Water logged

I collect all my thoughts in the shower. I make lists, wherein I solve all the world's problems one step at a time.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes I wish my thoughts were always as orderly as the directions on shampoo. But I don't mind a little less clarity here.

Here, in the shower, is the one place I can bunch up all cares and shove them aside as my kids have done with their soggy washcloths.

Under a sunflower sized spigot, I stand almost immobile for what seems like an eternity as steam and spray dance around me.

But it's not an eternity at all. It's just a ten-minute ritual entirely circumscribed by the small hand of time, which has realigned temporarily with how slowly the faucet can move leftward in the chase for just a little more hot water.

Of course, I find other problems there, too.

The amount of hair I find in the drain makes me take an inventory of my stress levels before I take a moment to wonder if all of it's mine.

Like how the washcloth mountain stands majestically in the corner. Its sedimentary layers mark the number of tourists who haven't received the gospel of Leave No Trace.

A musty washcloth mountain, though, is not a hill on which anyone should choose to die.

There are so many other things that could kill us.

Is that a new mole? Should I be suspicious? How can I not be when it's shaped like Iowa?

I wash my hair with something called "Snow Fairy" gel to take my mind off this new and alarming discovery. The bottle lifts too easily and dispenses too sparsely. Ordinarily, the sweet smell of bubblegum mixed with wintergreen would offer just enough comforting confusion to distract me. Still, I can't stop thinking about the Iowa-shaped threat on my forearm.

Why does it look reddish?

I'll try and calm myself further by noting the color is uniform before I run my finger overtop and find it feels different from skin. I use my nail edge like a chisel, and the whole thing flakes off like paint.

Was it paint? It's possible, but I know I didn't use that color. Maybe it was a scab from a burn I only this moment vaguely remember? How many times have I accidentally touched the edge of a hot cookie sheet with my arm after I'd take it out of the oven? Too many to remember precisely.

Should I be worried about my memory now?

Conditioning. That's all that's left. I squeeze a quarter-sized dollop in the palm of my hand and massage it into the thickest part of my hair: the tangle at the nape of my neck.

Leave it on for at least three minutes for shiner, and silkier hair instructs the label.

The water is cool now, which is perfect, according to another person that visits my shower in the soapy bubbles of memory. "Never wash your hair in hot water," this gruff and bearded apparition says in my brain. They were the words of wisdom he learned from his mother, a hairdresser.

I clawed through the tangle with my fingers as the water grew cold. Reality interrupts with the sharp discomfort of icy pinpricks. 

I turn off the tap and reach for a towel.

Note to self: we're out of shampoo. I should make a list.

TLDR

A royal blue-lettered envelope embossed with the school's insignia arrived in the mail, indicating a more important communique than what usually appears on the pastel-colored pages that make their way to the bottom of a school bag, never to be seen again.

It is the scholastic equivalent of a tree falling, unwitnessed, in the forest: If a homeroom teacher sends a note home to parents, asking them to send in a snack before Thanksgiving recess and they don't read about it until Valentine's Day, did it really matter?

I don't think so. 

In fact, this year's inattention saved me $75, NOT ordering Yankee Candles.

But a letter, on official stationery with metered postage? This must be serious.

Important looking letters are the kind of things that strike fear in the hearts of parents like me: We who do not rifle through our children's things looking for unfinished homework, evidence of poor grades, or notes from teachers that require an authentic signature.

We who get our need-to-know information through the filter of our kids' badgering. If they want to participate in a particular thing, they have two options: they can either let ME know in a timely fashion … or they can skirt the issue entirely using forgery.

Not that I expect the latter.

"What could this be?" I wondered as I stood in front of the post office box, keys still dangling from the lock. I turned it over to inspect the back, deciding whether to open it immediately or wait until I was properly fed and caffeinated. Which -- truth be told – could happen next Tuesday in Never.

The last official letter that arrived via post had standardized test scores tucked inside. I would shred them in secret, and nest the strands at the bottom of the kitchen garbage, lest anyone  accidentally piece them back together on purpose and have to live with the fallacy such numbers actually "count."

Of course, it might have been an optometry referral for nearsightedness ... or it may have sounded an alarm that the health office didn't have the proper documentation on one kid or both.

Schools understand that a single page doubled spaced letter sent through the USPS, will have more of an effect than seventeen thousand words printed on a half-dozen sheets of multi-colored paper jammed into the knapsacks of teenagers. Knapsacks, I might add, which also likely contain smashed bits of snack crackers, as well as a wad of fermented gym clothes. 

But I digress.

Whatever it was that concerned the school enough to pay the price of postage rather than entrust the Backpack Express, the note would be brief and to the point, and it would possess enough formalized authority to spur me to action.

I would shred... or make the necessary appointments ... or have the doctors' office fax the school nurse post haste.

Or, in this case, in a few days it would make me open my phone and add a date-not-to-be-missed into the calendar so I might witness an accolade earned by my eldest. 

"Might" being the operative word.

My daughter took the letter from my congratulatory hands for inspection.

My sudden revelry turned to guilt.

"You didn't RSVP, did you?"

"Well, no one reads those bits at the end."

Hope, more squeeze than a hug

I felt a hand grasp my thigh, and everything in my body -- including my breath -- tightened.

In that instant, my son had the ball, and, without hesitation, he had launched it toward the basket in a one-armed hook that had no business making it to the hoop, let alone through the net. The ball, closer than it had a natural right to be, glanced off the rim and bounced back into the boxed defense of the visiting team.

Another kid dribbled it away.

My neighbor in the bleachers - another team mother whose son has long ago proven his ability to dunk - let go of my leg as if it were hope itself.

"So close," she said without fanfare. It's a tone I instantly recognized as one that was ready, willing, and able to celebrate if there had been a swish.

I nod and start to breathe again. There are worse things in life than never scoring a basket during a game though I would never use those exact words with him.

In the years I've been watching him play, I've seen the other boys gain speed and the precise amount of aggression necessary to get ahead of the play and change the direction. They charge in and foul out.

My son lopes along to his position and adjusts his hair.

I elbow his father, sitting on the other side of me, as he shouts the things everyone shouts: "Hands up ... Get ahead of them ... Turn around."

It's no more helpful than me letting out the sign of pent up breath the moment the ball ricochets off the rim into the hands of the other team. I keep reminding myself that disappoint FOR them sounds the same as disappointment IN them.

It is best to try and be silent.

His need to make points in a game has a direct correlation with the time he spends in the driveway practicing free throws. My need to point out the cobwebs hanging from the net usually has the opposite effect of what I intended.

Silence is hard.

There will be more games. More chances to be in the right place at the right time and make his shot. He doesn't need me to say the words "It will happen," though I say them anyway. Filling the air of the car with the participation trophy of encouragement.

The truth is, I already marvel at my kids' ability to try new things or stick with them no matter how futile it all seems. His skills move - not by leaps and bounds - but in increments.

When I was his age, I never gave any activity in which I didn't immediately excel time or attention enough to improve. I always quit post haste.

This kid clings to every moment of half-hearted, trying with his game face on.

None of which will change two games later when the basket he finally makes slips through the net silently.

The crowd didn't go wild. The team didn't hoist him onto their shoulders. It was just a little bump in a game they wouldn't win.

But the kid didn't care. He quietly celebrated by sitting smack dab in the middle of the bench, leaning back with a huge grin ... and adjusting his hair. He had made his basket, and it counted.

The sound of progress

Oh, my nerves! The beeping!

What is that beeping sound?

I follow the noise to a dead end.

It could be anything.

Everything is plugged into something, or powered by batteries, or animated by the collective evil of a thousand big brothers floating somewhere just out of sight ... in a cloud.

Of course, it's an alarm, but for what?

A digital monsoon?

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep!

Nine-fifty-five in the evening. Past bedtime. The house is mostly quiet save for the whirring of gadgets that give us the pretense of silence.

It's not a watch, or a phone, or the smoke detectors. It's not a video game or sound effect on the television. It's not the ghost of a toddler's toy.

It's just a soft, lethargic alert that seems to be coming from everywhere … or nowhere in particular.

My best guess is that the sound is coming from somewhere in the bathroom ... some battery-operated thing is possessed.

Since I can't locate the origin of the alert, I cover my ears and resign the search until it stops. Which, thankfully, it does is short order.

Add it to the list of mysteries of the modern age.

The mid-evening series of assertive beeps, which is the harbinger if nothing, go silent as fast as they made a sound. They repeat only once a fortnight, so I have not wasted a moment on an investigation.

Just another modern inconvenience brought to me by so-called progress.

You know … like e-mail and e-bank. All those excellent services that seem so simple until they go haywire. You know … like your e-address gets filled with junk mail or gets a virus, and the e-medicine you subscribe to can't give you e-ntibiotics without an international scene.

Did you back it up?

Errrrrr.

It turns out we never have the right backup plan.

Of course, in some cases, I've learned to adapt.

I can set the clocks on all of the devices that keep track of time. 

I can usually connect my gadgets wirelessly to other gadgets. 

I know exactly where to place the digital bathroom scale, and how to stand on its glass surface to ensure the readout shaves off a few pounds.

I know that Siri won't respond to questions asked of Alexa and vice versa. I don't try to force them into some awkward friendship, though I wish they'd put their petty rivalry aside and do a better job of snooping on my son's conversations. 

I'm reasonably certain all e-mails of importance find their way into the trash folder based on an inverse ratio of my need to see them, so I check there as regularly as my primary inbox.

A strategy helps even if it's not enough for mastery of all these bells and whistles.

When I find it difficult to adapt, I simply employ avoidance.

Avoidance, it turns out, is the easiest way to deal with so many mysteries of modern life. Real problems won't let you dodge them. But for all the rest, especially the infernal noise of modernity, the batteries will give out eventually as we weather this storm. 

Home cooked

"What's THAT smell?"

It was 5:30. After School Sport #1 was over and there was just enough time to finish math homework and wolf down some form of sustenance before rushing off to make it to After School Sport #2.

It was a hopeful sort of question. A smell that reminds you that hunger can creep up on a person. Another reminder that in the not-too-distant past this time combined with this smell might make a kid guess that dinner was almost ready.

"Your father is making supper," I responded as I hung up the car keys and pulled off my coat. As usual, I have a flair for stating the obvious. The air all around us held a mixture of aromas: tomatoes, garlic, onion. … It is the scent of warmth and comfort.

Modern family life sometimes requires such details to be defined. In our house, The Dad is the chef and sink unclogger. The Mom does the baking, and the driving, and the laundry and the cleaning of the pots and pans. She even does the mowing of the lawns.

But we'll leave that for another season.

Since his departure on business a few weeks ago, The Dad's kitchen has produced only one three-part meal: Baked salmon, lemon asparagus, and rice. It was an unusual Saturday night when the calendar square was uncommonly bare, and an extraordinary effort by The Mom.

For the remainder of his absence, the things we ate that resembled food made their way from freezer to microwave in roughly three-minute intervals six times a day. 

Tasteless, time-conscious tidbits that barely nourish anything. 

"I'd say it was pasta of some kind, but I could be mistaken." 

Of course, I had no first-hand knowledge or proof of purchase in the form of supermarket receipt or empty reusable totes sitting in the hallway waiting to be refolded. 

But my nose told me the meat would be some fancy sausage. Probably the spicy kind, the boy would exile to the edge of his plate before quietly flicking it piecemeal to the pooch. 

He wouldn't complain. 

It's not his style. 

He'll just quietly eat what he likes and visit the kitchen later ... when everyone has moved on from dinner into watching "their" shows. 

He'll find himself a yogurt from the fridge or frozen shrimp from the freezer. A ravenous appetite can be a powerful motivator in learning how to "cook like mom cooks." 

Though some might say "assemble" or "thaw and mix with ramen."

It's only a matter of time until they realize that when left alone, dinner for most moms means stopping at the gas station and picking up a bag of popcorn ... or Funyuns.

Still, we manage to muster enough motherly concern to ask the kids what they had for lunch, and clutch our pearls-less throats when they answer something along the lines of "a bag of Skittles and a Coke."

Our popcorn dinners, we rationalize, have, at the very least, a coating of cheese. We may not be growing children, even if we are expanding as adults.

Of course, we moms aren't fooling anyone.

And then it occurs to me, as he rolls up his sleeves and starts to wash his hands, he's beginning to take after his father.

"Well ... THAT smell is definitely burned popcorn. What do you say we make some potstickers?"

Snap out of it

My husband went to Europe for two weeks, so I bought a new car.

But while The Cat was away on business, The Mouse's old rattle-trap car - which has been patched together with rebuilt parts, spot welding, and duct tape - started to make a noise so heinous and unsettling that the car radio set at its highest volume couldn't drown it out.

OK, the mouse might have panicked. But the Cat was all "It's your cheese. And I really hate car salespeople. I'd look for something new, so you don't have to worry about it."

But worry is my currency. And it was burning a hole in my pocket.

How will I get to work and back? How will I get the kids to play rehearsals and music lessons? To wresting and basketball? What if there is an emergency? The grocery store is only three miles away, but we might as well live on Pluto if my car up and dies now.

The last thing I wanted to think about was how soon our newly minted 16-year-old would be angling for wheels. Yet that very thought was

keeping me up at night. That and the brakes that seemed like soft, squishy cheese.

So I did what any semi-irrational, middle-aged motorist who's never-owned-a-new-car does in such cases: I cruised a local car dealer's website looking for a bargain.

Suddenly, a window popped up in the corner of my screen.

A prim little emoji with a smart page-boy haircut and operator's headset typed out a greeting each letter appearing separately and stitching themselves together as if by magic.

"H e l l o! We have hundreds of new and pre-owned cars to choose from. Take our personalize survey and let us help you find the ride of your life."

The last car I bought on my own was back in the days when car ads lined birdcages. Just before the internet and cell services gobbled up all of our attention and when cookies were the things you might track so as not to ruin an appetite.

Honestly, it looked like a trap.

But at that moment, I felt like a certain wolf, with courage enough

to chew off its own foot to save it from the trap of the wrong car. ...

I typed in my information:

I am looking for a pre-owned compact hatchback preferred with manual transmission. Must have advanced safety features and be fuel-efficient. 

= : ^ )

My anime operator's response: 

=8 ^ O

"You are looking for a unicorn."

Of course, she didn't use those words, but asking to add years to my timeframe struck terror into my heart.

It's strange how months of thinking about replacing a car can turn into a mad rush the second you click on a virtual showroom.

The mission had me.

The next thing I knew, I was making appointments to test drive possibilities and talking myself down from the ledge. 

"I'm going to take the weekend the think about it," I told myself and tag team member two, who got me in a hand-off from the emoji woman and had every intention of passing the baton to his team's "number cruncher."

You could almost hear the sound of failure as I sprinted out the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.

But I couldn't let it go. Two hundred thousand miles was just inches away.

The rattle and clang of my car just got louder the further I got from the showroom. The brakes seemed to get softer. Hmmm. ...That thumping sound is new. 

I can see another car dealership in the distance. I decided to stop. The sales team has all the same pitches, but they also had a unicorn.

Well, almost. This fairytale creature didn't have a hatchback and had only been around the block about 111 times, but it was a reasonable price, and it had safety features up the wazoo that came standard. 

When my husband called to check in and see about our progress, I told him the news.

"I bought a car. I pick it up Monday."

"That's great! How do you feel?"

"Right now, I feel relieved. But I'm sure I'll snap out of it."

Undressing like a Christmas tree

I felt like a jewel thief. Only some weird holiday version, who sidles up to a warm and cracking fire as the sleepy home's inhabitants nod off. The graceless kind, who tries to be silent as she pockets a sparkly bauble from old Tannenbaum's branches, but instead manages to knock over a tower of empty boxes before seizing a chunk of a glitter-strewn plaster mold of a thumbprint made to look like a reindeer. 

Luckily I am invisible.

Before anyone is the wiser, I have wrapped the ornament in a scrap of ancient tissue paper and stowed it in a box next to a blanket stitched letter "S."

But for all my stealthiness, I have no actual superpower. In fact, I am reasonably sure that the chore itself is what renders me unapparent.

If there is a woman on earth who has managed to delegate the work involved in the breaking down of Christmas, I have yet to make her acquaintance. 

 It's like any other household chore, except that the decorative conifer propped up in a festive plant stand and bedazzled with a slew of decorative knickknacks, and currently shedding its needles all over her living room floor, doesn't have any natural enemies beside yor' friendly neighborhood volunteer firefighter (who would also like to remind you to unplug the toaster oven when not in use).

It very well could stand there until summer, at which point it would be just a few handfuls of broken glass ornaments clinging to a nubbly tree skeleton and a few piles of curled up brown needles all over the floor. 

I miss my mother as I glance at the green fringed tablecloth that has served as our tree skirt for all of these years, appallingly apparent that its true purpose is as a de facto towel to soak up the spillage.

I think about her as I make my way around the tree, taking things off in groupings: first the flat things, and then the fluffy things, followed by the breakable things in waves of similar size. 

It's a method that makes it seem as if I have a three-dimensional map of their official positions in the storage containers permanently etched into my brain. When in truth, I wing it or fling it if I find the stuff doesn't fit. 

In one box is another box, filled with perfectly wrapped orbs that haven't been touched by human hands in at least three Christmases. If I pick one up, I can tell which I am holding from memory just by feeling its shape and weight.

The pink, sequined diamond - that was one of my favorites. The little elf man dancing in the hollow of a pin cushion egg, a very close second.

I barely remember my mother making these ornaments. She wasn't the crafty sort, but she turned out so

many of these intricate gems one year that the tip of her index finger bore a perfect divot where the pins pushed inward. 

She lamented how she sold all

the best ones - the ones made from our dresses and that had the

Most meaning to her - at the church craft fair. At the same time, chiding herself for letting herself get attached to "things."

These same "things" that have attached to me, and which, still in their wrappings, I haven't had the bravery to hang on my tree lest any one of them meets its demise as a dog's chew toy.

"Maybe next year," I think as I tuck that box away and slowly add the others. 

I can almost hear my mother's laughter as my kids make one last lap of the kitchen - grabbing a last handful of cereal for their nightly hibernation - when they finally notice

my work in the next room. 

"Hey! You undressed the tree."

A new year

I felt foggy. 

I wasn't sure what I was looking at, but the resolutions I had been tossing around in my head made me ready to stop gawking at the world through this tiny screen.

I wasn't going to pick it up.

In the first light of the new year, my twenty-twenty vision felt more like twenty-fifty.

Things swam in and out of my eyesight as if I had woken up underwater.

Honestly, I wasn't hungover.

Not in the traditional sense anyway.

But this feeling was slightly new.

For the first time, in more than a decade, my family had momentarily parted ways as the networks counted down the hours toward a new beginning.

Two of us - the elders - ventured out into the night, bearing desserts and the willingness to let the cards fall where they may ... usually on a large and generous table as happy party goers engage in some profane ad-lib.

The other two – the youngsters - stayed home with a single TV to fight over (who will get Netflix and who will have to give up Xbox) and a smorgasbord of TV dinners to choose from (and overheat).

Somehow, none of us seemed happy about this new end-of-year independence.

Certainly not the teen who had turned down what turned out to be her only invitation. In her estimation, it didn't count because she had fished for it. Of course, she had to throw it back.

There are so many things I could have told her. So many pearls of wisdom to let loose from their string.

But I know If I tried they'd just scatter all over the floor, tripping me up in the midst of my own awkward lecture series.

I stayed quiet, but offered my husband, who has trouble comprehending a world in which any problems remain internationally unsolved, the best advice I could give anyway: "sometimes a person just needs to wallow in her sadness."

It seems wrong, I know.

It's counter-intuitive and self-defeating. And yet to know what I'm getting at you just have to ask yourself: how many solutions turn out to be explosive messes when added to something caustic?

Arguing this point may be the emotional equivalent of bleach meeting ammonia.

Of course, the other parents didn't have it easier than we did. Our kids may have stayed home with their Apples To Apples and their disappointment, but their kids were driving around with their newish licenses into the adult world, heading to other kids' parties. Their parents were tracking their every move with Find My Phone.

I'm not sure I'm ready for this new normal, even if it is just an exaggeration of the old normal, which includes a liberal dose of worry that lives permanently in the pit of my stomach.

Humor helps. Laughing helps. Getting home in time to watch as the Pope loses his cool with The Faithful even restores my faith in humanity.

Because the old normal still rings true. Our party doesn't end until we are home safely with our kids, and we turn on the station that always drops the ball.

Just like us.

Bleep

I could feel my blood pressure rising.

There I was, on Christmas Eve, standing in line at the local pharmacy, haphazardly balancing two armloads worth of last-minute sock stuffers I hadn't intended on buying when I sidestepped through the sliding glass doors twenty minutes earlier on a quest for aspirin. Still, nary a soul was behind the checkout counter.

The lone clerk in the entire store -- whose set tasks include cashing out, printing photos, restocking the beer cooler, and ensuring that the register is filled with enough tape to supply every customer with an impossibly long receipt for even the simplest of purchases -- was elsewhere possibly paving the driveway. The handy little plunge bell that ordinarily summoned him has also disappeared.

Instead, a slim robot kiosk with a touch screen and a revolving light winking from its top beckoned us toward it as welcomingly as a machine can manage.

The line stood silently still. As if we were lambs heading to slaughter.

The lady in front of me - grayer in the hair than I - hesitated and then demurred: "You go ahead, dear," she said good-naturedly. "I think I forgot something."

I knew she was stalling.

The fact that she moved closer to me as I approached the checker bot was all the evidence I needed to understand I was the guinea pig.

I could barely hear her breathing as I bleeped each item past its digital crosshairs. I kept up my poker face until the end when the machine slurped up my wrinkled tender and barfed back my change. 

We both audibly exhaled.

"That was easier than I thought," I said, giving away my ultimate bluff: I am a novice at the Do-It-Yourself checkouts.

I prefer dealing with humans, even if they never smile or sound like robots when they order me to have a nice day.

This is probably why I didn't dash off the moment my mile-long sales receipt finally finished printing.

The lady who'd let me jump the line looked like she was now standing at the edge of a cliff.

The least I could do was talk her through it.

The first two items cleared the scanner with satisfying beeps. A package of candy took two tries, but the remainder of her purchases went through the process with no trouble. It wasn't until the payment section of the transaction that the whole thing came to a screeching halt.

The machine wouldn't read her credit card. No matter how she inserted it … chip or swipe … it just blurted out an ear-piercing buzz.

"That doesn't sound right," said the store clerk, who had appeared out of thin air, presumably summoned by the less-than-magical sound.

For the next few minutes, he waved his hands and pressed some buttons. He tried every trick in the book, starting with wiping the card's magnetic strip between two sides of thin plastic bags that won't be at his disposal in a few months' time. He did everything but kick the kiosk until luck and technology finally gave in and took the lady's money.

We all sighed in relief.

And for the first time, I saw the human connection to be made through automation: All of the humans in the room we're sharing a moment trying to solve its puzzlement.

"I'm so glad that worked," laughed the clerk. "I was afraid I'd have to go back and visit the blood pressure machine."

Sweet and salty sixteen

This year her birthday will be on a Wednesday. Just like any old day. Except that on this particular Wednesday, at the exact time of 7:14 p.m., she will be celebrating her 16th year with her high school chorus and probably about two hours of homework, just like any other Wednesday in December, with the exception of Christmas.

She doesn't want to turn 16. Not like that.

She wants it to turn her. Like magic.

Hollywood probably has some role to play in this understanding of the significance of a sweet sixteen. 

Why was hers so sour?

I understood. How could I not?

Sixteen is supposed to be magical.

It's supposed to bring about big changes.

But she doesn't feel any different.

And to add insult to injury, she'll have to share her big moment with her high school winter concert and her little brother's second-ever Modified wrestling match about an hour away.

Not even her clothes will be special, as the scheduled arrival of hearts' desired attire has been incrementally pushed from on time to some time into the New Year. She can thank her Christmas birthday for the shipping delays, but I can see from her expression that she is really trying hard not to blame me.

For her, the dash to maturity is taking forever. Everything about it requires perseverance akin to waiting patiently for slow-drying paint.

It is a perspective that will eventually turn around in a whirlwind.

Like my estimation of time, which determines that her growing up has happened in the blink of an eye.

I don't want her to turn 16 either, though it's more a belief than desire.

It's hard to believe that much time has already passed.

In the greatest cliche of parental understandings, I can't imagine ever feeling that she wasn't just born yesterday.

The memories of her "newness" don't seem to spring from any distance at all.

I can still feel the contractions. I can picture the rush of snow against the car's windshield on the drive to the hospital. I can still hear the jangle of alarm sounds on the heart rate monitor that brought a flurry of nurses to my bedside to jostle us back into a normal rhythm.

Even then, she didn't want to make a simple "entrance."

Who would if given a choice?

Not her. 

She's the child who practically stood up upon arrival in this world.

She was the child who made herself known whenever she made an entrance… especially on her birthday.

When else will a person be able to wear a princess gown if not on their birthday?

That truth should be self-evident even when styles change.

But it's not about the clothes. It's not even about reality as much as it about recalibrating expectations. It's really not just any old day.

I can't imagine those feelings will ever recede, no matter how old we get.

I can only assume all these things I remember can only be made more unforgettable by time.

Well, this is awkward

Walking dogs is awkward. 

There's no way around it. When a human walks dogs in the multiples, things get awkward.

Leashes get tangled. Unmentionable bodily functions get bagged and juggled. And the weather is anybody's guess.

On this day I didn't bother with my umbrella. The rain -- which my friendly, neighborhood weather predictor hadn't predicted -- had disappeared anyway.

Dogs don't mind the rain.

As a regular walker of dogs, I've noticed a tiny miracle of weather. Big fat drops may splash down on my car as I drive from dog house to dog house, and, just as suddenly as they had materialized, they dry up the moment I park.

Of course it could be just my unusually sunny outlook. I am always ready for inclemency. I have a hat, and a coat, and footwear for every season.

Truth be told, this particular dog owner had entrusted me with perhaps the most valuable thing in the world besides her four-legged friend: her garage door opener.

(That sound you may have heard upon reading those last four words was the sound of angels taking flight amid a celestial chorus.)

I did NOT hear that sound, however, because in my hundreds of years on this planet I have neither owned nor operated a garage door opener.

Honestly, when she first suggested I park in her garage during these super sloppy, slushy days of winter, I had no idea how convenient such a luxury would be.

I took the opener and the instructions of how to use it - a simple, one-button toggle - and clipped it to the visor. I wasn't sure I'd ever use it.

Silly.

Of course, I wouldn't just USE it. I would study it; examine its range and speed. I'd press the button at various houses in the neighborhood as I approached to determine which house would prove the furthest away I could start the process of opening the door so that it reached its apex as I crested the driveway.

It turns out the third house from the corner is the charm.

And I would become just a little bit envious as well. Not that I'm not content with my carport, but I'm also not beyond wishing we had a garage door to open with such a miraculous device automatically. It's just that electronics seems to make everything better.

Until you rely on them.

Like how I breezily pull my car into the garage, release my hounds into the backyard through the back door and proceed to spend the next few minutes waiting with my furry friends as they release some pent up energy before our more sedate walk.

Which we do just as soon as I go back into the house and get the leashes ...

Which I left ...

Along with the keys ...

In. The. Car.

Hmm... why is this door locked?

I try the other doors — all locked.

My mind races through my super-sleuth deductions: The handle locks must have some quirky mechanism wherein they turn easily on the inside but remained locked to the outside. A feature that becomes null and void when opened from the outside with a key.

My new reality lit up my thoughts like the lightbulb activated by the garage door opener:

I had locked myself out of the house and my car inside it.

Well, this is awkward.

Snow day

I love the first snow day of the season. Besides the momentary halting of set plans, it cleans the slate for new possibilities.

Our kids delight at an unscheduled day of freedom. They no longer bundle up or trundle outside. They don't make snowmen or snow forts or hound me to go sledding. They've happily outgrown last season's snow pants.

But even though they may squander the time holed up in their winter darkened bedrooms, the mood around us will be filled with light.

Celebration is in order on this rare day when snow accumulates, but their homework does not. They've already plowed through it.

I'm amazed by how fast their childhood has chugged along.


I've stopped worrying about this march of time in the same way I've stopped worrying about to-do lists being left undone.

Of course, as adults, we know that the probability of happenstance will focus on withdrawing our cars from their snowbanks and clearing off steps and sidewalks.

On the upside, our yard's imperfections are temporarily covered by a thick and glittery layer of frosting. From the warmth of my house, the coating looks light airy, though I know from its depth (and the occasional thud from a rooftop slide) that it is weighty and dense.

Whatever it covers may stay that way until spring.

I'd been waiting for the leaves of the dogwood to give up their ghosts. A yearly ritual that usually lasts beyond the window of time, our town allots for its convenient vacuum extraction.

The maples in the neighborhood have already shed their leaves in a timely, if not orderly fashion. My dogwood likes to be unfashionably late, clinging as it does to its dry and curling foliage for as long as vegetatively possible.

I don't mind. Its leaves are small, and when they finally make their descent, they will land in a tidy circle around the tree. No small part of me wants to kill the grass. In fact, the more significant portions: my arms, my legs, and my patience are in full agreement.

As they seem now, brownish-red flakes intermittently dotting the snow cover, the leaves punctuate my admiration for their unwillingness to quicken their demise.

But the leaves are the least of my worries today.


This, oddly, gives me a rare and fleeting chance to be neighborly; wherein I haphazardly try to identify neighbors by their proximity to a particular house, despite not being able to glimpse more than a few square inches of skin between scarf and beanie.

Asking if they need help breaking ice is a better ice breaker than one could imagine.

I'm surprised by how much I look forward to the work of removing the snow. How gratifying it is to shovel far enough to relieve the neighbor of some after-the-workday drudgery. How little it matters that the kids – forced into the light and a winter coat (maybe even long pants) – just lean on their shovels as they take turns lobbing snowballs at each other.

How it takes less time than I imagined but probably more muscles than I've developed in the off-season. The next-day ache will be my trophy.

Another weird day in the neighborhood

Dear NeighborTM,

I don't know you. In fact, we've never met.

I'm not the overtly nosy sort, though I do have one of those fisheye cameras that records my front door and all the way out to the sidewalk ... for security purposes - and the possibility of viral stardom.

A person can't be too careful these days or too exposed.

But we'll get to that later.

I probably wouldn't recognize you if I bumped into you at the Post Office.

Not that I have any reason to go to a post office, what with the internet being so darn convenient that I can download and print all necessary postage on my home computer.

I love the clean lines of its modern architecture, but I despise waiting in any line that meanders or stands still for too long. It's not as if I were just any old member of the great unwashed society at large.

I'm very busy.

But I am relatively new to the community, which is why I joined NeighborhoodTM when an ad popped up on my Instagram, which - fun fact - is also where I acquired my almost circular security camera.

Anyhoo...

I was happily posting photos from my garden, which you might have noticed looks a thousand percent better than one tended by the poor soul who had previously inhabited our not-so-humble abode, when I noticed the package on MY front porch -- the one the Big-Name-Shipping-Dude delivered to me by mistake, and that I had planned to call about, giving whoever answered the phone an earful about their terrible sense of direction -- was missing.

My heart palpitated.

This violation was worse than the fact that no one in the vicinity had made any effort to congratulate me on my award-winning blooms.

But I digress.

I was so shocked by the disappearance that I spent the next three hours reviewing video footage from my security camera, looking for grainy evidence of the culprit.

To my horror, I discovered the trespasser inviting herself up onto my own private patio and having the audacity to peruse the parcel's shipping label before whisking it away into the back of her soccer-mom van and driving off.

The nerve. In broad daylight, too.

Of course, dear NeighborsTM, I plan on notifying the proper authorities in due time, though I feel it only fitting I should pop in here post-haste and alert the culprit directly by inviting all the other VillagersTM to sharpen their pitchforks. There's no telling where such a porch pirate will pounce next.

'Tis open season, so to speak.

Oh sure, the address on the label suggested the recipient lived somewhere on my street, but who in their right mind would just walk such a package to its intended destination?

Of course, I am being rhetorical. Someone paid good money to have the item delivered correctly and professionally. I would not presume to deny anyone a refund for incomplete or negligent service.

Nor do I want anyone traipsing up to my door looking for misdelivered packages without leaving a note, or a kind word about my hostas. How am I supposed to verify their authenticity and their good taste?

The brown-shorted delivery dude went to the wrong house, and he will come back and do his job if it takes four calls and two days of emotional labor here in my virtual NeighborhoodTM.

Also, I'd like to bask in the glow of your righteous indignation on my behalf. I also enjoy how you swarm to my defense when I politely and jokingly tell that one critic who suggests I have been unneighborly, to stay in their lane or go back to Canada.

They assure me that no one is afraid of Canadians so I can't be xenophobic.

It's so nice to have Good NeighborsTM. I can't wait to invite them to my Block Party.

Tastes like chicken

"Oh, by the way ... I'm vegan now," the boy said with an air of nonchalance as he glided into the house after school, and made his daily afternoon pilgrimage to the fridge. "Well ... for this week, anyway."

Now, as one of his parents, and the person most likely to procure the majority of his provisions, I had to suss just what he meant by "vegan." 

I wasn't sure if he knew that meant he'd have to eat vegetables. 

"You mean, vegetarian, right? You're still going to eat cheese and pancakes and yogurt."

He shook his head. 

"I'm not eating animal products whatsoever. No meat, no dairy, no eggs, no honey. My honey oat granola? It's dead to me."

This new eating plan seemed ... well ... unwise. Especially since the kid standing before the wide-open icebox couldn't find a single thing to satisfy his mid-afternoon cravings.

"Did you know Oreos are vegan?"

It even took me longer than my usual Don't-Just-Stand-There-With-The Door-Open-Refrigerating-The-Kitchen time window to grasp that there was almost nothing in inventory to satisfy such a dare.

Bread? This one has milk!

Pasta? These have eggs!

These crackers? Have cheese! 

And, by the way, the edible is not inevitable: you can't live on Oreos alone.

Yet, despite my deeply held urge to snark at this dietary whim -- not to mention an ill-advised game of "Is it vegan?" round-robin wherein I actually asked a 12-year-old boy to gauge whether coffee made from beans that traversed the entire digestive tract of the endangered palm civet would get the coveted vegan distinction -- the truth was I wanted to support any effort on his part to eat something found in nature.

Maybe something green would finally pass through his digestive tract, and he would like it.

A part of me was overjoyed that this boy had finally accepted vegetables into his heart, if only for a seven-day challenge issued by The New Church of Experiences Based On a Dare ... more commonly referred to as YouTube.

It was contagious.

The overflow of my exuberance collected into a four-way pact that ensnared the whole family into agreeing to eat nothing but leaves, sticks, and highly processed twigs for the next seven days. 

I won't lie. It was exciting for the first three hours.

Together we planned meals and grocery shopping and meal prep. We read labels and searched the internet and shared in our collective shock and disappointment that some bananas are preserved with a spray made from shrimp and crab shells.

We started with bold choices, even using a freshly harvested stalk of "baby cabbage" as the base veg of our inaugural meal.

The reception roasted Brussels sprouts (without bacon or Parmesan) received ranged from lackluster to gag-inducing depending on who you asked.

You can probably guess who was standing over the trash spitting out the green paste.

Indeed, most of the boy's trial phase of this challenge wound up in the compost.

Carrots were still "gross."

Lettuce? Let's not.

Beans? Scmeans!

Four days the kid lived on plain bagels with peanut butter. 

During those same four days, the rest of us ate our bleak kale salads as we lusted after cheese and eggs and meat. Each day asking the boy at meal-timed intervals if we were still vegan?

And on the fifth day, we rested:

"I'm no longer vegan! He announced as he slid into my car on that delightfully snowy afternoon. It was the cafeteria chicken that turned me."