How did I wind up on their SH*! list?

How did I wind up on their S#*! list?

SPAM that is.

All week long I've been getting e-mails from a former college buddy I haven't seen in years. Out of the relative blue came a string of forwarded messages with off-color jokes, editorial cartoons and inspirational messages. Nothing terribly offensive, just out of the ordinary.

I shot back a quick note, ignoring the punch-lines and explaining I was pleased as punch to hear from her. I inquired about her family and if she’d seen any of the "old gang" rattling around in her travels.

Nothing.

A few days later her husband's name popped into my inbox sandwiched between a BBC news update and a brief note from my mother-in-law checking in with a grandmotherly message for Ittybit. His communiqué, like his wife's, was a little bit of humor (video form) making the rounds on the World Wide Web.

Another note is sent off into the ethosphere ... more nothing … until … the mother of all pet peeves arrives in my inbox bearing their return address -- an e-mail warning me of the dangerous BLUSH SPIDER.

There are the people who wouldn't stand for pictures of Branjolina's leftover grilled cheese sandwich bits coming anywhere near their Internet, and I think I may be one of those people. It's not that I don’t like jokes. I laughed hysterically when the Trunk Monkey popped out of my inbox and dragged me to the Suburban Auto Group's Web site, where I spent the better part of an hour viewing SAG's library of simian "public service" ads. It's just that I have little tolerance for alarmist entertainment.

For the record: NPR is not getting shut down so don't sign and forward the petition; KFC uses real chickens; hypodermic needles are not showing up in McDonald's play areas and on the undersides of gas pumps; and there aren't people trolling around mall parking lots trying to knock you out with ether in perfume bottles.

I have noticed, however, that since I've begun tracking down urban legends and torturing folks bent on perpetuating these myths with a few facts, my inbox has turned into a virtual desert.

I can't tell you how many people send back a rebuke, telling me that they were just trying to be helpful when they passed along that "urgent" message reminding each of us to turn off our cell phones at the gas stations, lest they go off and cause an explosion.

I suppose if it were a political thing, I'd be saying I was trying to fight spam over in their e-mailbox so I won’t have to fight it in my own. But it's an uphill battle, and it doesn't help matters much that even gas stations have fallen for the hoax, many of them posting signs warning of the potential for disaster of using your cellphone at the pump.

I hang my head a little in shame every time my letters are returned with a line of hurt feelings and a streak of consternation: "Well, I thought it was sage advice even if it never happened. It can't hurt to be careful."

I'm beginning to think hitting the delete button is really the best way to connect with my imaginary friends.

The winds of change

I remember when I felt time was just standing still. Ten years after college ended, I was still wearing my ratty Levis with the worn knees and sitting on salvaged couches. I could move through life as I pleased, or so I thought, even if it wasn't true.

There were signs of responsibility — there were more bills to pay, pets that needed attention and care, and there was a growing accumulation of things that seemed to own me — but nothing that quickened the passage of time. It just seemed to drag along from one day to the next.

Then along came Ittybit. Even in pregnancy, I felt time speed up. Nine months didn't seem long enough to adjust to this new existence that was headed our way. I spent a lifetime coming to terms with who I thought I was only to have a 6 pound, 2 ounce little girl show me who I could be, and, more importantly, who I wanted to be.

Time is just flying by much too fast now. Weeks are flowing like minutes. She's already half past two, and if I'm not careful to pay attention, I miss all the best things.

Take, for instance, a recent car ride in which Ittybit demanded "wind." It was a cold morning. I tried to talk her out of it, but she persisted. She wanted the wind. So I pulled a jacket across my lap, turned the heat to high and acquiessed.

Turns out she wanted me to open the windows of the car so she could liberate a roll of paper towels — leftover from a recent cleaning — one sheet at a time. I had to laugh when she heeded my rear-view admonitions and, drumming her fingers on the roll, asked if she could make "yittle pieces" dance on the wind.

"Absolutely not," I stifle a laugh. "That's wasting AND littering. And we don't do either of those things."

I didn't really expect her to comply, but I had no idea how closely she was paying attention.

As we continued to drive she asked me if I "yiked" the wind.

"No," I answered. "It's too cold out today. I have goose bumps."

A few streets later she started to list our differences on the matter: "You no yike wind. I yike wind. Mommy not yike it. I yike it."

Something about the categorization of this new knowledge and the tone in her voice, which was matter-of-fact if not melodic, made me add something else to the list of differences. Something I didn't want to think about at 8 in the morning.

Namely our names.

I didn't want to lose my indentity in marriage and neither did my husband, so we kept our respective names.

Up until Ittybit was born I corrected people who called me Mrs. The Mister, and delighted that during her first days on this Earth the name on her wristband was mine. For those four days in the hospital, at least, everything about her was mine.

It was stunningly greedy of me, yet I felt it only fair because she was a part of me; someone I knew better than anyone, even if it was only for a moment in a lifetime. When we left the hospital, I left as the person I had always thought I had been and she left with a new name on her birth certificate. It was our first major difference but not likely the last.

As we drove down the road with the windows fully open now and the heat blowing hot against the tops of my feet, Ittybit asked the question again: "Mama, you yike the wind?"

This time my answer was more considered: "Yes, Baby. I LOVE it. I love the wind."

I could hear her excitement bubble over: "You yub it? I yub it, too!"

Sometimes all it takes is a little fresh air to remind me what's most important.

And now ... ve DAUNCE!

"Ow! OW! OWWWW!"
My husband is yelling and dancing around the house in a towel again.

"You know we should really get a disco ball for the shower if you’re intent on practicing your moves," I tell him without ever looking up from my game of "grocery store" with Ittybit. (We're at the part where she is trying to get me to give her $49 for two boxes of pasta and a carton of chicken broth but refusing to bag my purchases just like at the REAL market.) He complains that it feels like something's biting him. I think it's just a phantom sting until he flings down the towel and stomps on it.

He searches gingerly through the trampled terrycloth and extracts a flattened wasp. Proof, according to his side of the story, that the carnivorous insect was in a clean towel he pulled from the laundry basket, already folded but not yet put away.

I’m not sure I can endure any more communal living with the wildlife that migrates through our house each time the seasons change.

In addition to the occasional outdoor-dwelling neighborhood cat that makes its way indoors despite the presence of two loveable but loud dogs, I've put up with visits from bewildered raccoons, discombobulated bats, and off-track birds, not to mention freeloading houseguests such as spiders of all variety; worms I can’t identify; lady bugs, which are cute in small numbers but terrifying in swarms; and ants that fly. Each year brings a new brand of infestation.

The wasps, though, have moved in for good.

I imagine they are building elaborate wasp "condominimums" behind the walls in the rafters. On the sun porch in the evenings, I sip my coffee and watch their enormous bodies wheedle in and out of the light fixtures. I am sure they are studying the sockets so they can bring the magic of illumination to their own more than humble abodes.

I can't get myself to think of these creatures as anything but villainous. Especially when Ittybit comes running to me from the playroom of the same porch, complaining that there is a "weary, weary, scary 'piiider on her duck. And begging me, "Peas, Mama, det it off."

As I go to investigate — fully prepared to relocate a daddy long legs or some other common house spider and explain the family motto: spiders are our friends — I stop mid-thought when I see that what is crawling on the gigantic stuffed animal is a wasp.

I shudder at the image swirling in my head of that inch-long monster driving it's stinger into her bee's knees. I sweep her up in my arms, telling her all the while she was right to call me for help.

While the husband studies the labels his collection of insecticides, carefully deciding what toxins he's willing to unleash on the world to rid ours of the latest infestation, I rush to judgment.

"This time, we disco," I announce and I run to the bathroom for my no-name can of hairspray, rusted from 12 years of styling neglect and shower steam.

"Welcome to the '80s, waspers; I hope you like Extra Hold."

My own private river in Egypt

Denial is not just a river in Egypt it's also a highway in New Jersey, a bridge over the Mohawk and a twice annual argument over the marching of time.

I've spent the last several months thinking of all the things willed into non-existence thanks to differences of opinion that make it difficult for otherwise affable people to see eye to eye.

We all know these people, right? They are the folks who -- regardless of their esteem or genuine regard for you -- never believe a single word that you say.

When I was just out of college I met the KING off all disbelievers. He was a guy who, although highly educated, wasn’t terribly motivated and couldn't conceive of anything that conflicted with his view of the world – regardless of how sane and straightforward the information offered as proof may be.

His answer to virtually everything that went against his grain was always: "I don't think so."

For those who have never encountered such a person, let me further confound you with a hypothesis: The 'I-don’t-think-so' reply of his is virtually the same response as the more adolescent retort "SO?" There is really no way to refute either one. No matter what facts you throw at this naysayer, they won’t believe you.

If you think you haven't encountered someone with this particular gift, just try to send a seasoned Capital District driver over the Thaddeus Kosciusko Bridge. A few blank stares and a MapQuest search later, and they'll still be standing there dumbfounded and questioning your grip on reality until you add: "You know, the twin bridges? The Dolly Parton bridge?"

My husband still has disagreements with his grandfather over how best to get to the old family homestead in New Jersey. According to the elderly gentleman, who hasn’t driven on the highway since 1970, the I-287 bypass just doesn’t exist. Nothing his grandson can say, even hauling out a map and pointing out the line that clearly reads I-287, can convince him otherwise.

Of course, in my case, the tendency for folks to write me off as unreliable isn’t too far fetched. I am, after all, the person who believed for YEARS that Tommy Chong was killed in an airplane crash; that Mikey (who hates everything and is fed Life cereal anyway) died tragically when a chemical reaction between Poprocks and Pepsi caused his stomach to explode; not to mention that long-held fallacy of my youth that Sex Pistols front man, Sid Vicious made a guest appearance on Sesame Street.

But no matter, when you have lived through more than 30 sets of time swaps -- two a year -- it galls you to have to defend the "Spring Forward, Fall Back" dynamic.

ME: I hate this time of year. I never feel good until I get that hour of sleep back.

HIM: No. It's Spring AHEAD. We GAIN an hour.

ME: No. The CLOCK goes AHEAD, which means we skip an hour thereby losing an hour of sleep.

HIM: I don't think so …

ME: &$!@ #@&!! … We go through this EVERY YEAR. And every year I am right. Could you please, FOR ONCE, just suspend disbelief long enough to commiserate with me, and then you can go back to whatever it was you
were doing? HUH? Just this once!

HIM: (Eerie silence).

Before he tiptoes away from the crazy, sleep-deprived weirdo he married, I can see the glint of recognition in his eyes. "Oh, I get it. This is your road leading to New Jersey."

Yeah, something like that.

Soap scum and impulse control, who needs it?

My husband tries to pretend as if he's immune to consumerism. He acts as if he's been vaccinated against caving in to impulse items craftily placed at checkout counters and the lure of soft-sell advertising by nature-bestowed testosterone.

The things he buys he NEEDS. He's a MAN. Men don't make purchases out of some strange super subconscious urge to feel better about themselves when they’ve had a tough day (that would be too womanly.) When men need two KING-SIZED Snickers bars and a Truck Trader magazine it’s because they have to eat and they have to have a way to get to work. Period.

Whereas I have come to embrace my irrepressible urge to fork over $80 at Target every time I just stop by to get diapers. Small things — socks, picture frames, baby clothes and paper goods — call out to me. I'm drawn in by the bright colors like a raccoon to a shiny trinket.

So it is with understanding that I laugh as my husband walks into the house with a box containing the answer to all our prayers.

Yep. He needed the Dow Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner unit as much as I needed Don Aslett's Multi-purpose Two Piece Broom Set (as seen on TV) or the Swiffer Wet Jet. Where my pet peeves are pet hair and floor gunk, his are mildew and soap scum.

After scanning the directions and assembling the apparatus, he hangs it in the shower and prepares to test it out. To me, it looks like a soap dispenser masquerading as a flea bomb.
I can’t help but giggle as I look at the package assertions: "So easy, it’s like having a maid!" As for instructions: "Touch, Spray and Clean." Simple enough.

"Says here you push the button and you have 15 seconds to close the door or pull the curtain before the sprayer goes off."

The cautionary literature is pretty entertaining as well: If you get this stuff in your eye, a light rinse is sufficient because it contains few irritants; safe for cosmetics containers and tub toys. Not toxic.

"This is good," I think to myself. "Who needs a pesky emergency room visit when house guests mistake it for a soap dispenser."

I half expect to see a recipe for a tasty salad dressing under its "safe for all kinds of tubs" advisory.

"Ok, stand back. Here we go."

Fifteen seconds later I’m piggy-backing and peering over the shower door as the 180-degree sprayer spits out a nearly invisible mist with the assistance of a deafening mechanical whirring sound. As I stand there trying not to inhale the patented Fresh Scent smell that has now filled the room, I inwardly doubt the contents of the shower bomb will live up to its promises. I make a mental note to make space for the device in the closet alongside my family of useless floor cleaners.

"Well at least my impulse buy makes a cool noise."

I swear he can read my mind.

WARNING: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

I’m going through a phase in my own development in which I am repeatedly forced to ponder the primordial and often painful parental question: "Where did she come up with that?"

As my little mime walks in circles, chanting "I know, I know, I know," I am actually staring into a tiny mirror. Almost everything that leaves her lips, from "Oh, wow!" to "Sooooo cute," comes from hanging out with me.

Much of what she repeats is immediate. As soon as the words “OH, DARN IT” fall from my mouth at the exact moment whatever I am holding catapults to the ground, the same words and inflections tumble out of hers.

And it's not just speech, either. As we left a coffee shop the other day, she put the lip of her sippy cup between her teeth and smiled widely as I juggled the tot, a diaper bag and my own cup of java dangling from my mouth and dashed across the street to the car. Monkey see monkey do.

Most parents don't think their kids are watching as closely as they do. The standard joke: when the call from the teacher comes to report Junior has slung the most repugnant of all four-letter words, the constantly cursing parent wonders where he bleepin' picked that up.

I marvel all the time that Ittybit's first regurgitated words weren't some variation of human waste products. The slips on my part have occurred far too often for them to have gone unnoticed.

Of course, more egregious mimicry has occurred. On the occasion of an unavoidable social function, which she was also attending, I snidely informed her we are going to meet some "annoying people."

She immediately grasped that last couplet and ran. "Oh yay! Meet annoyyyyyying PEEEEEPLE." And I spent the rest of the day trying to convince her that we were actually meeting NEW people. "Can you say NEEEEEW people?"

What toddlers choose to repeat and how they do it is fascinating. As she sits and talks to herself, a rambling stream of conversation she’s recorded in her VIMEO memory comes to life.

And while some influences are evident, others are more elusive.
I know most of the behaviors she displays are based in something she’s witnessed and somehow adapted for her own purposes.

The other day, our sitter reported through peels of laughter, that Ittybit was smashing a play hammer into a bean bag dog, flattening the toy time and again.

"Ahhhhh. All better," she was quoted as saying soothingly, while wrapping the toy dog in a blanket and continuing to apply her medicinal services to any and all exposed parts.

"What are you guys doing at home?" the sitter laughs into the phone.
"I’d tell ya, but then I’d have to … well, tell ya. And to tell you the truth, I really don’t know."

Watch and learn, watch and learn

The creaking of the swings can be heard long before we reach the playground. She's fighting her third (and hopefully last) cold of the season but I've convinced myself that a walk to the park will be good for both of us.

When we reach the green Ittybit squirms to get down.

"I need to running, mom?" she looks at me for permission and lopsidedly waddles over to the BIG slide.

"Go up there, mom?" This time her tone is more of a command than a question, but still she waits for my nod of approval before she makes her ascent.
I'm not sure how we managed to harbor an early walker (10 months) who is still content to stay in her crib until we come to "wakt" her up, especially now that she's over the ripe old age of two. But I thank the same gods who decided she would — of her own volition — ask permission BEFORE she gives any of her food to the dogs; throws fruit down the stairs; or puts her favorite book into the VCR expecting it, no doubt, to come to life.

Of course, when you have a child who hangs back and watches every move, you have the tendency to try and get her to take the bull by the horns once and a while. Some might call me naïve and even unwise to let a toddler make such decisions as whether to climb the 14 feet straight up before careening down a chute on her own, but I've always learned by watching, too.

Before I was a parent, I observed in amazement as my cousin asked her toddler if he "felt safe" climbing to the top of the jungle gym by himself. He said 'no' and promptly came down. That same child, standing on top of a stored canoe one year later, weighed his mother’s words as she asked him if he thought standing on the wobbly boat was "safe." This time he answered a defiant "yes" and simultaneously came crashing to the ground.

She picked him up in her arms and calmly checked him over, dabbing at a little blood on his lip with a kitchen towel. She spoke calmly and without sarcasm asked him if he’d be doing that again. Through tears and sobs he answered as honestly as any preschooler could: "YES!"

We laughed. But it became clear to me that the work of being a toddler is mildly dangerous out of a kind of necessity. They need to go IN so they can find OUT. Getting a few scrapes and bruises along the way, isn’t the worst thing that could happen.

I knew right then I wanted to be my cousin's brand of mommy.
I remind myself of her example as Ittybit wants me to go up the slide with her like I use to when she was a "baby." I tell her she can do it by herself now, but I will be at the end waiting to "catch" her.

She sits at the top for a second before giving herself a lifting push. Down she comes, laughing joyfully, her eyelids press tightly together and her wispy hair aloft on the breeze. She pushes my arms away as she scrunches to the end of the slide and drops to the ground by herself. Wheeling around toward the ladder, she shrieks with glee, "Do it again, mommy. Do it again."

No questions asked. No help necessary.

Beware the ides of ... April?

"How may I help you?"

The first clue of advanced maturity should have been the conversation itself.

It was 9 a.m. and I was on the phone with a mutual fund company trying to max out my contributions to a retirement account. It’s a far cry from downloading the latest MP3s from iTunes and nowhere near as satisfying.

Since I’d waited until the last possible moment to make the year-end transaction, and I couldn't remember my secret pin number, I had to call the convenient 800 number and plead for help before the ides of April thwarted my financial future.

The woman on the other end of the line was calm, pleasant and accommodating. She even walked me through the Internet procedures with the skill and composure of a freelance Web designer apologizing for her company’s obviously clunky platform.

She ascertained my preliminary identity and then performed more rigorous tests to confirm it: Mother's maiden name; home telephone number; birth date (month and day) although, for some reason, she spared me the embarrassment of having to say the year aloud.
But she knew it anyway: "Oh, you have the same birth date as my husband ... though not the same year."

Then the entire conversation came into a different perspective. It just then dawned on me that perhaps I was no longer the youngest person in the "room." Though nothing in her words or demeanor gave me unequivocal proof, it became abundantly clear to me that I probably had at least a decade on her spouse - my unnamed rival - who almost shares my birthday.

See, I had pegged her as my age or older. I had assumed her care in walking me through the online procedure was more than formality. Yet, as the transaction progressed it became painfully obvious that there was no need for a simultaneous pressing of buttons; "Houston" didn’t need radio contact for this mission. She was merely helping an old woman cross the information super highway without getting squashed.

Its not like I don’t see time marching across my face whenever I look in a mirror. The evidence is clearly apparent. The grays that have been making ever more numerous appearances and the lines etching in deeper on my forehead are just two of its tell-tale signs.

But somehow it’s still a shock when you turn the corner from kid to adult. When you’re 50th birthday is closer than your 20th, and you know in a blink of an eye it will be upon you.

I suppose when you’ve been carded for R-rated movies a decade out of college and six months pregnant you just take it for granted that age will not outrun you. Of course, when you pull out that drivers’ license and show the pimply-faced kid behind the ticket counter the proof he requires, you’d better brace yourself for the response.

"Wow! Sorry, lady. I had no idea you were that old."

So much for soft and cuddly

I should have known by the words on the palisade that this was going to end badly.

The tape keeping the throng of sugar-craving toddlers at bay read "CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS." The message I chose to ignore was clear: There is nothing warm or cuddly about an Easter egg hunt.

We didn't attend our town's Easter egg hunt last year. We thought it would be too chaotic for a child still learning to walk. Instead we held a little hunt of our own in the front yard. I spent a few minutes hiding eight plastic eggs filled with Cheerios and other dry cereals in plain view. With a little help from her grandparents, Ittybit found all eight orbs in short order.

But this year we were ready to join the community of egg hunters. We even got to the hunt a half hour early afraid of the consequences of being late and also to hobnob a little with the neighbors. As we stood behind the police tape trying to keep Ittybit amused with songs and games, stopping every once in a while to explain why her soft pleas to "do out there and pict some ayes" were going unheeded.

I listened with interest as parents all around us were laying out strategies for their kids so complex I expected at any moment one of them would pull a chalkboard out of a stroller and diagram the game plans with arrows, Xs and Os. But even that didn’t register as odd. I was too giddy, as I clutched my camera, to notice.

Just when we thought it wouldn’t be possible to wait any longer, the man with the megaphone informed us the tiny tots’ event would start momentarily. He asked for volunteers from the parental audience to come into the field and guard the borders, a little assurance there would be eggs aplenty for the next gaggle of gigglies.

My husband said I should go out there. He thought it would entice the young 'un to run out to me, picking up eggs as she went. While my inner mother was screaming for me to tell him she would need his help, the outer one I didn't say a word. Off I went to be a minuteman.

When the signal was thrown dozens upon dozens of tiny tots broke rank. All except for our little one, who clung tightly to her father's shiny stain-proof pants.

Within minutes all the eggs were gone. I had even forgotten my job and let dozens of kids into forbidden territory as I watched my own little peanut move haltingly toward a shiny green egg a few feet from where I stood. I held my breath as she got closer and a blur wooshed in between us and it was gone. She stood there blinking in disbelief. By all accounts it was a dismal failure.

I had brought candy with me on the chance that the eggs were filled with a confection too advanced for her small palate. But she had her heart set on picking up an egg. As her tears started to fall like rain, I chastised myself for not scrubbing the soap scum out of last year’s mismatched egg halves, now transformed into misfit tub toys.

Talk about heartbreaking.

What's worse, the crowd was dispersing and no one seemed to notice the little girl with the empty basket. As we stood there like deer in headlights a neighbor came over to see about the tears. Their daughter had snagged four eggs. (She had been to the event last year and was a professional marksman at the tender age of two). After a brief conference to entice the child to hand over one of her eggs, our little benefactor happily handed over two.

I have never wanted to hug someone else’s child more than I did that very moment. I think Ittybit wanted to hug her too.

Out of sight, but not out of mind

On a recent Saturday the stars aligned and the grandparents stepped up so we could step out.

“Date Night:” A sad two-word phrase that single folk scoff at and married folk have to schedule as if it were a dental appointment. The understanding is universal: If you have to plan it in advance your relationship’s romance would rather be napping.

Now everyone on Earth seems to know how important alone-time is for parents except parents. We spend much of our week away from the kid (and each other) in our respective jobs and activities. Reserving weekends for family-building seems only appropriate. But when you add a liberal dash of household chores into the mix as you try to schedule kid-friendly activities in between Journey to Ernie and the afternoon nap, you find the days just slipping away.

When we started performing dramatic interpretations of Winnie the Pooh (speaking to each other in the voices of the characters most closely resembling our moods), I knew it was time for some entertainment that carried a rating more restrictive than ‘G.’
After explaining the situation to Ittybit, who pleaded to be included in this magical dinner and movie experience, she finally relented as we helped “Amah and Papa” re-familiarize themselves with the locations of every possible food item the little queen might crave during our absence.

Bracing myself for a tearful goodbye, instead she begins gathering her play balls and ignores my continued presence. “Bye, Mommy. Bye.”
In case you weren’t already painfully aware, parents of small children tend to be unable to have conversations about anything else besides troubling body functions or behaviors exhibited by aforementioned kids. Date nights are no exceptions.

Through appetizers and drinks we discuss our non-existent potty training strategies; her aversion to water and soap coming anywhere near her skin, unless she’s playing in the sink of her own accord; and the potential that she is honing accelerated diversionary skills at the tender age of two.

When the meals arrive we inhale them, forgetting that tonight we have the luxury of time. Drumming our fingers on the table as the check arrives, the movie is still hours away.

“Should we call?” I venture.

“No. They’re fine,” my husband says, unsure.

We put the phone call out of our minds as we trudge over to the theater and wait in line. Even though we are silent, I can hear him thinking about snacks. Since we child-proofed our cupboards of virtually every food item off-limits to toddlers, we have been hankering for such contraband as popcorn, peanuts and sticky sweets.

We find seats and settle in, determined to leave parenthood behind for a few hours. When the lights dim and the film flickers to life on the screen we are transported back to our wild, carefree days when we could stay out all night, decide to go to parties at the last minute or even take off for the weekend on a whim.

We continue watching until all the credits have rolled and the lights come back up. On the drive home we discuss the magic of the movie with all the pretension of theater critics, and wager (with sly hope) that Ittybit will still be awake and entertaining her grandparents with her own dramatic exploits when we get there.

I lose. … She is fast asleep in her crib. But waiting for us in our room are the playballs, trussed up one on top of the other with masking tape and sporting a cardboard jewelry box “hat.” The gift is carefully balanced on the laundry basket next to my bedside table.

“Look, she built us a snowman,” I exclaim, as my mother fills us in on the details. And as it usually happens my husband finishes my thought: “I kind of wished we’d seen this movie.”

Breaking the (piggy) bank

“Moe mondey, MOE MONDEY!” Ittybit chants as I break another cardinal rule of parenthood by handing her a “choke-able” and telling her to go play.

She’s only two, but already she knows how to swipe a credit card, hand cash to the cashier at the grocery store and put quarters into the family “piggy” bank (actually an enormous Coke bottle) for safekeeping.

She becomes vexed when the Eisenhower dollar her papa gave her won’t fit through the slot. “Go in there. Go in there. Go in there,” she instructs the coin, as if the emphasis on the right word will be the magic that makes it fit.
When the enormous silver dollar won’t listen, she asks me to make it a bank of its own.

Scrounging a bit, I find an empty diaper wipes box and some stickers for decoration, and in seconds we have a new repository, not to mention one very satisfying “plunk” sound.

If genetics has any role in financial acumen, I am praying that Ittybit will take after her “Amah.” I have nothing but hope that my mother, who loads her up with dollar bills (that probably have gone through the washer and dryer several times to ensure cleanliness), will also instill in our tiny tot some of the secrets of her saving ways. Lessons, I might add, which have been almost entirely lost on yours truly.

If you’ve never met anyone with the Midas touch before, you should park a chair next to my mom and sit for a while. She has the gift.

By the time she was my age — on a nurse’s salary — she had already helped her parents buy a house, her brother a car and established a healthy savings for her own growing family. During the course my youth, she and my father even salted away enough money to put both me and my sister through college.

Such fiscal diligence has its price, though.

Every now and again my mother asks me if I remember our Christmases, and how our piles compared with our friends’ piles. I know what she really wants to know is whether we were disappointed.

In terms of quantity, our celebrations were more subdued but I’m fairly confident neither my sister nor I ever felt any real inequity. Quite the contrary, in fact, we felt rich beyond belief. We had everything we wanted and even things we didn’t need. We felt lucky.

But it really wasn’t luck at all. It was skill. It was being able to decipher need from want. It was being able to hold off on gratification long enough to make a choice that was based on more than impulse. It was taking money out of the equation almost entirely. “This isn’t about the money. It’s about you. Things aren’t going to change you.”

I’m embarrassed to say it, but money still burns a hole in my pockets. At the end of any given work week my cash reserve is usually long gone. Although I’ve gotten a little better at saving (thanks to automatic banking) I could still use the kind of discipline my mother has and my daughter is practicing.

Come Thursday, as I’m scrounging for quarters on the bottom of by bag, Ittybit toddles over and hands me her purse. Inside are three crisp dollar bills.

“Hey, can I borrow this until payday?”

“Sure mommy, sure.”

How do I love thee ... let me count the toys

After Ittybit’s bedtime I gather a bunch of toys left helter-skelter in the “Blue Area” — an empty question mark of a room situated between the master bedroom and the rest of the house, which my husband inexplicably painted the color of painter’s masking tape — and make my way to the playroom where they belong.

As I crouch on the floor near the toy bins, adjusting the small figures this way and that, it might appear to the untrained eye that I am merely tidying up.
My husband is not fooled.

Since my tiny two-year-old has started throwing up her hands at the “Mamarazzi” (‘No pishers, mama. No pishers, peas.’) I have turned my lens on HER toys. It’s regressive, I know, but it fills the void in my photographs where she once stood. I set the camera on a table and adjust the focus. Click. Inching the accessories forward just a bit, I reset the camera, re-check the focus and … click.

“Come on, she knows they’re YOUR toys,” my husband chuckles as I claw through a small box of figures. I am reminded of why I married him when he asks me if I’d like a bowl of ice cream while I play with MY toys.

It turns out, with respect to collections at least, I am like my father.
My dad would spend hours setting up his old train set under the tree every Christmas. One oval-shaped track, an engine and a handful of cars could consume the better part of an entire day. Forward and backward he’d send that train around the track, never letting it speed out of control or derail. He spent so much time giving detailed lessons on the set’s operation that when he was willing to hand over the controls we had already moved on to another game.

Unlike my father, who was satisfied with his small Lionel set, I covet what I don’t already own, and brand loyalty isn’t part of my vocabulary. My latest obsession is Playmobil. I can’t seem to pass a toy store without adopting one of the jewel-box sized “Specials.”

I like the ones that depict everyday scenes such as a woman in the laundry room or a mother grocery shopping. I one day hope to own the construction site portable toilet with crews and the airport screening line. They’ve even replaced my love of fast-food toys.

There’s just something satisfying about these German-made toys with their simple shapes, their smooth colors and ever-present smiles. They are always smiling, even when they’re vacuuming or shoveling elephant dung at the zoo.

I can’t imagine cleaving my life to another’s who didn’t share, or at least respect, such simple pleasures as the small toys that dwell in kids’ meals. I’d sheepishly go through the drive-through windows of fast food restaurants, order a Happy Meal and a coffee, pretending to be a mom with a kidlet to go home to just so I could collect all of the toy prizes from Toy Story, Batman and Shrek. I knew I’d married wisely when my husband ingested pride, happy meals and antacids (in that order) to procure some of my most beloved trinkets.

Even on our honeymoon in New Zealand, while most people would be busy visiting as many natural splendors as possible, he was willing to indulge my plaything fascination and risk 16 hours of travel time and our next room reservation to visit the “MacDonald’s Toys of the World Museum,” a private, basement collection listed in a book of “local attractions” provided by our motel in Foxton.

That is why I know my husband feels my pain as Ittybit thwarts my camera lens with a furrowed brow and an outstretched hand. I know he’d like to be able to ease it with a little ice cream and a kids’ meal toy.

I’m not sure enough can be said about a man who knows your weaknesses and loves you because of them, and not despite them.

“You know,” he says, handing me a bowl of Rocky Road, “these photographs would look really good in the blue room.”

Hey, mom ... you're fired!

I wasn't expecting the phone call alerting me to the e-mail.

I sensed something uncomfortable afoot when she became eager to hang up the phone, instructing me to read the message and call her back. This isn't the first time I've been in this uncomfortable place. Since getting married, however, I thought I would NEVER again have to hear the most frightening words to ever loom over a relationship: "WE HAVE TO TALK."

And now, it seemed, one of the MOST important relationships in my life was on the rocks. As I read (and reread) the six paragraphs, it became painfully obvious our babysitter was breaking up with me. Well sort of, anyway. She wasn't quitting, thankfully, she'd just decided the smoothest way to make the morning transition less exciting would be to do it quickly. It would be easier if I were a long-distance partner.

For two years my morning routine has revolved around wrestling an infant-turn-whirling-dervish into a breakfast bib, fresh clothes and then the car seat, and driving 17 minutes to a warm cup of coffee and the connected feeling of friendship and commiseration. What could be better than catching up on girl talk and having (and being) a sounding board as the kidlet loosens her kungfu grip on the collar of my shirt and ventures out into a room littered with toys?

As I studied the detailed account of her thoughts in the electronic missive — all carefully crafted so as to give me the letdown gently but providing little room for argument — it became clear I had two choices: drop my kidlet off in the morning and leave or drop my kidlet off in the morning and leave. The only variation in the choices was how I could spend my time before my arrival or after my departure.

I should have seen this day coming. I sensed it the same way I sensed that my high school boyfriend was looking to the blonde beyond me. Yet I pushed it to a dark corner of my mind where it took its place next to the elephant I was trying to ignore, as well.

See, lately, Ittybit has been having a power struggle between mom's authority (which is somewhat lax) and Lori's (which is considerably more stringent). For a few months most of our mornings have begun with meltdowns and playpen timeouts that drag on until THE MOM leaves. It's a daily lottery that has no discernible pattern. Sometimes she's joyful and eager to play with toys and other days she's clingy and cranky, eager to play one legislator against the other.

It’s a roller-coaster emotion of care provider rejection: That pivotal moment when it becomes clear that you, as a parent, are doing more harm than good with your presence in the playroom.

As I sat at my desk rereading the e-mail, I felt my heart sink as the largest part of my social network suddenly became unmoored. The two-woman coffee klatch I savored each day for the past two years was adrift. I suppose I didn't really need the caffeine as much as the camaraderie.

But as I look at my Ittybit, I see another reality looking back at me: The baby has vanished and a full-fledged person, with new needs, has taken her place. It’s only natural for me to feel unsteady as I search for my place in this new development.

Will power

Two years, two months and nine days.

That’s how long I was able to hold off introducing Ittybit to the inherent evils of fast food.

Friday morning, as we dashed through a breakfast of pancakes she didn’t want, cereal she only nibbled, and fruit she just wanted to hold, I asked her what she really wanted to eat.

“NO REALLY!” I said, implying with as urgent a tone as I could muster that I was serious and there would be no more of this dilly-dallying about.
“Shawsheege,” she said happily.

Oh, of course, sausage – the only bit of fatty, artery clogging animal flesh our house was lacking that day.

“We don’t have any sausage, honey,” I said with the sweet dulcet tone ebbing back into my voice, “how about some of this yummy soy bacon?”

“Nooooooooooooooooo,” she moans.

And here’s where things go horribly wrong. (I know you’re all thinking … no, the SOY bacon was where things went awry.)

“Perhaps we can stop at the store … later,” I mumble.

Here’s a tip for any one who has ever made or even implied making a promise to a child hoping they would forget about it the minute they were strapped into a car seat and the neighborhood dogs — out with their owners for their morning constitutionals — go whizzing by the car: Don’t do it.

This is not your husband or wife. … This is a person, albeit a small one, who generally gets all the sleep they need and whose desire for things is not clouded by the hoops one must hop to acquire them. And you might as well know that there are no children on Earth gullible enough to be duped by a crazy woman in the driver’s seat pointing out the window and yelling, “Oh, honey, look at that cute puppy.”

Two seconds later. ...

“Shawsheege, Mama. Shawsheege, PEAASSSE!!!”

As we pass the grocery store I try to reason with her. “Honey we can’t go there now. We have to go to the bank and then to the babysitter. We’ll get some later.”
“No now. In there. Shawsheege in there, mommy.”

Just then, her sweet toddler voice is replaced by a loud, piercing cry, and foreign-sounding words begin to tumble out with sobs and “shawsheege.”

It’s no use. I check my pockets for change and, finding some, pull my car into line at the McDonald’s drive-thru. As I wait my turn I contemplate how much longer my commute to work will be now that I’ll be choosing a route that doesn’t include any glimpses of the golden arches.

Before I can chart the course, it’s my turn and I inch the car forward. I ask the box if I can just get a side-order of sausage, and the nicest, static-filtered voice I ever heard replied, “Oh, you sure can. Drive on up to the second window.”

The cashier laughs a little as I hand over a mountain of small coins and gives me a small bag in exchange. She waves at the toddler sitting in the backseat, who is wide-eyed as the pungent aroma of sausage fills the car.

“Oh, shawsheege,” she squeals in utter delight when she opens her package and finds a perfectly round patty steaming up at her.

“Shank you, mommy. Oh shank you,” she says, petting the folded box as if it were a kitten.

Before I pull away from the widow and drive into the rest of my day I ask her if she’s going to eat some.

“No. Save it fo’ later.”

I guess she just has more will power than I do.

Until next year, adieu Mr. Snowman

The snowman sits on the lawn, a sad little puddle of his former self.
“Oh, no! NO MAYN,” Ittybit opines with every ounce of drama she can muster, pointing toward the soggy lumps of snow partially hidden by a small pile of colorful winter clothes.

“FIE IT?”

If only I could fix it.

These cheerful little winter beings, draped in last year's woolens and sporting leftover produce from the refrigerator to accentuate their chiseled features, were an important part of my youth. More so than I ever knew.

There are many photographs of me leaning against a population made entirely of snow; my front yard friends. Images of great sleeping giants — too heavy for my 12-year-old self to lift into upright positions — mingle in the old shoebox with endless summers at the lake and pictures of my teenage feet.

These days when I see a snowman my mind travels past the simple joys of childhood and rests on a single dog-eared photograph in that box of memories. A childhood friend, lost.

Its color has faded a little with time but the crispness hasn’t. It shows two seven-year-olds, wearing different colored parkas with similar fur-line hoods and exactly the same toothless grins, sitting side by side on a half-finished snowman. Whenever I see it time always comes rushing back.

We had similar-sounding names and similar pre-teen interests. When he visited his grandmother, who lived next door, he routinely made his way over to my house. Ringing the bell, he’d eagerly ask for himself as my mom opened the door. My mother loved him. She joked every time he visited that she’d like to hide him in her pocket.

That snapshot represents an idyllic childhood friendship filled with leaf pile jumping, sledding and summer lightning bugs we collected in jars — a bounty of quarter apiece put on their heads by the boy’s visiting war-hero uncle. We gazed at them in amazement as they performed a phosphorescent ballet. Magic bottled in jars.

He died in a car accident on a lonely country road a few months after I started college. He wasn’t the first of my friends to die this way nor, sadly, was he the last. But it is his memory that haunts me every winter when the snowmen begin to appear.

I think it’s because the idyllic childhood of my memory is laden with stories of him and memories of other neighborhood kids so marvelous that I have forbidden myself to seek revelation lest the miracles be explained away with matters-of-fact. Many of those children have grown up and moved on just as I have. They have new adult friends and busy lives.

As we walk past the “NO MAYN,” I reassure my Ittybit that there’s nothing to fear or fix. The snowman will be back again next year and he will be just the same as she remembered. In some ways I am also reassuring myself.

There was a time when I thought that I had outgrown my childhood friends, but now I don’t think it’s exactly true. I think they are as important to my childhood as my daughter is to the life I have now. And in some comforting way, they are all the ages they were when last I saw them. I am too.

Untrue believer

While my husband was away on a business trip recently I joined a cult.

I know it may sound a little bizarre coming from a lapsed Catholic, former altar server-turned agnostic yoga practitioner who doesn’t especially feel spiritually or creatively unfulfilled (except on Mondays). But that’s essentially what I did.

Perhaps it was out of boredom. It can happen. My mother suffered a similar ennui early in our lives while my father was away on business. In her case, however, it happened when two lovely Jehovah Witness members came calling one afternoon.

She invited them in for lemonade and a refresher course on the Watchtower. Having no intention of converting, she merely craved a little conversation. Every time they wanted to leave, she’d just asked another question and poured more lemonade. By the time they were able to scramble out the door, probably way past dinner time and their bladders no doubt bloated, she said she knew they’d never be back.

My lunge toward a spiritual awakening, however, was spurred by the Internet, amazon.com and my need for adult conversation.

With a few friends raving about miraculous claims concerning Julia Cameron’s self-help manual “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity,” the wave that’s apparently sweeping the nation, I decided one late night that I had to see what all the fuss was about.

The last time I did this, mind you, I ended up with two rubber brooms hawked by some slick Australian shill, who, at 2 a.m. one lonely night, was speaking my language — the easy removal of pet hair from any carpeted surface.

Of course I KNOW when a salesperson throws in a second identical product as a “free gift” for the incredible price of only $19.95, the chances of the item actually working as described decrease exponentially. But my need to believe in the power of this broom, however, was much greater than my fear of being robbed of $24, including shipping.

In fewer than four days my cut-rate used book had arrived and I was on my way to experience enlightenment.

The book is divided into sections by weeks, and contains non-negotiable rules such as writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling; performing exercises, such as listing all the people who have made you crazy within your lifetime and taking yourself out on an "Artist Date" once a week to commune with your inner artist. That last one was the clincher: Any excuse to take myself out for an expensive coffee is my siren song.

Within the first few pages, however, I realized this tome wasn’t exactly speaking my language. “I don’t feel the need to be mired in the blame game,” I complain to my friends when they confess they are mired in crazy making. “Why focus on the negative?” But I stick with it.

As I moved from one week to the next I fulfilled my “obligations” by writing three pages per day in my stream-of-consciousness journal, alternating between the I AM TIRED page with the THIS IS REDICULOUS page and, my personal favorite, I AM NOT SELLING FLOWERS IN AN AIRPORT page.

The book claims that everyone who reads it and works on its premise in earnest will have an “Ah-Ha” moment.

And true enough, mine happened in fewer than 14 days: “I’m not broken; I don’t need fixing. Go sell crazy-makers some place else.”

Nevertheless, I really can’t wait until my husband gets home so I can go and meet myself for coffee.

Oxymoron: Don’t worry, mom

I am an anxiety-riddled worry wart who thinks every ache and pain — every pimple, bruise or rash — is the beginning of the end. If I were to go to the doctor every time I worried about my health I’d be charged rent for taking up space in the waiting room.

There, I've said it. It’s out in the open; the elephant in the living room that I’ve been dusting around for decades.
Somehow, I don’t feel relieved.

Instead, I find myself working my way through the medical profession as if the potential of being awarded an honorary doctorate were the end goal. Unfortunately, the only thing I’m learning is that there’s something infinitely worse than NO information at all: a little bit of knowledge is the absolute pits. (Thank you, Internet).

Becoming a parent only seemed to heighten my anxiety and make the eventuality of my demise seem that much more frightening. As has become my custom of late, with each new symptom, fleeting or otherwise, I scour the Web for the worst-case scenario. When I find it I topple off the edge of the world.

People call folks like me “hypochondriacs,” but I don’t think the word is an accurate description.

We are the people who go to doctors because there IS something wrong. They just don’t know exactly what … yet.

When I turned 30 the doctor said … “well, this is when you start getting stuff.” Before that moment I don’t really think I ever gave much thought to the kind of stuff I’d be getting. When she mentioned it, however, I had no choice. And really, I didn’t have much time. Turns out that in a few days, my blood told her I had a thyroid condition — thyroiditis. Not serious, actually pretty common, she said. Pills were the answer.

Next came sinusitis, dermatitis, allergies, headaches, stomach upset, aches and pains, more weird blood tests and specialists. New people in white coats hired on to track the niggling, borderline results the lab sends back. If there’s an “itis” in its ending I’m pretty sure it’s going to find me. I have friends who patently REFUSE to see doctors because “they always find something.”

My husband tries to calm my already fragile nerves, but I am not comforted by the notion that stress may be getting the better of me. “If it were all in my head,” I tell him, “why would I have a borderline test result?” I used to joke about my fears. I’d tell people I was pretty sure I had malaria or tuberculosis when I came down with the sniffles. It was somewhat comforting to get my worst thoughts out in the open.

Now I have trouble even considering such possibilities.

I tell myself there are other causes besides avian flu when my nose starts to run and my eyes get itchy. I search the Internet to find the least scary among the reasons why my right foot might have fallen asleep as I was sitting on it.
"Must calm down," has become my mantra.

“I can live with eczema,” I think in the doctor's office as he examines the red spots on my finger tips. But after I leave I wonder what was really said in that little room. Did he say there were no symptoms of serious concern BEFORE or AFTER he listened to my lungs … why then did he make a return appointment for three months? What is he NOT telling me? Spin, spin, spin for the next 90 days.

All this spinning is like a bad theme park ride — "peecups" careening out of control. Great! Now I'm nauseous. Of course, I still have to remind myself that I’m not a doctor … I don’t even play one on TV.

Trying to extinguish Elmo's fire

My husband believes that Aussie quartet “The Wiggles” rise in popularity with the preschool set is directly related to boredom level of Gen-X mommies who are sick of purple dinosaurs and want a little “eye candy” with their morning coffee.

I’d like to indulge him in this way of thinking merely because I desperately want to believe that I have some influence over our Ittybit’s preferences, but experience tells me it’s just not true.

In the ways of children’s entertainment I had figured I would be a natural: I loved both versions of Pixar’s “Toy Story;” I couldn’t wait to collect all of the toys from the McDonald’s Happy Meals (way back in 1995); and I’ve anxiously waited in line, regardless of the weather, for every major Walt Disney release since “The Rescuers.”

So I ask you? Who better to select the soundtrack for the car?

I choose hip bands from my college days that are now adding children’s music to their discographies — They Might Be Giants, Bare Naked Ladies’— as our travel soundtrack. I bop along to “La, La, La, Lemon” and try to get her hooked on anthems of my early youth, Schoolhouse Rock!, but few of my selections have ever caught her fancy.

She listens for a while, as if to humor me, and then calls for the Wiggles and their dreadfully addictive song, “Big Red Car.” The melody will haunt me all day.

I don’t even know where the CD came from or who put it in my car. This mystery has replaced the single-sock disappearances from the clothes dryer phenomenon that had served as my proof that aliens surely exist.

I had hoped that she would be a kid that bucks the trends, but in addition to her ineffable love of peas on ice cream, she is also an Elmo and Ernie groupie, destined to be the president of the Barney fan club and a staunch supporter of Teletubbies’ Tinky Winky. This is just more evidence, in my mind, that Barbie is an inescapable part of our future.

The trend to make children’s entertainment more hip for moms and dads who are missing their mosh pit days is something of which I wholly approve, especially when it’s done well. Any songs that use the words “Akimbo” and “Gavotte” or make me think of all the words I know that begin with the letter “L” are just my blend of tea.

Even though I love PBS and think it does a fine job with most of its programming, I can’t help but get riled on the instances when Elmo uses words incorrectly. The argument that Baby Bear’s lisp teaches tolerance drives me over the edge. “For what? Incorrect pronunciation?” I growl at the television .

One rainy Saturday I happened to catch a particularly interesting installment of Sesame Street, where Elmo had turned into the Muppet version of David Letterman. (For the record: both a leaf and an apple float but a rock does not).

For a brief moment, I could overlook his cloying voice and insistence on referring to himself in the third person. And suspending disbelief for even a few minutes means that somewhere down the road there is hope for Stupid Monster Tricks and a Top Ten List from the home office in Oscar’s trashcan.

Now that might even be worth sending The Wiggles back Down Under.

Virtual reality ... mixrs on flickr!

It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your mom is?

If she’s anything like my husband’s wife she’s catching up with her friends on “flickr,” an online photo sharing Web site where folks can post photographs, join groups and generally pat each other on the back for the images they make of their cute kids, lovely landscapes and self-possessed cats.

Where my 1970s counterpart may have joined playgroups and mixed with other moms in the shade of the playground, it seems the moms of the new millennium are meeting online. It is a virtual recreational area where only the digital likenesses of our children mix and mingle.

With most real-life playgroups hosted during the workday, it’s really just simple logic that brings these parents together: Full-time employment, weekends filled with mundane chores and a large percentage of other would-be moms and dads operating under the same conditions. Until someone comes up with a group that meets after Ittybit’s bedtime (which is usually 8 but can stretch until 9 p.m.), on my couch in front of Soprano’s re-runs, I’m sticking with commiserating about constipation, skin rashes and tantrums with moms and dads from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Masterson, New Zealand.

I joined flickr initially so I could easily post photographs to a blog I had devised for the seven people who were interested in viewing the 4,329 pictures of Ittybit’s first two years. It took only 14 minutes for the flickr addiction to take hold.
After I uploaded my first six pictures — which took up the maximum size allotment available per month on a free account — “ro ber ta,” from Itu, Brazil, posted a note to a photograph of the 12-month-old Ittybit, in silhouette, toddling town the hall, dragging her baby doll behind her: “oowww my .. sooo beautiful!!” it read.

It was all down hill from there. Before I knew it, I’d purchased a “pro” account and was an uploading fool.



Through flickr I’ve made acquaintances, picked up contacts and even assigned some as “friends.” Before long, I had joined (and in some instances formed) virtual playgroups, where members can do everything from post pictures of their kidlets in action to participate in a virtual game of “snap.” In my favorite groups members play silly word games, offer critical reviews of photographs and even exalt the beauty of Canada Geese. I’ve been involved in online forums, participated in a hurricane fundraiser and even helped organize a photographic print exchange as a holiday offering to my virtual friends.

As my husband snores on the couch beside me, drained of all energy by the exploits of a toddler — the cherry atop a day of hard work — I tap away at the keyboard, checking recent activity on old photographs and uploading new ones.

At first, it was as much about escapism as it was about photography. It was a place where I never expected reality to touch.

But one day, as I was looking through recent uploads, an image jumped out at me. I clicked on it. It was a medical photograph of an aggressive lung cancer diagnosed that day. He was the fiancé of one of my contacts. I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do or say. I just followed his progress and prayed. On my daughter’s birthday, I learned, he died.

When another woman on my contact list, who is in her late 20s, was diagnosed with skin cancer she decided to let her virtual friends into her real-life drama. I suppose I did what any of her real friends would do: I sent her a care package.

Complex math + simple logic = chaos

Fourteen minutes and the clock is ticking.

Calculating a complex series of equations in my head — subtracting the two-hour nap she missed that afternoon from the protein content of the breakfast she ate that morning, and dividing it all by the number of Cheerios left behind in snap-top container rolling around on the floor of the car — I surmise I have less than a quarter of an hour to procure a week’s worth of groceries before storm clouds set in and we are washed away in a torrent of tears.

These days I’d rather scrape the remnants of spilled leftovers from the fridge and smear it on saltine crackers than take Ittybit shopping. A one-toddler, one-mother wiggling circus, I play the juggler as she empties the cart of what I put in it, clapping and smiling as if I were one of the brothers Ringling and she were a trained seal. And that’s a good trip. I have collected a series of photographs of the bad ones, which I’ve titled “Hates the Dairy Aisle.”



I could kick myself for taking for granted her happy, amenable days when her fussiness could be calmed by the vibrations of the cart and a kind word from a cashier. I could also kick myself for leaving the provisions list at home.

I unbuckle her from the car seat, praying silently that the truck-shaped shopping cart hasn’t already been driven off by another toddler. I try not to picture myself pushing the cartoon-inspired cart, which I believe was purposefully designed to be about three centimeters smaller than the width of every aisle in the store just for the sake of amusing the single-serving shoppers in the world. Instead I have relinquished my “cool” status and accepted the inevitability that I will likely knock over the Pepsi pyramid one of these days because I know without this dastardly device I will have to shave off five minutes from my shopping time.

Relief. The cart is there, revved and ready to go. Zoom, we’re off. First stop: produce aisle. Ittybit stops honking long enough to yell out her desires. “Peppers. No! Red peppers … nanas … oooh, aaaaaples.” She samples the broccoli before I can get it away from her and wants to hold the box of clementines on her lap. I sneak in a bag of spinach and some tomatoes and soldier on.

I feel emboldened. We have vegetables and we’re heading off to get meat. Twelve minutes to go. (It would have been 13 but I struggled with the produce bags, trying unsuccessfully to open one by rubbing my thumb and first two fingers together on the bottom end for 45 seconds before I eventually turned it over.)

Scooting to the meat section I throw my selections into the basket and push on to the bread aisle. I see the first signs of agitation and I still have six aisles to go. When she stands up in the coffee aisle and pretends to be Rose on the bow of the Titanic through the front windshield of the cart, I consider taking a shortcut to the milk aisle and calling it quits.

“No,” I say aloud, “WE CAN DO THIS.”

Next stop: Frozen foods. To squeals of delight from the peanut gallery, I toss frozen vegetable from a three-foot distance into the basket. “YAY, peas!!!!; ”Hooray for corn, “Ooooree, COE!!!” And her beloved Ice cream gets an entire chorus, “Ipeem! Ipeeem! IIIIIIIIIpeeeeeem!”

Milk, yogurt, cheese and eggs … we’ve rounded third and are on our way home. Ittybit flirts with the checkout clerk a little as she helps empty the cart onto the conveyor. I am silently congratulating her by stroking her hair while the groceries are tallied and the clerk turns her attention back to me.

“That will be 135 dollars and 57 cents.”

Oh no, where’s my wallet?

Where else would it be but at home with shopping list!

Now it’s my turn to cry.

Brought to you by the letter 'O'

I have a tendency to ardently believe things that are not true. That’s the tricky part of logic and an even sketchier part of memory: the truth is hard to decipher when the picture you've painted in your head just keeps getting more vibrant as time goes by.

For instance, I am convinced that I saw Sid Vicious rocking out with Ernie and Bert on Sesame Street even though I know it’s utterly impossible. For seven years I believed that Tommy Chong died in a terrible car accident, and that was why Cheech Marin ended up on Nash Bridges with Don Johnson.

Sadly, this memory affliction goes beyond my recollections of network TV lineups to a time in which reminiscence is not humanly possible.

When I was 9 years old I asked my mother if there were Venetian blinds in the nursery of the hospital where I was born. When she told me there had been, I became thoroughly convinced I remembered crows standing on the ledge looking in at me. “They were there,” I argued, when she told me the memory wasn’t real. “I just didn’t know what they were called until much later.”

So when Ittybit toddles over to the stack of DVDs that I had spilled from atop the player, selects a powder blue disc devoid of any cartoon likenesses out of the hodgepodge of scattered children’s titles and exclaims: “Oh, that’s Elmo’s World,” my jaw drops open and I find myself wrestling with a new version of the truth.

I pull her close to me, suffocating her in a hug. This has to be a joke. I pick out another bland looking disc from the pile and wave it in the air, looking over my shoulder to make sure ventriloquism isn’t the cause of this new skill. “What’s this one?” I ask her. “Yoga,” she smiles, although her words sound more like "yo-ya."

Where’s the phone? Digging it out from under the couch cushions, I call my husband’s cell number. “Does this sound crazy? I think Ittybit can read,” I yell into the receiver, wondering all the while how the Babydoll learned this without constant intervention and pop quizzes and calculating how long we will be able to hide her from the government.

"That's nice, honey. Did the mail come?"

I wasn't ready for this grown up girl. I was still reeling from the recent shift away from being “Mama” to my new role as “Mommy,” when her new "reading" skills crept up on me.

This requires more investigation. I grab her up and whisk her into the kitchen and toward the alphabet magnets on the fridge. She starts to recite the letters on her own, picking up her favorites and separating them from the rest of the herd. A. B. C. E. I. T. … O.

It’s not as if I hadn’t noticed she’d shown preferences. She always stops her sing-song recitation on the letter P. She refuses to say Q. I can’t blame her, after “elemenopee” the fun kind of ebbs away.

Her aversion to the letter Q, I believe, is likely the result of my bringing the magnets with me to the doctors’ office on the occasion of her second-year checkup. All she wanted was her favorite letter -- “O” -- while the nurse was trying to take a blood sample, and O was the ONLY letter of the 26 that didn’t make it into the bag. In desperation, as her cries arced into a crescendo, I tried to substitute the letter Q by holding my thumb over the tail. She wouldn’t have it.

Already, our truths are colliding. And all I can hope for is that the O is somewhere in the car.

Honey, I think I’m bispousal

“Hey, do these jeans make my butt look big?”

I’m not sure whether he’s kidding. Just the other day I found my truck-driving, manly-man husband surfing the ’net looking for skin-care tips.

“No dear, you look perfect.”

For as long as I can remember I have subscribed to a commonly-held notion that women need wives. I advocate that women in the dating game should insist on courting only those men who possess a dash of culinary prowess and a liberal measure of kitchen skills. A good rule of thumb: If the object of your affection doesn’t know how to work the washing machine and isn’t willing to learn, it’s time to cut and run.

The idea, however, that sometimes men need husbands took me by surprise. Just as there is more to being a wife than housekeeping, there’s more to being a husband than carpentry. In my evolving glossary of terms I called this emerging marital understanding “bispousal.”

An adjective, bispousal describes a person who possesses emotional characteristics generally associated with a spouse of the opposite gender. My husband, you see, was acting bispousal when he complained that I had tracked in dirt after he had cleaned the floors. I, on the other hand, was acting bispousal when I didn’t remove my shoes immediately upon noticing the mop in his hand.

Need more proof? His bispousal tendencies are elevated when he makes a four-course meal that includes items that are stuffed, braised, broiled or deglazed. I show mine by cleaning the kitchen floor with the sink hose and a roll of paper towels.
There are so many ways in which I see role reversal in my marriage that I have even begun to counsel other women on how to deal with men as if I am one.

“It’s not that he doesn’t love you,” I say to my friend, who had just posed the primordial question: Why it is that once the marriage takes place the courtship fades? “It’s just a kind of an emotional laziness. He still thinks ‘Wow. I am so lucky to be with her. She is the light of my life,’ just not in those exact words. His vocabulary is limited to something more along the lines of an “Oh, Yeah!” and a few grunting sounds.

It sounds dismissive, I know, but I’m not really being critical. I think that if the emotionally giving one (whether they be a woman or man) understands that the emotionally distant one (be they man or woman) isn’t purposefully trying to undermine them, a lot of marital discord could be avoided.

As usual, though, in terms of counseling prowess, I am the pot calling the kettle names.

In our family, I am the one who lumbers up the stairs after the end of the workday grumbling, growling and praying that no one speaks to me until I decompress, which usually never happens until the weekend. My husband would love for me to share my day. He would love to have me sit at the counter while he cooks dinner and tells me about his. It takes the kind of effort that a person sitting in the dark with a beer and the television blaring just doesn’t have.

Of course this is also how I am sure my theories won’t be heading to a bookstore near you. Whole forests have been plundered already to provide pages for self-help manuals to tackle this very subject. And while I suppose I’ve heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, I’m fairly certain it’s not true. After all, I’m from Troy and he’s from Kennebunk; I don’t need a map to know that you can get there from here. But perhaps a few “yes, dears” now and again, along with an occasional “you look nice,” wouldn’t do any harm.

A life not imagined is a life unexamined

- Cloud #7


There are whole conversations I can’t have with people because our experiences are so far from shared that the light from shared would take 18 million years to get to us.
I mean, how many adults out there — during their dark and single days — just picked a person (real or imagined) and made a boyfriend or girlfriend out of them?

I’m not talking about flirting with strangers in the hopes of developing a relationship, nor am I describing outright stalking. I’m talking about “dating” a person without letting him or her know about it because it’s just EASIER that way.
I’m fairly certain that my hand would be the only freak flag flying were that question to be asked.

At the time, it just seemed to be the perfect way to have a relationship that was doomed to fail anyway. There are no fights, no misinterpretations and no decisions about which movie to see. And when it’s over there are no messy breakups or bad feelings, it’s just over.

Think of all the sadness that could be averted if we just THOUGHT about dating the transitional guy instead of ACTUALLY dating him. I suppose I’ve been looking for the easiest road to travel since I discovered life doesn’t come with a map. In my case, however, the easiest road is the one not traveled because it really doesn’t exist.

Careers are my latest flight of fancy. I’ve even developed a list of the 10 jobs (with no foreseeable future) I’d rather have.

For example, topping the list a few years ago was Cow Placement Expert.
“You know how cows look on a hillside as they graze and cavort?” I once tried to explain. “That would be my doing.”

I had to reassess my qualifications for that particular occupation as I was driving to work one day and saw a bovine herd loping up the hill after a tractor that was dragging hay.

“OK … A cow placement expert is really a farmer.”

Since then, my favorite field of expertise is in the area of color arbitration. I would be the definitive source on all matters concerning that age-old question: What color is this?

Need to know whether the jacket you’re about to purchase is navy or black? I will tell you. Is that hat fuchsia or peony? I will know the answer. Of course all decisions are final … there is no appealing the judge’s decision.

My real-life husband is among the plethora of people in need of this service.
A few years ago he bought a truck and called me at work, brimming with excitement, wanting to describe it to me. Since I have no understanding of technical aspects of mechanics the only part of the description I could remember was: “It’s green.”
When I got home and looked for this new green truck in the driveway I was somewhat flummoxed to find a big orange vehicle in its place.

“Hey, I thought you said the truck was green?”

“It is green … see there on the trim and the letting on the door?”
You may laugh, but it’s this type of color misunderstanding that can lead otherwise happy couples to have untimely breakups.

Remember my not-so imaginary friend? I saw him coming out of a health club dressed head to toe in purple Spandex one day and the magic was over.

“That’s it,” I said aloud as a co-worker looked over at me a little perplexed at the sudden outburst. “We’re breaking up.”

Temper, temper

She’s looking up at me with a scowl on her face, eyes growing smaller and more certain by the moment.

She is silent.

Flying by the seat of our pants

I had chills thinking about the flight this past Christmas Eve, a three-jump journey to the Duluth grandma and her growing reunion of family.

Last year’s jaunt to a different city for the same jamboree had been disastrous.

Back then our Ittybit was an “infant in arms,” screaming herself to sleep during each torturous descent. She had gotten her first stomach bug two days into the dream Boulder “vacation,” and each bout sent me into the shower and then directly to the laundry. When the bug spread to others all eyes were upon us. I willed myself invisible. It didn’t work.

By the time we returned from the holiday I had a new understanding of motherhood: It is the phase in one’s life when a vacation seems more work than the average day-to-day drudgery.

This Christmas, as we waited in the airport terminal with a wriggling toddler before the first leg of our trip, I caught a reflection of myself in the glass as I looked out the window at the empty slot where our plane should be. My hair had sprouted more grays.

According to the tickets, that empty space at the end of the jetway wouldn’t be filled for another two hours. My hope for a harmonious trip had faded along with my hair color.

As the minutes ticked away by the month, I was sure the meager supplies of diversions I’d packed would not be enough to sustain us for the next eight hours.

Just 16 minutes into the wait, I had already pulled out all the stops.

Glitter, crayons and snack particles littered our wake as we moved from one gate to the next trying to entertain the 2-year-old dervish whirling between us.

Narrowing my eyes I began sizing up my fellow travelers, hoping to enlist their unwitting assistance to make time move faster.

Who amongst them could help in this diabolical plot to entertain a toddler once the pay phone buttons had lost their luster? Who might scrunch their nose and walk brusquely to the security guard and complain?

I sidled up to a “Charlotte York-ish” young woman and her traveling companion, a puppy packed impeccably in a comfy carry-on kennel. I know it’s a Cavalier King Charles spaniel from watching “Sex and the City,” but I ask anyway to make small talk. While I was thrilled that this Charlotte turned out to be even more gracious than her fictional twin, I was puzzled as to why Ittybit wouldn’t go anywhere near the sweet little creature.

Then it hits me: “Oh that dog is tiny and cute. … Your dogs are large drooling beasts, who merely tolerate you because of what drops from your highchair. You don’t know what it is and think, judiciously, ‘approach with caution’.”

Of course, she thinks nothing of the death-defying pre-flight flight we took near Gate 7. Her worried father, however, considered contacting FAA (and OSHKOSH) to find out the stress endurance of overalls as I swung her by the seat of her pants, five inches from the ground, every so often setting her down gently on her tummy while I rest. He decided to let it ride after she squeals delightedly, “Do it again! Do it AGAIN!”

Eventually the meter runs out on this amusement too, and I scrape the bottom of my bag for a miracle.

Glue stick, coloring book … hmmm … where’s that Skymall magazine?

For the next hour Ittybit happily calls out the colors she requires as I rip them from the insipid catalog. As she smothers Elmo with a green, floppy flyer pillow torn from page 6, I rejoice. “There is still hope.”

What will happen when she's 12?

We had such good intentions.

As we move along this path of parenthood, we had aspirations of shaping a child who found the simplest of pleasures the most joyous.

We fully envisioned ourselves buying only classic toys made of wood and lead-free paints, of course, and fostering in her the ideals that material pleasures are fleeting.

As most parents find, there are times when you wonder why you buy toys at all. That incredibly elaborate doll with life-like hair and blinking eyes sits alone in a corner as Ittybit rattles around with an empty milk jug and a clothespin.

Shake, shake, shaking with happiness.

Of course such delights are fleeting. As her interests in the jug wane we trip over ourselves to find the next toy that will hold her attention.

We cross our fingers and hope it’s not going to be the talking car or the singing ride-on tractor that plays “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” at an unalterable volume. Especially because we know as soon as it leaves the store in our possession she’ll be on to something else.

I tell you, finding the TOY OF THE CENTURY is a drug worse than crack.

Once you see that light in a child’s eye pulse with excitement over a deluxe, 39-inch plush pet that could very well be the envy of the neighborhood, pulling out the wallet and forking over the cash seems more like an involuntary reflex.

So what if you need a horse trailer to cart it home?

That’s how I remember it happened anyway.

The stand-still horse measures head and shoulders taller than our tyke but is eerily captivating with its butterscotch coat and round, shiny eyes. It wasn’t even in a store when the love affair started. It was in the home of a friend and the toy of choice for all visitors.

I thought it was so cute that I made a point to take Ittybit’s picture astride so I could show it to my sister, a consummate horse lover.

That was it. The seed was planted and what grew was a monster desire on the part of my family to procure such a beast.

I suppose I couldn’t resist. There’s something about a horse the size of a Great Dane, which plays “Home on the Range” out of one ear and clip-clop sounds from the other, that makes your heart just go pitter-pat.

Well, almost.

As the dutiful daughter, I got the scoop and transferred the information back to the gifting parties. It was a little dishonest, I must admit. I was confident that finding this toy would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

I was wrong. Within days the doe-eyed animal had been located and purchased, destined to become the third dog in our house, and larger than the other two at that.

Of course what is worse is the realization that Ittybit was given a pony on this her third official Christmas.

What will we have to get her when she’s 12?

A spin of the wheel

Sitting in the examining room in a paper gown, the obstetrician spun the wheel that would tell my future, and I held my breath.

Making the decision to have a child after a young adulthood filled with dreams of a single life and self fulfillment seemed such a longshot, I wasn’t really sure how I got here.

Five months earlier, I was saying “I do” with such trepidation; even though my mind was clear and I was happy, I worried. Would things change? Would I be different now that my life was going to be joined with another’s?

I balked at every step of the way, from the proposal to the license. I refused to change my name with such a ferocity that I might have become just a little unglued. I feared losing my identity. I feared a change that would make us both different people. I held on to each moment with a white-knuckled grasp, treating the bridal shower and the rehearsal dinner as wake and funeral for my single self.

Every detail became important as I waited for the date when I would walk down the aisle and laugh my way through the vows
we’d crafted together.

Looking back on it now with the distance of just a few years it seems as if it was all just a colossal waste of energy.

The idea that I would be someone’s mother was infinitely more important and powerful, not to mention irreversible. I had planned every detail of the wedding and seem to leave the baby to chance.

Once the stick test confirmed the happy news and I’d made the official appointment, it dawned on me; the wedding hadn’t changed me in any tangible way, but this most certainly would.

A year of planning a wedding and nine months … less by the time the first appointment was made … to get ready for something huge and tiny in one.

As you might imagine, we had a typical reaction to the news: We bought pregnancy books, which my husband lovingly hid from me once I peeked my head up from chapter seven and exclaimed “…OH my GOD. Vericose veins? … hemorrhoids? … WHO on Earth would ever get pregnant if they knew what the side effects were?” during dinner at his mother’s house.

Then the strangest thing happened. I relaxed.

Through 39 weeks of measurements, ultrasounds and blood tests, I meandered toward motherhood happily enduring heartburn, nosebleeds and being awoken in the middle of the night by jabs from tiny little feet.

All of that was still ahead of me, though, as I sat on the examining table swinging my feet, anxiously waiting for irrefutable proof that I would wreck this child’s life somehow with this haphazard planning.

“It looks like you’re due date is Dec. 22,” said the doctor. “We’re looking at a Christmas baby.”

“Nice going, mom!” I chastise myself. “You’ve already robbed the kid of a lifetime of birthday loot.”

I just feel better when it's not around

It’s midnight and I’m sitting up with a glass of wine and my favorite holiday movie — “Barfly.”

OK. “Barfly” has nothing to do with the holidays, really, but lately I’ve been relating everything Christmas-y with a Mickey Rourke/Henry Chinaski/Charles Bukowski sensibility: I don’t hate Christmas, I just feel better when it’s not around.

How is it possible to love everything about the holidays except the holidays?

I love the music and the sentiment, the hustle and bustle; I even enjoy buying presents for family and friends to find under the tree.

It’s just that, for me, the perception of Christmas and the reality of it are two divergent things.

The joy that Christmas promises, in my estimation, requires the distance of a season or two for full appreciation to take place. Summer, for example, would be a perfect time to have Christmas.

When it’s uncomfortably hot and I am willing the skies to explode into fat snowflakes is when I pine for Christmas. Not when I am frozen to the core and trying to scrape the ice off my windshield with a credit card in the mall parking lot.

If you were to ask me in August what any thoughts of Christmas bring, I would envision myself toasty-warm in a big fluffy robe, sitting by the tree with a mug of coffee and nothing to do but look at the lights and relax in the moment.

Come December 24, however, and I have a new picture in mind that usually has me in a frenzy, surrounded by a tangle of tangibles, trying to wrap Christmas gifts that at the time of purchase I thought were brilliant but I now fear will fizzle. The last straw usually comes around midnight when I’ve lost the end of the “Magic Tape” for the 17th time and I am seriously considering using a glue stick.

THAT’S IT! I AM CANCELING CHRISTMAS!

But how?

Two years ago I was successful in abandoning Christmas by having a baby a week prior.

Christmas came anyway, but it was trumped by something infinitely more important.

We missed every Christmas party thrown, every cookie exchange and even the family gift fest that year. Christmas came to us. Our stash of pre-made cookies went to the hospital staff, and our presents to each other were small tokens.

It was a wonderful Christmas, but one that won’t likely be duplicated with any precision.

I still have my picture of that comfortable Christmas morning by the fire in my own house with nowhere to go and nothing to do as I book the 1,243-mile flight to Minnesota, where, with a toddler in tow, we will spend the holidays this year.

I suppose there’s just no way around it. No matter how much I plan, I know on Christmas Eve I will be furiously wrapping presents left naked for the baggage screeners to peruse and wishing the tape really was MAGIC.

G'morning, neighbor

Sometimes I think the neighbors I know best are the other motorists I encounter each day on my hour-long commute to work.

They’re the folks who share the country back roads that wind their way to the babysitter’s house, and the highway that takes us all into the city and to our respective jobs.

It’s a kind of moving community that shifts and changes every time my routine varies by just a minute or two.
I spend more time each week reading their bumper stickers and noticing the dings and foibles of their cars than I do chatting with any of the folks who share a portion of my street address.

It’s an easy relationship that doesn’t necessarily require much effort. All I have to do is glance in any direction while traffic slows to know who they voted for in the last election or if they are pro-choice, anti-war or if their kids have made honor roll.
Of course in any neighborhood there are problems: there are pushy people trying to get ahead, people who don’t take care of their property and people who just don’t pay attention to concerns of their fellow compatriots. They yak on cell phones, honk their horns and occasionally scream obscenities. There are some otherwise nice neighbors who retaliate with equally unneighborly behavior, because, after all, it’s not as if they are going to encounter each other over the fence line.

I know that most people rail against their "commuter neighbors" for any number of real or perceived infractions - edging into the lane without the prop¬er turn signal; following too closely or doing any number of dim-witted maneuvers that clearly indicate the fellow trav¬eler may have obtained a licenses from a discount department store - but not for me. Much of what I see day in and day out is what makes such a long drive bearable.

I’ve seen a guy who plays a wooden recorder whilst driving, and another gentleman tooling along with two parrots, one perched on each shoulder; I’ve seen cars packed with any manner of interesting cargo from Styrofoam peanuts to rubber play balls. I’ve seen people sing to themselves, play silly games in traffic jams and even doing good deeds. What I’ve witnessed on the roads is as much a community as any neighborhood in which I have lived.

For two hours each day, the mundane becomes interesting and strangers become friends.

Just about every morning I start my day by waving to a man who rides his bike (or walks) to some job I imagine he has on a local farm. I don’t know his name and I haven’t a clue as to what he really does for a living, but this cordial relationship goes back more than a decade. Sometimes he has tools with him, sometimes he’s empty handed. One year he sported a sling on his arm for several months. When he’s not there for a few days in a row I worry about him.

I vow that someday I will stop and introduce myself.

In recent years I’ve baked an extra batch of cookies at Christmas just for him. But on those days, with the bundle on the seat beside me, our paths have not intersected.

Perhaps this year they will.