the Prius, the way it lights up, I feel like I'm on a space ship ready to take off (though I think the acceleration is probably a tad different).

My latest obsession is the new iPhone. About three months ago I bought an iPhone, even though I instinctively knew that a new one would be out in the summer (despite Apple and AT&T telling me not to count on it). I didn't think I could wait until then so I bought the one they had at the time. Then the iPhone 3GS just came out. It is twice as fast, double the battery life, has a much improved camera and more importantly, video recording capabilities that can be immediately downloaded to YouTube.

Mind you, I've already loaded the new software for my old iPhone onto my current phone and it provides many of the improvements found on the new phone. You can write in landscape mode, it has an audio recorder, you can cut and paste information.

Still, it's not the same. I want the new one.

There is the small matter of the $500 I would have to pay AT&T to get a new phone, even though mine is only three months old. There is no way I am going to do that.

Cheapness wins over function every time when my brain cells are all firing. I will keep my iPhone. Besides, I don't need the new one because I already have a flip camcorder for downloading to UTube, which I rarely use.

Still, every ad for the new iPhone speaks to me. I try not to listen.

Something/anything. Am I really any different than my daughter? I want, want, want, too.

I very much use the mantra of -- less is more. Mimi very much neither uses, believes, nor understands the concept. One day she will. Fewer things that really count, have meaning and memory are what matter. Not the number of them.

On the car, though, that one I feel I do need a change. I want to leave a smaller carbon footprint behind (my husband rolls my eyes at this. I kinda do too. As soon as the words spring off my tongue, I think, 'You are so full of shit. You just want a new car.')

The truth is I could lose pretty much every thing I have and I would be fine. It is a lesson I continually teach my daughter and one I still need to remind myself.

Something/anything? How about nothing? There is something very elegant about it. I think my daughter and me might try it more often.

By Dawn Yun

A Lesson to All Teenagers -- Call Your Mothers

2009-06-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Lying. This is a biggie for me, being a child of divorce with abandonment issues.

I can handle most any kid-related screw-up, but lying. The phone didn't ring, allowing me to sleep until five a.m. when I woke with a start. I knew the second my eyes were open that he had not called. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and punched the missed calls log. Nothing. Lifted the receiver on the house phone. No interrupted dial tone indicating a message. He had not called when the concert was over or when he safely arrived at his friend's house. Two checkpoints skipped and it was now five-fifteen and I was full of adrenaline. I called his cell -- straight to voice mail. I called his friend's cell. Same. I called his again. Same.

I got dressed.

"Don't go over there. It's too early, you'll wake everyone up," my husband sleep talks from the bed.

"Uh-huh,” I agree as I pull my hair into a ponytail and start to wash my face.

I called his cell again after I got my shoes on and headed for the back door. Voicemail again.

I'm pissed and a little scared. Mom mode. Odds are he just screwed up. Of course his friend's mom or someone would have called if there were an accident. Or an arrest. Or he'd OD'd. And then there was the possibility that his friend's mom was too distraught over the death of her own son to tell me about mine. Or they hadn't found the body yet after the car went off the bridge. All this ping- ponging through my uncaffeinated brain as I wind up the narrow redwood-lined road to the house where I was going to yank my brat kid from a warm bed to kick his ass.

I didn't knock or ring the bell. I let myself in through the garden gate, and down the steps passed the pool to the first door. I knocked and listened to the birds and noted that the sun hadn't yet come over Blithedale Ridge. My cell rings. My husband, urging me to go get coffee, calm down and wait an hour before I barge in and embarrass our son.

“Good idea,” I say. “OK.”

I knocked again and a sleepy teenager answered. My guy was across the pool in the main house and I asked the boy if he would tell him that his mom was here. When he came to the door he looked worried, and asked what was wrong.

"You didn't call."

"Yeah I did."

"No, you didn't. Get your things and meet me in the car." I thanked the sleepy messenger and walked back up to the street and waited for him.

He didn't waste time, threw his things in the back and got in the passenger seat barefoot and bleary eyed. He insisted that he had called after the show, at eleven, until I showed him my call log on my phone and asked to see his. Nothing since nine p.m. Then he says he was too caught up in the moment, that his phone, keys and jacket were rolled in a ball under the seat where he couldn't reach them.

Excuses.

I am so relieved to have him in the car and that he is whole and alive -- and so fucking pissed at him that I tear up when I say, "You lied. That is the part that disappoints me the most. Why would you feel that you need to lie to me? You had an opportunity to establish a foundation of trust here. It was so easy. All you had to do is call and check in. I want you to go out in the world and be with friends and see music and have fun. I want you to show me that you can do this and make good choices and be safe and check in. I have to ask myself, what would cause you to not check in? You are always so good about this. And then you lie. That's the worst part."

Now, my six-foot, two-inch, one hundred eight-five pound boy is shaking and tearing up and apologizing. "I screwed up. I'm sorry, but I swear I didn't drink or do drugs."

I nod, "Well, fine. But you also swore that you called. So there's that."

I'll never know why he didn't call. I do know he'll at least think about it next time, and hopefully he will get it right. That morning I made him sit with me at the Depot café and have coffee and chat for over an hour while the sun came up. He was clearly uncomfortable and really didn't look too good. I enjoyed that. His leash has been drastically shortened and did he ever make a nice Mother's Day breakfast for me the next morning, complete with coffee just how I like it. He volunteered to unload the dishwasher and asked if he could help me plant tomatoes. He and his brother took me to see “Star Trek.” He accepted his younger brothers’ ribbing about how “mom kicked your ass.”

Sadly, I know I'll do it again.

By Mary Allison Tierney

From the Mouth of Babes Come All Kinds of Words

2009-06-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

Last week, while clearing away the dinner dishes, my boys, Ethan, five, and Alex, three, began their debate.

Ethan, in an authoritative voice, fired the first shot with, “Storm troopers have cooler weapons than Jedis, you know.”

“No, Jedis are good guys,” answers Alex. He doesn’t even know a light saber from a blaster.

You’re so stupid, Alex. Storm troopers have cooler ships.”

“No, Jedi!” Alex pounded his fist on the table.

“Hey!” I interjected, “Next one to fight with his brother eats dessert alone in the dining room!”

Alex turned on me.

“Well, if you put me in the dining room, I’m gonna go postal on you!”

Where do they get this stuff? It should have tipped me off back when Ethan was two and he dropped his ice cream cone.

“GODFUCKINGDAMNIT!” he yelled at the sidewalk.

As parents, we all know that kids are little parrots. So, when Ethan began repeating Daddy’s swears, I threatened to wash Daddy’s mouth out with soap. Now that little Alex is of parroting age, he knows how to remind Kirk, “Watch your language,” because he hears it from me. Swearing has become a thing of the past.

Sometimes, I find that the ugliest things I say get repeated. Last Thanksgiving, with the entire extended family assembled, Ethan announced, “Mommy says we can’t hang out with (relative’s name omitted) because she’s lousy with kids.”

Now, that required some explaining.

Not all of the things my kids repeat are that hideous. I often hear from Alex things like, “You did such a good job with your dinner, Mommy. Now you get some dessert,” or, when I’m on the toilet, I’ll get a reassuring pat on the knee from him.

“I’m so proud that you pooped in the potty, Mommy.” Yeah, like I’d ever be caught wearing a Pull-Up!

Right before the November election, Alex asked Ethan why George Bush gets the thumbs-down, and without missing a beat, Ethan said, “Because he’s a moron.”

Kids say the darndest things, don’t they?

My boys have mastered the parentese, and they’ve also gotten the context. Yesterday, we were putting on our shoes to go to the park. In a rare display of fraternal helpfulness, Ethan assisted Alex with the Velcro on his sneakers. I was tying my laces, musing on Ethan’s maturity, when he asked me, “Do you really know how to tie your own shoes?”

“Yeah,” I said. He sighed and shook his head. “Sometimes I just can’t believe how grown up you are!”

Right back atcha, kiddo.

By Mindy Uhrlaub

Godparents Make the Best Friends and Relatives

2009-06-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

When it came time to chose godparents for my daughter I gave it careful thought. I wanted her to have two godparents and wanted them to be people she could always turn to as I had a sense -- correct I might add -- that my daughter and I would fight often because we would be so much alike.

We do and we are.

Amy, my best friend since I was eleven, is visiting today. Mimi is camping with her father and brother. I am Jewish. I don't camp. I hotel.

The night of Amy's arrival from Seattle we will have too much wine and laugh.

Come Sunday morning when my family returns, Mimi will jump into Amy's arms and shower her face with kisses. Amy will stare at her with wonder and joy, the same way I look at my daughter every day. I will watch the scene play out exactly as I had envisioned it seven years earlier. I can imagine it seven years from now. And years and years beyond that.

I explained to Amy that her role wasn't just to buy gifts, but to be a second mother to Mimi. To bestow her wisdom to my daughter when she is perplexed and needs an opinion outside of her mother's.

The same with my friend, Cally, who lives in Florida, and is an artist. Art, besides being a rock star and a vet, appear to be Mimi's calling. When Cal calls now they talk intensely about drawing. Aunt Cal offering advice about blending colors and how to show perspective.

My daughter is blessed to have two wonderful godmothers. I am lucky to have them as friends. For we love each other unconditionally.

It helps that both are hysterical, fun, playful, insightful and smart.

They'll always have us. And we will always have them.

By Dawn Yun

Guitar Gaze, Keeps Family Ablaze

2009-06-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Ever since I took up the guitar about a year and a half a go I've skipped my mid-life crises because I'm so happy strumming.

Without dreams of fame or fortune just appreciation for making a D minor chord blend with its cousin, A minor. I feel transported.

My guitar is not on display in the living room for show. It's for playing. I practice for fifteen to thirty minutes daily.

At first my family was incredibly supportive. Now I have to give them warnings before I play. The sounds of doors closing sharply throughout the house make their own kind of music.

Lately, I notice that even the cat leaves the house, slipping though a hole in the screen door, to take refuge in the garage, safe from my sounds under holiday wrappings.

While my guitar playing may sound like noise to them, for me the sound couldn't be sweeter. Nor I any happier.

To my family and anyone who hears me playing while passing by, I promise to try and lower the volume. And, I might add, "Rock on!"

By Dawn Yun

Vacation for Mom -- Family Free with Friends Who Are Family

2009-06-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

School is out for summer!

School is out forever!

Well, no, not really. But it is over for me for the next two and a half days! Woo-woo-hoo-hoo!!!

My husband usually takes the kids camping for approximately eighteen hours. Enough time for me to say, "I have the night to myself." In the wee hours of the a.m. I see them climbing down the front stairs. "And the morning for my family."

I am grateful for the free time however short it may be.

But this is long one. Roughly two days is equivalent to a week for me.

With the family gone, I read, write and lounge.

Tomorrow morning a friend is visiting from Palo Alto. About one p.m. she will leave so I can pick up at the airport my best friend, Amy, in from Seattle who is visiting for a week. Amy called last week to say she had an unexpected opening her her schedule and wondered if she could come and visit.

This was untrue. Unbeknown to me, her mother revealed that Amy's intentions for suddenly coming were, "Dawn's had a lot of deaths the last year. I know it's been hard. I have to come and be with her." A true BFF. Her mother is my second mother (pronounced muth-a). A New York Jewish mother if ever (pronounced ev-a) there was one. I am lucky to have this family in my life since I was eleven.

Amy enjoys her pot. Not my thing. So I've been trying to score some from a friend who lives life firmly on the edges. Her telephone is not accepting voice message, texts or anything that resembles communications. Oh, well. I have two great bottles of wine, an entire evening without children and we can have a gabfest.

This looks to be a wonderful beginning to what I feel certain will be a great summer.

By Dawn YunPublish Post

Once a BFF, Always a BFF

2009-06-17T00:01:00.001-07:00

My friend Deb called me last October. I hadn’t seen her in about seven years. Our 35^th high school reunion was coming up and she wondered if I’d want to go with her. I was thrilled to hear her voice although I’d been hurt and confused during the past several years, wondering why she’d let our friendship wither. I’d long considered her one of my closest friends, but calls and cards had gone unanswered for a few years before I’d stopped contacting her.

Toughest to digest was that our friendship moved from the slow lane to the exit ramp when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age forty-four. I so wanted to support her through her treatments but she did not need me. She had her husband, her sisters and other friends who lived closer. I heard enough to know she’d survived, but her not needing or wanting my support forced me to realize our friendship had eroded more than I’d been willing to admit. A few years later, my holiday card was returned with a red stamp of No Forwarding Address. I took this as the final signal that I should let the relationship go.

The high school reunion was a blast. Deb spent the weekend at my house. We gabbed for hours. She made no mention of her silence over the years and I’d decided beforehand that I would welcome her back, no questions asked. I honestly don’t think the years of silence were anything personal – probably more to do with living one-hundred miles away, raising two teenagers and finding time with a husband who worked long hours. I can’t say I felt no resentment but mostly I was glad to have her back.

And she is back. She initiated my family’s spending a weekend at her home. We’ve met for lunch. She sent me a lovely bouquet of pink roses when I hit a tough patch at work along with a card saying how happy she is that we’re back in touch.

She also asked me to join her this July in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. We’ll trek twenty-six miles in San Francisco over two days. We met for a twelve-mile training walk last week. We exchanged fundraising tips, sock recommendations and organic snacks. I’ll be there for her on July 11^th and 12^th. We’ll walk together to honor her ten years as a breast cancer survivor and our thirty-eight years of friendship.

By Marianne Lonsdale

Maybe There Should Be Camps for Parents

2009-06-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

It’s the first week of April and I have not signed my children up for summer camp yet. The squares on my calendar spanning from the middle of June to the end of August – the 10 full weeks that make up summer vacation -- are blank.

I am at once calm and panicked. I am proud not to have succumbed to the pressure to plan our summer schedule half a year in advance. I am terrified that those summer days will blend into weeks and then months of whining boredom.

Like Christmas decorations, the camp brochures seem to arrive earlier each year. Glossy pamphlets began filling my mail box in early February. Sorting the mail tempts me to live not in the moment, but to propel myself months into the future. On a cold, grey, mid-winter afternoon, I give in and anticipate what we’ll be doing the first week in August.

I imagine spontaneously packing up the car with a cooler and towels to head off to the beach looking like some family out of the Lands' End catalog. I picture us taking long bike rides, going on picnics, working a lemonade stand, making hand-cranked ice cream. But experience tells me that after a few days of hanging out with Mom, my kids will crave time with their friends. And their friends won’t be free to join us on an outing to the beach. They will all be in camp.

With resignation, I settle down to register fearing most camps will already be full. I sift through the pile of promotions. The possibilities are endless, overwhelming, and the cost often outrageous. I’ll need a spread sheet and a GPS device just to figure out whether I can promptly deliver two children to two different camps in opposite directions during the correct week – the week their best friends can also attend. (I have been known to show up at last week’s sports camp only to realize that my child is currently attending art camp on the other side of town.)

My 7-year-old daughter and I narrow the choices down to horseback riding, musical theater, cooking, ceramics, and gymnastics. My 11-year-old son considers soccer, kayaking, clay animation, golf, newspaper reporting, and fencing. Suddenly, there are not enough weeks of summer (or dollars in my bank account) to accommodate their preferences let alone squeeze in a family vacation.

I throw up my hands in dismay. I want to go to camp.

By Tina Bournazos

An Unexpected Twist on Parenting

2009-06-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

You know the scene in the movie when the Mom goes into the kid’s room to give a last good night kiss, and instead they find a faux human made of pillows, and the kid has run off somewhere?

When our daughter was missing from her bed, I did not react as calmly as Donna Reed might have in Father Knows Best. I don’t know who would have known best in the situation I found myself in, but it sure wasn’t me in that moment of discovery.

“OH MY GAWD!!!!” I screamed out for my husband. “HENRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Katie has been a rambunctious teenager. She has come in too late, had too much to drink, too much to smoke and gone too far away from home without asking if she could beforehand.

She has been an honorable student and polite to strangers, but when it comes to getting her to put away her laundry or answering her cell phone when she’s out, she’s been a challenge.

I recognize Katie’s rage because it’s not that different from my own adolescent rants that still emerge from time to time. Her beliefs are interwoven with contradictions but she can always justify them and sometimes what she says is hard to argue with. According to Katie, organized religion is the root of all evil, but she loves to rock out to Jimmy Cliff. (Ganga Man God.) She thinks the police abuse their power in most situations but wonders why the police are never available to help the homeless people. Homeless people should be respected as real and valuable however, her parents (Henry and me) have acted in ways that have not led her to respect us.

The list goes on.

Young people change the world, I know that, and so, when I found the rolled up clothes and pillows under the covers instead of Katie, after my shock I became quite thoughtful.

Maybe it was time for me to change.

Katie has just graduated from high school, it is the summer and I can’t stand fighting anymore. Henry and I did not devise a grand consequence for Katie after we tracked her down by texting all of her friends and eventually got her tucked away in her room.

As we lay in bed at two a.m., wondering how to be better parents to our teenaged daughter, we were exhausted. “Maybe it’s time to let her go a little,” Henry said.

Usually I was the bad cop parent, but at this point, I was too tired to enforce any more strict rules. “Yes,” I agreed. “What we’re doing is obviously not working.”

On Sunday morning after the debacle, we had “the talk.” We took a very different approach.

“Katie,” I said. “We know that you’re a good girl and are sure that most probably you regret the decision you made last night. We have a proposal for you that we’d like to try on an experimental basis. ”

She looked at me suspiciously.

“We would like to lift your curfew.” The surprised smile and delight on her face was large.

“Show us that you can handle it, which means you cannot be unreasonably late every night. Keep in touch with us so we know where you are, and help out around the house more. Show us more respect so we can give you more responsibility.”

Henry was unusually quiet. We usually spoke over each other during these group parenting events, but we both remained calm, and hopeful.

Like I said, this is an experiment, and we will see how it goes one night out at a time. Letting go, separating, leaving home, it is all so uncomfortable and awkward; but it does have to happen eventually.

By Gloria Saltzman

A Friendship Based on Illusion

2009-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

The baby and toddler years will always be amongst my most memorable memories. It wasn’t easy finding a group of women who felt the same exact way I did about mommying.

We shared insecurities, secrets, tips, and truly gave each other what was left of us that we didn’t give to our children.

Then -- something changed.

Maybe when my youngest went to kindergarten. When I began to work again. When I got diagnosed with an unexpected illness.

Suddenly, I could see clearly what I could not observe, or did not want to notice: true friendship.

And one person, who I thought was the most giving of people, upon closer inspection, really was not. Oh, there was so called generosity. Groceries in particular. She always came laden with them. And liked to present me gifts with that I neither needed, sought nor could use.

What she had trouble giving -- was herself. I noticed when I talked, she rarely listened. I babysat for her child way out of proportion to her watching mine. Then there were the unkind words that sometimes found their way out of her mouth. They were always so shocking that I was speechless in reply.

One day, after a particularly virulent spiel -- I could no longer ignore my internal voice. It yelled: MOVE ON!

The problem: her daughter and my daughter are great friends and I don’t want that ruined. We also run in similar circles.

This is where being a mother and the wisdom I’ve hopefully gained must come into play. This is not about me. This is not about her. This is about our children.

Still, there is sadness for what once and for what will no longer be.

I’ve always tried to create family from friends. My best friend at 11 is still my best friend today. I laugh as hard now with my college friends as I did with them back when we were in our 20s (a-hem, that being just a year or two ago).

I’ve been fortunate to have lived around the country and have friends in each place where I have resided. And I have incredible mommy friends who will be my sister-friends forever.

I am happy that by putting an end to something that once was beautiful but is now toxic, I am taking care of myself and I will be watchful for my daughter.

I will also be something else – mature, graceful and kind. The qualities I want my children to have.

Still, I am sad to lose a friend or the friend who I thought she was only to realize that person was an illusion.

I'll try to remember the good times, even if there was imagination on my part.

Right now our daughters are BFFs. But watching her constantly angle, setting up play dates, sans my daughter, yet she always seems to want one when she knows my daughter has a play date with another friend, borders on the manipulative and absurd.

I wish things were back to how I thought they once were. But I know now those were only dreams. And we awaken from our dreams.

By Dawn Yun

A Nursing Home Holiday Filled with Family, Memories and Tears

2009-06-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

My father-in-law, Glyn, moved to a nursing home in early December. We came bearing gifts on Christmas day – my husband, me, our 10-year old son, along with my husband’s brother and his 11-year old daughter.

Glyn sat in the dining room. A first for him as he had been taking all his meals in his room. He ate his prime rib with gusto as we hovered around the table. Conversation was sparse. I had thought that this visit to the nursing home would be sad but it felt okay.

Holding a gift box and tearing the wrapping paper off was difficult for Glyn. My husband helped him open a large box filled with a heavy black jacket. I wondered if he’d ever get the chance to wear it.

“Did you bring the camera?” my husband asked.

“Yes,” I replied, fumbling in my purse and hoping the batteries were charged.

I focused the camera on my husband, our son, his brother, and our niece as they stood behind my seated father-in-law. I felt a rush of anxiety. Should we be taking this picture?

No, no, not here, not the annual family picture in a nursing home. Pictures would stop with last year. No more, no.

The nervous surge receded. I could take the picture. This is where we gathered, where we honored Glyn this year. I pushed the button, capturing the three generations.

“This is the nicest Christmas I’ve had in a long time,” my father-in-law said.

“I’ll bring his presents to his room,” I said and quickly grabbed the jacket and another gift. His room was a short walk down the hall. I barely made it before bursting into tears.

By Marianne Lonsdale

Christmas Memories La La La La

2009-06-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's only summer, but already my mind is on Christmas past.

When the doorbell rings for our tree-trimming party every year, we turn up the volume on Handel’s Messiah, ladle out hot mulled cider, and put our guests to work hanging the ornaments.

I’m the only one invited to the untrimming party. Soon Joni Mitchell’s Blue is blasting from the speakers as I bring up boxes from the garage and get to work dismantling Christmas.

But I’m not blue at all. I love taking apart the wooden train set and stowing away the brightly painted nutcrackers. I scrape melted wax from the mantel and toss withered cedar boughs into the fireplace. Scummy vases once overflowing with holly and white orchids get a good scrubbing.

Then I untrim the tree, from hand-blown glass balls to hand-crafted macaroni angels. It’s like unearthing a time capsule. Here is the rocking horse era, followed by the rise of the snowmen. Family pets are honored by an abundance of dog and cat angels. Crazily misshapen Santas record the preschool years, while “Baby’s First Christmas” bears round out the collection.

My favorite part is tossing the denuded tree off the balcony. Such a satisfying crash! Pine needles blanket the asphalt below, but I don’t sweep them up; the wind and rain will take care of the mess. This act of purposeful sloth thrills me as much as tearing out spent petunias from the garden at the end of the summer. Annuals and Christmas trees are supposed to wither and die, then get tossed. Unlike the perpetual nurturing demanded by children, pets, perennials, and husbands, limited care for ephemeral glory is the only requirement.

After all, it’s the dismantling that brings about the restored order and hope of the new year.

By Lorrie Goldin

School is Almost Out for the Summer!

2009-06-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

This simply cannot possibly be true.

It is.

School is almost o-ver!!!!

In my home I'm uncertain who is more excited, my kids or me.

My 16-year old son, who scores so high on his tests but forgets to do his homework, is facing five weeks of hard labor: intense summer school in English and World History.

He has promised us Bs from the summer forward. He will need to if he hopes to get into a decent college.

"You know you're going to be one of those kids left behind and you're way too smart. So just do your homework, please?"

Mimi, my seven-year old, enjoys taunting her older brother that she does not have to go to summer school.

"You're in second grade. There's time. Just wait."

"Jay," I admonish.

The day after Jay gets out of school we are leaving for vacation in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We will fly into Salt Lake City, I'm still unsure why, and then drive into nature.

My husband knows that I do not camp. I hotel. So he has booked some nice lodges.

Then in early August the kids and I will leave for a week to see my family in Connecticut and we'll visit New York City and Boston. I'm taking my kids and niece and nephews to see the play, Hair. They don't know the ending. But the sun will definitely be shining in. It will be their first Broadway play and I'm excited to share it with them.

We'll catch fireflies at dusk and watch them light up Mason jars with their light bulb-like backs and then set them free. During the mornings we'll take long walks down Martha Stewartesque country roads. I'll laugh with my sisters. And probably fight a bit, too. The cousins we'll also laugh. And probably argue as well. This is why my husband stays home. He is not used to the noise. I grew up with it. To me it's just ambient sounds.

In between there is camp for Mimi three days a week and play dates on the other two. I sense this is going to be a beautiful summer. We'll see old friends and hang out with our neighbors.

The opportunity to slow down, reflect and enjoy is that for which I hope. The reality, I know, is more likely my son will forget to do his homework and my daughter will say -- just as she does about school -- that she doesn't want to go to camp.

Still, I look forward to the respite. Even if it's only in my imagination.

By Dawn Yun

A Seriously Bad Case of Writer's Block

2009-06-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

This sucks. It sucks so bad. Right now this is beyond sucksome. It is so sucky that I have to make up words just to feel creative.

I've got a terrible case of writer's block.

It seems whatever I write doesn't flow, the words don't make sense and I have no fucking idea what I want to say. I'm trying hard to make good points but right now things are too sharp.

I'm feeling and I'm feeling nothing at all.

Trying to write something at a level I've worked hard for years to achieve is just not there.

Today I realized why I'm so incoherent in my thoughts -- I'm in remembrance and grief. And I have to write something that is upbeat! Hap-hap-happy!!! I might just as well draw that stupid ass once and soon to be again ubiquitous, yellow smiley face. The Sunday New York Times says it has returned. I have a suggestion: yellow head go back to nostalgia where you belong.

Losing loved ones is beyond painful. Three in one year is a lot. But twelve years earlier I had four family members die within six months. I also had ten chapters of a book due. I missed deadline after deadline until I finally turned them in. I was living in total shock. A sort of protective bubble enveloped me as I tried to figure out life. My life. I was single and childless.

The bubble has burst. Now I'm married with kids and my attention has to go to my family. Trying to focus in on what they are saying and to be in their moments is not easy. Sometimes I have to force myself. We're all sad. But the kids have a sense of joy that my husband and I lack.

I have been down this road before.

I feel as if I'm riding a bicycle with a crooked wheel. I try to steer in the direction I need to go, but I can't.

When I want to write something that leads the reader down a certain path, even with a compass -- a past draft proposal -- I'm lost.

I know I am sorting. Feeling. Making jokes on the outside and crying within. I am prone to saying funny things to others. I am just having the most troublesome time writing them down.

What I've learned of grief is that it is a process. Not one to be rushed. It takes time. Something I don't have when I'm on a deadline.

By Dawn Yun

A Mother's Wish for Children

2009-06-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

I want something. Something good. And important. For Children.

It costs $200 million dollars.

Impossible, right?

The Buddha said, "Love each person as if they were your own child.”

What if each mom reading this believed that the amount of juicy, unwavering love they feel for their child could in fact translate into a focused laser of goodwill that facilitated a miracle.

What would you want to see happen?

I want to see a children's hospital come into being.

There are three amazing pediatric hospitals in the Bay Area that have saved countless children's lives -- kids just like yours. Many kids have been transported here or their families brought them here from all over the world for help with conditions and diseases untold.

One of these hospitals is a training center for some of the most promising young surgeons and pediatric specialists in the world.

And that hospital is housed in an ancient, exhausted building in San Francisco. Parts of it look like a third-world structure.

There will be no improvements made. The rates of infection and cross-contamination are highly affected by crowding and sluggish ventilation.

A new hospital has been decided on, so no funding will improve what is already there.

Here's the hitch: No hospital will be built until at least $200 million dollars in private funding is accumulated. One young administrator told me, "I will be retired before they break ground on that hospital.”

Here is my wish, my hope that good conquers avarice and love for children creates miracles. San Francisco built a baseball stadium downtown against a few odds. Little big deal. Moveon.org got people to boot the administration's congressional minions. Bigger deal.

Maybe I can help. I don't know anyone very wealthy. But I am good at phone trees and writing and have lost a good deal of social inhibition. I am going to find out where the money could come from and what I can do to help. I am going to believe that what the Buddha asks of the world is possible, to varying degress, for all of us.

I'd like to hear what other moms wish for, against the odds or not.

Just imagining the combined love for our dear children makes me think we're unstoppable.

By Avvy Mar

California Politicians Need to Do The Right Thing

2009-06-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the Special Election, Governor Schwarzenegger and other leaders should not be so quick to throw up their hands and declare that raising taxes is off the table because the people have spoken. Such an interpretation is inaccurate and irresponsible.

Although surely many voters intended to convey an anti-tax message, countless others rejected Propositions 1A-1E for different reasons. We must also consider these meanings behind a NO vote:

· NO to slashing funding for children and the mentally ill

· NO to depending on the lottery as a means of financing education

· NO to the Trojan horse of permanent spending caps and rainy-day funds in exchange for temporary and regressive tax extensions

· NO to appeasing a legislative minority that holds the state hostage

· NO to muddled language, intent, and outcome

· NO to government by ill-informed citizen initiative and legislative buck-passing

· NO to applying bandaids instead of addressing the real problem.

The real problem is both structural and moral.

Structurally, California will remain in a stranglehold until we reform Proposition 13, get rid of the two-thirds requirement for approving taxes and the state budget, and stop governing by initiative.

Unfortunately, these structural remedies constitute the third rail of California politics, and legislators understandably shy away from high-voltage risks. Still, unless leaders and voters have the moral courage to grab that third rail, the state is doomed to something far worse than political suicide.

Our predicament stems not only from a tanking economy, but from a failure in leadership and a failure in citizenship.

Instead of capitulating to the tantrums of anti-tax zealots, Governor Schwarzenegger and other elected and civic officials need to put taxes back on the table. As Bill Clinton notes, “There’s a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think it’s an investment.” Rather than sell California down the river, our leaders must find the courage to reframe responsible taxation as not just necessary, but a good investment.

Ordinary citizens must also find the courage to listen. Too many Californians want it all, but want it all for free. Such entitlement creates a dangerous disconnect from reality and the responsibilities inherent to good citizenship. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed, “Taxes are dues we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. “

They are bargain dues at that. Taxes utilize economies of scale and are cost-effective. Before the slash-and-burn tax revolt of the '70s, they bought us the finest state parks, K-16 education, and infrastructure in the nation. Taxes are the modest means by which we equitably share the responsibility of providing common wealth for the common good.

Keeping taxes off the table also ensures that Californians will pay more in hidden costs. The price may not show up in our tax bills, but it surely shows up bloated everywhere else: skyrocketing fees at our public universities, losing a day’s pay standing in line during curtailed hours at the DMV, struggling to care for your elderly aunt when she loses her home health attendant.

Even if our personal pocketbooks can absorb these now-privatized costs, nobody can afford the huge societal costs. Taxes are an insurance policy against blowback that results from defunding worthwhile services. If we fail to support prevention upfront, we will pay the much higher cost of intervention later, in the form of uneducated and latchkey children, unemployment, homelessness, overburdened emergency rooms, and increased crime.

Finally, tax policy is a reflection of our values. We ought to be ashamed of protecting tax loopholes for rich yacht owners while eliminating health care for millions of poor children. Have we no sense of decency?

Some argue we can’t afford to raise taxes. We can’t afford not to—for the state of our state, the state of our pocketbooks, and the state of our souls.

By Lorrie Goldin

Let your voice be heard:

Budget Conference Committee Members: Names and fax numbers listed at:

http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a49/pdf/conferencecommittee_roster.pdf

How to find out your legislators’ contact info:

http://www.legislature.ca.gov/legislators_and_districts/legislators/your_legislator.html

Surreal City Scene in Suburbia

2009-06-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Monday was my daughter’s first day back at school after a two-week break. We went shopping so I could return some sweaters.

That was the plan. What resulted was anything but. The trip to the mall was one big exercise in getting something/having anything.

I was trying to look at bras with my five-year old. Now, a woman cannot be rushed when deciding on a bra. Mimi put one around her neck. “Does this fit?” she asked.

I laughed, but stopped when she darted. “I want something!” she yelled while grabbing underwear. “Please!?! Just this one thing?”

“Mimi, you’re too young for a thong,” I tried to reason.

There was no reasoning and it soon became apparent there was even less reason to stay. This resulted in a full-on tantrum. I led her by the hand to the car, her screams trailing behind.

There was a van parked extremely close to us. Its wheels were on the white line that should have separated our two vehicles. Mimi flung open the door and it hit the van, which was impossible to avoid.

I got her into the car seat and sort of noticed a guy getting out of the van and back in. When I opened my door, it scraped his. I got into my car and he bounded out.

It took me a second or two to realize how angry he was. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any respect? What’s wrong with you?”

My first thought: Fuck you. (Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker.) But just as quickly, I thought: I have a child. So I calmly put the key in the ignition and said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. I was inconsiderate. It was my fault. I’m sorry, sir.”

He took a step toward our car. I wondered if he was going to smash the window.

“I should kick your fucking ass,” he said. “I should. I should do it. I should kick your ass.”

It is not so unusual to see this in New York, but in suburban Marin, it is. And, it was made more surreal because my child was there. I apologized, looked away, calmly closed the door, LOCKED it, put the car in reverse, and drove away.

“Why was that man so mad, Mommy?” Mimi asked.

“Some people are just mad, Mimi." I realized the irony as five minutes earlier I was that angry. “And sometimes people act out because they can’t express their feelings.”

She seemed to consider my words. I thought about them, too.

“Mimi, I know that being a child is really hard for you. You don’t like being told what to do. But you’ll get older. It’ll get easier. And no matter what, I’ll always love you. Always.”

I reached my hand out behind me and she held it. I smiled at her reflection in the mirror and she smiled at mine.

By Dawn Yun

My Son The Sport Savant

2009-06-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

My son Jack may be a savant. Don’t immediately think “Rain Man”; think more Madden. Jack is 4 1/2 and has an extreme fascination with football.

I can’t figure out the connection. Both of his parents are well versed in the sport and are fans to a certain level (somewhere less than face painting) but we certainly haven’t had any time or energy to devote to building our own knowledge of the sport, let alone creating a prodigy.

He can recite scores -- both as they happen, as well as some that happened months ago. He knows the names and purposes of all positions both offense and defense. He has favorite players, jerseys of favorite players, names of favorite players, great plays of favorite players, all colors of teams, all names of teams, all mascots.

Perhaps my personal favorite is his desire to go to Tom Brady’s house and get tips on how to play football. Who am I to squash this dream? I would like to go to Tom Brady’s house and get tips on… stuff, too. My job is to see his dreams happen, even if they seem impossible.

Jack really does have a unique talent. He knows the difference between college and pro teams and games on television. He can count to any score and knows the value of every point scored. He has three team’s regalia complete with jersey, pants and helmet, and wears the helmet when catching a touchdown pass at the end of the living room.

It would be one thing if he couldn’t catch or throw a ball, but he seems talented in doing that as well.

My younger son has realized that opposition is hopeless. His “No hootball game” has turned to “watch ponies” or “watch Patwiots.” He gets bored in the first minute or two, but Jack will watch for hours if we let him. He reenacts plays in the living room complete with straight arm, jukes and tackles. I know that some people see the violence, but I see the passion, with proper protective gear.

He asked me six months ago when he could play football. I didn’t know, so I went to the Internet to look up how old he would have to be to play. I told him he could play when he turned 7. So, every day he asks me how long until he turns 7? Every day I answer. Yesterday he asked if I would watch him play when he turns 7. I said that I would be there every game. He said, “No, on T.V.?” In his world, he was already playing in the N.F.L.

Childhood is a blessing in dreaming big. Parenting is hoping that they can achieve every one of those dreams.

By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

Disney Dollars and It's Not Even Disneyland

2009-06-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

My niece, Lily, introduced my son, George, to Disney’s Club Penguin.

It’s an online video game filled with virtual penguins colored pink, red, purple, green or blue. Colors cost twenty game coins each. The penguins wear baseball caps or long brown wigs and waddle through town, a sandy beach or snow.

Who can resist the penquins’ pets, the puffles: small limbless balls of fur with eyes and wide-gapping mouths that smile, frown or yawn? Adopting a puffles cost 800 coins and colors denote their special abilities, tricks, and personalities. The gray one can be grumpy. Puffles must be fed, allowed to play, put to sleep and can attend parties and play dates. When my son’s penguin isn’t home his puffles live a secret life in their igloo. Once we caught them dancing...

... Ahhh, Mom Look!

Then there’s the social value of the kids interacting with each other’s avatars. Of course in this game everyone’s avatar is a penguin. Penguins, sit, dance, waddle and wave on command. They also emote and send postcard messages: ‘Bring your puffle out to play.’ ‘Igloo party.’ ‘Be my buddy?’ ‘Cool outfit!’ So far no one’s raised money for charity, held a political rally or cleaned up the beach.

The penguins are distinguishable one from the other by user name, clothing and accessories. Children must purchase these from the various on-line catalogues: one for puffles, one for igloo upgrades and another for penguin attire. Club membership, $29.99 real world dollars, gives children access to more extravagant accessories.

And that’s my problems with the whole thing.

Who wants to be friends with the poor kid—I mean a common penguin wearing an old-school black and white tux?

My son and niece earn game coins for their penguins by playing in various games environments. These include surfing waves, cart surfing through a mine, fishing (catching the giant red mullet earns 100 coins), and something my niece just taught me, making pizzas. Once coins are earned, the kid goes shopping. If you’re not a member, product selection is extremely limited, which is why my son begged me to let him be a member.

Cute and social verses exploitive and commercial. Hmmm?

The other morning my son held an igloo party. My niece sat beside him commenting on the event as it unfolded.

“George, you need to buy some more stuff for the igloo or your quests won’t stay,” Lily directed as penguins popped in and out of George’s igloo.

“Why won’t they stay?” I asked. After all my son’s split level igloo has a dance floor, a DJ turn table, an electric guitar, eight puffles, two couches, a bean bag chair, and two magical coffee tables that provide bowls of snacks.

What’s not to love?

“Unless you have enough stuff they get bored and leave,” Lily warns.

Bored in less than two minutes?

Today, my son says he needs more buying power. He asks me to join him as his penguin rides through the mine cart surfing. If he works the directional part of the keyboard that makes his penguin perform tricks and I keep the penguin jumping up and down by pressing the space bar, George earns more coins than playing by himself. As we sit side by side, George makes his penguin perform hand stands, back flips and cart wheelies. It’s so ridiculous that we start laughing.

Two hundred and fifteen coins! High five!

By Patricia Ljutic

Unattainable Ideals Offer Unrealistic Comparisons

2009-06-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Society for Sex Therapists and Research recently released the greatest public service announcement in history. Perfectly satisfying intercourse between loving partners most often occurs between three and thirteen minutes. This does not mean that somewhere in America, someone—not you—is coupling every three to thirteen minutes, but that longer is not necessarily better. What a relief that marathon lovemaking is more myth than measure of intimate pleasures.

We so often suffer from comparing ourselves to some unattainable ideal and bearing the shame of coming up short. Movies, magazines, TV commercials depict smiling people in designer homes living the good life, or at least having lots of long, hot sex. Excluded are those of us with cellulite or moods.

Maybe it’s time to recalibrate our standard measurements. But why stop with sex?

When my daughters were tiny, I went to a talk by a revered Bay Area nurse-turned-guru for new mothers. This is how she measured parenting success: At the end of the day, once the children are asleep and you no longer feel like killing them, on the whole, more days than not, does your pleasure about having kids outweigh your regret? If so, you’re doing fine.

By that measure, I’m doing better than fine. Usually I’m glad I became a mother even before the kids are asleep.

And how about the fashion industry? When dress sizes were reconfigured so that overnight I went from twelve to ten without liposuction, I felt much better. I also spent more money on clothes. No matter how you measure it, that’s a win-win for both me and retail sales.

Now I’m waiting for the next greatest public service announcement in history—research conclusively proving that perfectly satisfying sex between loving partners can occur far less frequently than one point five times per week.

By Lorrie Goldin

Listening to Children's View of Love

2009-06-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

I drive my daughter, Miranda, to camp in the morning along with her best friend. I’ve been doing it most of the summer. With a little pal in the back seat, my daughter doesn’t demand my attention. So, I turn the radio on and listen to my NPR programs. That is until the radio announcer started talking about dying children in Iraq, and I quickly shut it off.
And quickly tune in to what my daughter was saying to her friend.

“Diana and Jeff are in love. I saw the love at the party.” My daughter’s very serious tone drew my attention like a laser to the back seat. I slowed down and angled my head so I could hear more clearly.

“Yeah, sure,” Her friend said in an equally serious tone. “They’re boyfriend and girlfriend. I saw the love too.”

“But, he doesn’t love me.” My daughter sounded puzzled at that.

“No. But he likes you.” Her friend sounded reassuring.

“The grownups say they’ll get married.” My daughter said this as if she was planning what to wear to the event.

Her friend said, “Sure.”

My daughter then asked her friend “Are you still girlfriend to Dave?”

“No,” said her friend. “That’s gross. We broke up.”

Silence in the back seat until my daughter changed the subject. “I’ll be the princess and you’ll be the baby and I’ll find the palace.”

I sat forward and switched on the radio again, but kept the sound low. I wanted to laugh and cry. The conversation sounded like 16-year-olds, but these girls are only six.

Yet they can see the “love.” They already know what “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” mean. So, my new resolution is to keep the radio down, a friend in the back seat as often as possible, and listen carefully to get the critical information I need.

For when I ask how things are, already I’m getting the much-used word: “fine.” Followed by silence.

Note: Names have been changed to protect friends.

By Georgie Craig

Thanksgiving to Holiday Memories

2009-06-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

Napkin rings crafted from toilet paper tubes, the wrong kind of pickle, jeans at the dinner table -- I had already made too many concessions.

My irritation grew as the girls lost interest in helping halfway through peeling the apples. Determined to be thankful for my family and friends, though, I tried not to sweat the small stuff.

Thanksgiving morning brought major sweating -- and shivering. The flu had struck. I was too weak to crawl out of bed, much less roast a turkey and conjure up gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans, piping hot and on the table at the same magical moment.

My favorite holiday would have to proceed without me.

My husband and daughters sprang into action. Never were green beans trimmed and potatoes peeled with such enthusiasm!

The clatter of utensils and easy cooperation drifted up the stairs. Were these the same kids who could barely put a used glass in the dishwasher or the husband whose culinary talents began and ended with spaghetti sauce?

The table was strewn with the post-feast wreckage of crumbs and spilled salt. Grease-stained, mismatched napkins flopped helter-skelter, their toilet paper tube rings askew nearby. One lone napkin stood crisply at the head of the table, still encircled by gaily painted cardboard.

“Mommy (we miss you),” read the hand-drawn place card.

I gave thanks.

By Lorrie Goldin

A Child Shines When a Teacher Sees Her Brightness

2009-06-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Parents' Night. Second Grade.

Kindergarten and first grade were disasters for my daughter and for myself. I was in a clinical medical study for lymphoma, while my daughter was in a classroom with forty children from whom much was expected. My daughter needed warmth and attention. Instead she received coldness and efficiency.

Guilt over my class choices for her was at times overwhelming. Probably as overwhelmed as she was in her class. She made few if any friends. Mimi was unusually quiet. I rarely had the energy to do homework with her. I had changed drastically from the fun mommy I used to be into one that she no longer knew. She wanted the old one back. I wanted her to return, too.

Here it was a year later and a class of difference. Mimi was now in a room with only twenty children and a warm teacher who made jokes, treated each child as an individual and with love. She even hugged each one at day's end.

During Parents' Night Mimi was the first name called to read her story. We expected the antithesis. Yun. That's always last. Though surprised, Mimi strode to the front of the room, before her classmates and their parents, including her own, sat on the stool, opened her book, and confidently read.

I sat up straight and stared at her with a kind of love that can only emanate from a mother to her child. My smile was permanently embedded in my face. Her reading was loud, confident and funny. She took note to pause at the laughter and then continue. When I saw my daughter, I admit, I saw myself. What an ego boost!

Mimi jumped off the chair and stood before it, taking in the applause and looked in the back for me, seeking my approval. Our eyes locked as I stood and clapped. "Bravo!" I yelled. "Bravo, baby!"

The other parents clapped especially loudly. Some knew what she, and what I, had gone though. She also received extra applause for going first and showing extraordinary poise. She was recognized for the talent she is and always was. She was no longer "one of the lowest" which I had to hear over and over for the previous two years. The teachers excuses of, "Well, she is one of the youngest," never convinced me otherwise. She was labeled as less than and less than she always was in those classes.

With the right teacher, a warm environment and support, she has thrived. The other day when I was volunteering in her class, the students had to be tested for their reading. I listened to each child as I sat working on my volunteer project. When it was Mimi's turn the teacher asked if I wanted to stay or leave. I said I would continue what I was doing. As Mimi read, my guess was that she was average. I was stunned when the teacher added the numbers and said, "She's at 158. That makes her one of the best readers in the class. Wow!" She looked at me with wonder. "She improved by 200 points from last year. What happened last year?"

Though a very painful subject for me, I've learned -- and being a New Yorker this has not been easy -- not to say anything bad. Rather, I simply said there was a lot going on with me medically and I believe it affected her. Plus, she was simply in the wrong class. "Now," I said, "she's in the right one."

A child being placed in the correct class with the appropriate teacher can make all the difference in her confidence and success.

Now I must seek out the right third-grade teacher. I am not a parent who demands things for her children. But when it comes to school and the right teachers I've learned the hard way that some things are worth fighting for. This week I have a date with the principal. Mimi endured two years of wrong classes. I will be nice, but firm, and even a New Yorker if I must, but I will ensure that a classroom mistake like that doesn't happen to her again. I think she's paid her dues. Even if her library books are usually late.

By Dawn Yun

The Quintessential Existential Mom

2009-05-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

"You loved me more when I was a baby," said my seven-year-old son Walker as we looked at our family album.

I nuzzled his hair, and said, "I adore you more every day. I loved how cozy you were then, but now you’re able to talk. You can read to me, and I don't have to change your diapers."

Walker seemed satisfied with my incomplete answer. I turned off his bedroom light and went back to the photos. There he was, newborn, in a penguin pantsuit with matching cap. His skin looked red and blotchy, and his eyes were shut. At six months, he was still bald, but smiling, like a wise Buddha. At two, he had long wisps of yellow hair and clutched a Thomas the Train.

Now, Walker's head is covered in blond curls, and his two front teeth are missing. He looks like a vampire cherub.

I love all the Walkers. To me, he is an ever-transforming miracle.

I will always remember all that Walker was. I know that's how many parents get through their children's adolescences. When their teenager has baggy pants hanging off his butt, body odor and a nipple ring, they remember a four-year-old who loved dinosaurs. When fifteen-year-old Walker is embarrassed to have me pick him up at school, I'll remember when he asked me to marry him.

I change, too.

The last time my parents visited, my mother stared at the age furrow on my forehead. It must feel odd to have one's children begin to look old.

I believe in an afterlife, but I wonder how it works. Do we get to pick our age?

I would prefer the body I had at eighteen, and the mind I had at forty. I want Walker to be a little boy, but I doubt he'd make the same choice.

Whatever ages we chose, I think we would eventually get bored.

Human life is spent in motion, and I don't think I could adjust to being static. We exist as trajectory lines, not points, and I suspect that in heaven, we will get to evolve, too.

By Beth Touchette

Everything Has its Place

2009-05-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

My stomach was reeling from a mixture of too much Chardonnay and too much pumpkin pie, when I realized there’s no room in my living room for a Christmas tree.

I had to have a tree, my mother was coming for the holiday and she was bringing presents. A tree was the necessary showcase for her beautifully wrapped gifts. And what of my daughter? Miranda couldn’t be the only one in her public school with no tree.

I slowly spun around the room looking for what furniture we might tuck into the garage until the relatives leave. There’s a couch, a chair, a coffee table, a bookshelf, all necessary for social and familial functions.

Then my eyes landed on my daughter’s worktable. It had started innocently enough, with a plastic container full of paper and a bucket of Crayola crayons. Now the worktable has taken over about a third of the living room. Plain paper, stickers, beads, Pokemon cards, glue sticks, paint brushes, glitter pens, small and large markers have spilled off the table and made incursions under the table.

As I gazed at the mess in my living room, I pondered joining a religion that doesn’t celebrate Christmas. My first choice was Buddhism, but I’m lousy at meditation. My second was Hinduism, but it’s hard enough for me to remember my daughter’s and husband’s names much less a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses.

So I decided on buying the biggest storage bins I could find. I know I could just throw stuff out, but that would require negotiating with my daughter. I tried that once, asking if we could throw some stuff out. My daughter, who is 5, looked up at me with clear blue eyes, her hands on her hips, and said in an offended tone, “I love everything I make.”

That’s how I found myself in Target on the weekend after Thanksgiving looking at storage bins. I found three that stack and will fit in my garage. So, tonight, after my daughter has gone to bed, I will strategically cull the worktable leaving enough mess so she won’t notice what’s gone. I know someday I’ll have to toss stuff and risk her displeasure. But that’s not until I run out of room in the garage.

I hope she’s off to college by then.

By Georgie Craig

A Thing of Beauty

2009-05-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Slipping into my warm morning bed, Aubrey wraps herself in the afghan her great-grandmother made and sucks her thumb.

Once settled, she studies my face.

After awhile, she reaches for the bridge of my nose and points: “You have a dot here; it’s brown.” Moving her finger lower, next to my nose, she says, “And a dot here above your lips; that one’s almost the same color as your skin.”

She studies me the way lovers study each other, the way I study her father, tracing the details of his skin -- the marks along the cheekbone, the spine, the shoulder blade, the ankle, forming the Big Dipper that wraps his body.

Aubrey looks at me with such love and familiarity that I recall studying my own mother’s face closely when I was 4. I had pointed to the brown dot in the middle of each of her cheeks -- the perfect symmetry of her marks.

“What are those?” I’d asked.

“They’re moles or freckles," she said. "Some people call them beauty marks.”

I looked hard for a moment and decided, “I’ll call them beauty marks,” caressing her face, drinking her in.

Later, on pink construction paper for her Mother’s Day card, I would draw her dark curly hair, her square jaw, her brown eyes. Her features were stark contrasts to my own straight blonde hair, my oval face, my hazel eyes, but when I drew the sure brown dot on each cheek, with those distinguishing marks, she was, unmistakably, my mother.

Now I look into Aubrey’s face and memorize her little marks: below her eye, next to her nose, above her lip, across her face on the other side of her chin. I think: Little Dipper.

And Dane, my boy, who, at 5, tells me his “mole marks” are actually made by raccoons, I memorize his, too: at the outer tip of an eyebrow, next to his nose -- on the opposite side of his sister’s -- on his cheek, and then up and across his face at the corner of his eye. I think: Orion.

My own little constellations.

At my yearly physical, the doctor checks my skin, the marks on my body. She looks for the mark that might not belong, because our moles grow in families, she says. Wherever there’s one of a certain kind (in color or shape or size) there’ll be another healthy one somewhere.

That’s how we know what belongs.

I think of my mother, my husband, my children. I line up our faces side by side in my mind. I think of these families of moles, passed down or claimed among generations, our raccoon marks to memorize and recall, our own little constellations hailing from the same sky.

By Anjie Reynolds

Throw Stuff Out and Feel Great!

2009-05-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

It seems that the moment I attempt to throw something away in an attempt to de-clutter my house of past prime toys, I find myself unable to actually do it.

I stand poised over the garbage can and I hesitate. I find myself scared to follow through.

I am plagued by questions such as: Is this really garbage? Can’t I find another use for it? Maybe if I find 25 more just like it I can bring it to my son’s pre-school for an art project!

What if I actually do throw this away and regret it? I have been known to finally purge pieces of a long-forgotten toy only to find the remaining parts the next day.

There have been occasions that I have gathered debris from every corner of my home and filled a bag with every intention of tossing it. As I got sidetracked on my way to the garbage, my sons discovered the bag of “treasures” with glee.

The bag of trash then became the most fun thing they had to play with.

Perhaps I should put their brand new and already forgotten holiday loot in a bag by the curb.

By Cathy Burke

When a Mother Runs, Perspective Comes

2009-05-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

The morning is cool and cloudy, ideal for running. Getting in a run is usually a highlight of my day. I pop on my iPod, crank up the volume and try to keep pace with the up-temp
beat of rock or old school disco. But not even a head-banging dose of mullet rock, courtesy of Judas Priest, can get my motor running today.

I’ve just come from dropping my daughter off at school where her teacher cornered me by the storage cubbies. The look on her face said she didn’t want to have a friendly chat about how nicely my daughter shares or how great her art work is.

As she launched into a description of Phoebe’s out-of-control behavior on picture day earlier that week, I felt sick to my stomach. My daughter brought the already challenging task of trying to get more than 50 pre-schoolers to sit still for a group photo to a grinding halt, she informed me. Refusing to cooperate, Phoebe whirled across the playground like a tiny tornado leaving chaos in her wake.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this kind of story about her. Throughout her pre-school career, Phoebe’s teachers have sent notes or talked to me about her sometimes disruptive antics during circle time or other inappropriate conduct.

But a long complaint-free spell had lulled me into the comfortable delusion that everything was okay. Of course my sweet, bright little girl doesn’t have ADHD or some other behavior disorder, I’d told myself. She was just going through a phase.

Now I wasn’t so sure.

When I get to the Mill Valley bike path, I’m fighting back tears. I don’t want to run—I want to go home and crawl into bed. But I force myself to plant one foot in front of the other. Shuffling like an old lady, I make my way toward Sausalito.

I never find that effortless groove I crave. But I finish my run. And as I look up at Mt. Tam in the distance, I know that whatever my daughter’s problem is, we’ll deal with it. The journey might not be easy, but I will go the distance for her—one step at a time.

By Dorothy O’Donnell

Which is Scarier? Movies or Real Life?

2009-05-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

“Guys, Mom is going to the movies.”

“With scary parts, like monsters?”

“No, a chick movie.”

“What’s a chick movie?”

“It’s where ladies talk a lot about their feelings and everybody else does, and nobody hits anybody, and they kiss boys a lot and sometimes cry.”

“Ew. . . why would anybody watch that?”

“I like movies where there are scary parts and chases, but then sometimes, like tonight, I like to see ladies having lots of big feelings and kissing cute boys and probably crying, too.”

Heavy, serious sigh. “OK. But I want to see the movies where there are scary parts and I won’t even be scared because I’m brave.”

“You know, being brave sometimes is having big feelings and kissing boys. Getting married and having babies is really brave.”

“But now you have no scary parts because I’m here and I will kiss you and you don’t need to be scared.”

God bless the child.

By Avvy Mar

Not The Kind of Big Ticket Items You Want to Buy During the Holidays

2009-05-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

Before you know it the holidays will be here. That doesn't mean buying toys for our kids. This tells us it's nearly time to buy new appliances for our house. They love to stop working at just about the same time that the holidays are breaking our bank accounts.

Instead of Toys R Us I'm scurrying to Best Buy or Sears to replace some expensive but can’t-live-without-it item, like the dishwasher that just fell apart all over my kitchen floor.

Last year, it was the central heat and air conditioning unit that whirred and buzzed for a few days before shutting down altogether right before Christmas. Temperatures in Sacramento where I live were dipping into the 30s and 40s at night and my kids complained they could see their breath. A contractor spent two days on the roof fiddling with the unit before he could determine how to fix it, which he managed to do the day before my mother arrived from Connecticut and I hosted 13 people for dinner.

The worst example is from our first Thanksgiving in Sacramento. That’s when we were hosting my husband’s family for dinner and our one and only toilet backed up so badly a hole was blown in the pipe that led to the city’s sewer line in the street. The pressure had built up so much that when the pipe burst it sent the, uh, debris that had been flushed down our toilet high into the air creating a geyser of, uh, stuff in my front yard. My husband and I watched in horror from our living room window. Finally, he turned to me and said, “We could laugh about this or we could cry about this.”

We laughed until tears poured down our faces.

Determined to break this expensive albeit memorable tradition, I tried over the last several weeks to ignore the dishwasher’s decline. First, the front cover broke off, revealing a wall of tubes and wires. Then the control panel worked itself loose and dangled precariously above the floor remaining connected only by a slim handful of wires. A friend who visited recently gawked, “What is wrong with your kitchen?” When my husband insisted I face the undeniable fact that this holiday season would not be the one to end the cycle of poorly-timed appliance breakdown, I resisted. The dishwasher still worked, I reminded him, and suggested he duct tape both panels back onto the front of the dishwasher.

The dishwasher has since stopped working. I’ve been scrubbing dishes by hand for a week and somehow have avoided admitting to my husband that I was wrong. Nonetheless he wisely disappeared for a few hours over the weekend and returned with an early Christmas present.

The new dishwasher will be delivered tomorrow.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

Depressed But Hopeful

2009-05-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

I am scrolling through my mental Rolodex.

Can't call her, I say to myself, she's got troubles of her own. Can't call her, she's worn out with my story. Can't call her, she's as lost as I am.

Alright then, I get to pace around here, hoping the confusion in my head and my frayed nerves will let up.

Depression has been a part of my life since girlhood. It only became clinical after my first child 10 years ago. I got professional help and, to my utter surprise and delight, completely recovered. After many years, my husband and I found a rhythm.

Then we decided to have one more child before I got too old. Our boy is almost two, healthy, gentle, a real love. I did not suffer postpartum depression again right after he was born.

But, folks, it's back.

Not as extreme as before. The onset of this one coincides with my husband's bike crash and subsequent wrist surgery and five month disability leave. We are at each other and both of us are exhausted.

The old demons in the closet have taken the opportunity to come out for a few more bouts. With any luck, he and I can put away some of those demons (his, mine, and ours) for good.

I am not sure how it works for him, why he sticks around. But I know why I grind through each day, sit through another therapy session, walk up steep hills to raise my serotonin levels, and listen attentively to anyone who seems to possess a speck of wisdom.

It's those two beautiful children who occupy this space in time with me. I know they need me. They desperately love me, as I did my parents. If I can just hang in there, things will get better, and we will have some real fun together.

By Vicki Inglis

I Should Have Started Her on Thai Food When She Was Two

2009-05-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

The 7:30 a.m. dilemma.

What to pack for my daughter’s lunch?

Mimi’s dining palette is limited. There are about five things in the universe that she will actually eat. Costco dinosaur nuggets are at the top.

She can have them every meal, every day, but I worry she’ll get bored or teased by her schoolmates.

A bean and cheese burrito is a possibility. But last week only a bit of burrito was left in its foil; then earlier this week I found an entire burrito un-foiled in her lunchbox.

Another choice is cold pizza, but really it isn’t – because we don’t have any.

Perhaps Ramen noodles? I know scraping the bottom here, but I also have a 13-year old and this is his FAVORITE food in the world, and so Mimi loves it. But there’s not even a piece of chicken floating in it. It’s hard for me to give her a main meal that lacks a remnant of protein.

Perhaps a cheese sandwich? Sometimes she’ll eat the cheese, sometimes not, but NEVER the bread. Yet, I feel compelled to sandwich the dairy between two slices.

Then there are the snacks.

A GoGurt in Strawberry Splash or Blueberry Blast, some fruit, usually apples thinly sliced. If they’re thick, they’re left uneaten.

And sometimes Trader Joe’s animal crackers. But I have to be careful. If she sees those first, she won’t eat anything else.

There are just too many cuisine options. Breastfeeding was so much easier. All the food you needed for your child was contained in your body. You didn’t have to choose flavors or textures or even colors.

I settle, as usual, on the dinosaur nuggets and stack six atop each other.

I take solace that they’re in a bright purple and yellow container with a matching lid. If nothing else -- it’s a stylish presentation.

When I unpack her Hello Kitty! lunchbox in the evening, I’ll discover if I’ve made a good food choice.

But for now there is no decision. As the clock moves toward 7:45 -- I have to wake her.

By Dawn Yun

A Mother's Rights

2009-05-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

For three years I’ve been petitioning the Department of Homeland Security for the return of my daughter Olivia’s sealed adoption file. First, with forms to Immigration in Los Angeles, then with letters to Immigration in San Francisco, and finally, with appeals to the behemoth keeper-of-all-records in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

Access to that file is my right as a United States citizen, guaranteed under the Freedom of Information Act. Which doesn’t mean they make it easy.

Parents like us who adopt children from Guatemala are handed a sealed envelope at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City and instructed to surrender it sealed and intact at the first point of entry, which for us was L.A. The temptation is to steam the envelope open and make copies of everything in it: original photographs, birth certificates, foster care facts, birth mother information. But who would dare take that risk? It took almost two years to get our daughter home, and that only happened after I moved there for six months and learned enough Spanish to plead our case myself.

January 5, 2004, the day we touched ground with Olivia in our arms, was the day I started the paperwork to retrieve the file. My next-to-last communication with Homeland Security was dated January 9, 2007. The case had gone on for so long they wanted to know if we were still interested. Yes, I responded via fax, certified-mail, and telephone message left in the director’s office. Still emphatically interested.

Tuesday night I didn’t get out to the mailbox until 10 p.m. The children were finally asleep, and my husband was dozing over the newspaper at the kitchen table. I thought the file when it came would be another envelope. But with technology, everything’s on CD.

I ran downstairs and turned on my computer without even pausing to wake up my husband. They say knowledge is power, but right now it feels like a gift.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

I Don't Want Apologies; I Need Understanding

2009-05-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

“You owe her a string of apologies,” says the therapist, after listening to my husband in a private session. At least, this is where one fantasy took me this morning.

Our debts are climbing, my husband is sleeping at his friend’s house, the Genie has broken on the garage door, and our son scratched the front of the dishwasher with a pair of scissors.

The signs indicate there is trouble.

Surely, any impartial observer would find fault with my husband attending a bachelor party at a strip joint, and going incognito for four days. Why then do I not change the locks on the doors, and tell him that if he likes his friend so much, he can stay there?

Women out there, you are not going to like this, but I am dependent on him now. I have a 2-year old and and a 10-year old to look after. I promise to write more on this soon, but suffice it to say that I am not ashamed of being financially dependent right now.

The single strongest driving force in resisting divorce is the well being of my kids. There is no affair involved, or addiction, or substantial abuse going on, (although the last two have minor parts in this drama). Therefore, I hang in there.

Frankly, I am amazed at how much pain I will tolerate in order to preserve the chance of a united home.

I am not a wallflower. I don’t just sit back and take his tirades like a whipped dog. I defend myself. I withdraw from conversations that have gone into attack mode. I am getting help and I have gone back to a 12-Step program, both of which help bolster me.

Most likely I will never receive a string of apologies. All I really care about is much greater understanding and cooperation between us. That's what I want my kids to grow up with.

By Vicki Inglis

Mom is a Coffee Junkie, Her Son Is Addicted to Dinosaurs

2009-05-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Dane, my 5-year-old, is sitting on the couch watching Prehistoric Planet, his favorite DVD about dinosaurs.

Leiopleurodon—an ancient whale-like sea creature whose jagged-tooth jaws have been likened to a giant car-crusher—has eaten, well, a dolphin thing.

Dane’s cozy under his afghan, but his hands are cold. He woke up too early so I sit and watch the video with him. I hold a homemade hot latte in my hands. It feels so good I think Dane will like holding it too.

He holds it and looks so comforted I tell him he can have a sip. He raises an eyebrow and cocks his head at me.

“Go ahead,” I coax with a nod.

He brings the cup to his lips, tips his head back a little and drinks a sip in. He slowly brings it back down to his lap, looks over at me, and smiles the smile of a conspirator. I return a knowing smile.

“Good stuff, huh?” I say.

I feel like a junkie who’s just scored a kid his first hit.

Since he’s able to recall every arcane detail about the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, I’m tempted to tell him that these are Blue Bottle beans, voted by some to be the finest coffee beans roasted in San Francisco and home brewed on our Rancilio espresso machine.

Instead, I let him hold my warm cup as Leiopleurodon makes his way further into the deep.

By Anjie Reynolds

Mommy - It's Time to Do Something for YOU

2009-05-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Motherhood is not a glamorous job and all too often lacks the recognition and respect it deserves.

Luckily, my mother rarely concerned herself with what others thought of her, but she did get tired. And she did wish she had some time to herself, maybe even time for a self-indulgent manicure.

When it got really bad, she would exclaim, “I’ve had it up to here” pointing almost to the top of her forehead. We never thought she would point to the very top of her head, although I believe it did happen once when she spontaneously left for a weekend in Aspen by herself.

My father had to come home from work early, and we were all a little concerned about her. Apparently she went for bike rides and enjoyed the outdoors, probably ordered room service or dined at an expensive restaurant without children fighting or dishes to do.

‘She’s finally gone crazy,’ we thought. But now as a mother I think -- good for her! It was about the sanest thing she could have done.

I have taken my mother’s advice and have made arrangements so that one day a week, I have a day off. Usually I fill it with chores that I did not have time to do during the week. I can hear my mother on the phone, asking me what I’m doing on my day off and when I give her the list of errands, her silence speaks disapproval.

“Maybe you could get your nails done, or do something for yourself,” she says. ‘If I have time,’ I think.

Whenever I make a trip to visit my parents, my mother always gives me her nail appointment and offers to baby-sit my daughter, Samantha. I tell her I like to get my nails done by her manicurist because she gives the best pedicures, but we both know it isn’t about my nails.

By Rebecca Elegant

This Mother Has Our Vote

2009-05-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

Ours is a household of political junkies, so when my daughter turned 18, I wrapped her birthday presents in voter registration forms.

Now eligible to buy lottery tickets and cigarettes, join the Army, and vote (but not drink), she sat down with me at the dining room table piled high with Voter Guides, newspaper clippings, endorsements, and a small forest’s worth of glossy political ads.

Too bad about the drinking age thing, because we both could have used a good stiff one to get through the mountains of spinformation in front of us.

The lesson commenced. “It’s pretty impossible to be well informed about all the issues and candidates,” I instructed. “So one strategy is to follow the recommendations of people you trust. Or compare all the editorial endorsements of various newspapers and average them out.

“Then there are plenty of well-intended but poorly drafted initiatives. You have to decide what message you want to send or whether to vote purely on the merits. It’s perfectly reasonable to vote your ideals, but it’s also a good strategy to vote pragmatically.”

“This is really depressing,” sighed my daughter, staring at hundreds of blank bubbles on her absentee ballot.

Now my daughter has registered in another state where she goes to college, outside our sphere of influence. She is swamped with schoolwork and never has time even to glance at headlines.

I wonder how she’ll vote.

I wonder if she’ll vote.

By Lorrie Goldin

The Third Grade Fashion Police

2009-05-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

“Today Phoebe asked me why I wear dresses all the time,” said my eight-year old daughter, Lena, one day after school.

In denial that girlie peer pressure, which I remembered from middle school, was starting in the third grade, I gave Lena’s classmate the benefit of the doubt.

“You know, Lena, sometimes kids have trouble making conversation. Perhaps Phoebe just wants to talk with you, and discussing clothes is a way to start. May be she likes dresses, too. ”

Lena gave me a puzzled look. “Last week, when I wore my satin skirt, Phoebe asked if I was going to the prom,” said Lena. “Phoebe hates dresses.”

Come to think of it, during the two years that Lena and Phoebe were in the same class, I had only seen her wearing jeans and thin, pastel T-shirts. It didn’t matter if it was too cold for a T-shirt or too hot for jeans; Phoebe’s outfit was the same. Phoebe’s T-shirts either had botanically incorrect flowers, Hannah Montana, or “edgy” slogans like “Boys Drool and Girls Rule. ” Most of the girls at Lena’s elementary school dressed in the same can’t-wait-to-be-a teenager outfit.

“Well, why do you care what Phoebe thinks?” I said, which is probably the most naïve thing a parent can say to a child.”

A couple days later, Lena wore a black skirt, bright green T-shirt, black leggings, and a black small sweater. I thought the strong colors made her look particularly beautiful. She was upset when I picked her up.

“Mom, today Phoebe, Michaela, Niki, and Camaron all asked me together why I was dressed all in black, like a witch.”

I patted Lena’s head until she felt better. As we drove home, my eleven-year old son, Walker, who is soon to be in middle school said, “You know Mom, may be Lena needs to start dressing like the other girls.”

I couldn’t help clicking with disgust. “Why does she need to follow everybody else?”

“So she can be popular, and fit in,” said Walker

“Aren’t the popular people the ones who think for themselves?” I said. I let my kids put in a CD, so I could have the last word.

The next day, I picked up Elena after going to the gym. I wore a T-shirt that shrank too much in the wash. As I sat on the bench while I waited for Elena to load her backpack, I noticed Michaela staring at the bit of my stomach that my T-shirt revealed. Michaela then looked at her mother, and rolled her eyes. Michaela’s mother rolled her eyes back at Michaela. I turned crimson and frantically yanked by shirt so it would stretch into my shorts. I was still shaken as Lena, Walker and I walked back to the car.

I hoped Lena hadn’t seen anything, but she had noticed the eye roll, and worst of all, my embarrassment. All she said was, “Aren’t Michaela and her mom mean?”

I agreed, and finally understood what Lena had to face every day.

By Beth Touchette

No Time to Write When You Are a Procrastinator

2009-05-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

dsIt’s time to write. To schedule interviews. To work on my book proposal.

The kids are in preschool, though I’ll be picking them up early since Lucas is getting over a cold. Still, I have very two fruitful hours left to work. I check my e-mail. Nothing urgent. No excuse to linger. However, I must check Facebook and become a fan of Seventh Generation and Oprah. I read others’ status updates. Then I update my own account about how my son convinced me to buy fluorescent blue-colored Peeps. But even Facebook, which can usually suck hours out of a day, takes just a few minutes. I call my husband. I’d spoken with his mom the day before, and I’d forgotten to tell him that they can’t see the Disneyland pictures on their digital picture frame, oh and that LegoLand in Denmark is open every day of the week in May when we’ll be visiting. My husband, ever the efficient engineer who rarely procrastinates, is in serious work mode, so he only utters, “OK.” The entire conversation takes less than a minute.

This is not going well.

None of my normally reliable stalling techniques are working today. Damn it! Now I have plenty of time to be the real-life productive writer that I'm forever complaining I never have the time to be.

I could write a blog!

But where?

Twitter? Facebook? MySpace? The Writing Mamas? My mothers' club newsletter?

It's not easy being a mother today, let alone one who writes.

By Kristy Lund

Seeking Shelter from the Storm

2009-05-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's raining. Oh shit, it’s 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 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, rageful side of deep loneliness where I stand on a different side of the river from my friends with healthy kids.

It’s a room without a door in 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 grown up 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

High Expectation May Be Too High

2009-05-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I went to hear Madeline Levine talk about her new book called The Price of Privilege. She writes about an epidemic of depression, anxiety and substance abuse in children in middle to upper class areas, such as Marin.

Since my daughter is only two, I do not have experience raising an adolescent in Marin, but I do have a great deal of experience teaching adolescents.

Looking back on my high school teaching career, a major cause of this burgeoning epidemic is clear: the emphasis on performance rests at the heart of the problem.

With this emphasis on performance, let’s skip right to graduation and forget the process it took everyone, students and teachers alike, to get there.

First of all, the school where I taught in Marin publishes for all to see the colleges and universities the graduating students will attend. While it may be interesting to see all of the different places the students will go, I think this publication sends the wrong message: where you go to college is more important than anything you did to get there, and is the most important aspect of who you are.

Nothing else is published about the students, not a special quote cherished by the student, not the community service the student performed, not any aspect of the student’s personality.

That Timmy is going to Stanford is all we get about him. Teachers are also victims of a performance-based culture at graduation. Students pick a few teachers to walk with them. The rest don’t even have a seat at graduation, let alone a part in the ceremony.

I remember my first graduation experience in Marin, leaning against a tree near the back, barely able to hear what was being said. Even as a confident adult who knew deep down that I was a good teacher and that I should be proud that I put my heart and soul into my job, I felt this overwhelming sense of failure because I was not chosen to walk with them.

This is in stark contrast to a school where I taught in Colorado where even though four-thousand students attended, every single faculty member walked proudly in robes with the students, and we were even reserved front row seating, so that we could see and hear the students we worked so hard to get to this point.

Now if I was feeling this crushed, I can only imagine how insecure adolescents who are struggling to find themselves must feel in a performance heavy culture.

This is not to say that we should protect our kids from all disappointments. They need failures to grow and learn from, but they also need to know that their worth and identity are not dependant on grade point average, college acceptances, and varsity sports teams.

Now I sit here, not as a teacher but as a mother who knows how easy it is to get caught in the tangles of a cultural phenomenon that has the potential to squander creativity, individuality and self worth.

How can I impart to my daughter that achievement is good if coupled with intrinsic motivation? How can I show her that working to our full potential gives us a sense of pride, but that our foibles and eccentricities are what make us human, and therefore able to love and be loved? I do not yet know the answers to my questions and that frightens me a bit. For now, hugs and kisses seem to solve most problems in my two- year old’s life.

By Rebecca Elegant

Teens Can Accept Green Instead of Greenbacks

2009-05-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

A teachable moment arrived recently in the form of an e-mail from the graduation committee of my daughter’s high school. It was a plea for extra donations to keep Safe and Sober Grad Night afloat. The Senior Class ritual is jeopardized because families and community businesses who usually fund the celebration are themselves struggling to stay afloat.

Safe and Sober Grad Night is a wonderful tradition for many Marin high schools. Seniors pile into buses shortly after tossing their mortarboards, and head for an all-night, chaperoned, substance-free party. No one is excluded. There are no intoxicated senior drivers, no fancy clothes, no panic attacks or tears about who has a date and what to wear. It’s a bunch of kids, many of whom have known each other since kindergarten, celebrating all they have meant to one another before they set off for broader and divergent horizons.

I am glad to write a check to support Safe and Sober Grad night, but can’t we do more? What if we embrace the economic meltdown as an opportunity to scale back on excess and teach our kids the true value of community?

Marin, with its ostentatious consumption and intense pressure to keep up appearances, has always been a tough county. Rich and poor families both contend with the twin epidemics of affluenza and entitlement that commonly infect Marin kids. The financially stressed face even more urgent hardships.

These struggling families are not new, they’ve just been hidden. Long before Wall Street went belly up, there have been kids in Marin who skip prom because they don’t want to burden their parents. Countless parents have lost sleep trying to conjure up enough cash so their kids can keep up in the social competition. The widespread pain from the current economic crisis makes it easier to shed light on a problem that’s been here in the shadows all along.

Happily, there are signs of progress. Teens Turning Green, an organization founded by Marin students, is expanding its original emphasis on cosmetic safety to promote ecologically and economically friendly prom-going. Now that the focus on green includes the shrinking abundance of greenbacks, there’s an even greater opportunity for finding the silver lining in this perfect storm.

Of course, it’s fun to dress up and show off from time to time-- one needn’t be a killjoy. But imagine if everybody downsized in the status competition and contributed the savings to Safe and Sober Grad Night--especially the kids who don’t need to for their wallets, but may need to for their souls.

What if winter formals in far-flung San Francisco morph into winter square dances in the school gym? What if proms no longer feature pricey chocolate fondue fountains that ruin the girls’ finery? What if stretch limos and exorbitant ticket prices become as uncool as tobacco?

Imagine nobody losing sleep about affording either prom or graduation! As Teens Turning Green suggests, kids can lend and borrow clothes. They can do each others’ hair, toes, and make-up. They can drive the family car and donate what they would have spent on a stretch limo and all the accessories to Safe and Sober Grad Night. Kids can even hold a car wash to get those prom wheels gleaming while raising money for the common good. Parents can do more than write a check—they can encourage their kids to give up excessive spending and instead give of themselves.

Teaching our graduates the value of community and living within their means—now wouldn’t that be a terrific send-off?

By Lorrie Goldin

Childhood Fears Attack Our Adult DNA

2009-05-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

As my father was packing up his car when he left the family, his parting wisdom was this;

“Never become financially dependent on a man. Jus look what it did to your mother."

My mother was residing at the time in a locked ward on seventy-two-hour hold for suicidal threats.

His words still haunt me today, forty years old and financially dependent, with two kids under five.

Today, my husband winced at the pile of Costco party supplies I just came home with.

"We already had plastic cups."

"They’re giant and red,” I say. “They’re too big for punch.”

He looks at me, I look at the floor. We both sigh, all contained hostility.

"We're not making enough to match what we spend... atf all now," he tells me.

I am ashamed and angry. I turned down a job working in the county jail because I realized I just couldn't work there once I felt the despair pour into me while walking among the locked units. Somewhere, after having kids, my past armor has disappeared. But we are both angry at me for not taking that job, despite our verbal assurances to each other that it was the right decision.

We need money, and my private practice is not bringing in enough yet. Financial dependence and wanting my kids to have their mom and a great preschool is right, in my mind. My gut differs. We're going broke and I am panicked and embarrassed. I want to see it differently, that I should be supported for being available to my baby while she is small, but I harbor backlash beliefs that I should be bringing in the money that will take the stone partly off my husband's back and give me the self-esteem that seems to have escaped along with my six-pack abs and taut skin.

I remember my father's words and how I lived by them, aggressively independent and hard-working.

Terrified, really.

There is something to grow up here with, another perfect lesson in losing my position of invulnerability thanks to choosing children. This tight-fisted nausea itself is where I need to stay for today, and hope for a little faith to open.

By Avvy Mar

A Man Will Always Be Your Son

2009-05-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

"Your turn to tell the story, Mom.”

"No, it's your turn,” I replied, and so he began.

No connected thoughts. Lots of giggles and silliness in his 4-year old delight until he settled into his pillow.

It is easy to tell a story when the listener believes in you and hangs on every word. The plot thickens or wanes as his breathing softens or excels as your story is interrupted with listener input.

I remember one story that began with giggles and joy and ended with tears of release and hopefulness. I could tell you that story now, but more than the story what I remember from that nighttime reverie of Mom and child is a special lasting reward and joy.

That night my son looked up at me and asked, "Mom, what is the biggest number of all?"

I answered, "Nathaniel, there is none because numbers go on and on to infinity."

I know he understood for his immediate response was, "Then I love you until it never comes to an end and infinity and more.”

That was 30 years ago but never forgotten for though he is now a young father with a child of his own, when we correspond we always sign with our secret code:

I.L.Y.U.I.N.C.T.A.E.A.I.A.M.

By Ruth Scott

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

2009-05-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

Anniversaries usually represent happy times. But the latest anniversary in my life was not a celebration. It was a remembrance of my mother’s passing.

I had sought a sign from her last year. Something that indicated to me that she was somehow still around.

It was night and nothing.

I was putting my then 4-year old daughter to bed when she suddenly turned, stared at the ceiling and said, “Whose face is that?”

I didn’t see anything, except maybe lint.

“I don’t know, Mimi, whose face is it?”

“Grandma Rae,” she said. Rae is my mother.

I smiled. I had my sign.

This year I was so busy that though I was aware of the date and sad, I didn’t really think about receiving a sign.

I had a meeting that day with my daughter’s teachers to discuss her progress and to ask for advice on how to get her to do her homework.

Since she loves art, they suggested that she draw a picture and then write a sentence describing it.

In the evening Mimi drew a picture. It was a unicorn with a rainbow below it.

“We need to write a sentence and sound it out,” I explained.

“The unicorn flies over the rainbow,” she said.

My mother’s favorite song was Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

I smiled. I had my sign.

Though my mother and daughter have never met, I somehow get the feeling that somewhere, some place, they have.

By Dawn Yun

From One Generation to the Next and the Next

2009-05-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

My father-in-law will move from a skilled nursing facility to an assisted living apartment this week.

My husband and I are a bit frantic about figuring out what furniture and belongings from his large three-bedroom home will fit best in the new, tiny apartment, and about getting his nicotine stained and smelly condominium ready to rent out.

And we try not to panic over where the money to pay for all of this will come from.

My 10-year old son, Nick, spent Sunday afternoon with us at Grandpa’s home, helping us sort through a lifetime of possessions. Nick found treasures – a digital camera, an electronic keyboard, a bag of rolled pennies too heavy to carry, a telescope, and a tape recorder.

He hauled trash with us to the dumpster, hiking up and down the stairs about 40 times. He saw tears roll down both his parents’ faces when we stumbled into the past. Photo albums, of course. But how to explain my tears when I found the Neiman Marcus box with the chiffon head scarves of the grandmother who was dead before Nick was born?

Much went unsaid.

The thought crossed my mind many times that Nick might be doing this for us one day. I didn’t voice the thought. Too much of a burden for a 10-year old. But I hope the day stands out in his mind. I hope Nick takes in what good care his father is giving to his grandfather. That is a lesson to be learned.

We take care of each other. Always, forever, no matter what.

By Marianne Lonsdale

A Special Bicycle

2009-05-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

Someone stole my boy’s bike.

Fortunately, a friend has loaned us one until we buy another, but that bike! I bought it when Dane was 2 – the future rider he’d become, just a pedaling speck in my mind.

That bike inspired a 5-year-old’s self-reliance that would’ve made Emerson proud.

All summer long, we rode, first in circles around the playground; then, into Sausalito or along the Bay Trail between Marin City and Mill Valley.

We put in about 15 miles a week on that bike –– Dane zigzagging along the Bay Trail and me easing my own bike behind him, his 4-year-old sister attached to me on her trail-a-bike.

At first, Dane’s zigzags made my hair stand on end as serious cyclists zoomed by. Eventually, though, he learned to use the right side of the trail, and I watched him more calmly from behind.

Soon he was off-road, standing up to test his tires in the mud, raising a daring hand to point out the great white heron or snowy egret at water’s edge.

Come August, he even advanced to the hilly 5-mile perimeter of Angel Island, working in 100-degree weather with the determination of a yellow jersey rider on the Tour de France.

Now we ride to school. Not many students do this regularly, so, when he pulls his helmet off, his hair sweaty and sticking up, his fellow kindergarteners are incredulous, “You rode again, Dane?” And he smiles shyly with a proud sense of himself.

But riding isn’t about attention; Dane loves what riding feels like. When his sister says, “Let’s go feel the wind on our arms,” we all know what she means.

Let’s just get out and move ourselves along. Let’s pick warm blackberries in September and brush rain off our faces in January. Let’s pedal up steep hills, gasping for air, or speed through puddles, soaking our socks. Let’s have an adventure.

That’s what that bike represented: a boy gaining a sense of himself and a sense of adventure, powered by his own two legs.

I knew that bike wouldn’t last forever, and that Dane would eventually need a bigger one, and that someday he’d ride without me. But that bike marked the beginning of a way of life that extends beyond cars and exhaust, into adventure and self-reliance, and it served as the vehicle for me to witness it.

Boy, I’ll miss that bike.

But, Bike, thanks for that boy.

By Anjie Reynolds

What Happened to Her?

2009-05-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

When I went to Yahoo!’s home page a few weeks ago, something startled me. It was a picture of astronaut Lisa Nowak next to a bizarre headline about her attempting to kidnap the rival for her love.

I almost jumped out of my chair. I know Lisa! I went to high school with her in Rockville, Maryland. We ran on the track team together. I remember her as smart, ambitious, and very competitive. In her senior year, Lisa won the prestigious student-athlete award and told us that all she wanted to do was fly.

Her dreams came true this past summer when she flew on the space shuttle. I watched her on TV and cheered her on. I hadn’t been in contact with her since high school, but I was proud of her. Look at what she’s accomplished! Particularly as a woman, and especially as a mom!
I could only imagine how incredibly hard it must have been for her to win that principal dream. So it was with utter shock that I followed the news of her drive across half the country to confront/attack someone in the manner that she did (in wig and trench coat, wearing diapers for the long drive, with pepper spray at the ready).

I thought, how could she have thrown away all that she worked so hard for with this one foolish act? How could she have allowed her emotions to overwhelm her reason?

Many theories were bandied about. None of us can say for sure what happened, but personally, I think she cracked, under tremendous pressure. And I’m deeply sad for her.
Being a modern day mom is a tough job. Just being responsible for other human beings is pressure. Raising them, more stress. Maintaining stability and love in your family, additional worries. Working full-time while meeting hundreds of obligations, incredible anxiety. Having a high-visibility career in a traditionally male industry, explosive demands.

Sometimes we moms are so busy we forget: We need to give ourselves breaks, take care of ourselves and each other. Release the pressure. Because we know what’s most important in the end, and it’s not having the moon and the stars, per se. It’s being able to share them with those we love.

By Cindy Bailey

Listen to a Child?

2009-05-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Children ask very complicated questions, expecting an easy answer from that great source of all information, the one who “knows it all,” Mom.

Flattering as this may be, I’ve come up against some whopper questions in my rearing of five children. Most of the time I end up being the learner and they my teachers.

Some attempts at answering a 4-year old inquiry stand out in my memory. One occurred the day Alison, then four, watched the space shuttle. As the men walked in space she asked, “Mom, what is space?” I spent time and thought and many words showing her space and telling her what space was, such as the space in a glass, the space in the drawer, the space between where she stood, and where I stood.

Perplexed and dissatisfied, she left the room, only to return five minutes later radiant and beaming. “Mom, I know what you mean,” she exclaimed. “Space is where you don’t bump into anything!”

Now why hadn’t I thought of that?

Then there was the time when Heidi, about the same age, crawled out of the bathtub and perfectly defined “nudity,” by declaring, “Mom, I’m barefoot all over.”

And so it began, when questions and definitions got too difficult for me to explain in the vocabulary and reasoning of an adult, I could listen carefully to how they were thinking and lead them through their own words to their own truthful understanding.

Often, while learning new facts, they introduced me to things I had overlooked. This was true the day I was wandering around the yard with my own children and a neighbor’s little boy. We were hunting and collecting insects and grubs for a game I had created to teach about the environment, “Nature’s Treasure Chest,” when Gavin asked me, “Is a honey bee the only insect that makes food for people?”

I paused, I knew of insect that was eaten in different cultures, insects that produced silk and other product, but I concluded that the honey bee, indeed, was the one insect that produced a product that could be harvested for human consumption.

It was my daughter, Ann, who first showed me that the sow bug, and the pill bug carried eggs on their ventral side and that these little creatures were not insects but relatives of the crab and lobster.

Listen and you hear logical names created by children. My son was the first person I heard call a “butterfly” a “flutter by.” It seemed a better name to me, and since then I have heard others use this term.

I remember going on a hike with him and there was a dandelion seed along the trail. . . We had often picked them and made a wish as we blew the seeds to the wind. He looked at the dandelion seed and said to me, “Mom, I see a wish growing.” I was charmed and learned to listen better and I began to write the enchantment down and keep a list that I could recite to his adult ears.

It’s special to both of us, and I think he thinks I’m special for remembering and sharing.

By Ruth W. Scott

Mornings are a Mother's Time

2009-05-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

I pop out of bed at 5:45 am and push the alarm button to off.

I pad down the hall and get the coffee started, careful not to wake my husband or son. My workout clothes, laid out the night before, await me on the sofa. I dress, walk up the driveway to pick up the newspaper. The moon still shines and the air is crisp and cold.

Twenty-five minutes for sipping coffee and reading the paper before I head to my 6:30 a.m. exercise class. An hour of hard sweating. Back home for a quick shower, an even quicker bowl of cereal and I’m out the door by 8 a.m.

Three more stops before I get to work – gas station, ATM and dry cleaners. I slide into my desk chair a few minutes before 9 a.m.

I’ve already had a full morning. This amazes me. In the years before motherhood, I never in my wildest dreams thought I could accomplish anything in the morning. I was lucky to get showered, dressed and out the door. Even coffee and breakfast was at my desk.

Now morning is MY TIME.

I relish my early hours. My time to myself to exercise, to squeeze in a few errands. To do it all early so I have more time with my husband and son later in the day when they need and want me.

By Marianne Lonsdale

When Should You Send Your Child to Kindergarten?

2009-05-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

I am sending my younger son off to kindergarten in the fall. Depending on the time of day, I believe it is the best idea I ever had or just one more way I'm screwing him up.

I am afraid if I send him before he is “ready,” I risk launching a tragic school career. It will be fraught with failures and missed opportunities sprinkled with serious judgement errors.

Everything will be traced back to kindergarten.

“If only I had one more year to work on my social skills,” he’ll say, as he cries from the window he has shot out as a teenage serial shooter. “It only I had learned my ABCs.”

Of course, the truth is -- I feel guilty for actually thinking about my needs first when considering when to send him. My son, Paul, has a late birthday, missing the cut off by one week, which was just as well because he was not ready.

But with Eric, it is up to me. His birthday is August 1st. This will put him pretty much in the middle. He will not be the youngest and he will not be the smallest. He turns five-years old, four months before the cut-off date, so he is officially old enough.

Is he “prepared” enough?

Socially, he is up for anything. Whatever he sees, he wants to try. He is always determined to succeed. He gets frustrated easily but this involves him clenching his jaw and his fists and stating loudly: “I am so frustrated!”

Paul’s reaction to just about everything has always been tears and hysteria. But Paul was writing his name by four-years old. When I ask Eric to spell, he smiles and says “S!” He is obsessed with Scotch Tape and opens Zip-Lock Bags by ripping a whole in the bottom.

He takes his pants off in order to pee. No matter what the weather, he will be wearing shorts (“little pants”), a T-shirt with a dinosaur on it, and bare feet. Oh, and no underwear. I finally figured out the shoes and underwear slow him down when he takes his pants off to go.

And so he is registered.

He is excited about the prospect: announcing daily that when he is “bigger” he will go to Paul’s school. Every day I am encouraged by his positive attitude and determination. While Paul always needed to be “first,” Eric prefers a challenge. I am confident he will rise to the test and have a great year at kindergarten.

I look forward to to athose extra “child free” hours, too.

By Cathy Burke

Girlfriend, It's Time to Move On

2009-05-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

The baby and toddler years will always be amongst my most memorable memories. It wasn’t easy finding a group of women who felt the same exact way I did about mommying.

We shared insecurities, secrets, tips, and truly gave each other what was left of us that we didn’t give to our children.

Then -- something changed.

Maybe when my youngest went to kindergarten. When I began to work again. When I got diagnosed with an unexpected illness.

Suddenly, I could see clearly what I could not observe, or did not want to notice:true friendship.

And one person, who I thought was the most giving of people, upon closer inspection, really was not. Oh, there was the giving. Groceries in particular. She always came laden with them. And liked to give me gifts that I neither needed, sought nor could use.

What she had trouble giving -- was herself. I noticed when I talked, she rarely listened. I babysat for her child way out of proportion to her watching mine. Then there were the unkind words that sometimes found their way out of her mouth. They were always so shocking that I pretended they were unsaid.

One day, after a particularly virulent spiel -- I could no longer ignore my internal voice. It yelled: MOVE ON!

The problem: her daughter and my daughter are great friends and I don’t want that ruined. We also run in similar circles.

This is where being a mother and the wisdom I’ve hopefully gained must come into play. This is not about me. This is not about her. This is about our children.

Still, there is sadness for what once and for what will no longer be.

I’ve always tried to create family from friends. My best friend at 11 is still my best friend today. I laugh as hard now with my college friends as I did with them back when we were in our 20s (a-hem, that being just a year or two ago).

I’ve been fortunate to have lived around the country and have friends in each place where I have resided. And I have incredible mommy friends who will be my sister-friends forever.

I am happy that by putting an end to something that once was beautiful but is now toxic, I am taking care of myself and I will be watchful for my daughter.

I will also be something else – mature, graceful and kind. The qualities I want my children to have.

There is legacy and lesson in that.

By Dawn Yun

Sing It, Pre-School Sister

2009-05-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

My daughter has started singing with vibrato. She’s four. So, it’s not a quick and snappy “Mary had a little lamb,” it’s slow and pensive: “Ma-a-ary ha-a-a-ad uh-uh-uh li-i-i-it-uh-uh-uhl la-a-a-amb”

It’s pre-schooler sings the blues.

I’m not sure where she picked this up, but I will say it seemed to start after a two-week visit from her Grammy, who, if I may be so bold, utilizes a wee bit of the vibrato herself.

But, then again, maybe she picked it up from me. While I try to stay away from excesses of vocal warble, perhaps my voice occasionally makes those dips and dives, too.

I’ll admit that sometimes in the dark when I sit on the floor of my kids’ bedroom and sing up to them in their lofts, I let my voice take off. I belt out the lyrics to their (my) favorite song, Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue.”

In some parts, I sing fast and raspy, going somewhere edgy and rebellious. In other parts, I let my voice go slow and bluesy, somewhere unchecked and from the heart. And, so far, since they don’t ask what it means to work in a “topless bar” or why you’d light “a burner on the stove to offer me a pipe,” sometimes I let myself feel the poetry and music so deeply I could cry.

So when I hear, “You are my sunshine” coming from my daughter’s mouth like she’s channeling Ethel Merman, I admire the risks she’s taking with her sounds -- and, maybe, even her feelings.

I try to catch her eye with a nod and a smile as if to say to my girl, “That’s right -- sing it, sister.”

By Anjie Reynolds

What Are We Fighting For?

2009-05-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

My seven-years old son asked me recently, “Mom, is war ever good?” We were driving in beautiful Marin, past the emerald green hills and the sparkling blue water of San Francisco Bay.

I paused, and my thoughts raced through my head, searching for just the right words and just the right message. I thought of all the articles and books I ever read as a teacher and as a mother on explaining complicated issues to young children. My brain quickly turned up the information it retained on the warfare philosophy and latest war-related news, complete with visual images seen on TV and computer screens, as well as latest war casualties’ statistics. What could I answer to a seven-year old?

Suddenly, I recalled the familiar voice of my mother telling me stories of her growing up in Russia during and after WWII. It was her voice that made my throat tighten, my heart beating rapidly, my mind still desperately searching for words. I sensed that my answer was not instantly coming, and I said, “Let me think about it, okay?”

A few months ago, when Alex’s questions were getting increasingly complicated, I often found myself short of factual knowledge. Exactly how many miles are there from our planet to the moon? What does an artificial heart look like? For cases like these, I explained to Alex’s dismay that “sometimes Mom does not know everything, and she needs more time to look it up and think about it.”

Soon Alex grew to like that answer, because it often meant that we’d look stuff up together online or in the library. I also learned that it meant that I will definitely be reminded to account for my “thinking time.” As I invoked my “let me think about it” answer deferment, I knew that a few hours later I will be asked that very same question again.

My mother’s voice came to me from my childhood, when my bedtime stories were not about Goldilocks or dinosaurs, like the ones my son hears from me these days. They were my mother’s childhood memories, told in a quiet half-whisper in the darkness of my room in our apartment in the center of Moscow.

She told me of being called the “German bastard” by other children, because her birthday fell on the first day of war for Russia. She also told me about her family living in the church basement for several cold winter months, while their village in the outskirts of Moscow was bombed flat. Speaking slowly and calmly, she’d tell me, “Everyone bombed us, both our planes and the Germans. Bombs and bullets are too stupid to know who to kill and who to spare, they do not pick sides. Everyone who was out of the basement was dead.”

My mom also told me that the reason we didn’t have any family jewelry was because my grandmother exchanged all of her gold rings and earrings for two loafs of crudely baked brown bread to feed her five children, including my then four-year old mom. Even with that, her two seven-years old siblings died of starvation, their emaciated bodies forever etched in my mother’s memories. They were my uncle and aunt I never got to meet.

She told me about my grandfather coming back from war triumphant, angry, addicted to alcohol, and missing a leg. My mother’s stories left me sleeping fitfully, dreaming of black smoke of my mother’s burning village, of planes dropping bombs on women and children, and of the scarred stump of my grandpa’s leg.

Growing up during the Cold War, I was plagued with the anxiety of a seemingly imminent war threat from the United States. After learning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in school, I grilled my much older brother with questions: “What exactly happens when a nuclear bomb explodes? Why do Americans want to start a nuclear war with us? How long will it take me to die if the bomb hits my school?”

An aspiring young scientist, he was all too happy to provide me with gruesome details. For my third grade art contest, I drew a picture of a big, black bomb with two thick red lines crossing it off and a white dove with an olive branch flying in the background. I did not win any prize.

As I got older, things gradually changed. The Cold War ended when I was a teenager, and America became our far away capitalist model to emulate. I moved to California to go to college, and my son was born here, in a comfortable hospital room overlooking the mountains of Marin County. In the beauty of emerald green hills and in our peaceful if hectic everyday life, my mother’s bedtime stories, my nightmares and my brother’s graphic modern warfare explanations began to slowly fade away. Only occasional glimpses of TV news about the war in Iraq kept them from completely disappearing from the back of my mind. My son’s question brought it all flooding back.

Sometimes, your mind does strange things, and it does not recall memories in the exact way it recorded them. A mother now, I suddenly see my son in the black smoke of a burning village. I see him in the dying, starving child in the basement and in burned bodies of nuclear bomb survivors. I imagine his face in place of a uniformed picture of a fallen American soldier in Iraq.

Is war ever good? It was such a short question. I could have given him a long, complicated, well-researched answer complete with statistics and examples. As a teacher, I could have possibly found the way to word it in a child-appropriate way. Instead, when we got home that day and he surely remembered to ask me again, I quietly sat him on my lap, hugged him tight, and simply said, “No.”

By Svetlana Nikitina

No, Not THAT F Word

2009-04-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

I almost said the “F” word in front of my daughter this afternoon. Not the four-letter one that ends in a “k” -- though that one does slip out occasionally. I’m talking about “F-A-T.” It’s how I felt when I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the Banana Republic window.

I’m not, really. I can honestly say that my body image in my 40s is better than it’s ever been -- usually. I’ve accepted that I will not be a waif or tall and willowy in this lifetime. And on most days, I appreciate my athletic build and strength. But after a week out of town spent eating too much and not exercising enough, I’d gained a couple of pounds. And the old “I’m fat” tape started playing in my head.

I barely stopped myself from saying the words out loud. But one of my missions as a mother is to avoid contaminating my daughter with the negative body image I -- and most women I know -- have struggled with. So even when I’m feeling a tad pudgy, I try not to criticize my body in front of her.

She’s not yet five. But she’s already taking note of diet commercials and messages from the media that thin is good.

“Mama, did you know that there’s medicine that can help you lose weight?” she told me the other day, almost as amazed as when she discovered “Curious George” on KQED.

And when I picked her up from preschool last week she announced that “me and Isabel are going on a diet so we can get small enough to live in a flower.”

Talking about living in a flower is cute. Talking about losing weight at her age is scary.

She thinks dieting is a game. But I know what it’s like to obsess about weight and to measure one’s self-worth according to what a scale says at a young age. And I know that now girls start down that path even earlier.

Helping my daughter cultivate a healthy body image in our society will be an uphill battle. But at least if she grows up hearing me say “I’m strong” instead of “I’m fat,” she may have a chance.

By Dorothy O’Donnell

Mai Tai Mommy

2009-04-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

I will never, ever go on vacation again. Normally, I find myself saying this after carting my three kids under five years old to Boston and back on the red-eye that stops through Denver to switch planes. HELL ON WHEELS – or wings, in this case.

But this time, I will never, ever go on vacation again because I left my household of three kids, one giant yellow lab, one German student, one wide-eyed husband and many unwelcome vermin in the basement – and went ALONE on vacation with another mom.

Yes, ALONE. No children. Solo. Single. Alone.

“What???” you scream at me. “Why, that sounds like BLISS, freedom, peace!!!”

And it was. Four nights and five days of Hilton Waikiki heaven. Palm trees, SPF 45, gorgeous, trashy magazines. What’s Britney up to these days???

And we relaxed – hard. We wiggled our toes. We flipped from front to back. We took 20 minutes to slowly, slowly tiptoe our way into the medicinal Hawaiian waters.

No splashing. No whining. No “Mommmmmmmmmy!”

No responsibility for the frying of small parts of tiny ears, backs, noses and butt cracks. No up at 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 5:30 a.m., ready to play. No peanut butter and jelly encrusted with sand fingerprints on my new, sassy bathing suit.

It was a strong Mai Tai away from a Calgon moment.

“So why won’t you ever, never do it again?” you ask, scratching your Mommy head?

Because – simply – I came home.

I came home a relaxed noodle – a slippery shell of the “chop-chop-chop,” on-time, driven, schedule-schedule-scheduled Mommy of old. I came home a non-supermom. I came home a peaceful, mumbling, relaxed idiot – shocked at the level of chaos that I’d become so used to, and unable to jump right back into the diaper/playdate/mommy-wheres-my-other-sock fire.

So I made a vow to my husband as I wept in the shower after day two of being back. “I will never, ever go on vacation again!” I sobbed.

Well, until next year, at least – Mai Tai’s here I come!!!

By Annie B. Yearout

How to Find a Place of Comfort When Your Kids Drive You Insane

2009-04-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

It’s 7:55 a.m. I’ve made breakfast, changed the toddler’s diaper and clothes, consumed one cup of coffee, made and packed lunches, and am waiting for the outcome of one of two classic getting-to-school-scenarios: 1) everything moves according to plan; 2) nothing moves according to plan.

I stand by the front door, open it, glance at my watch. “It’s time to leave!” I announce hopefully, trying not to betray the mounting tension, doubt and anxiety the last five minutes at home often produces on school days.

The third grader arrives. She has spent the last fifteen minutes wrapping her forearm in toilet paper, held together like a cast with scotch tape, because she “hurt it falling out of bed.” The voice inside my head, disbelieving, scornfully asks, “What IS it with you?” I would never have gotten away with this kind of plea for attention.

And then the first-grader: she appears, this time, with hair and teeth unbrushed, socks and shoes not even found, her breakfast half-eaten, some still on her face. “Mommy, I brought this especially for you,” she says in a tender, meaningful voice, as if to say, I Love You With All My Heart and there is NOTHING else that matters, especially school.

“How S-w-e-e-t,” I manage to get out while I glance at my watch and evil-eye the plastic sparkle ring that she’s offering me perched atop a bed pillow. Time ticks, toddler begins to run amok. The internal voice again, louder, “I asked you to brush your hair and get your shoes four times already and you never listen and now it’s time to leave and we’ll probably be LATE.” Thanks, I say. It’s time for school. Time to GET IN THE CAR, I say. Do you UNDERSTAND?

Then the toddler comes in the house and throws a handful of dirt from the potted plant on the Persian runner, like an offering of the worst kind, straight at my feet. I begin to assume the look of a crazed and rabid dog.

Recently, I put an old, paint-peeling Adirondack chair on our front porch. It is my official time-out spot. I go there almost every morning to remember how to breathe.

Breathe, write, breathe, write….

by Lauren Cargill

Takeout Preserves Family Life

2009-04-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Some afternoons when I drive my car into the garage after taking my daughter to swimming, ballet or acting class, the last thing I want to do is cook.

Usually, boiling water seems like climbing Mount Everest. But since we’re not in the income bracket to afford a cook, or a Sherpa, or even delivery -- I fall back on takeout.

Takeout is to me what a housecleaner is to other, neater, more obsessive women: a luxury that keeps me from going insane.

It has become a want that is now a need. It truly is a service that prevents me from appearing on Snapped, the lovely TV show that “focuses on average women, who snap and kill or arrange for their husbands to be killed.”

But getting takeout isn’t as easy a decision as it seems.

First, there’s the expense. Truly, it would make more sense to just boil water and throw some noodles in it. But, hey, often boiling water is just too much work. And a hit man or woman can be so expensive.

But in family life there is no easy answer.

For you see I have to decide what takeout to get, call and order, and then go get it. Sometimes this involves descending into negotiations between my daughter, my husband and me that would make an ambassador squirm.

For there isn’t one, all wonderful, all-knowing takeout place. Oh, no, in our family there are different types of takeout. There is takeout my daughter will eat, also known as fast food. This includes burritos.

Then there is adult takeout. That is takeout from my favorite Indian restaurant. It is takeout my daughter will eat, if I starve her a bit. It is takeout my husband and I love.

Best of all, it is takeout that will last two days if I order extra. The only downside is the cost.

But as I remind my husband between bites of garlic naan, it’s cheaper than a divorce, or the alternative. And, as my daughter squirms, I remind her that if she just eats one more bite of chicken, I’ll get her the Pokemon cards she desires.

See, I know how to keep my family happy.

By Georgie Craig

A Mother's Reward is Her Daughter's Self-Confidence

2009-04-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

“Its going to be so funny when everyone notices how long my hair has gotten!” chuckled my four-year-old daughter, looking at herself in her mirror, basking in self-love.

Preparing for another birthday party, negotiating wardrobe, how much of my make-up I’ll let her wear, we arrived at my daughter’s certainty about what the true focus of the party would be.

“Dominic’s mom, Karson’s mom,” she went on “they will ALL be so amazed by my hair!”

I stared at her, my little center of the universe. I almost reminded her that people will be thinking other things also, but stopped myself. We have hopped off the developmental ski lift and reached the highest summit of narcissism at just the right time. It changes on its own if all goes well. Leave her alone, I tell myself, the world will be knocking her off it soon and often.

What is the good mother response? Join her in it? Say nothing? Move to another topic? “They'll be happy to see you. We haven’t seen them since last year,” I say, attempting to go with it. She is fluffing her hair and gazing in the mirror. “Um, hm. . .” she says.

I wonder about myself at her age and my anxiety over her confident self-celebration. My mother was in the trenches of her long depression, spreading despair throughout the house when I was small. I can remember feeling exuberant and confident. I tried to share it with her.

“It will be OK, Mom,” I remember saying to her on one occasion when I was about my daughter’s age.

Her eyes looked huge and black. “No, it will never be OK,” she said and I felt myself fall into those black pools and believed her fully.

Today, looking at my daughter now touching up her Cinderella lip gloss, I feel my grateful moment for the day.

This is that paycheck that I get as a mother, knowing I’ve cut the cord to that particular maternal inheritance of short-circuited confidence and negativism that I know my mother and her mother received. My daughter’s sun will not be clouded over to the best of my ability.

We go to the birthday party and several moms who haven’t seen us in a while all say the same thing to my child: “Maya, I can’t believe how long your hair has gotten!”

I’m going to put a bonus in their next paycheck.

By Avvy Mar

Daddy's Home And Mommy Needs a Break

2009-04-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

I’m a mom who’s ready for school to start up again. Not elementary school -- dental school. My husband’s on break for a week before he starts quarter number five of his twelve-quarter program.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that he gets to hang up his shirt and tie and spend some time with us -- especially since during the school year I’m relentlessly on duty at home while he’s relentlessly on duty at school or studying.

During this break, we’ve been able to do some meaningful activities together; camping at the ocean, riding bikes along the bay, cutting out paper coconut trees in our son’s kindergarten class, drinking homemade lattes on the sunny porch.

He’s gotten to do some meaningful activities for himself, too; tuning our bikes (which I had no idea needed tuning), organizing his tool box (which of course was spread out for several days over said sunny porch), and surfing the Web a lot in his underwear.

But when our kids pulled off their shirts and pants on Saturday to run around the house in their underwear yelling, "I'm Daddy! I'm Daddy!" I felt we’d all seen enough of him for a while.

I found myself eyeing that shirt and tie, happily looking forward to another kind of break.

By Anjie Reynolds

Supportive Words from the Mother of a Soon-to-Be Jock

2009-04-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

My son Jack may be a savant. Don’t immediately think “Rain Man”; think more Madden. Jack is four and a half and has an extreme fascination with football.

I can’t figure out the connection. Both of his parents are well versed in the sport and are fans to a certain level (somewhere less than face painting) but we certainly haven’t had any time or energy to devote to building our own knowledge of the sport, let alone creating a prodigy.

He can recite scores -- both as they happen, as well as some that happened months ago. He knows the names and purposes of all positions, both offense and defense. He has favorite players, jerseys of favorite players, names of favorite players, great plays of favorite players, all colors of teams, all names of teams, all mascots.

Perhaps my personal favorite is his desire to go to Tom Brady’s house and get tips on how to play football. Who am I to squash this dream? I would like to go to Tom Brady’s house and get tips on. . . .

My job is to see his dreams happen, even if they seem impossible.

Jack really does have a unique talent. He knows the difference between college and pro teams and games on television. He can count to any score and knows the value of every point scored. He has three team’s regalia complete with jersey, pants and helmet, and wears the helmet when catching a touchdown pass at the end of the living room.

It would be one thing if he couldn’t catch or throw a ball, but he seems versed in doing that as well.

My younger son has realized that opposition is hopeless. His “No hootball game” has turned to “watch ponies” or “watch Patwiots.” He gets bored in the first minute or two, but Jack will watch for hours if we let him. He reenacts plays in the living room complete with straight arm, jukes and tackles. I know that some people see the violence, but I see the passion, with proper protective gear.

He asked me six months ago when he could play football. I didn’t know, so I went to the Internet to look up how old he would have to be to play. I told him he could play when he turned seven. So, every day he asks me how long until he turns seven? Every day I answer.

Yesterday he asked if I would watch him play when he turns seven. I said that I would be there every game. He said, “No, on T.V.?” In his world, he was already playing in the N.F.L.

Childhood is a blessing in dreaming big.

Parenting is hoping that they can achieve every one of those dreams.

By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

A Soft Moment Leads a Mother to Her Life's Work

2009-04-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Swinging my three-year-old son between us, my sister and I walked up the narrow paths of Sorich Park through a forest of Eucalyptus trees toward Mount Tamalpais Cemetery.

We passed a bearded man on our way. “Clear day,” he said. “I thought it would be muddy, but it’s a beautiful day.” The man looked familiar. After the man passed, my son asked, “Was that Baba?”

“No,” I said. “He had a beard like Baba’s. But Baba died.”

“Baba died?”

“Yes.”

“Like Goldie?” Goldie was our goldfish.

“Yes, like Goldie.”

“They put him underneath the ground like Goldie?”

My sister grimaced.

“Yes.”

We heard a distant sawing sound, then a crash. We looked up through the forest, where men were cutting fragile Eucalyptus trees. Once towering trees collapsed. Below us, a family held a funeral amidst the falling trees.

My son sang, “Skip, skip, skip to my Lou. Skip to my Lou, my darlin,’” as he bounded toward “Baba’s bench.” He wiped the dew off of the black granite with his sweater sleeve. I sat him next to the engraved name of my father.

“Tina, sit next to me,” my son called to my sister. So they sat sandwiched on the driest section of the granite. My son asked, “Do you want to read a story?”

This time we had not brought any books, so I said, “Why don’t we tell you a story about Baba.”

My son nodded.

“Baba and Nana used to swing us up into the air on blankets. And we would laugh and laugh. Baba loved to make you laugh when you were a baby. And he held you tight.”

My son felt the gold letters on the edge of the bench that read: When a child is delighted in, she finds herself delightful.

My sister turned to me. “Dad would be so proud of you.” She pointed to my son, “Just look at him. He is delighted in.”

“Thanks, Christina.” She commended me the same way my father would have when he was alive. And, all of a sudden, I realized that my son was my life’s work. The rest was just peripheral.

By Ariana Amini

Volunteer for Brainless Tasks and Find Nirvana

2009-04-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

I never feel more stupid than when I volunteer in my daughter’s kindergarten class.

Her teacher snaps out instructions. My job, I think, is to help the kids draw three pictures that describe their weekend and then write a one-sentence summation.

I’m supposed to help my daughter, Mimi, her friend, Anni, a boy, David, and a girl, Samantha.

“This way!” I say. Mimi goes the other way, as does giggling Anni, while David heads straight to his seat, as does Samantha.

“Mimi! Anni,” I admonish. The giggling girls slowly come over. “Okay, let’s draw!” David sketches, as does Samantha. That leaves the other two, who do not.

“How are things going?” asks the teacher.

Obviously, not well.

“Mimi and Anni, start drawing please,” she says. “We’re running behind.”

Running behind? I look around at the other parent-volunteers. Paul and his students look extremely absorbed. He seems to display quiet authority.

I can try that. Not that I get the chance. Somewhere between looking up and looking down, another parent-volunteer swoops in and takes over teaching David and Samantha.

Is this a parent-volunteer-student steal? Is somebody saying I can’t handle teaching four children at once, which I obviously can not, but still. . . And why take those two? The easy ones. Why not my daughter and her friend? The challenging duo.

“Good work!” the parent-volunteer-student stealer says proudly to David and Samantha, as they continue to draw. She smiles at me.

After much cajoling, my two remaining little students finally draw their pictures and write a sentence.

“Can you stay for a few minutes?” the teacher asks.

She leads me to a table in the back upon which sits several sheets of black construction paper, a white pencil and scissors. She holds up a circle.

“I need you to make twelve of these.” She draws a circle in the air with her finger. “Think you can do it?”

I look nervously from paper to pencil to scissors and finally nod. “I think I can.”

I carefully lay my pre-cut sample against the very edge of the paper and trace. I leave an inch of space between and then draw another circle and repeat the pattern. I precisely cut, taking deep breaths along the way.

“Your daughter is smart,” says another parent-volunteer who approaches my table.

I protectively cover my circles with my hands, fearful she may take them.

“Your daughter does her work. She’s just taking advantage of you because you’re here.”

“Oh!” I shriek. “I was really worried because I thought she couldn’t draw. I thought she couldn’t write. . .”

I suddenly stop externalizing my internal insecurities. I don’t even know this mother. “Thank you!” I say displaying all my teeth.

The woman gives me a small, knowing smile back.

I return to my circle cutting.

Sometimes, the most mindless tasks can provide the greatest peace of mind.

By Dawn Yun

You Never Know What Will Come Next

2009-04-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

I returned home from a Writing Mamas Salon to my daughter hugging my leg and my husband telling me that his mother could not be reached by phone.

Bad feeling.

It reminded me of when we couldn't reach my aunt on the phone. She lived in Brooklyn, I was in California, one sister was in Chicago and the other in Connecticut. My cousin and I had given the super of my aunt's building some money to keep an eye on her. I told my sister in Connecticut not to drive to New York. I'd phone the super instead. I said if anything happened to my aunt, do not send her to Coney Island Hospital. It is where my uncle had passed away, mainly from laying on a gurney in the hospital's corridors for hours unattended. The super sent my aunt away in another ambulance to another hospital. She had a massive stroke.

Tonight my sister-in-law, Pat, went to check on my mother-in-law, Polly. She found her on the floor, unable to move. An ambulance came and brought her to the hospital. A major stroke, too. My husband left as soon as I came home.

A little over a month ago my father died. Less than a year ago my brother-in-law did. When I had to break the news to my husband I said, "I don't know if you're mom will last the year." He stared at the floor. The news of his younger brother's passing too unbelievable to be real. "I know," he said with quiet understanding and sadness.

I can't say what will happen. My aunt lasted a few weeks in the hospital. She was ready to go. When she said she was, as much as I loved and adored her, I wanted this for her, too.

I don't know what will happen to my mother-in-law. The decline in her health since her son's death has been astounding. I think she's ready.

We're all living to die and most of us are dying to live. But for some, like my aunt, and I believe my mother-in-law, a lesser quality of life isn't one worth living. It's just too hard. And they are too good for such harshness to come at the end of their lives, precisely, when they are least able to fight.

However it turns out, I hope her suffering is minor. She is well loved. Most of her family was with her on Saturday before this happened. When her time comes, I hope it is painless and fast. Such a good person deserves as much.

By Dawn Yun

Reality TV Addicted Mom Fesses Up

2009-04-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

I admit it. I’m a fan. Or an addict.

As I watched Jason, the formerly dumped dad, finally pick his whisper of a bride-to-be on a Monday night on ABC, twirling and twirling her gowned figure around and around, as only a short man can do with an itty-bitty woman, I thought, grabbing a tissue, sniffle, True Love!

But then, at the Most Shocking After The Rose Ceremony Ever on Planet Earth, where we’re supposed to finally meet, live, and have kids, the happy couple who’d been twirling and twirling and pulling the moon into an alternate orbit -- the bomb drops. Jason doesn’t really love his ex-Dallas Cowboys cheerleader sprite. He wants the other one. The one he dumped. Flat. On. Her. Incredulous. Face.

If you don’t watch the show, let me lay it out for you. Single, unlucky in love dad goes on a date with twenty-five women. He gets to play with all the women however much he wants – kiss, tickle, tempt them with his shirtless body, take helicopter rides and laugh – ha ha! – for the countless cameras that surround their every move. And then politely dump them by not handing them a rose. Dating under a microscope is the appropriate cliché, ‘cept this microscope has twenty bazillion fans (addicts) who just can’t get enough of poor Jason’s quest for love.

This season, according to Chris, the well coiffed and patiently disgusted host of the show, Jason’s journey has drawn more viewers than ever. And I can see why. To add to the drama/trauma, we viewers all already knew and held a stake in Jason’s fortune as we had all watched him fail at finding love on last season’s Bachelorette. The one with the Greek gal we all had girl-crushes on. Deanna. You see, Deanna dumped Jason last minute, and chose the completely inappropriate snowboard dude instead.

A nation wept.

Of course, to make the soap opera circle complete, (and feel free to skip this paragraph if your kid needs a diaper change or Ed McMahon is at the front door) back to this season, the same Deanna flies all the way to New Zealand where Jason is about to propose to his itty-bitty slut, I mean, fiancée, while unhappy Deanna confesses that she made a BIG mistake last season and wants Jason back!

Can it get any better than this? Reality TV soap opera at its best!

Confused? Head a-twirl? Good. Because isn’t that what love is, confusing? Dizzying? And that is what has drawn so many (educated!) suckers like me into this orgasmic, minefield of drama played out for us on Monday nights. This isn’t a sappy, happy story of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy marries girl happily ever after. This is the 2009 version of how love really works (uh, sorry, Shakespeare), and Jason’s angst and complete bungling of making the “right” choice for his small family reminds me of some of my friends and acquaintances who have recently made their own tough, love choices and are leaving their marriages and relationships even after ten plus years and three point two children.

Fortunately or unfortunately for them, my friends don’t have helicopters whisking them and their kids on date nights or long-stem, red roses determining their fate. But their world is twirling, around and around, as I watch and hope that their new, single-mom ride is smoother than the bumpy, public one our sweet Jason, Bachelor Dad, has chosen to take. And, hopefully, I will watch them and engage with compassion and empathetic angst on a different level than I do with my guilt-ridden Bachelor addiction.

By Annie Yearout

Oy Vey! Matzoh in the White House

2009-04-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

There is a Jewish holiday called Purim that was celebrated just last month. It’s the story of a Jewish Queen, Esther, who with the help of her beloved uncle Mordechai saved the Jews from being slaughtered at the hands of the evil Haman who had a position of power in the government of King Ahashverus, Esther’s new husband. Esther was ordered to marry him after his first wife Vashti refused to dance naked for his friends. Traditional interpretations say that he beheaded her, but the more modern story is that she left him to go to med school. The story ends by Esther throwing a party for her husband and after making sure he’s had a few drinks tells him of Haman’s awful plans. The King is quite smitten with his beautiful Jewish wife and the story ends well for the Jews. Haman is killed and Mordechai is given a role in the government!

Anyone who is familiar with the plight of the Jews knows that this story is a fantasy. The end tells of the possibility of what could happen if things went well and good won out over evil. Recently something occurred in our own American government that gives hope that fantasy does sometimes become reality.

There was a Seder in the White House! A Seder is the ritual meal that commemorates the Jewish festival of Passover; the retelling of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt and slavery. This was the first time that an American president and his family took part in a Jewish ceremony in the home of our leader. As the story appeared in the papers and various on line sites, rumors of a Jewish cousin appeared! Michelle Obama has a cousin who converted to Judaism and became a rabbi! This is so exciting that every sentence might have to end with an exclamation point!

It is not new to have Jews taking part in American government. The combination of having an African-American president and the observance of Judaism as part of that government that has been so closed to diversity and tolerance for the past eight years, leaves me feeling that we may actually have a visionary in power who may actually create a more loving and tolerant nation that reduces suffering and oppression for all of it’s citizens.

My fantasy is this: When my children have children and we are having our annual Seder, I will be able to include in the retelling of history, of a new president who came into office when the country was at its lowest point in decades. I will be able to explain to them that is was not always that the U.S. did not start wars without reason, and that it was not always that there was no hunger in our land, or that everyone had healthcare. I look forward to telling my grandchildren that the blessed world they will live in was created by grassroots organizations and hard working people who believed that their fantasies could become reality.

AMEN!

A Mother's Friendship Will Last Forever

2009-04-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

“Shoot me if it comes to that,” I make my husband promise every time I visit Maggie. If his response is any indication, I suspect he’ll oblige.

“He must be a saint,” shudders my husband as I describe Maggie’s decline and her husband Peter’s ministrations.

His horror foreshadows the treatment I’m in for when our lives move from better to worse, the inevitable trajectory all wedding vows portend. I ought to feel alarmed, but I know exactly what he means. I feel the same way. When the saints go marching in, my husband and I will knock each other over running for the exits. Or the guns.

I wonder if Peter contemplates the same thing.

When I met Maggie thirty years ago, she had an elegant steel-gray chignon and a cultivated British accent that made her ribald wit all the more delicious. She and Peter had survived wartime London, his family’s death-camp incineration, and a sister’s suicide. I wonder if they will survive Alzheimer’s.

Today’s visit has been particularly grim. When Peter tries to help put on her socks, Maggie recoils in fear. Maybe she wonders why this strange man is swooping down on her. Peter explains that I am taking her on a walk, so she must wear socks to protect her feet. Because her hearing is going almost as fast as her mind, he raises his voice. She dissolves into tears, perhaps frightened by this shouting stranger. Peter retreats to the next room. His shoulders heave up and down in silent weeping.

I hug Maggie back into some kind of composure until Peter can regain his. He shows me the Kleenex, the sunglasses, the hat he has tucked safely into her purse next to the socks. He makes sure I understand that the twenty-dollar bill is so Maggie can treat this time. Trading off who buys the cappuccinos is one of her few remaining claims on dignity.

Suddenly, Maggie’s face clears. I ask if she would like to put on her socks now. “Of course!” she answers disdainfully, mystified by all the fuss. Maggie bends over like the girlish tennis champ she once was, neatly pulling on her crew socks. She offers a papery cheek to Peter, who kisses her and tells her he loves her. Peter and I confer about time, calibrating how long his respite will be. Then we are off.

“Do you know that man?” Maggie asks as we head down toward the bay.

“Yes,” I tell her, as I do every time. “He is your husband and you have three children together. He is a good man.”

“Is he?” she remarks dubiously.

Maggie searches for lost phrases to tell me about Peter’s temper and the many people who break into the house, invisible to all but her. She wishes they would leave her alone. One of the women seems to be having an affair with the man who used to be her husband. Vaguely uneasy, I wonder if she is referring to me because I have defended the man who frightens her.

“Your mind is playing tricks on you again,” I say.

But is it? Maybe Peter mistreats her while the rest of us admire what a rock he is. How do I know what really goes on? I can barely stand to be there two hours a month without fantasies of mercy killings. He is there always, a stalwart man whose heartbreak and frustration simmer just below the surface. It doesn’t take much to drive a person from decency to desperation. Even my own father—the most mild-mannered and generous of men—once stood over my bedridden, demented grandmother with a pillow. What if my mother had not opened the door when she did?

I half-listen to Maggie’s halting stream of consciousness. When she fumbles with the door lock to unroll the window, I curse myself for bringing the car without the automatic controls. Some time ago Peter told me that Maggie had tried to throw herself out of the car when he was driving. Was she confused, psychotic, or lucidly suicidal? It might have been the sanest calculation imaginable. She’s never tried again.

As Maggie alternately weeps, then brightens, in the front seat beside me now, I wonder if I should call their son again, or if I will know when it is time to alert Adult Protective Services. But nothing is really different in this monotonous descent into hell except that I have deigned to pay a call.

The salt air soothes us both. Maggie grew up in a fishing village, and each bayside stroll returns her to herself with the calming tides of home. Her stride is brisk and steady even though she cannot grasp my words or find her own. I take Maggie’s elbow in a companionable gesture, a little out of fear that she might veer suddenly into the water, but mostly out of gladness that at least I can do this.

Maggie and I finish our walk and go for cappuccinos. She offers a string of garbled syllables to the waitress, who is patient and kind and somehow able to divine a wish for extra foam.

I deliver Maggie back home before heading to work. She is too proud to let me see her up the front steps, and always insists that I just drive off. So I feign a need to use her bathroom to make sure she is safe. Only as a gracious hostess with a favor to bestow can she bear to let me linger.

“She always seems in better spirits after she sees you,” Peter tells me. “Thank you.”

His gratitude intensifies my guilt. I have done so little, and I have done it with a divided heart at that. For I want nothing more than to run. Maybe then I can escape the specter of my own decline I see mirrored in her crumbling dignity. I want to join the legions of Maggie’s friends who can no longer bear to call or visit.

I want to, but I can’t.

Just like Peter. Just like all the ordinary people who want to run from heartbreak, but don’t. Perhaps this is what makes a saint. Perhaps my husband will not shoot me, but will find the grace to help me with my socks.

I might even do the same for him.

By Lorrie Goldin

Is There a Difference Between Animals and Children?

2009-04-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

The fact that we have just plunked down an insane amount of money for a dog bed (for a creature who would be just as happy sleeping on old towels) is testament to how much in love we have fallen with our new family member from the Humane Society.

And this is probably old news to other dog owners, but I am surprised at the parallels I keep drawing between my child’s and my dog’s behavior:
***Like my daughter so poetically put it - “Mom you’re all about poop… first you used to wipe my butt, now you’re picking up Deuce’s poop.”
***I have to repeat myself to make myself heard.
***You discipline them for something, then turn around an hour later and they are doing the same thing.
***I have to regularly stop them from putting inappropriate stuff in their mouth.
***They never shut the door behind them.
***They never pick up after themselves. Dog toys, kid stuff – they’re everywhere.
***They’re constantly underfoot. I turn around and one or the other is nipping at my heels.
***They seek my approval and then are disdainful of my reaction.
***I have to make sure they “go” before bedtime.
***They want treats at the wrong time.
***They always want to get into bed with us and then hog up all the space.

And though I have to keep reminding my daughter that he is not the brother she always wanted – “You are my child.” I keep saying about him, “I am his owner.”

But then I look deep into those wise brown eyes and can’t help but be convinced that like our children are meant just for us, aren’t our pooches?

By Tania Malik

Not a Jock as a Kid But is One as a Dad

2009-04-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

My husband sits in the row ahead of me, with the other Dads, at Little League night at the ballpark. He’s one of the guys, his Oakland A’s hat moving up and down as he roots for the home team.

Michael never played sports as a kid.

Felt like an outsider, like he didn’t know how to fit in with the sporty guys. He hung out with the juvenile delinquents, but didn’t really fit in with them, either. He’d call both groups boneheads and wonder if he’d ever find his own tribe.

Then he had a son.

He didn’t know his son would be his entry ticket. Nick’s not so sporty either but he wants to fit in with the boys.

So Michael helps him.

He’s been an assistant baseball coach for two seasons. A certified coach. Often scared he’ll be found out. That the other guys will figure out that he does not know what the hell he’s doing.

Tonight Michael is a jock.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder, talking baseball, yelling to the players on the field. Being parents has brought us into so many groups that we would not have been a part of otherwise. My eyes fill with tears as I watch my husband truly fitting.

There are so many benefits to parenting that are not obvious or expected.

By Marianne Lonsdale

Chocolate: The Drug That Makes ALL Problems Disappear

2009-04-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

It started with five overdraft fees of thirty-three dollars each. I pleaded with customer service to remove the charges.

Nope, wouldn’t do it. What?

Customer service has almost always let me slide. Let me talk to your manager. Nope, those are charges for checks drawn with insufficient funds. But, I’ve been a loyal customer for fifteen years! I'm going through a divorce. I’m not used to shuffling money around accounts. I'm asking for your help. . .

Nope.

Click.

Then I stare at the balances on the computer screen. three-hundred sixty dollars, three-hundred and twelve dollars and twelve dollars and two cents.

I am not certain when and how much my soon-to-be ex-husband will transfer to our joint account. There’s the MORTGAGE and HOME EQUITY LOAN bills due in a few weeks. It may take months to find a reasonable job. I have no choice -- I must e-mail my father and beg for money.

At this point, I am crying so hard, the muscles in my face have begun to seize up. I try to think of a friend that I could call to calm me down, but I think I have worn them all down. Not so much that they don’t care about me anymore, but I better not push it.

The muscles in my face squeeze tighter.

I ask myself -- what are you going to do? I could have taken a walk, which would have helped. I could have taken a bath, which might have been beneficial I could have called a person from the Al-Anon program, which would have been a positive move.

Wait!

Suddenly, the solution occurred to me: CHOCOLATE.

If I jumped into the car right now and race down to Rainbow Grocery, I could buy several bars of Dagoba Chocolate (www.dagobachocolate.com), and be on my way to pick up my kids right after.

A voice from somewhere deep within said, 'Don’t you think that’s a bit wasteful?' My own voiced reasoned, 'But, I am getting groceries for the family, too.'

A conversation with self ensued.

Like what?

Well, fruit.

Can’t you get that cheaper down the street?

We need yogurt.

You have some in the fridge.

Oh, fuck it. Get the hell out of my way. I’m going!

TWELVE bars of Dagoba chocolate, of the Conacado 73% cacao sort.

Already. . . I can feel life getting better.

By Vicki Inglis

A Stranger's Note of Love and Grief Reminds a Mother Of What She Has

2009-04-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

I was on a walk the other day, my every step pounding frustration into the pavement.

“How am I supposed to get this all done,” I whined to myself. It was a typical mother’s complaint towards the end of a typically busy week. How am I supposed to keep the house clean, the refrigerator filled, the children supervised?

I work outside the home. I’m active at my church and volunteer at my children’s school. I help out neighbors and friends who need me. There just isn’t enough time for it all.

Shouldn’t my husband be doing more? Shouldn’t my children be more appreciative? With every step my anger towards the people I loved most grew.

My daily walk led me to a tiny grove of redwoods. I plopped onto a wooden bench built a year ago in memory of an elderly neighbor who had died. I noticed a pot of flowers had been placed next to the bench. A card was tucked within clusters of tiny orange blossoms. I reached for it, a moment’s distraction from the building tension inside my head.

“My Darling,” the note began. The handwriting was jerky, that of an elderly author who had long since lost the smooth stroke of youth. I was reading a love letter, I surmised, left to the woman memorialized by the bench.

“Now, I am but a moth – burnt by the moon. I am lost without you.” I gasped, caught off guard by the plaintive tribute. I was eavesdropping on a stranger’s grief but felt compelled to keep reading. “I will always love what you have loved,” the note continued. The signature read only: “Forever + ever.”

I imagined the author and his love in earlier times. Had they met when they were young like my husband and I? Had they walked these very streets, sometimes hand-in-hand; at other times alone and angry as I had on this day? Had he witnessed her decline? Whispered goodbye in her ear?

I returned the note to its place between the flowers realizing the tribute to lost love was also a tribute to what I had now: A happy marriage to the love of my life, two beautiful children I adore and a cheerful home in a welcoming community.

The note was also a reminder that what I have now won’t always be mine. I will lose my loved ones one day or they will lose me. It’s the way of things, inevitable. So how was I spending this precious morning? Angry that my sons hadn’t emptied the dishwasher? Complaining that my husband took me for granted?

I resumed my walk feeling solemn and softened by my peek into a stranger’s life. I felt grateful, too, appreciative of the lesson he had taught. Live today. Love today. It’s all I have.

I decided to cut short my walk and turned toward home. I had kids to hug and a husband to kiss.

By Laura-Lynne Powell

A Mama's Voice Says "Clean": Her Other Voice Says, "Ah, No."

2009-04-12T00:01:00.001-07:00

Lately I am noticing a sharp decline in the quality of my evening house clean-up. I’m slipping.

My mental and emotional state is intimately linked to my environment. The amount of mess, number of items stacked in little piles, the general stickiness rating of most toddler-height surfaces, increases my agitation as they increase throughout the day or week.

A bottle of 409, a paring knife and a Magic Eraser duly applied after the family is asleep has often returned me to homeostasis and feelings of peace before I move onto writing, reading, consuming celebrity gossip, or e-mailing my friends.

I accepted somewhere in my third year of marriage that my lovable, dependable husband’s tragic flaw, being a premier level slob, was probably never going to change. The house would be as clean as I care to keep it. I was free to choose whether to work with that or make myself miserable. I chose shalom in the home for all our sakes.

And I was successful. . . as long as we only had one child.

Then came my second daughter. As the workload increased, my motivation has slowed. Increasingly, over the past months, I fall onto the couch with a novel, or e-mail my friends and discuss adult and big questions. Often, the dishwasher isn’t running, clothes and food is strewn about, and I go to bed without cleaning any of it.

Frankly, my house is sometimes pretty grubby when I wake up.

I am starting to hear from my own imperfect voice in this matter. I want that “room of one’s own” after the family circus of the day, where I can be alone with my yet unthought ideas and scrambled feelings.

I need more interior room and have started to buy it with the price of organization and cleanliness. My voice is lurching out, messy and unfocused, but worth it. My imaginary weaving together of a tidy, inviting home and a growing space in my own mind is slipping away. My resolve to beat back the forces of entropy is failing, but feels shameful rather than freeing.

Messy, this sorting out a mother’s priorities, hoping to be able to do more than is possible.

By Avvy Mar

A Mom Dances When She Has Time to Herself

2009-04-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

I’m home alone for six days while my husband and son ski in Lake Tahoe!!!

Six days.

Count em, six! I do happy dances all over the house several times a day.

I got so excited at their leaving. Starting the day before, I had this excited buzz. I hadn’t felt this type of enthusiasm since when. . . it’s a familiar feeling. . . geez, it’s how I used to feel before a date with my husband, well, before we were married.

Ugh, that’s kinda creepy that his leaving gives me the kind of buzz that his arriving used to do.

I watch most of Season Two of Grey’s Anatomy on DVD. I don’t cook. I write. I organize my son’s room. I exercise every day. I play my music loud and dance from room to room. I sleep until eight a.m. instead of six a.m.

My big sister is coming for a sleepover tonight. The girl talk will flow along with the wine.

I cry a lot, too. Not big sobs, just a few tears several times a day. I am filled with gratitude at my luck – my husband, our son, our home, how easy loving each other is. My life is better than I ever expected it to be. I wipe the tears away. I still miss them even as I dance with joy.

My son calls early this morning.

He wants to make sure that it’s OK to call me. Of course, I tell him.

I return to dancing. Not dirty dancing. Guilty dancing. I do miss my family. Still, I dance.

By Marianne Lonsdale

A Mother Who Never Has Time to Write Creates Time to Procrastinate

2009-04-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

It’s time to write.

To schedule interviews.

To work on my book proposal.

The kids are in preschool, though I’ll be picking them up early since Lucas is getting over a cold. Still, I have two fruitful hours left to work.

I check my e-mail.

Nothing urgent. No excuse to linger.

I must check Facebook and become a fan of Seventh Generation and Oprah. I read others’ status updates. Then I update my own account about how my son convinced me to buy fluorescent blue-colored Peeps. But even Facebook, which can usually suck hours out of a day, takes just a few minutes.

I call my husband.

I’d spoken with his mom the day before, and I’d forgotten to tell him that they can’t see the Disneyland pictures on their digital picture frame, oh and that LEGOLAND in Denmark is open every day when we’ll be visiting in May.

My husband, ever the efficient engineer who rarely procrastinates, is working, so he responds, “OK.” The entire conversation takes less than a minute.

Damn it!

None of my normally reliable stalling techniques are working today. Now I have the actual time to be a real-life productive writer.

But what do I write? An article? My book? A blog. A personal update? That's fast and efficient. But where? Facebook? MySpace? Twitter?

Sigh. . .

It's not easy being a writer today.

By Kristy Lund

A Scary Word Comes Between a Family

2009-04-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

I had just returned from our first writing salon of the year. I listened to Jay complain about the unfairness of algebra homework, while Mimi held onto my leg as I tried to walk down the hall.

She asked if she could sit in my lap and I said of course. Mimi hesitated, than leapt onto me. I wondered why she thought before acting.

Mimi felt heavier. I tried to put my chin above her head, but it didn’t fit.

Something was odd. Something was different.

As I put my arms around her, I realized what it was -- she had physically outgrown me.
There was a gap between us. A distance apart.

Almost nine months earlier, nearly the time it takes to give birth, I labored with the delivery of a very different kind of announcement: I was told I had cancer. Just that word. . .

I had no idea how unbelievable it would all become. How sitting still for even a few minutes would be a major accomplishment. How senior moments would became EVERY moment. How much I would change.

There were times I would lose it and my husband and children would just stare because they were not used to seeing me this way.

Early on, during a three-month wait for a definite diagnosis, in my mind I journeyed to my own funeral. It was difficult for me to look at my family because then I would have to consider that possibility.

Now I know it’s in an early stage, but the disease is chronic and unusual. There is no net.

For some two-hundred nights I have applied a topical chemotherapy drug that smells like a bomb and is derived from one. I’m in a clinical trial, so the experimental agent comes in a yellow and black bag that looks like police tape, and my bathroom hutch resembles a crime scene.

Each tube of medication is plastered with warning labels.

In psychedelic pink: Caution: CYTOTOXIC DRUG. Dispose of properly.

In neon yellow: CAUTION: New drug limited by Federal Law to investigational use.

In bright orange: HIGH ALERT MEDICINE.

I feel like a spotlight is on me and a helicopter hovering above.

But then seriousness sets in. I know my situation has affected my children emotionally. My son will come into my daughter’s room while I stare off into middle distances that are never far enough away. “You’re OK, right?”

Mimi will move toward me but then face away with her back. She reminds me of a pissed-off cat. She wants to love, but she is afraid. Mimi has asked me not to die.

Today, when my husband dropped me off at the Cancer Center, my daughter began to cry as hard as the rain outside pounded. “Wait!” I pleaded to the valet. “I need to hug my daughter.” I felt her hot tears mingle with my own. Her body was warm and enveloped me as we clung tightly.

I promised Mimi repeatedly that everything will be alright.

I believe in those words. I have children. I must.

By Dawn Yun