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. Just look what it did to your mother."

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

His words still haunt me today, 40 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. . . at 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 guts differ.

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

Labels: Avvy Mar, Costco, financial dependence, financial independence, money, parents, preschool, saving money

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Many of us go rushing through life thinking we should do something important, be someone, and then we die and recycle back into another piece of the whole and what is remembered?

I think of my mom and remember her Angel Food Cake.  No one ever has, or ever will, make one like it. 

I have her recipe and I fail every time I try to make it; so do my daughters.  With her flat, antique whipper she produced it joyfully to the end; partly because I had surpassed her in so many other endeavors as she grew older.

When her hands grew arthritic, the grandchildren did the whipping and under her direction they were prideful and successful. The cake was there when I had a birthday, when my children were born; when I came home after surgery, and always appreciated.

I remember my Dad for wonderful rowboat rides up Curly Creek where he spun extemporaneous stories of the Adventures of Princess Virginia, or recited Shakespeare, Kipling, and Robert Service aloud to any and all who would listen.

I knew the “Quality of Mercy” from “The Merchant of Venice” by heart, long before I could understand its meaning. I remember breakfasts where he starred as the chef, making imaginative pancakes where his thin batter somehow managed to spell out our names or take the form of balls and bats or monsters.

I asked my eldest daughter once what she would remember me for. Without a moment’s hesitation she answered, “For showing me the star in the apple. You taught me to cut the apple the other way so I could find the five pointed star.”

I told her that her father had shown me the star in the apple before she was born, when we were first married. 

My youngest child was birthed after his paternal grandfather had died, yet his older sisters would take their two fingers and walk them up his arms and legs chanting, “Here comes the walking man, the walking man, the walking man,” just like grandpa Scotty had done to them when they were toddlers.

Our son would giggle and squirm with delight unaware of this link with the past, the fact that he was experiencing grandpa’s immortality. Pasternak says it all in “Dr. Zhivago” with one line, “You in others, that is your soul.” 

We are not to choose or ever know what small or great act will live on after we are gone and recycle back into the whole. Perhaps that is the true mystery of life, the meaning of oneness.

And so it goes on and on and on. What we are to each other we will perhaps never really know, but I think the good we do, the joy we produce, the positive, somehow goes on and the rest is eventually forgotten, forgiven, or just weeded out.

By Ruth Scott

Labels: children, life, parents, Ruth Scott

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I am standing at the doorway of my parents’ house, next to my mother, with my daughter in my arms, and my son at my side. 

The car pulls away, taking with it my brother, his wife, my nephew and my twin nieces. 

In my peripheral view, I see my mother’s head droop.  I look at her and notice her lips tighten and her eyes begin to overflow. 

She is silent in her sadness.  

It occurs to me that this will be me someday.  Standing at my doorway, waving goodbye to my beloved children, with tears in my eyes. 

It seems impossible. 

So far away from where I am today, knee deep in diapers and discipline and dinosaurs.  It is hard to imagine my children grown up, able to prepare their own meals, do their own laundry, and manage their own lives without my husband or me. 

The day will come when, God willing, they will each find their own way and lead healthy, happy and fulfilling lives. 

I say to my mother, “One day it will be me, standing in my doorway, sadly waving goodbye, as my children drive off to their own lives.” 

“If you’re lucky,” she replies. 

By Jennifer Taekman

Labels: growing old, Jennifer Taekman, parents

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It was Friday before Mother’s Day, and I had 30 minutes to find a card, write a note, buy postage, and drop it in the mail. How did this always happen? Being a mother and forgetting your own on our “special day” was like forgetting your twin’s birthday.

I was in the drugstore, scouting the cards by cover, gravitating to the humor section, as usual, when I noticed a black & white message in the sentimental section and picked it up. “Mom, you’ve always been there for me,” it said. I grabbed another: “You always knew just what to say.”

These Hallmark versions described a mother I didn’t have and hadn’t missed until my daughter was born -- a mother who greeted me after school with homemade treats and a hug and questions about my day; a mother who doted on her grandchildren. When my daughter was born, the stark contrast between what I felt as a mother and what I saw in my own mother’s eyes awakened a loss I’d never acknowledged.

But the loss I felt wasn’t for me; it was for her.

I’d shrugged off Mom’s forgetfulness over our birthdays and stopped taking it personally that she and Dad didn’t visit more often. She thought we lived too much for the kids; that our schedules were too intensely wrapped around soccer and Little League and dance troupe. Mom and I talked regularly – monthly -- avoiding politics in favor of food: new discoveries in salmon or Dad’s barbeque conquests.

Standing in the aisle, I felt the heat rise to my eyes, shocked at the ferocity of emotions that didn’t have the decency to wait until I was alone. I was almost out the store’s back door when I noticed I was still holding a card. The familiar face behind the checkout counter reached over to scan it, and I handed her a five, stifling my sniffle.

Inside the car, I pulled my purchase out of the brown paper bag: “For my best friend.” I couldn’t send this; she’d know it wasn’t true. I’d buy another card tomorrow, after soccer. It wouldn’t arrive by Sunday, but I figured sincerity was better late than never.

By Kimberley Kwok

Labels: cards, honesty, Mother's Day, parents

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Last Thursday, I helped with my daughter Elena’s field trip to the Marin Recycling Center.

Walking Elena and her two classmates to my messy car, I sang "To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump" to the tune of the Lone Ranger. I was expecting a boring trip, and hoped the song would generate enthusiasm.

“What’s that smell?” whined Elena when we reached the recycling center. The other girls joined in unison.

We entered the spacious education room. There was a giant television with a gleaming blue monitor, a wooden piano decorated with stained glass, a turkey made of scrap metal, and a robot comprised of different sized cans. I asked our tour guide, Devi Peri, about the parquet dance floor. She said community dance groups used the facility at night. "The room can also be rented for special events," she added.

After a short video -- Marin County had the country’s first curbside recycling program -- we put on hard hats and fluorescent vests. The initial stop on our tour was the plastic recycling area.

Devi pointed out the objects that should not have been there, including a planter, containers and plastic bags. “The only kind of plastic that our center recycles is bottles. All the other stuff that people put in just creates more work for us.” I cringed; I sometimes put yogurt tubs in the recycling because I feel guilty throwing them out. We walked toward 10-foot tall blocks. One was composed completely of crushed plastic milk jugs, another was made of aluminum cans and a third was created from plastic laundry detergent bottles.

Our next stop: the transfer station, a gigantic covered enclosure where garbage trucks dumped their loads to be consolidated and trucked to the landfill in Novato. “Two hundred and fifty tons of trash is collected every day in Marin,” Devi said. Elena’s pregnant teacher, Mrs. Rodgers, left the building to gag.

We walked toward a giant sign stating, “God Bless America.” A smaller one, immediately below this statement of patriotism, indicated where the “Hazardous Waste Drop-Off” was located. The parents snickered at the ironic juxtaposition.

The kids liked the garden of treasures salvaged from the landfill. There was a lawn jockey, a faux Egyptian tablet filled with hieroglyphics and lots of stone busts of unfamiliar people. We were also surprised to see a male peacock displaying his tail.

“Okay kids, (now's) the last part of the tour, Tin Can Farm.” There was an enclosure of real pigs. Chickens and roosters also wandered around.

“Who wants to see the white peacocks?” asked Devi. How many surprises is this trip to the dump going to have? I wondered. I held up the kids so that they could look over the fence and see the pure white peacocks. Their tails looked like lace doilies.

I made my charges scrape the pig manure and recycling ooze off their shoes along the sidewalk before getting into my not all that messy compared to the dump car.

Driving home, I realized I had taken more photos of the dump than of my son’s birthday party. It was the best field trip of the year. The dump wasn’t the end of the line, as I previously thought. It was a place of new beginnings. Noisy roosters found a home, ugly stone sculptures found admirers, community members found dance partners, and lots of glass and aluminum found near eternal life.

To go to the dump, to the dump, the dump -- and more -- call 415.499.3232.

By Beth Touchette

Labels: parents, recycling, school trips

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He arrived with great joy 15 years ago this March. He has absorbed all of my tears, shared my playful joy and loved me unconditionally.

I have, in turn, woke up at night to quiet his screams, cleaned up after his messes, gave him medicine when he was sick, made sure somebody responsible looked after him when I was away, and loved him unconditionally.

Thankfully, he approved of my husband when I got married and my husband willingly accepted the fact that he was part of the package that came with me. My husband gladly adopted him and embraced loving him, holding him and waking up to feed him. He has even put thought into his gifts at Christmas and embraced the fact that he gives me so much joy.

My first “kid” Siren is my Siamese Blue Point cat. Unlike my children, ever since day one Siren has pooped in his “toilet” and ate every last drop of whatever food is put in front of him. However, like my children, he wakes up several times at night, screams as loud as he can for no apparent reason, and wants my attention at his every convenience.

Siren prepared me for experiencing the level of annoyance, joy and unconditional love that children bring to my life.

Unexpectedly, the magnitude of these feelings grew exponentially with the birth of my own boys.

By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

Labels: kids, parents, pets

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My 11-year-old son was recently invited to go bowling with the five other boys that make up his close circle of friends. The parent who proposed the bowling outing intended to drop the boys off and pick them up a few hours later.

I hesitated.

The bowling alley includes a full-service bar and an arcade, features that attract a seedy crowd. The local paper lists it as the vicinity of frequent nighttime police calls. However, on weekend afternoons it’s a mecca for school aged birthday parties. It’s anyone’s guess who might be hanging out there in the middle of a weekday during mid-winter break.

My son was almost 9 the first time my husband and I let him walk the three blocks to our suburban neighborhood store to buy some milk. Proud of our confidence in him, he bolted out of the door, exhilarated to be on his own. Seconds later, a concerned neighbor phoned to report that she has seen our son running down the street alone.

I was heartened to know that my neighbor was looking out for us, yet dismayed that the sight of a lone fourth grader was so conspicuous. How will our children ever gain a sense of independence if they are forever encumbered by the watchful gaze of adults?

Today my son stays at home alone regularly -- sometimes even with a friend over -- while I shuttle his younger sister to after school activities. He walks to and from the school bus each day while many of his peers are still driven to the bus stop. He rides his bike to soccer practice. He roams the local creek with his friends. And this year he and his friends even went trick or treating unsupervised. (I did tuck my cell phone into his costume, just in case).

Fretting over whether to let him go bowling, feeling the pull and push of wanting to protect him without stifling him, it occurred to me to ask my son what he wanted to do. He confided that he wasn’t comfortable going to the bowling alley on his own. He declined the invitation, and, turns out, so did most of his friends.

That afternoon I sent my son off, on his own, to the nearby ice cream parlor to buy the treat of his choice. He politely waved to our neighbor as he passed by.


By Tina Bournazos

Labels: bowling, kids, parents

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