An open letter to a kindergartner

Dear Ittybit,

The summer is scooting by.

I hadn’t been paying attention as most mornings have been encased in a cold crust and me in the desire to stay under the winter covers. The down comforter on my bed has been employed for a fourth season instead of stowed, and there are days I think I could employ another part time.

You never seem to notice the weather. You seem impervious to its grasp. Only when the possibilities of cooling ice cream or warming cocoa are in the offering do you pay it any mind.

But the heat arrived, finally, and with it the breathless realization of humidity and humility: School will start for you and with it comes a whole new life for all of us.

Not that we ever took off mid-week to go berry picking or to climb a hill and peer off its apex, the potential to just get away is monitored now by many someones else … principals and teachers and so forth. The eyes of the state will be fully upon us now that you will have to attend and be counted.

Not that I am particularly worried about Big Brother, although often I think I should be more concerned.

I know you will be brilliant. I know you will rise to any height you might want to reach.

As any mother does, I worry that others won’t understand you or that they’ll hurt your feelings. I worry that you will lose the confidence and the fearlessness you’ve shown to my ever growing amazement.

As most mothers do, I look for comparisons. I measure my untrained observation of you against my untrained observation of others.

I look around at girls your age and, still, you stand out to me. Your wit your perceptions your calm, measured approach to investigating new things all strike me as unique, though I know all mothers must see this in their children. All mothers marvel. It’s what we do.

We also doubt and get defensive. We project our tepid experiences and lie in wait for their return. I am awake late at night wondering about all the things I will not be able to control all the things I should not try to control.

I tell myself that my job is not to fix things for you, but to show you how to fix them for yourself. It is also teaching you how to accept and move on when what is broken seems beyond repair. My mission is to let you attempt lost causes in the hope that you will fix the unfixable: Mission impossible.

I was reminded of all of this as I tried to keep your brother from raiding the cake plates at a birthday party while you girls sat in a circle playing "pass the present."

The object of the game was to pass a gift among you until the music stopped. The girl holding the package would carefully unwrap it, revealing another layer of pretty paper. I listened as the music played and stopped three times. The giggling became quiet and nervous. One girl was saying how she never won anything. Another agreed.

I found myself looking in any direction but where the laughter was keeping time with the tune. I just couldn’t watch.

I didn’t want you to lose. But I didn’t want you to win, either.

That is my dilemma.

What to do?

While in Maine earlier this summer, I had an opportunity to take a surfing lesson for mothers and instead of happily rushing into the water I stood back, angry and indignant. The only reason I felt compelled to do this, I raged, was to prove myself to you, who would be standing in the sand, cheering me on.

It wasn’t proving anything to me.

I have no interest in surfing. I have less interest in balancing on a wave or wearing the seal-like suit that would keep me somewhat warm in the chill of an Atlantic morning. I said I would go through gritted teeth. I’d committed to looking like a fool and envisioned myself chasing a board through the waves.

As I stood by the surfshop counter, looking in any direction but the clerk, I almost didn’t hear her ask for the registration I didn’t have.

Face saved by reservations I didn’t have, but ego bruised with the reservations I did have.

What to do?

I want to calm the waves of this growing storm to remind you that life does seem unfair at times that you will feel the sharp words of others digging into the soft flesh of your innocent chatter. But you will, in turn, undoubtedly plunge your indignation into some poor soul’s inner core, and you will be the guilty party.

But what is life but a series of highs and lows an exploration into the unknown?

And I remind myself that my job isn’t to calm the waves it’s to help you learn to ride them.

Love and reservations,
Mommy

'Staycation' has new meaning for mom

We returned from our vacation in Maine one person short.

Despite having numerous conversations with my husband all summer long wherein I pontificated on all the reasons why I thought Ittybit was still too young to be away from us for five days (six nights), when her grandmother suggested all the fun things she had planned for the cousins the following week, my reasons seemed ridiculous.

"Can I stay, mom? Can I?"

How could I say ‘No?’

The decision was made early in our week-long holiday that Ittybit would stay on with her aunt and grandmother. As the week went on the magnitude of her first extended separation eluded me.

But on the last night I could barely sleep.

The what ifs were shouting at me.

What if she gets hurt?

What if she’s afraid?

What if she decides that she wants her mommy … and I’m four hours away?

The answer was always the same: We’ll figure something out.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? Figuring?

The day we left, she was gangly in her grandmother’s arms with her newly sprouting limbs getting ready to take a grab at kindergarten. She waved amid tears as we pulled away.

"I’ll call you in a few minutes," she shouted after us.

We’d decided that she could call us as often as she wanted to hear our voices.

But the phone didn’t ring.

As soon as our car had rounded the corner, and her cousin had called her to help him build some imaginary contraption that was sure to feed the squirrels and relegate the red ants and mosquitoes to their rightful place in the belly of some beneficent bird, she’d forgotten her momentary homesickness.

It wasn’t until her usual bedtime, which coincided with our unlocking of the side door and unceremonious dumping of suitcases and gear onto the laundry room floor, that the phone call, complete with uncontrollable sobbing, came.

"I wanna come home, I wanna come home, I wanna come HOME. Can you come and get me now? How about tomorrow morning? Can you come and get me tomorrow morning? I miss you. I miss daddy. I miss my brother. I miss the dog."

Aw, I thought, she misses the dog! … the senile, old, incontinent dog. She must be overtired.

I was right. Her grandmother called back a short while later to report that it took only one book to transport the weepy child to the Land of Nod.

There was only a small part of my inner voice warning me that leaving her might result in an inopportune eight-hour round trip rescue operation, but mostly it reassured me: she’s my daughter.

I was only a little older than her when I stayed for weeks at a time with friends at their summer cabin. My father always felt bad when I cried … as he was picking me up to take me home.

Now that I am a parent, I know how he felt.

I want her to be confident without me, even though I want her to need me. I want her to have fun but not more than she’d have if I were there. I want her to miss me but not enough to warrant a rescue mission.

It’s a delicate balance, easily toppled by a sudden expulsion of held breath.

Reach Siobhan Connally at sconnally@troyrecord.com

The first, official test of primary school is for parents

I knew it was coming: The letter that would send me off the deep end.

When it arrived, I could tell by its thickness that the legal-sized envelope contained a brewing storm of discontent.

Even my husband, who normally opens only those things addressed to him that he believes contain payment for services rendered, couldn’t wait until Ittybit got home to tear open the missive and see which Kindergarten teacher she wrangled.

He called me immediately. "Well … Ittybit’s teacher is …" he said over the phone at mid-day. He sounded disappointed after saying the name. "Do you remember her?"

He was hoping she’d get a teacher we knew from the community or one recommended by a friend. But neither of us wanted to be "THAT PARENT," the one with the squeaky wheels, always needing grease.

"I’m sure it will be fine," I said, believing our first born could charm a snake if she needed to. Not that I’d want to make that comparison with respect to a teacher of five-year-olds. Or would I?

When I got home and thumbed through the brightly colored pages filled with welcoming words and informative warnings, it was the light pink sheet with its tiny print that made the hair rise on the back of my neck.

I’d expected that, too.

I have enough friends with school-aged children to know budget cuts have meant parents shell out for all sorts of items that, when they were in school, used to be procured through purchasing departments things such as art paper and tissues, art supplies and in some cases cleaning products and disinfectants.

For years, frazzled families have told me all sorts of stories – using teachers’ names in vain – detailing how they’d nearly driven themselves to the edge of insanity trying to procure all the name-brand supplies, which inflate the over-all price of the Back-to-School shopping spree by 20 to 30 percent, listed on their supply sheets.

I also know that parents who stray from list find the offending brands sent back home with a note of derision.

When the following items:

n Kleenex (no lotion or perfumes)

n Crayola Twistable Crayons

n Crayola Washable Markers

n ZipLoc Gallon-sized bags

n Expo brand dry erase markers

n Elmer’s glue sticks

n Fiskars scissors (blunt)

n and Dixie Cups

were specified on our supply list, I can’t say I was surprised. But I was still disappointed.

"Tell me again," I asked my friend, who is now in her last years of public school procurement, "why do teachers demand Fiskar scissors and Ziploc bags? Why do they want Mead binders and Kleenex brand tissues? Why do they specify Elmer’s glue sticks? I mean, I must have two boxes of generic glue sticks that are probably made by Elmer’s but sold to companies who sell them with a different label anyway …"

She just looked at me with a pained expression and told me the same thing my husband said …

"Oh, you are going to have such a hard time with school, aren’t you?"

I know, I know, I know … I’ve been saying it all along. Ittybit will be brilliant and I will be bucking the norms.

I’m going to be that mother who sends generic tissues and glue and baggies … the one who sends her kid to school with generic glue and no-name dry erase markers, poised for battle.

Now, I understand the arguments that teachers have preferences, that students having the same tools lessens jealousy and other boneheaded (excuse me) reasons for brand uniformity but in public school, where uniforms have been fought tooth and nail, it just seems disingenuous.

Perhaps a more plausible explanation is that teachers are testing parents trying to learn early on which ones will be compliant and which ones are destined to roil the waters.

"Wait until she gets to high school," my friend laughs. "You are going to need a lifejacket."

Moving at a snail's pace

I found it difficult to look at the "big picture" as we moved our home to a new house.

Whenever you endeavor to do something that has so many parts I think the tendency for the non-planners among us is to just shut down.

For months people with the best of intension and previous experience told me to start packing "now." I knew they were right, but whenever I looked around at the massive amount of stuff we’d accumulated in a decade, I saw all the things that more or less owned me.

Instead of packing in boxes I packed in my mind.

And I purged.

Every now and again I filled my car with things to donate to Goodwill. I dropped them off.

For a little while I felt lighter even though the donation hadn’t made a dent.
But when it finally came time to hunker down and get to the business of moving things, it was just a blind grab and toss.

Project Mayhem.

For a start, we didn’t procure enough boxes. Packing box after box unpacking, repacking. We found ourselves reusing worn cartons marked "Kitchen" for "Bedroom" or "Bath." It didn’t really matter, seeing as how all of it was just being dumped into the closest room to the entrance.

Our stuff has stuff, or so my parents like to tell us.

But relocation isn’t rocket science it’s merely the systematic organizing and schlepping and hauling and re-organizing until one finds a constant (or the set of car keys they lost two Christmases ago).

Perhaps that’s why I found myself wide awake at 4 a.m. trying to bring organization to the kitchen before the rest of the house arose, bringing chaos to the kitchen instead.

I made a pot of coffee and stared up at the cabinets. It strikes me as odd that I – the person who doesn’t really do the cooking – feel compelled to organize the space. As I unwrap the first of the glasses I realize that while the cooking part is creative, the cleaning part is compulsive. If I am to uphold my end of our "You Cook, I’ll Clean" arrangement, I should be able to organize them for easy replacement.

I get to work placing the dishes and the bowls, the cups and the saucers. Mixing bowls will go up there a little to the right. Wine glasses next … and then serving bowls and platters. Coffee is growing cold. I splash in a little more to warm it up. There’s the collection of water bottles and Thermoses to place next, not to mention the odd lot of things we’re keeping but never use. A corner of the cabinet, in view but out of reach seems good for those.

I begin to notice things. The kitchen appears smaller, but it’s holding things we spread over three rooms in our old house. Everything is finding its place something I’ve been longing to say. I know it won’t last. Space seems to have a way of overfilling, but in the early morning light of a brand new day in a new house, sitting back with a cup of coffee and a sense of completion certainly has its perks.

Moving is good. It helps a person sweep away the cobwebs of clutter … It also doesn’t hurt when you hear a familiar jingle of keys as you finally move the tiny fake Christmas tree from the spot it’s been inhabiting year-round.

One can only be a girl on her way for so long

Whilst driving home from work recently I was forced to realize a truth that is only surprising to me: I am middle-aged.

Oh, this little pest had been flying around for a while. I swatted at it from time to time with the gestating and bearing of children at an age when most of my friends were getting ready to put their own kids in middle school and some *shudder* high school or college.

I thought of myself as an early starter but late bloomer "A Girl On Her Way," to quote the title of a Maia Sharp song and the reason for this inarguable new wisdom.

An interview with the rich-voiced Sharp was airing on National Public Radio as I steered my Civic home … (which are both key signs, I’ve learned, that a woman has reached a certain age: I came to this understanding a few years ago while attending a gathering known far and wide as a "Stitch and Bitch."

The term alone should have cued me in to this new lot in life but it was the husband of the host, after he’d found himself shuffling cars in the driveway, who enlightened me.

When he returned from his chore, he jovially announced that he’d been able to hear an NPR story in its entirety behind the wheels of seven different Hondas).

But I digress.

Sharp was telling me (and thousands of other listeners also somewhere along their evening commutes) that a girl on her way has only has so long before she become a woman who never arrived.

And there I sat, slack jawed, alone in a Honda, listening to NPR – a woman who never arrived.

The years really did go by that quickly.

Promise doesn’t fade so much as it lingers around, seemingly inexhaustible, before it just suddenly disappears.

You tread water waiting for your first "real" job. You get your first promotion. Then a second. Maybe you are named to the post of leadership before you turn 30 … like I was.

And then, perhaps, you get laid off. Financial cuts. Downsizing. Synergy. You adopt whatever catch phrase makes it seems less personal.

Maybe they’ll tell you how horrible you left things, even if you inherited the mess, as a parting gift. Don’t want you getting any ideas about your worth.

For a while you might spend some time thinking you are unemployable. But sooner than later you find yourself employed again. This time you are grateful. Fearful, too. Unwilling to take chances.

You stagnate.

You try new things eventually because you can’t help yourself.

And for a time you are on your way again.

People call you. They ask for things. Things look promising again.

But nothing really catches on. The phone stops ringing the inbox stops flagging for your attention.

Then children come and your interest is renewed. Your voice gains a new resonance. A new meaning transcribes your words and your thoughts. You have another chance.

For a time there are people asking for things.

You are encouraged. But again, same as before, nothing you spark catches fire.

And then one day a song comes on the radio. And the woman singing it, who finally feels she’s arriving at the place she intended, is younger than you.

And you look into the corner of the rearview mirror that you have angled toward your face. Finally you see the truth. Damn vanity.

And you swat dead that fly that was buzzing around you. It hurts. But turns out, it was not as painful as you thought it would be.

You tell yourself: If you had only sought to arrive you might have missed out on all the sights along the way. Maybe one day you will believe it.

If only moving house and home was literal

I know I shouldn't complain about the toils of moving, seeing as how I have not personally schlepped a box from one house to another in more than 15 years, but having done none of the effort and experienced all of the angst, I just feel as if I’ve missed out.

My husband, you see, is an efficient mover. When we moved from our last apartment about a decade ago I came home from work to find only the “essentials” were left for our last night at the first-floor abode: a lonely old futon mattress, a television and a bag of tortilla chips.

My couch and every other stick of furniture in the place was gone.

My husband’s friend had arrived early and they had nothing to do but get to work.

In no time they’d packed all the possessions in the four-room dwelling and driven them the three towns over to our first home.

It was a big deal.

Almost as big as the first Christmas in our new home, during which three generations of family were invited to attend, and who bought our first tree and decorated the room with lights — without me.

But I’m not bitter.

They saved the decorations for me to hang … alone.

Again, not bitter.

This time, however, as we spent the better part of six months renovating a new house and settling into a new venture, I have no excuse beyond denial.

In as much as I liked the new house for all the normalcy it offered — two floors, front porch, bathtubs — I loved the dwelling we were leaving; our barn. My children were born and raised in that house. We buried a beloved dog in its backyard and planted a tree on my first Mother’s Day in the front yard. I had envisioned ribbing them as they tramped through the second-floor apartment with muddy shoes and flaunted unclosed doors: “WHAT! Do you think we live in a BARN?!”

I know it’s for the best: The new house is better sized for our bigger family and also comes with an expansion for my husband’s business; a chance we couldn’t let pass.

But I can’t help but heave heavy sighs as I belatedly start the process of purging the things we don’t need and packing the things we do. There are two piles of everything: Clothes to keep, clothes to donate; papers to file, papers to recycle; trinkets to save, trinkets to sell.

The process takes forever.

Boxes I haven’t touched in years now hold treasures that spark my memory. I can’t believe I saved all these brochures from our honeymoon … Oh, will you look at that … a matchbook from our first date.

I toss them into the bag that’s headed for the dumpster; a bag that’s leaning against a wall with the tell-tale hatch marks of a growing family – pencil dashes with names, ages and dates.

I know soon that wall will soon get a fresh coat of paint, just as surely as I know I’ll probably find a dozen things that were lost over the years when we move the couch.

As I stand there looking at the smudge-covered partition, I know the reason I’m stalling: I’d rather put that wall into the moving truck and leave the couch.

Throwing marriage out with divorce is like throwing baby out with bath

I was all ready to pick up and hurl the first stone as Atlantic Monthly essayist Sandra Tsing Loh metaphorically suggested in her painfully personal work “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off” in the July/August edition of the journal, wherein she bluntly and unabashedly revealed her part in the failure of her 20-year marriage, and as a result questions whether the institution has outlived its usefulness in modern society.

Her question: When modern convenience and modern technology has not only freed us from the drudgery of work but also the statistical likelihood of an early demise, would it not seem logical that the idea of making a life-long commitment to another human being would also be rendered obsolete?

Recounting her own mid-life crisis and those of her female acquaintances she wonders why anyone would not only commit themselves to something that has a statistical rate of failure of about 50 percent, but also defend such an institution with such a defective track record so vehemently.

Perhaps, it's just habit; a foolish consistency of little minds. Or perhaps it's something else.

I found the piece, oddly enough, when I noticed my Web site’s hit counter leading hapless readers to my site and an identically titled essay critiquing another piece Tsing Loh wrote for the Atlantic a few years ago on the so-called Mommy Wars.

As I read her latest treatise, my heart was telling me that she is a woman who is going through one of the more painful, demoralizing, defeating moments in life; a moment that – while perhaps a construct of some antiquated system of social support – is no less tragic for a family’s individual members.

But my mind was agreeing with her.

In as much as I am one of the 90 percent of Americans who willingly went into a marriage knowing the rate of failure; knowing that there would be times when the “work” involved could eventually outweigh the value of the relationship; I also believe that if I had made such a decision in my 20s … even in my late 20s … I most likely would not be married now.

Should we live with such mistakes for the sake of the children?

Tsing Loh makes an interesting, and seemingly logical point in her article that while statistics continually indicate two-parent homes are best for children, single-parent homes are not far behind. The problems, as she quotes the experts, come when parents continually bring new paramours into the mix, wherein children are forced to bond or compete.

It makes me realize, where she’s standing seems to be a strange place to be. There’s no one way to live a life, even though there are socially accepted norms.

It seems to me we are naturally moving toward new understanding of these obstacles, too.

Even in a generation, it seems, we’ve slowed the process immensely.

By my calculation, Tsing Loh would have been about 27 when she married the man she’s now divorcing 20 years later. In some eras 27 would foretell spinsterhood. But today, a woman in her 20s is expected to see the world, and make her mark before she settles down. Ask Rebecca Woolf, writer and essayist, who found herself unexpectedly pregnant at 23, marrying her boyfriend and trying to work family life around her rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

Woolf has parlayed her journey into a and a popular blog site – Girl’s Gone Child - despite worries that motherhood would more than likely derail her potential for career success.

And yet, only a generation ago, Woolf’s age wouldn’t have been an issue at all in the framing of family life. Many women had careers and marriage by the time they were out of college.

Now the 24-year-old mother is a unique and suspect being.

Still, I can’t see myself objecting to my children living with their love interests before marriage; in fact, I can more likely see the drawbacks of a more traditional scheme from my own narrative. Had I married the first (or second) person I lived with there’s no doubt in my mind I’d be in my third marriage as I sit here typing.

Yet, in as much as I agree with her theory, I am not ready to give up on marriage.

I’m not ready to file away the 50 percent rate of divorce under the heading of “failure,” any more than I would give up the experience I got from living with the two men I didn’t marry.

Perhaps, in time, Tsing Loh will realize that throwing marriage out with divorce is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Parenting pitfalls are rarely so black and white

My husband doesn’t like to be The Bad Guy, the one who always says ‘no.’

He feels he’s been pushed into wearing the black hat by Yours Truly, The Pushover.

He’s the one who tells Ittybit to eat three more bites before she can be excused, that she has to sleep in her own bed, and that we are dog people NOT cat people.

I am, by comparison, the scoundrel who replaces the fish the moment they die, lets her watch TV to her heart's content and allows her to have ice cream for breakfast.

I can feel his pain, sort of. I return home to the scampering of little feet and the excited cheer of “MOMMY’S HOME, MOMMY’S HOME, MOMMY’S HOME!” after I’ve walked out to the mailbox.

It’s a nice feeling.

But as the traveling member of our tribe — the one who goes away for nights at a time on business — he’d like to be welcomed back into the fold with at least a brief chorus of “DADDY’S HOME!” followed by big, wet sloppy kisses from the members of the family who are not completely covered in fur.

Instead he gets an “oh hi,” a wave and “does this mean I have to sleep in my own bed?” directed at me, the woman who, in his estimation and in his children’s eyes, is always wearing a white hat.

Even the dog yawns and goes back to sleep without bothering to get up. Traitor.

This is exactly the scenario my entirely fictional organization “People for Less Unrest in Marriage” was designed to counsel.

If I were not the leader, the folks at PLUM would completely take me to task for changing the rules; for not picking the battles I know he would have fought or, at the very least, for not scripting the return with a manufactured ticker-tape parade.

But as the creator of PLUM I’ve fired those who would defy me.

It’s not like THEY have to figure out how to get the kids breakfast, get them dressed, give the dog a pill, clean up whatever canine accident took place on the stairs (yuck), get a shower and get ready for work, pack lunches for daycare and get out of the house before we’re so late that the light from late is already blocking the sun, not to mention answering the age-old question: “Where are my keys?”

Now where was I? Oh, yes, disorganized.

Let’s backtrack shall we? A few paragraphs up I mentioned something about replacing fish? Let’s go back there. Yes?

So … Golfie died last weekend and, while my dear, black-hat-wearing husband was busy painting our soon-to-be new house I was practically promising little miss Ittybit a pony as a suitable replacement.

Before you cast that stone, let me just confess I just can’t flush one more fish down the commode. I just can’t handle the karmic responsibility. I’ve had better luck with mammals. That is why, as we stood – her eyes all teary – toilet side, I suggested a guinea pig to the girl as we watched dear old Golfie circle the bowl and descend.

But it might as well have been a stallion if you’d seen my husband’s eyes bulge when I told him.

I said we’d “TALK” about it, but we all know that means “DONE DEAL” to a preschooler.

I know Mr. Black Hat is only being the true voice of reason when he rightly points out that we are moving soon, after which we will be going on vacation. It doesn’t make sense to get a new pet right now.

He’s right. I know he’s right. Stop rubbing it in.

I break the news to her that we’ve talked and we agree that a new pet is not going to happen until after our lives have settled down again (in three to six weeks). Until then, we can go to the pet store to look at the little critter she’d like to harbor and buy a book telling us how to take care of her.

She does a happy dance, all is right with the universe, I’m still wearing the white hat and off we go to the pet store … where she decides on a hamster.

But now, after having read six chapters at bedtime on the nature and care of hamsters, her father and I are finally on the same page: We’d rather have a cat.

He’s going to break the news.

He gets to wear the white hat for a change.

Write to Siobhan Connally at sconnally@troyrecord.com or read more online at www.troyrecord.com, click on “Blogs.”

No good deed goes unpunished

No good deed goes unpunished.

As a mother, I should know that. As a shopper, however, it never occurred to me.

It also never crossed my mind that my comeuppance would come in the form of a broken toe.

Before I tell you how I managed that, I'm going back to the beginning.

I am a dutiful shopper.

I follow the aisles the way that marketing psychologists intended. I weave my way through the produce section first and then meander around the outer edges of the store, picking up meat and eggs and milk before getting lost in the mire that is in the middle.

And when I say lost, I mean literally.

I walk around for nearly a half hour looking for the beer (beer being the only food group, in my husband's estimation anyway, that is improperly placed in the wasteland that is the store's processed food island). I have a distinct Deer-in-the-Headlights expression with a touch of Zombie when I finally find it and heft a case of some high-priced India Pale Ale into the cart.

But that's not what I really mean when I say dutiful.

My follow-the-rules personality flaw continues past the checkout to the parking lot, where the design of the cart corrals has always made me suspect that the designer might have also gotten lost in the beer aisle. Why else would a shared shopping cart park be accessible from only one row and impossible to squeeze carts through if cars are parked next to it? The answer has to be the Demon Drink.

No matter. Where there's a will there's a way, right? No one wants to have some errant cart bashing in the side of their minivan all because the last driver was too lazy to put it back.

When the kids were small, I'd leave them in the cart while I packed the car with our haul, and then we'd make a final drive back to the store or to the cart corral.

Now the kids are bigger and more likely to flee the scene or get into trouble if they're not strapped into their seats as I offload the natural granola bars and organic cheese puffs that they require in their lunches. I can't have them playing chicken in the parking lot with the other abandoned carts, you understand.

Instead I bribe them with one of the tasty-treats they were allowed for being quiet and docile in the store if they will sit tight while I run the cart across two lanes of parking spots to the badly designed car corral.

But as they sit and slurp their Gogurt (or whatever liquid sugar-y substance that comes in a plastic tube) du' jour, I have somehow managed to run the front wheels of the oversized kid-friendly/parent-mocking car shaped like a car right into the side of my foot.

Ow.

And with each step back to the car it just gets worse

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Owwwwwwwwwwwwww.

It's broken. The toe is broken.

As I drive the throbbing only increases.

This isn't good. Usually time has a way of taking pain away, or at least dulling it.

I pull into the driveway.

Conspicuously missing is my husband's car.

There's no one to help me schlep two kids and six bags of groceries (not to mention that case of IPA) up the stairs and into the house.

And wouldn't you know it? Every single time the kids jump around in the waning light of approaching bedtime and processed sugar they somehow land on my battered, ballooning and now blackening toe.

Like I said, no good deed goes unpunished.

Hoopla not worth every penny, but has its value

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY hate the end-of-year dance class extravagance.

That’s about $400 worth of despise:

Starting with $37 a month, including months containing two or fewer classes.
A $50 recital costume.

Having to pay $65 for four tickets to attend the recital (because it was booked at a professional performance space).

A mandate that five-year-olds wear make-up because "the lights will wash them out."
Dinner-time performance scheduled for preschoolers.

Not to mention that every minute of every class since February being entirely focused on "getting it right for recital," which often forced the cajoling of my wee one to actually participate after she lost interest.

Add insult to injury, just for kicks, and pay $18 + $7 shipping and handling for one 5x7 PROFESSIONAL PORTRAIT(TM) of the class (not to mention being told by a puckered-face woman that the pictures are copyrighted so I can't snap the action, too, even after I paid their highway robbery, no-customer-service, prices.) I hate the business model that demands parents herd their kids into a room and pay gobs of money for pictures, sight unseen, to arrive in six to eight weeks.

But the real end of my rope came as I was running around like a crazy person trying (and failing) to find nude-colored tights, a mandate for the dancewear that was not included with the $50 dancewear.

I practically broke down in tears when the husband, trying to be helpful, asked if I'd gone to WAL-MART. "I do NOT spend money at WAL-MART ... I'm NOT breaking THAT principle, too."

"OK ... Ok ...." came his soothing voice over the phone, evidence I'd gone too far; lost my moorings. I'd haplessly fallen over the edge of reason over sheer hose.
Much ado about nothing. Much ado over something that should just be fun. Something that no matter how it is presented, encourages the arts.

It wasn't the tights but my overall failure that I was lamenting.

My failure to find a class that met my desires for less consumerism. My failure to stand up and assert those values anyway. My insistence she continue when her interest waned. All the while feeling the emphasis was on the wrong place - the recital not the art.

My failure continues to kick me when I’m down as I recognize that the trappings were the ONLY part my daughter had any interest in after all these months: Having her picture taken in the dress and the chance at being on a real stage was poking me in the chest with my inability to NOT buck trends.

I knew it would be this way. I knew as they scheduled the circus, I was going to be playing an angry clown. I'm just utterly stunned and shocked by my own rage and stubbornness when it finally came to pass.

Can't just keep my mouth shut and smile. I know when the lights go down and the girls start their performances I will be just as proud as a parent can be.

And then a friend told me something that made it all fit together.
"Let your principles be a guide, not a shackle."

So easy to forget that, isn't it?

When we enslave our "principles" we really run the risk of becoming unprincipled.
I had said that I didn't want THIS to be our experience. And it won't be if I don't let my principles petrify. If I don't shut down and fold my arms to other possibilities.

... I just hope it's the dance that will be the reason she'll want to continue in six to eight weeks (if she chooses to continue) ... not just to see her picture on the wall.

He’s no longer an infant, but he’s still my baby

Dear Champ,

Now we are two.

Well, you are two and I am trying to force myself to think of you as a person all your own. Apart from me.

I didn't have this trouble with your sister and would chalk it up to last-child syndrome, but at the time she turned this auspicious age I had my doubts there'd ever be another baby in our house.

Of course by this age, she had moved along to her own room and had decided cow's milk was sweeter than mine. I'd changed back to my non-nursing bras and embarked on a new journey of bringing up toddler.

But every time I look at you, I see the infant you were two years ago not the boy you are becoming.

You are just as feisty as she was. You ask for what you want and expect to get it, but you melt my heart when I tell you "Later, Ok" and you sigh and say "OK."

I feel a jolt of disbelief as I leaf through photographs from just a few months ago ... the baby is becoming a boy. You love trucks and tractors and horses calling them out as they pass by your window on the morning and evening commutes. Translating your words has become a family past-time.

CHAMP: "Ah-bells coos!"

MAMA: "Annabel's cool?"

DADDY: "Annabel's shoes?"

ITTYBIT: "I think he's saying Annabel's SCHOOL!"

THE CHAMP: "Yeah. Ah-Bell's COO."

And where you can ask for "Coeder" (demand the Courduroy Bear book be read over and over) or locate and procure your own snacks (usually raisins, though sometimes 'Gookies’) you have no interest in changing your brand of milk.

You think cow's milk is the sole property of your sister, and you have no intention of fighting her for it.

Milk, for you, for now, is me. In that way, you are still my baby.

But as your legs stretch longer and your body thins out as you are able to ask for what you want: "Milch, peas," nursing on demand has gone by the wayside. At least in public.

"Later," I coo, "later."

"Ok," you say with a sigh, "ok."

And where I was once confident to lactate in public, during your infancy and early toddlerhood, I am furtive and feeling the pressure of secreting your sustenance now that you can tell me what you want in ways even strangers can understand.

And though you are interested in big boy things including — against all stereotypes I've ever been dim-witted enough to believe — using the potty the way all plumbers have intended, I'm having a hard time recognizing you without my shadow.

Your father is counting the days until you have your own room. Your sister is even packing your things, she feels she's given you free and first access to her mother for long enough.

But I'm just not ready to make you grow up faster than you are growing on your own.

Happy Birthday, love

Mommy

Names can wound us, words can cripple us

There are lots of people who disagree with the idea that only words used as decorative objects, forged in metal or cast in plaster, that fall from atop some monumental shelf onto our thumb twiddling noggins can do us bodily harm.

And truth be told, I’m one of those folks who believes that while it behooves us to use our words wisely — that what we say and how we say it can shape our understanding and our actions, as well as our relationships with other humans – we have to choose our battles.

For instance:

Curse words. Personally, I think curse words are terribly satisfying to say. Occasionally, too often, they roll off my tongue with the ease of a longshoreman.

Is that sexist? Probably. Longshoreperson.

To be quite honest, the only reason I think logical to oppose them in general is the long term cause and effect, which is the more you rely on them to make your point the less punch your paragraphs actually pack. It’s just a simple truth, they really aren’t effective if you want people to pay attention to anything serious you may have to say.

So when a word, unmentionable in a grandmother’s company, slips from between the sugar-sweet lips of my soon-to-be kindergartener, I can see how that secondary lesson about curse words is going to be harder to mandate than it would have been to model.

Thus far I’ve been trying the "you-realize-we-can’t-say-that-word-in-public" response when I hear the offending usage, hoping it doesn’t turn into an "if-you-say-that-word-at-school-you-could-get-into-big-trouble" admonition. At that point I’ll just be praying we don’t get a phone call from the principal or several angry parents we were hoping to befriend.

But there is one word that, if I possessed such a power, I would erase completely from the pages of Webster: boredom.

"I’m so bored," whenever I’ve heard it, has always seemed a whiney complaint that is a complete and utter waste of angst.

They are three words when strung together will literally make the hairs on my neck stand on end.

How is boredom possible if you can read?

If you can draw?

If you can think or plan?

How is it possible with the hundreds of must-have toys, the internets, the telephone, the myriad of amusements one can invent with their mind, folks can’t think of something more interesting to do than announce they are bored?

To me boredom is an acceptance of one’s own lack of imagination. A lack of intellect we announce to the world, demanding that it be fixed for us. A petty demand the same as when the sullen teen holds up an empty glass one room away from the kitchen and demands service by wiggling it in the air, saying "Can I have more juice …" but making no attempt to move off the couch.

The response we have is almost always something along these lines of: "Do I look like you’re personal waiter? You have legs. You know where the refrigerator is. You MAY have juice."

Perhaps all those things I mentioned: … the toys, the games, the virtual pleasures of the computer have softened us. Perhaps television has rotted our brains and given us minute attention spans. The argument seems plausible.

Only thing stopping me from believing it is that the slogan isn’t new.

Seems to me that the people who see boredom as a consequence of over stimulation, also see it as an acceptable alternative to modern technology. That doing nothing is OK, too.

But I don’t define doing nothing as really doing nothing. I don’t think Roget would have paired the two words in his thesaurus, at any rate. We are always doing something if we can think, or curl up with a book, or take a nap.

Allowing boredom to be an acceptable activity, if you ask me, just steals the thunder of the quiet thrills like dreaming up acceptable curse words to work into one’s English essay.

No babies are saved in killing of doctor

No one should ever refer to the killer of Kansas gynecologist Dr. George Tiller as being pro-life.

He wasn’t.

Any person or group that resorts to killing doctors as a means to an end of medical abortion is certainly advocating death.

The gunman who stalked Dr. Tiller in the lobby of his church was a murderous terrorist, plain and simple.

I can’t change your mind if you feel potential for life, and not life absolutely, is what matters.

There’s little I can say to a person who sees human existence in such black and white terms. I can’t sway anyone from the belief that some lives are more valuable than others. Some people just value life in reverse proportion to its weight and innocence; the smaller the more valuable.

I can’t expect them to understand a parent who doesn’t want to watch their children suffer and die over the course of a few minutes or more years than they have on this Earth to care for them. It’s a cost that will haunt them, too.

I know they have their reasons for believing what they do just as surely as I have my reasons:

I am pro-life, I am for medical privacy and I am pro-woman. It is not my place to decide what is best for anyone else regardless of what I would decide for myself.

I am not walking in their shoes.

Putting aside our most fervent moral beliefs, the giant irony in all of this – beside the horrible, tragic terror of such an unconscionable act in the name of life -- is that no babies would likely have been saved in the killing of Dr. Tiller, even if the gunman had leveled his gun and hit his mark 30 years ago.

Late-term abortions – clinically referred to as Dilation and Evacuations - are rare, and the people who have them are not women who waited too long to decide they didn’t want to be mothers. They are women who desperately want the babies they’ve carried. They have hoped beyond all hope for healthy, squalling newborns.

Instead, their babies were given a grim prognosis, perhaps one that determined a condition that might be incompatible with life outside the womb, or one that would present a lifetime of suffering. They may have found themselves in a hospital fighting for their own lives, perhaps battling preeclampsia, a pregnancy-related hypertension that can set in after 20 weeks of gestation.

The Preeclampsia Foundation estimates that globally hypertensive disorders account for more than 76,000 maternal deaths and 500,000 infant deaths each year.

There are many different conditions, each as rare as late term abortions, that can turn a pregnancy from a joyous occasion into a nightmare through no fault of the mother and with no redress by the doctor.

There are genetic maladies commonly detected in the second and third trimesters, such as severe Dandy-Walker syndrome or hydrops fetalis, which can produce babies not meant for this world; babies who will never breathe on their own.

These mothers who would like to choose to deliver a healthy baby, instead are faced with choosing how they will mourn their loss. Some wait and deliver stillborn babies. Some need closure sooner. Some are faced with having to protect their fertility and their mental health the best way they know how.

Those decisions should be every woman’s to make with her family and her doctor in private.

Doctors like Dr. Tiller.

I believe he was willing to pay this price -- enduring more than 30 years of protest lines and lawsuits, suffering bodily harm, ultimately even death -- to make sure women had the best care possible when facing such dire circumstances. I believe he did that out of compassion and a firm belief in what he was doing was necessary and ethically right for his individual patients’ health.

Dr. Tiller was no butcher.

The butchers were the back-alley doctors women turned to before the law of this land protected them.

The butcher was the man who shot him down as he attended church.

You have every right to disagree. But if you call yourself pro-life you must mourn the doctor’s death and see it as the abomination it was. You can not hold that the man who murdered Dr. Tiller was in any way doing God’s work.

An open letter to the graduate

Dear Ittybit,

Your last "Special Day" at the Marilla Cuthbert School for Unspeakably Charming Children snuck up on me.

It was the last day in which one of your parents **points to self** showed up bearing healthy snacks that none of your friends would touch with a ten-foot pole.

It was the last day I'd have a chance to slip the photos I'd taken throughout the school year into the bags of your classmates. Photographs tucked in envelopes that you dutifully sealed with "Love" in a color representing their name ... Blue for Billy ... Magenta for Madeline ... Silver for Sierra.

It was the last day in which one of your ever-patient teachers would tilt their heads and cluck in my direction ... as I so obviously hanged the paintings in the wrong place or as I read books when I should have been helping kids put on their smocks so they could paint.

It would be the last time I’d hear their chittering as I broke some other rule ... such as talking to you when you were in line instead of making sure you were all as quiet as church mice.

It's been more than three years since you first walked through the doors of this cooperative preschool ... the very one I went to when I was your age ... the very one I lived above when I was a young adult.

You already know those stories, you say, rolling your eyes and looking upward when I try to retell them.

You also know numbers and the difference between upper and lower case. You can spell you name and recite your phone number. And every day you come home with a new letter and all the words you learned that begin with that letter.

Both of us have learned a great deal these last three years.

In addition to writing your name and remembering your numbers, you've learned to cut with scissors, recognize letters and understand about cause and effect, as it applies to so many things.

On the last Special Day I was finally proficient in hanging the paintings to dry, and collecting all the crafts so that parents wouldn't have to search. I easily did the chores that needed doing ... cleaning paintbrushes, wiping tables, vacuuming floors and taking out the trash.

I didn't even mess up snack time.

"O" was the letter of your last special day.

I brought the things we'd agreed on: Oranges and Oyster crackers and Olives (though you were quite sure no one would eat them). I also brought orange smoothies, blended at home the night before.

You helped. We blended oranges, pineapples, papayas, mangos and bananas with ice and orange juice, squeezing in the juice of a lime for good measure.

When we tested it you gave it your highest praise: "The most delicious of deliciousities I ever had in my whole entire world or worlds."

I beamed. And then I set the blender up for a second time ... this time adding kale to the mix and a plan to call the new creation "Oscar Isn't Such a Grouch After All Smoothie."

But as the kids' luck would have it, the blender broke.

And then your father gave me his patented eyebrow arch: "Kale? Really?"

"Yes, Kale. ... I just wanted to see Ms. Cuthberts' eyes roll back in her head one last time."

I didn't need a green smoothie to do that, all I had to do was put out the green tractor trikes in the play yard.

"In the wrong place again, mom. In the wrong place again."

*Sigh*

Look out Kindergarten, ready or not here I come.

Love,

Mommy

Thrill seeking, one tot ride at a time

Hoffman's Playland.

I promised Ittybit we’d go.

Blessing? Curse? I know many-a-parent (and grandparent) who are trying to avoid that particular stretch of Route 9 for at least another month now that the rides have come to life for the season. But I promised.

The Champ’s been here before -- a few times during the past two seasons to be exact -- but he was of an age in which he was neither interested nor conscious enough to notice the candy-color amusements and the tiny tots lining up to ride.

It's possible we could have eked through our afternoon outing without the boy's involvement. He fell fast asleep on the 30-minute commute and his temperament beforehand indicated he needed the shut-eye.

There was also a satisfying breeze that, with all four windows open half way, cooled the car nicely. The Dad was more than happy to wait with the boy and practice his ability to sleep in a reclined bucket seat whilst I braved the tortures of the big-kid rides.

I agreed to make our first ride the Tilt-a-Whirl, vividly remembering the gastric upset from last year's excursion, but theorizing a full stomach back then may have been a contributing factor. It had been hours since I'd eaten, perhaps I'd be safe.

I was wrong.

Oy, motion sickness, how cruelly you've crept up on me in my old age.

I fought my way past her other favorites -- the parachute ride, the cautions for which we read AFTER asking papa, the heart patient, to accompany her the first year we visited; The tiny roller coaster, which jerks so violently in its turns that I always feel in jeopardy of falling out; and the Scrambler, the name alone is enough to explain why I walked past saying NO! NO! NO! -- to the car.

"Your father will have to go on those rides with you, Ittybit. I just can't do it."

In the parking lot, we stood for a second watching the boys snooze. And then I pounded on the window.

"Can you go with her? She wants to ride the Scrambler. I. Just. Can't."

"Gee. Thanks a lot," he said peeling himself out from behind the steering wheel and taking her hand.

As I sat in the car with the snoozing toddler, I could see her Dad's head and shoulders snapping backwards as the cars whipped around. She's too small to be visible from my vantage.

I will the boy to wake up. "You don't want to miss this," I whisper over and over. "Playland ... Playland ... Playland."

I didn't want to miss it either.

Louder: "WAKE-Y, WAKE-Y EGGS AND BAC-Y."

One eye opens, and then the other.

Still groggy from sleep, he’s still rubbing his eyes as I’m whisking him around the park, looking for his sister.

We find them near the boats, which is perfect as there is no finer first ride you can take than those boats floating around in a mechanical river.

I'm a giddy. Poised with a camera ... ready to take a picture from the same vantage my father took one of my sister and me.

Together they sit. He scowls. She rings the bell. He scowls some more. She rings the bell louder. He starts to cry. She stops ringing the bell to comfort him.

When the ride stops, I lift him out as Ittybit scrambles out next, translating his sobs.

"He's not a fan of the boats, Mom. Not enough aventure. ... He's a high flyer, I think."

As he smiled and waved his way through a plane ride a few minutes later, she proved her point.

My kids are thrill-seekers unlike their old mom.

Our Mary ...

Mary died.

She was the last of the "Great Aunts" on my mother’s side. My grandmother's baby sister.

She would have been 96 on Thursday, a long life by most standards. Nonetheless, the night my mother said she'd gone, the words tumbled over each other, preventing me from sleep.

Mary. Died.

Loveable Mary.

Stylish Mary.

Mary, who family lore puts kicking her knickers into the Hudson River once they’d lost their elastic and dropped to the pavement of the Green Island Bridge as she and a beau were walking across. Her grace, it is said, made him none the wiser.

Mary, who, despite a gentle demeanor and slender calves, was herself a brick house beneath tendrils of ivy.

Mary who’d lived through wonderful luck and terrible loss with the same cheerful grace -- a woman who was always "as truthful as kindness allowed" -- was gone.

If anyone could, we all thought, Mary would live forever.

I have many memories of Mary; many more than I have of my own grandmother, who died when I was a child: Her voice, her smile, her devil-may-care but the angels-will-call demeanor. A glint in her eye that was proof she enjoyed the world and the people in it.

I also remember the things that surrounded her: photographs of family members above the fireplace; magnets on the fridge holding up paper milestones from loved ones far-flung; the candy kisses on the coffee table, help yourself; the sodas in the pink ice box, sadly replaced when it couldn’t be fixed; the tea kettle on her pink, push-button stove. ...

Pink was her color. I wanted it to be my color, even as I robotically wore black.

Most memorable for me, however, was one night nearly 20 years ago when my mother phoned to ask if I would get Aunt Mary from the hospital and stay with her the night.

She'd had an "episode" and was alright, but shouldn't be left alone.

Such a request no one had ever made of me, nor would they have had they any other choice. No one else was available.

Great Aunt Mary had been having these episodes of stroke-like effects; and they scared her. She didn’t want to be alone.

I was scared, too. What if something happened to her in the night? What would I do?

When I arrived at the hospital she was waiting, dressed in a robe and slippers. The moment I saw her my fear evaporated. Though noticeably tired, she was the same charming person I’d always known her to be, ready with a laugh and a smile and an "I’m so glad you’re here ... I really hope it wasn’t an inconvenience."

It was the first time in my life when I felt not only needed, but trusted, too.

How could such need ever be an inconvenience?

It was just a single moment in time. A minute. A second. Insignificant.

Many years later she attended my wedding; she held my first child in her arms on the golden swivel chair; she met my second child in photographs after she’d moved away to live with her daughters.

After that I saw her only in photographs.

Her smile hadn't changed.

As news of her final days traveled back home, however, I remembered that night so long ago that I slept in her spare bedroom.

"There will never be another like Mary," I thought then. "I am lucky to have known you," I think now.

Goodnight, Great Aunt Mary.

Sleep well.

It's Mother's Day .... If you need me, I'll be napping

It’s been quite a while since the fledgling (and wholly imaginary) organization “People for Less Unrest in Marriage,” has called upon me to speak on its behalf.

I just wish it didn’t have to be so early in the morning.

What time is it, anyway? Yawwwwn.

No matter. Here I am, on Mother’s Day, representing PLUM when I should be inspecting the insides of my eyelids all because I found myself awake at some ungodly hour, looking at the clock on the bedside table and wondering a thousand insignificant questions: Wasn’t I supposed to be sleeping right now? Isn’t that what that person who takes up a sliver of the bed I hog (and whose laundry I often separate from the dirty diapers before washing) told me would happen? Why is this toddler toddling up to me with a full diaper? And why is his shirt soggy to the shoulders? Is that the fireplace lighter he has in his hands?

Too many questions for one groggy mommy, for sure.

Yes, it was just another Sunday morning. However, since my husband was home from being “on the road” and vanquishing art emergencies (or whatever it is he does when his iPhone buzzes, sending him and his trusty Sprinter Van away any give weekend day to deal with a enormous sculpture’s problematic placement) I had planned to sleep in.

In fact, I do recall that the guy (whose clothes I often fold before jamming on a shelf or stuffing into a drawer) had promised to take the kids to breakfast, or to the park, or some other place outside of the house so such a feat of motherly negligence could be realized.

Those of you who are moms realize that no matter when your kids get up any sleep YOU get after 8 a.m. is gravy. I, however, hold out hope for a noon rising. Not today.

After I snatch the lighter out of the boy’s hands and wrestled him into a fresh diaper and dry t-shirt, I meander out into the living room to find the man wrapped in a blanket like a cocoon watching Sunday morning television.

“Sorry. ... I feel sick," he groans pitifully. "I have the chills.”

"I hope it’s not the Swine Flu,” I grumble, remembering the days I used to bid him good travels by saying I hoped his plane didn’t crash.

“Don’t say such a thing,” he protests in response.

“Well I do ... hope it’s NOT the swine flu. I hope it’s just allergies and not some antibiotic-resistant flesh-eating super bug inhabiting your nasal cavity. ... Hey, did you make coffee?”

See, I’m not bitter. We at the People for Less Unrest in Marriage realize that sometimes the waves of our best intentions are dashed on the rocks of some opportunistic microbe lurking on some fine art gallery door knob, and there’s just nothing anyone can do about it ... not even if they immersed themselves in vats of hand sanitizer.

Yet, if he were “The Mom” the virus’ effects would be beaten into submission by sheer willpower and a single shot of well-aimed Lysol. Someone, after all, has got to get the kids’ lunches made, or get them to school, or wipe up that spill someone else (and I’m not pointing fingers) made when he was making himself a cup of tea.

It’s really not a big deal. Making my own cup of coffee and corralling tiny soldiers bent on seeding the dining room with toy landmines, isn’t the same arduous task when you’re not running late for work or trying to get to dance class.

Sunday is more laid back. It’s a day in which we might even be thinking about the estimable concept of forgiveness.

“Mom? I’m sorry I let The Champ flush dad’s boxer shorts down the toilet. I didn’t want to get them out by myself. It’s kind of gross.”

“That’s OK, honey. He won’t miss them. Your dad mentioned he was getting low on underwear. I needed to buy him some new ones anyway.”

Your life follows wherever you move

"It smells a little like the Bronx zoo in here," said the friend as he was walking up the stairs, sandwiched between me and the man who would become my husband.

From my position as lead guide I smiled and laughed, but in my thoughts I was so violently crossing him off our Christmas card list I think I may have ripped the bit of gray matter where his words had been indelibly written.

Our home has always been, shall we say, primitive. Even the people who sold it to us said they knew it was time to move on when their kids started referring to it as "The Dump."

It is, after all, a barn made habitable for humans by generations of either semi-skilled or completely untalented craftsmen ... all of whom had pets.

The offending odor detected by our honest friend wafted up from the carpet on the main stairs. Up until his pronouncement we'd been ignoring it by mouth breathing and opening windows to let it dissipate. There was so much to do before it would feel like home, ripping out entryway carpeting wasn't a priority.

Of course, the stench might have come from the rotting sub-floor under the bathroom carpet ... also deemed less of a priority than the kitchen, which was almost as closet-sized as the loo.

"Don't think about what's under there ... Don't think about what's under there ... Don'tthinkaboutwhat'sunderthere" became my mantra every time I stood at the tiny sink.

Slowly and steadily, hopefully, goes a life. And so too, it seems, does the work of making pretty the place you live that life.
There were walls to reconfigure, closets to built, a kitchen to remodel and so many things we'd never even considered that nearly sent us, as a couple, off to separate apartments. "How are we going to renovate the bathroom if there's only one bathroom?" became the Catch-22.

That was so many years ago. … Before we decided to get married. … Before we envisioned kids.

But as flawed as it was -- as crusty and haphazard -- we loved this place. We agonized and fought bitterly over changes. Should we open this up? Should we close that down? What about windows here? Skylights?

And then the kids came. A beloved dog left us and became entombed in the "garden." We finally managed to finish the hardwoods and change out the repugnant bathroom floor. Real walls replaced plywood safety measures. Molding.

I couldn't imagine ever leaving. We were so close to getting the master bathroom of our dreams. (Granted, I am the type of person who dreams I've gone to the Post Office to mail letters, but that's not really important to the story.) A home has memories that can be more valuable than masonry.

And then the opportunity presented itself ... as opportunities always present themselves: in murky, cloying ways that can be just as easily perceived as bad omens ... but we ignore them. Or rather the man that I love ignores. Rewards, he feels, sometimes involve risks ... calculated risks.

So we jump. Thinking we've secured a safety net at least so how bad can it be?

This time will be different. We’ll do all the work that needs doing first. We won’t live amid sheetrock dust and unfinished floors. It will be a real house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms and a choice of three rooms to make the playroom.

Good things can come in threes, too. (Or so I tell myself.)

We plunge ahead.

Yet when we open the door to this new life we find our old one right there waiting for us.

"It smells a little like the Bronx Zoo in here."

New mantra: Challenges build character ... say it with me

Oh, the snub.

That terrible rite of passage that begins when your very bestest, bestest, bestest friend-ever pretends you don’t exist … in public.

You know what I mean, right? It’s when you see someone you know, you run over to say “HI!” and they pretend they didn’t hear.

Even when you say “HI!” again, this time on your tip-toes, two inches from their upturned proboscis, they act as if you were invisible, turn on a heel and walk away.

“Why wouldn’t she talk to me, mama?” Ittybit asks, as I look over and see a little girl looking in every other direction but ours. I could also see she had some big-girl friends with her.

“Oh, honey. She’s just busy. Don’t worry. We’ll see her another day.” I try not to make a big deal of it. Sooner or later, probably when she gets to school herself in a few more months, the shoe will be on the other foot and we’ll be here again, reminding her just how sharp this jab felt.

Growing pains.

It never ends. It just leads to more furtive interactions, and the beginning of the dance in which we pretend we aren’t hurt; a dance that has us eventually preemptively crossing a street so that we allow the potential for that person to have a running start.

There are so many times, as a parent, that you want to just plunge your hand into a kid’s back (often your own kid, though sometimes others) and wriggle it around until you get a nice, tight grip on the inside of their jaws so that when they speak it will be your words that come out of their mouths.

If it could only be that simple.

Ah, but no matter how much we’d like it to be, and despite having seemed that way for the first couple years of our experience, parenthood is nothing like puppeteering.

The ability to whisper to your parents, friends, not-to-mention perfect strangers at the grocery store: “Oh, it’s not you, he’s just t-e-e-t-h-i-n-g,” comes to an abrupt end right about the time his older sibling overhears you and drowns you out with … “No, Mom. It is him. He only seems to cry when he’s around. I don’t think he likes him very much.”

GAH!

It’s also about this time when most pleasantries disappear.

Gone are the days – and there WERE days -- when you didn’t have to remind your tiny humans to say “Please,” or “Thank You” or “Excuse Me.”

And coming soon – if they haven’t already arrived -- are the days in which you get nothing but sullen looks and blank stares when you ask simple questions such as “How was your day?” “Will you please pick up your jacket?” “Please put your shoes on, it’s time for school.”

Not even a “Fine,” an “OK” or a “Sure.”

You get nothing … or worse ... you get the dreaded eye-roll.

There are times when I think schools cause this; schools with their cattle herding from class to class, leaving enough time in between the ABCs and 123s to allow alliances to be made and cliques to form over the lunch room tables and the playground games of tag.

The mama bear in me wants to insulate my cubs from any slight that hurts.

But the part of me that wins is the part that admits that without differences of opinion -- without fighting and brainstorming and storming off; without meeting anyone who was different, or trying or infuriating -- we’d miss a lot of potential.

We might also miss the potential of our own ability to rise above it.

For parents, little chairs mean big responsibilities

Dear Ittybit,

You slipped into the shower with me this morning, wanting your first kindergarten experience to be clean of preschool dirt, no doubt.

You dug through your dresser looking for the shirt a friend had given you because you'd decided to wear it to the big interview: kindergarten registration day.

You were sure the bright yellow hand-me-down was a "Kind-y-garten" shirt, since it was bequeathed to you by a kindergartener. But when you pointed to a word and I read it as "Preschool," you put it back and selected an alternate."I want to wear jeans, mama," you said to my surprise. "Big girls wear jeans," you explained.

But you didn't have any jeans; I'd long ago stopped buying them since you prefer soft, stretchy pants. You settled for a pair of purple corduroys with riveted pockets that were wadded up in the back of a lower drawer, one of last children's apparel purchases I made without your approval.

We were just about ready.

Your father had left the paperwork up to me. I'd collected the information - immunization records, birth certificate, registration forms, proof of residence - the previous night.

We were all excited.

You were going to be great. We all knew it. As I checked off the boxes on the assessment, I was kind of stunned that I needed a check list to remind me what a great kid you really are:

Manage bathroom needs without assistance? Yes.
Can follow two step directions? Yes.
Can count to 10? Yes.
Recognizes own name in print? Yes.
Can write her name using uppercase and lower case letters? Yes.
Can stand/hop on one foot? Yes.
Can cut curves with scissors? Yes.
Classifies objects by shape, color, and size? Yes.

Then the questions get more difficult to answer.
In stead of yes and no answers, they offer graduated check boxes ranging from “almost always” through “almost never.”

Is she easily upset? Not usually, although there was that time last week when her brother threw her new toy in the commode. … That doesn’t really fit into the easy category, right? That seems like an appropriate response. Where’s my eraser?
Does she respond to basic requests? Sometimes … although it greatly depends on whether or not the television is on.
Does she grab, hit, kick or whine? No, No, No, and Yes, sometimes, but I blame Caillou for teaching her that.

Why was I worried? When we arrived in the office and met the principal's assistant you were charming and all “Hello and how-do-you-do. ... Will I meet my teacher today?"

When a woman came to get you and bring you to the place where you’d be asked to play some games so that a panel of clipboard-toting administrators could decide your future class placement, you never looked back. You are not so much brave, I thought, as you are confident.

As you were reciting numbers and letters (and getting gold stars for showing the nice ladies with the clipboards how you could cut with scissors and catch a ball) we were getting sent to remedial parenting school in our minds, and likely the minds of the school's administrators.

I'd missed half of the forms that needed to be turned in, and had to quickly scribble them out as your dad tried to cover by cracking jokes and asking questions.

We look on sheepishly as the mother behind us received praise for getting all the forms filled out properly. Our shoulders slumped forward just a little bit more.

When we are brought together again, the three of us, to meet the principal we became THOSE parents; the one's who are afraid you won't be seen for who you are; the ones who are afraid you will be molded into student who repeats information by rote. We have no idea what we don't know.

I admitted to the smiling woman behind the desk that we have no doubt that you are ready for school and that you will do well. We are not worried about your abilities at all. I tell her we are the ones who are scared. We are the one's who will have trouble fitting in.

She nods her head with something in her face that says she knows us better than we know ourselves.

With love, and promises to work on getting more gold stars,

Mommy