The way other people hate food poisoning or a bad case of the flu, I hate being cold.

I can’t function cold, at all, and by cold I mean any temperature that dips below fifty degrees. My teeth chatter, my lips turn blue and my toes go numb. All I want to do is wrap myself in a wool blanket, huddle in front of a roaring fire and eat large amounts of high-fat carbohydrates. My husband sleeps in shorts and a T-shirt under a cotton bedspread we brought home from Guatemala; beside him, I sleep in flannel pajamas and a fleece sweatshirt under a layer of comforters so thick he calls it the “iron lung.”

Cold is the reason I moved to California, so that I wouldn’t have to be. Like Scarlett O’Hara raising her fist to defy hunger at the end of the first reel of Gone With the Wind, I vowed, growing up in a one-hundred year old house in New Jersey that lacked insulation, that as soon as I had a choice, I would never be cold again.

In that house, the water in the toilet bowls froze at least once every winter. We shivered in the kitchen with the oven door open and all four burners on the stovetop aflame. At night, we draped our school uniforms over the steam heaters so that in the morning we could jump straight into them from the warmth of our beds; once I sat so close to the coils of an old-fashioned space heater I singed a mohair sweater. The year that Jimmy Carter urged all Americans to turn down their thermostats to sixty-five degrees, we were incredulous. Sixty-five degrees was balmy.

What was he talking about?

I lived blissfully in San Diego until I met and fell in love with my husband. I rented and he owned, in the frozen tundra of Marin. What choice did I have but to move?

He thinks I’m kidding when I tell him: The day I see a snowflake, I’m heading south.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

Labels: cold, Jessica O'Dwyer, Marin County, New Jersey, San Diego

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My son, Mateo, wants to be a Rockette.

He saw them twice last year on television, first performing at the Thanksgiving Day Parade and then in a one-hour special during their annual Christmas Spectacular.

From the minute that line of thirty-six tap-dancing showgirls shuffled onto the TV screen wearing furry red Santa skirts and dazzling smiles, Mateo was transfixed. My normally rambunctious three-year-old boy sat staring at the images as though he’d been hit with a stun-gun.

“Look, there are the girls on a double-decker bus! Sneaking around in Santa’s workshop! And now getting shot by a cannon and falling backward—stiff, like this!—in outfits like wooden soldiers!”

Of course, Mateo is growing up in a household where the word “Rockette” is bandied about regularly in casual conversation. My eighty-year-old mother, Mateo’s grandmother, was a Rockette. (Or I should say is a Rockette, because as anyone with a Rockette in his or her family knows, one never stops being a Rockette, in the same way one never stops being a movie star.)

During mealtime, Mateo gazes at a photo on our kitchen wall of his Grandma Gerry at eighteen, hands on hips as she poses in a sequined leotard on the roof of Thirty Rockefeller Center, home to Radio City Music Hall and the “World’s Greatest Stage.” Not to mention Mateo’s familiarity with the scale model of the Music Hall at my parents’ home in San Diego, the shrine to my mother’s career of framed newspaper clippings, the closets full of top hats and canes. These objects are among Mateo’s cherished playthings.

“Can boys even be Rockettes?” I ask my husband, Tim. I secretly hoped it would be our six-year-old daughter, Olivia, who followed in my mother’s footsteps—that is, I hastily assure Tim, in between Olivia’s training for the Olympics and getting short-listed for the Nobel Prize.

Not Mateo. Not my only son.

“Our children can be anything they want to be,” Tim says, intoning his usual mantra.

I phone my mother and pose the question again.

“Not boys, not yet,” Mom answers. “It could happen eventually.” She pauses to consider the likelihood of Mateo making the cut, even then. “I’m afraid he’s a little short, though.”

“I don’t mean now….”

“And I don’t think he’s got the legs.”

She says this regretfully because, as we both know, there’s nothing anyone can do about “the legs”: You’re either born with exquisitely shaped Rockette legs, or you’re not. I’m the perfect example of not being born with these two natural gifts, which explains why I’ve spent my career toiling in front of a computer as an office drone, instead of captivating audiences with my high kicks.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Mateo loves fire trucks and cement mixers. He’s all boy. Maybe it’s the sparkles he likes. The pounding sound the tap shoes make. Like thunder.”

“Mmm,” my mother says. It’s no mystery to her why Mateo or anyone else would want to be a Rockette. To my mother, “Rockette” is the greatest job title in the world.

“Have you been following Dancing with the Stars?” she asks. “A line of girls are dancing on next week’s show.”

I check the calendar and sigh. Tuesday night. Mateo and I will be watching.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

Labels: Dancing with the Stars, Jessica O'Dwyer, Rockettes

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We have twelve clocks in our house and each one says a different time.

The big, round one that hangs on the wall in the kitchen reads 8:02. But the one on the microwave, directly across from it, claims it’s 8:13. The clocks on the coffeemaker and the oven hover around 7:56. A few feet away, in the garage, the timer on the automatic watering system says 9:07.

My husband sets the digital clock beside our bed 20 minutes earlier than something, but I don’t know what. When I open one eye to look at in the morning, I wonder: Have I overslept? Why is it so dark outside?

Olivia’s clock has stopped completely. Mateo’s ticks under his bed. My travel alarm is set to Guatemala time -- two hours before us when it’s Standard Time, one hour before us when it’s not. I synchronize it with the clock that tolls in the church tower on Fifth Avenida in Antigua. One of the reasons I love Guatemala so much is nobody cares if I’m late.

The problem is that I’m so familiar with each clock and its unique setting that I plan my life accordingly. On school days, we have eight minutes to walk down the hill to Olivia’s bus stop. The clock in the kitchen may say it’s 7:29, but I know it’s only 7:16. In the afternoon, school pick-up is 1 p.m. But I don’t get in the car until NPR announces the headline news before “Fresh Air,” which starts at 1:10, or thereabouts. My clock isn’t 100 percent reliable.

Last Sunday the newspaper said that Daylight Savings Time would be starting, and we should set our clocks ahead one hour.

Easy for them to say.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

Labels: Jessica O'Dwyer

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Five minutes before we dash out the door to catch the school bus to kindergarten, my daughter, Olivia, announces that she wants me to stop eating crust.

“Grandma said crust makes your hair curly,” she says.

“If only it were that simple,” I say, scavenging through the pile of shoes at the back door for her left sneaker. “I would stop eating crust this instant.” My curly, frizzy, untamed mop for a hairdo has been the bane of my existence my entire life.

“But I don’t want you to have curly hair,” Olivia says. She crosses her arms. “I want you to have straight hair. Like mine. So you need to stop eating crust.”

I stand up and look at her closely. So that’s what we’re talking about: Olivia wants me to look like her. Olivia’s hair is straight, mine is curly. Olivia’s eyes are black, mine are blue. Olivia’s skin is dark brown, mine is white. Nobody ever says to Olivia, the way they still say to me when I’m with my mother, “You two look exactly alike.”

Nobody ever will.

We have three minutes. “I wish I had hair like yours,” I tell her. “It’s black and shiny and thick. You could be a hair model.”

Olivia furrows her forehead. I’m missing the point.

I exhale deeply, one eye on the clock. “Instead of talking about ways we’re different, let’s talk about ways we’re the same.”

“OK,” she says in a small voice.

I tap my index finger on my cheek to show I’m thinking. “Mmm.” I snap my fingers. “I know! We’re both girls. We both love Daddy and Mateo. You were born in Guatemala. I lived in Guatemala.”

“We both hate being cold,” Olivia says. “Simon is our favorite on American Idol.”

“See? Now you’re talking.”

I uncover her left sneaker and kneel to slip it on her foot. “We’re both part of the same family, forever and ever.” I zip up her jacket. “We both have one minute before we miss the school bus.”
We rush out the door. “I’m not making any promises,” I say as the bus rolls into view. I bend to kiss her good-bye. “But if it will make you feel better, I’ll stop eating crust.”

The bus door opens and Olivia hops aboard. I can see she’s smiling.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

Labels: Jessica O'Dwyer

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Mateo walks into the kitchen as I’m unloading the dishwasher wearing his red pajamas with the fire engines on them. He turns to the side so I can see his profile, and from that angle he looks like an extremely short, three-year-old Jackie Gleason: all stomach.

“Look, Mommy,” he says. “I have a baby in my tummy.”

He lifts up his fire engine top and there, tucked inside his undershirt, is his stuffed green sea turtle, Tortuga.

“How nice!” I say. “A little baby for Mateo.”

“Baby grow big.” He opens his eyes wide for emphasis.

In Mateo’s world, babies in tummies are everywhere: The aisles of Safeway, the playground, and the pediatrician’s waiting room are filled with babies in tummies. The Lion class teacher and the assistant principal at his preschool have them, as does his speech therapist, Ms. Cydney. Even the substitute babysitter we hired last Friday night showed up eight months pregnant.

But the one tummy that doesn’t have a baby in it is mine. That’s one tummy that’s never had a baby in it.

I turn from the dishwasher and crouch to Mateo’s eye level. He knows both he and his sister, Olivia, were adopted. I tell him the now-familiar tale of how he was born in Guatemala in another lady’s tummy, his Guatemalan mommy. I fill in the details as I know them, ending with the plane ride home to San Francisco. I assure him that Mommy and Daddy love him more than any other little boy in the whole wide world.

After I finish, he crawls into my lap.

“I like that lady,” Mateo says, referring to his birth mother. He calls her by name. “She nice.”

“She is nice,” I agree.

“I want to be in Mommy’s tummy,” he says, pouting. He pushes me to the floor and lifts up my T-shirt. He pulls it over his head and snuggles into me. “I love Mommy.” His voice is muffled.

I hug him through my shirt. He’s such a little boy, but must understand so much. My own life, with biological parents and siblings, seems so easy and straightforward by comparison.

“I love you, too, Mateo,” I say. We sit on the floor for a long time.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

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It wouldn’t be so bad if Olivia wasn’t enrolled in a kindergarten with a Car Line policy. That is, you drive up, unlock the minivan door, and a parent volunteer unbuckles the child’s car seat and off she runs.

And it wouldn’t be so terrible if it were the same parent volunteer each day.

But the volunteer position rotates among the parents of students in the three primary grades, twice a day, morning and afternoon.

Which means all those parents—how ever many that is—get to see inside my incredibly, mortifyingly messy car.

The door slides open and I can hear the gasps. Olivia’s rainbow of crayons, melted into the carpet, Mateo’s spilled milk, streaked gray and sour. The pads of wrinkled drawing paper, mounds of crushed Goldfish, scads of molding orange cheese sticks.

And I’m sure they’re thinking: From the outside, her car looks so normal.

But inside!

Two pairs of children’s galoshes; a baby jogger, an Army camp chair, a blanket from Mexico. Tennis balls, sand toys, sweatshirts, baby wipes. Pens, pencils, paper clips, rubber bands. CDs, DVDs, regular books, books on tape. Stencils, tote bags, two pumpkins for Halloween.

“Who cares what people think?” my husband says. “Besides, they’re busy unloading kids. They’re not even looking.”

But his car is vacuumed. You can see the floor of his car.

Tomorrow, I’ll try a new strategy. As I wave good-bye to Olivia, I’ll mention what a minimalist I am. How the only objects in my living room are a sofa, a few paintings and a fireplace.

“My house is nothing like my car,” I’ll say. And then, as the door is closing, I’ll uncross my fingers and add, “Just don’t open the closets.”

By Jessica O’Dwyer

Labels: Jessica O'Dwyer

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The harvest is in! Peaches, plums, strawberries, nectarines! Raspberries, apricots, mandarin oranges! Ripe and juicy, plump and sweet. Hanging like Christmas ornaments, gleaming in the morning sun.

We grab our wicker baskets and hats, and pull on our long-sleeved shirts. We tromp down the stone steps to the garden beds at the bottom of our back slope. The branches are loaded!

“Lizard!” Mateo calls out, as a gecko scurries across our path and scoots into a dark space between the stones. My son crouches down to lizard level, eyeball to eyeball with the prehistoric thing. “Green!”

“I want all the black raspberries,” Olivia announces, not pausing to look. “Forty-four hundred ninety-two.” She finds a level spot to set down her basket and goes to work, her fingers as nimble as a spider’s legs as she feels in the sticker bush for the ripe fruit. One berry in the basket, five in her mouth, the sweet juice dripping down her chin. As if by instinct, she knows which berries to pull off and which to leave, her extractions as sure and delicate as a surgeon’s.

“Amazing, the way these strawberries put on.” Tim appears on the steps beside me, his basket already full.

I reach in and pick the fattest, reddest specimen. “Glorious,” I say.

Tim is the one with the farm-boy roots, the survivor if someone dropped him in a forest with a compass and a book of matches. He monitors the pollination of the bees and gauges the rainfall. He knows when to fertilize and how to dig the beds so they drain.

I pluck another strawberry and take a bite. “Absolutely perfect!”

Mateo trundles down the steps toward us, his gecko pursuit abandoned. “Peaches!” he says. Tim sweeps him up for a piggy-back ride to the tree. “Come on, big boy.”

The yard is a collage of colors, purple and pink and yellow and red. I smell the earthy bark of the redwood, the sugary aroma of the ripe fruit. A breeze ripples through the branches of the willow, and it sounds like a waterfall.

Today we’ll have raspberries on our cereal, strawberries on our pancakes, plums for dessert and peach ice cream. We’ll stockpile what we don’t use, labeling plastic bags with black Sharpie pens before stacking them in the freezer downstairs. All winter long, we’ll eat jam and sorbet, buckles and muffins, tarts, smoothies and galettes.

I reach for my basket, ready to pick. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk swoops in ascending circles, coasting on invisible currents. I watch until he disappears, certain he’s flying toward heaven.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

Labels: Jessica O'Dwyer

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Before I had two children, I never understood how my mother let us eat chocolate cake for breakfast and potato chip sandwiches for lunch.

Now I know.

Last night, Mateo had four popsicles and a box of chewing gum for dinner. Sugarless, yes, but still chewing gum. And I’m sure he swallowed at least half a dozen pieces. Doesn’t that stuff stick in your stomach forever? I’m sure some rogue piece of chewing gum swallowed when I was a toddler festers in my gut to this day.

And Olivia. She’s impossible. A “super-taster” my husband calls her. Which means she has extra “papilli” on her tongue—I think that’s the word for taste buds--allowing her to discern between Reggiano parmesan and the cheap stuff. Nothing I cook is good enough for my daughter; even my microwaving fails to reach her standards.

“I don’t like your bacon,” Olivia says. “It’s too clear.” Her dad’s, however, she terms “restaurant quality.”

I don’t want food to become another battleground. Getting dressed, putting on socks and shoes, taking vitamins, brushing teeth—and let’s not discuss going to bed. We struggle over all of it. So when Mateo pulls a chair up to the pantry door and clambers up to peruse the shelves, I practice my deep breathing. Uncooked oatmeal is a current favorite, which, don’t tell me, I know it’s bad.

My mother had five children, no help, and very little money to get by. These days, instead of judging her, I marvel at her capabilities. Chocolate cake for breakfast is nothing compared with what I allow my children to eat some days.

My husband is no longer surprised to come home after work and find me collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table, surrounded by the half-eaten wreckage of a meal.

“Is that all they’re eating?” he’ll ask. “Ice cream cones?”

“It’s got calcium, though. Right?”

I am my mother’s daughter, after all.

By Jessica O'Dwyer

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One Saturday a month, my husband, Tim, two children, and I pile into the minivan for an hour-long drive from our home in Marin to Travis Air Force Base with the express purpose of shopping in the Commissary. My husband retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army Reserves; shopping at the Commissary is the major perk.

Tim’s father was in the Army, a ticket out for a Depression-era Texas farm boy with a sixth-grade education. Tim grew up on military bases in Okinawa and Germany, Oklahoma, and Texas. When it came time for college, an ROTC scholarship was his best option. The Army paid for medical school.

Food at the Commissary is cheaper than it is at our local Safeway, and we don’t have to pay tax. They check your I.D. at the door -- which is inconvenient when wrangling two small kids -- but they check I.D. everywhere on a military base. Once you’re inside, the Commissary is the same as any other grocery store, circa 1975, which looks to be the year of its last renovation. But don’t buy fruit or the vegetables: they’re awful. I’m not sure why this is, but Tim tells me when he lived in Okinawa, the Army shipped gallons of milk to the troops, frozen, by boat. Maybe the Commissary uses the same technique with vegetables, even in this modern age of refrigeration.

In the years since September 11th, nearly every able-bodied soldier has shipped out. The aisles at the Commissary are filled with people left behind -- Vietnam veterans, Midwestern women with families, Korean War widows. But, occasionally, we’ll encounter a young Marine in desert camouflage and steel-toed boots, his hair in a crew cut. If he’s checking I.D., he’ll salute my husband. The Marine is just a kid, really, the age my husband was when he enlisted. A boy. My husband salutes back.

As I witness their exchange, I visualize my husband as a young doctor, stationed in Saudi Arabia. He is a healer, a man dedicated to preserving life. He hates war with every fiber of his being. I think of my son and my daughter, and remember the sons and daughters of mothers all over the world.

By Jessica O’Dwyer

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