One last ride

She sidled up to the chipmunk, as she had so many times over the last 10 seasons, and twisted around to look up. Her squint-eyed expression, a beacon of hoping beyond hope.

“Well? Am I there?”

“Sadly, my friend, you are not.”

It was June and we were at Hoffman's Playland. Ittybit was two inches shy of the line separating her from her intentioned ride – The Bumper Cars.

There are many things I wish I could give my children, but average height is genetically beyond my ability to provide. The chipmunk and I never saw eye-to-eye.

Deflated, but not destroyed, she skipped away from the only shady area in the place and headed for The Scrambler. That's her favorite, anyway: a pair of sardine cans attached to an arm that shuffles between four other cans until its passengers turn green.

She can't get enough.

Sad is the word that best describes emotions surrounding today's closing of this tea-cup-sized fun park after 62 years in business.

Although it had evolved over the years – growing from its original two mechanical rides to include more than 20 rides and attractions – Hoffman's Playland never really changed. It offered a warm pocket of nostalgia in a garment that you thought you had outgrown.

That's how it felt, to me anyway, the first time we brought Ittybit to Hoffman's when she was a tot.

I hadn't thought about the place since my parents brought me there. So it came as a surprise how perfectly perfectly it still fit. Not only could I scrunch in beside her on the Rock, Spin & Roll (a ride we had mistakenly referred to as the Spinning Dog Dishes), all 200-pounds of my husband could float high above the park in the Balloon Flight, as well.

I would have called it magical, too, had it not been for a different kind of revelation that Hoffman's made perfectly clear a few rides later. ...

Somewhere in the vastness of time – exactly where between the last ride of an intricate loop-the-loop roller coaster in college, and the first moment Hoffman's carousel started to turn while I held onto my infant equestrian, is unclear – I had become a victim of motion sickness.

As soon as the horizon shifted and the air pressure changed, my stomach started to churn.

Oh sure, the Tilt-a-Whirl seemed tame for the first few swings, but by the end of the ride I was regretting my morning coffee and not interested in lunch at all.

Eventually, my husband and I would wind up playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to see which one of us would have to go on the Rock, Spin & Roll.

The season I was pregnant, My father even gallantly offered to go on the bigger rides that his tiny granddaughter preferred. I'll never forget how scared I was as the two of them spun about seemingly miles overhead. I was left on the ground, finally reading the caution sign beyond “Pregnant Women” to where it had mentioned “Heart Patients.”

We all make mistakes.

People think the age difference between our children was planned for lofty, developmental purposes. But really we just wanted her to be tall enough to accompany her brother on the big-kid rides at Hoffman's.

This year, it paid off.

We visited the park one last time in September to say our goodbyes.

We wound around the park, taking turns on all their favorite rides. I stood at the fence holding a camera as they waited in line.

Finally, we made our way to the Bumper Cars. This time when she stood next to the chipmunk, he was the bearer of good news. Over the summer, she had grown the two necessary inches.

But at the gate, another sign delivered the bad news: The ride was closed.

She was deflated, but not destroyed. Our family tradition of height-restriction disappointments will continue.

We took one last spin on the Iron Railroad, thanked Hoffman's for a perfect childhood experience, and called it the end of an era.

Back to school ... part 2

The first day of school is an event celebrated annually by most American families as if it were a delicate skirmish that hinges on properly fitted battle armor.

Not the least of which include sneakers that make a person run farther, faster and well, entirely different altogether but still give you room to grow.

It is a complicated strategy.

We begin with frenzied shopping sprees during the last weeks of summer – we buy notebooks and binders and clothes our kids will outgrow by Christmas – and then move on toward the reintroduction of age-appropriate bedtimes, usually 12 to 14 hours before the first school bell rings.

The middle is stuffed with things savvy parents will have accomplished in the wee hours of the night before: Bags packed. Clothes set out. Lunches made. Missives read. Notes written.

But we are not savvy parents. We are sloppy parents. Sloppy parents who point fingers in each other's direction. We let accusations fly as we fly about by the seat of our pants trying to gather supplies that have been strewn everywhere, but in the backpacks where they belong. ... Are the clothes even washed? Wait! I thought they were buying lunch. … What do you mean she's not on the bus list?

Eventually, the skirmish dies down and a tenuous truce is reached.

It all ends with the modern equivalent of a ticker-tape parade – the rapid-fire updating of social media networks with a vast array of cell-phone bus-stop portraits as great yellow behemoths come grinding out of their own summer slumber to the edge of our driveways where they swallow our kids up whole.

Oh sure …

Technically, the day isn't over at 8:30 in the morning when your last Primary School Cherub hauls their over-stuffed backpacks up the three steps, past a smiling driver and through a gauntlet of other similarly armored children screaming from either side of the aisle.

In fact … for you the day is really just starting.

How fast can you get to where ever it is you have to be? How much can you get done before you have to turn around and get home? Maybe … just maybe ... you can get to the Post Office AND the bank before they close. Dare to dream, dear parent. Dare to dream.

Now that summer has ended, time will move in blocks of errands rather than minutes and seconds.

But you knew that … The Handbook that came with your version of child said something about the time-space disconnect on Page Six.

Never you mind that … The kids seem to know how to slow it down. Savor it.

For weeks, they've been modeling their new clothes and planning their wardrobes. She breaks out her jewelry and carefully drapes it over outfits already assigned hangers. He starts to break in his new sneakers. Careful not to scuff the surfaces.

Neither are settled.

I always wonder what they will choose to make their first-day statements. Last year she wore a three-quarter jacket with tights over jean shorts. She looked like Cindy Lauper met Mary Tyler Moore in a dark closet.

He wore shorts, a fleece, fingerless gloves a skullcap and aviator shades. When he hoisted himself onto the bus, he looked like a tiny Tom Cruise in “Top Gun.”

I love this day. For me, it's like Halloween and Christmas all rolled into one.

At the end of the driveway my daughter twirls contentedly in her first-day regalia. The outfit has evolved during the last seven days from a stylish twinset top and black petal pushers to a navy striped tunic, last year's denim leggings, and a moth-eaten beanie cap swiped from her father's winter duds. If she is anxious about meeting a new teacher and making new friends, she doesn't let on.

My son, too, ditched his first choice of togs – a faux leather jacket and skin-tight jeans – and settled on meeting his new teacher wearing his old favorites, a comfy old t-shirt and hand-me-down basketball shorts.

“Hey, little man. Why aren't you wearing any of your new school clothes?”

“Oh … it's the first day. I just wanted to go as myself.”

Back to School with the Stooges

He plunked himself down in the middle of the aisle, and, sitting criss-cross-applesauce, scowled at his choices.

I considered going boneless myself, flopping down alongside him, and complaining bitterly about how boring this is for me. But I don't think my son would catch the irony.

After all, back-to-school shopping is FUN for him. It's a treasure hunt.

For me, it's just a puzzle wrapped in chains and buried in a box under sand and rotting fish.

I'm not sure how long we've been in this store, but the school supply list seems as long (and as complicated) as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Just holding it in my hand gives me The Chills.

In fact, I think I might hyperventilate.

“How many stores WILL I have to go through before I find a sling-style backpack and rainbow pocket folders with prongs?”

Don't answer that! I prefer to live in denial.

“This is not a 'FINE LINE MARKER',” he pouts as I pulled a package of felt-tipped pens off the display hook and tossed it into our cart. It says: 'M-E-D-I-U-M.' Medium is not fine.”

He picks the offending item out of the cart and puts in back on the display rack.

“Medium is fine,” I say, retrieving it and throwing it back into the cart.

“No. Medium is not fine. Medium is medium. Fine is fine.”

Back to the display.

“Well, since they only have Medium and Bold, Medium, in this instance, is Fine.”

Back to the cart.

“Medium is definitely not Fine,” he mutters.

Display.

“Well, you may be right,” I hiss, taking the package from the display and holding it over the cart. “Medium may not be Fine, but I'm not going to another store, so Medium will have to be Good Enough.”

He tears the package from my hand and flops it into the cart.

Fine!

Stubborn. Just like his mother.

“What's next?” He asks cheerily. “Oh … folders!”

“Thissssssss,” I said out loud, “is going to take forrrrrrrrrrrrrrevah.”

I envy people who say they can't take their kids to the store because they want everything they see. My children can never decide on a single thing.

Two aisles over, I can hear my daughter pawing through a box of rulers. She's looking for one that is metric.

“Nope,” I hear her say, and then a clatter of hard plastic cascading upon more hard plastic. “Ugh … they are all in 'ins and cms'. Whatever cms are … I think they must mean outs … ins and outs.”

I want to slap my forehead as I dash over to her.

I am Abbot …

And my kids are Costello.

I clear my throat and stage whisper.

“Ins is short for INCHES and CMs are CENTIMETERS -- a metric measurement.”

“Ohhhhhh, riiiiiight!” she says with false embarrassment, and in a false English accent she picked up from watching Minecraft videos on the internet all summer instead or reading books or practicing mathematics. “How silly of me.”

“Can we hurry this up? I have to go home at hit myself in the head with a mallet.”

“I thought you said we were like Abbott and Costello,” she said with a grin.

“Nope … pretty sure we're all just Stooges.”

Old married couple

I can't get to sleep.

I just watch the clock as its glowing, lime green numbers mark the passing of another minute. The minutes compound every sixty seconds and amass accordingly, but time moves slowly as I lay awake.

I hate the clock.

I want to unplug it. But I don't.

The clock taunts me in ways I think are uncanny.

There is a terrifying marvel in its patterns.

Sometimes I get to sleep alright – I just drift off with an effortlessness that usually comes as the result of exerting myself some point during the day – only to wake up just as the clock strikes 2:22.

Always 2:22. Never 2:23 or 2:24.

It's not the clock's fault, I tell myself as I continue this battle with Sopor.

I close my eyes and shift from one side to the other, pulling the covers as I go.

This irritates my husband, who would tell you that this periodic predicament is my own fault, seeing as how I have been known to drink black coffee long into the evening.

But I disagree.

It's the ruminating that does it.

The chewing of ideas into something that should be nutritious, but usually turns out to be just a thick paste of anxiety.

2:25.

Do I get up? Watch TV? Read?

I consult my iPhone. Run my fingers through Facebook. Check my email. Play “Words With Friends.”

No sense in just tossing and turning. I swing my legs to the floor and feel the rust in my joints scrub off as I walk across the room to retrieve my robe.

Cold from the floor shoots up my legs from the soles of my feet, reminding me that summer is already over. I wish I could take the warmth of the bedclothes with me, but I settle for the wrapper and slippers.

2:26.

I have woken the dog.

She is displeased, though she follows me downstairs and into the living room, where she flops onto the couch across from me. Her head propped up on throw pillow, she keeps her eye on me. I am putting her out. She'd much prefer I sleep on the same level as the rest of the house-dwellers ... and soon … so she can relax.

I am turning nocturnal.

She is fully diurnal.

2:27.

I have a headache. I think.

This happens, too. Imagined pain.

2:28.

For a while, I pinch the web between my thumb and index finger with the thumb and index finger of the opposite hand. The layperson's acupressure.

My husband once recommended it.

“I feel something,” I told him. “I'm just not sure what.”

I'll give it 10 minutes … then I'll take ibuprofen.

2:29.

Who am I kidding? I rattle the bottle of greenish-colored gel-caps and turn on the kitchen tap. I can't wait nine more minutes. I fill a coffee mug, pop a pill and wash it straight down.

The water will probably do more to alleviate my pain than the drug. At least, that's another thing my husband has told me he believes.

2:30.

The cat scratches at the door. I let her in.

She roars at me for food. She's already been fed so I ignore her demand.

She curls up with the dog, who shifts but doesn't protest. Before long they are both snoring contentedly, like an old married couple.

2:31.

I envy them.

2:32.

I stop watching the clock.

Silently, stalwartly, doggedly there

Every fall, for the last few years of her life, my father took the dog of my childhood on a solemn walk.

Together they'd trudge westward on Route 20 to the veterinary clinic a half mile from home.

Ordinarily he would have driven the short distance, wrestled our fluffy, St. Bernard mix from under the front passenger seat and carried her into the office. He is a slight man but wiry and could handle the sixty-five pounds of canine resistance.

These trips, however, weren't ordinary. On these occasions, my dad would set his jaw and hold his breath, bracing for the possibility that he might return alone. He didn't want to struggle with this faithful friend on the day she wouldn't be coming home.

When the day finally arrived – when the vet listened to her chest and nodded slowly that it was time – the news took him by surprise.

She'd always come home.

This thankless, depressing job had been left to him. It never even occurred to us, or him that it should have been a shared task.

“It was awful,” he told me later. He'd stroked her fur as she lay on the cold, stainless table. He described how they swabbed her forearm and administered the final medication. She never made a sound, he said, she just closed her eyes and went to sleep.

He walked the half mile home with just her collar and leash.

And then there was silence.

His limbs still braced for the onslaught of escaping dog as he slowly opened the garage door. But no flash of fur or scramble came from beneath it. Thirteen years of muscle memory would now begin to atrophy.

A few days later a small cream-colored envelope arrived in the mail with the vet clinic's embossed lettering on the return address.

No one ever opened that card.

He just held it and cried.

I had never seen my father cry before that day.

Truth be told, I thought his tears were really for his own mother, my grandmother, who had died at least a decade earlier.

He had mourned her, of course, but in a stoic, tearless way.

A perfectly understandable transference in my mind, I try and reason. This love we have for animals seems perfectly uncomplicated, unlike the love we have for people.

It pains me to think when my father was diagnosed with lung cancer last spring, the demise of our old dog was the first thought that jumped into my mind.

It's horrible to think of my father this way. That, when he dies -- as we all must do – the hardest moment will bear my witness. And then the silence afterward …

I will look for him in the grocery store. I will see him in every man with a puff of curly white hair. I will miss his perfectly imperfect grin and his “fancy meeting you here.”

I know it's not the same, but I can't help but feel my love for him is perfectly uncomplicated.

We didn't fight. I never feel judged. He was just a supportive, loving presence. A person who was capable and fallible, but honest and loyal, too.

He never seems disappointed in me even when I felt I was nothing but disappointing.

But he is always there.

Silently, stalwartly, doggedly there.

My dad is.

Period.

Full Stop.

He IS.

Any thought to the contrary is too unbearable to think.

Growth season

The tomatoes have already started to redden, something that hasn't happened by late-July in the whole history of my pretending to garden. I'd like to think it's the beginning of a trend. But I know it's just an anomaly. These tomatoes are just alive enough to be embarrassed they are among the other so-called “plants” in the raised beds that border our house.

When I cupped my hand around the firm fruit and extracted it from the tangle of ugly leaves, I squinted, still holding it at arm's length, expecting the tomato to explode.

I'm not what one would call a green thumb. Not that it stops me from trying.

After all, last year we did manage to wrestle four pears and six strawberries away from the squirrels.

I've just accepted the fact that I grow food for the blight … and for the critters who visit late at night, vexing the dog. The perennial flowers that appear haphazardly among the berries and the lettuces, grace us with their presence for a few seasons before they disappear.

Their bulbs carried off by squirrels or killed in winter by my forgetfulness.

I didn't really expect anything glorious this year, though I fertilized the soil once and weeded a few times.

I tried to contain my delight at the little nub of green pepper that grew after the delicate blossom faded. I cultivated the same poker face when a curling tendril of cucumber reached its way up the trellis.

I knew what was coming.

Yellow leaves. Black dots. Munched leaves.

I frowned but wasn't surprised a little while later, when I noticed the tiny pickling cucumbers attached to the now dry and lifeless vines were petrified … in the rock-hard sense. The leaves had all withered and were crumbling when touched.

Broccoli-colored worms had feasted on the broccoli plants. Again, not a huge surprise. Last year's attempt had cultivated only a single, four-inch floret. Not exactly enough to count as a single serving.

The tomato vines, gangly and overgrown, turned spotted and dry in places but still produced healthy fruit. Last year, the vaguely green orbs, attached to healthy-looking plants, split or turned black before they ripened. Hundreds of the cherry-variety rotted on the ground.

A hundred times I've asked myself why I try to grow food.

I don't know what the true answer is …

Maybe it's because I fear a post-apocalyptic world, where our only source of food will be a dog … or the neighbors … if I can't manage to squeeze a squash from my garden.

Maybe it's just because I can't seem to do it.

Instead of giving up, I just try new things.

I pick plants I think are pretty.

Artichokes … Beans … Broccoli … Peppers ... Zucchini …

I also see it as a bit of a dare. The unwanted are the only specimens that have a chance to flourish in my garden.

Will anyone in this house eat an artichoke? Of course not. So, I'll probably get a bushel of them.

How many zucchini do you think we'll have to put on neighbors' front porches come late-August? 

Let's watch those suckers grow.

Community theater

This theater has seen better days. It's also seen worse ones.

The stage is small. There is barely a backstage, let alone dressing rooms. The walls are peeling. The ceiling looks like it has weathered a thousand storms, each one trying to come inside and seek shelter from its own rain. The ancient leather-covered seats squeal in protest when a person pries them from their upright positions. They are comfortable enough once you finally sit down. Of course, comfort is relative once you notice moisture gathering above your top lip.

Air conditioning is overrated, anyway.

And despite all the cracks, there is a moment, maybe you're sitting in the audience waiting for the curtain to rise on your kid's first-ever scripted performance, that you realize this is community theater at its finest. How is it possible not to love a place where your mailman, a neighborhood kid, and the friendly woman, whom you don't know but whose face you recognize from waiting in line behind her at the grocery-store meat counter, are stars?

That's how this “Hey, Lets Put On A Show,” stuff goes.

For me, it's hard not to love it.

I know because I've tried.

First it starts with the aforementioned “Hey, Lets Put On A Show,” and then it devolves into chaos and crying.

In our house, “Theater” has always gone hand-in-hand with “Drama.” And usually, after a bumpy ride, the pair tend to drive off a cliff like Thelma and Louise.

Shows need stories and props and costumes. They also need directors and sets and actors. You know, things my daughter, from an early age, had decided she could manage expertly.

But, no matter how talented I'd like to think my children are, the homemade versions of their endeavors tend to be long acting but nothing short of painful.

For me ...

Anyone lucky enough to be visiting during showtime.

Not to mention the poor soul who falls off the bed during the performance, which is how we know the curtain must close.

At least, that's usually how it goes.

For the price of admission – 10 imaginary dollars, which will be held up to the sunlight and pretendedly scrutinized for authenticity anyway -- audience members will receive an overly handled ticket to a never-ending performance featuring one actor, too many directors and something children shouldn't be playing with – you know … like fire.

It's breathtaking. Or at least breath-holding. … And that's why I banned the practice several years ago, though, admittedly, to little effect.

The show, as they say, must go on.

That's why, when I found out that our community theater willingly does this kind of thing – wrangle a few dozen teacup Thespians through the whole process – and for free – I signed her up.

Now, I know some people like community theater as much as they'd like to have a root canal. And the prospect of children's theater sounds like as much fun as having a mouthful of teeth pulled, but I can't tell you how amazed I was the first time we got through our first play without “drama.”

It called for a standing ovation. But more than putting our hands together, it also needs us to put our hands into our pockets.

Speaking the language

I never thought of myself as bilingual until recently.

Ok, perhaps “bilingual” is pushing it a bit.

It's more as if I have acquired a comfortable fluency in certain variants of a branch of American English that pertains to certain visual representations and other manifestations of an always evolving platform of digital information, which is specifically contained in the electronic game, Minecraft.

I'm not sure what I said just now, but it sounded impressive. Kinda like when I sing a Mexican song my mother used to sing to me … and my children think I understand Spanish.

Honestly, Minecraft has been something of an immersion experience, and I still don't know what any of it means.

In a nutshell, players in this blocky realm can build, farm, experiment, battle and coexist in a variety of modes along the ether.

As my kids -- elbowing each other and seeding copious amounts of cracker crumbs into my laptop keyboard -- take turns creating intricate, imaginary worlds out of this deceptively simple game of breaking and placing pixilated blocks into a virtual landscape, I pickup little bits of what it is they're doing.

I know there is a Survival mode in which monsters attack.

I know there is a Creative mode where you can fly.

I know the difference between a Creeper and a Griefer.

I know that a Mob doesn't adhere to the same definition as Websters.

I know what mob spawners do. In theory.

I know that the nether is a texture, not unlike cobblestone and that Zombie-pigman are an abomination.

You probably know more about this than I do.

After all, more than 16 million folks have already purchased this game and are playing it morning, noon, and night.

A pair of them live in my house. And when they aren't herding dogs or training horses or making pumpkin snow creatures they are watching videos on YouTube of other people building in their own worlds.

“It's a phase,” said one of my friends. “They go down the rabbit hole for a while, but they'll come back.”

I must admit, I'm a bit skeptical.

Perhaps that was true when they were playing the game. Fighting Creepers, shearing sheep, and building impossible skyscrapers that require switches, circuits as well as and ladders to enter, but something has changed.

They discovered other worlds out there and have become virtual tourists.

Lately, when I come downstairs in the morning, a bright chipper voice with an English accent greets me over the rapt silence of the kids, who are hunkered down in front of my computer shoveling yogurt into their mouths as they watch a character called “Stampy Cat” show them around his world.

“What's this on the floor? … Oh, it's cake …. everywhere the eye can see. Cake!!! Woooooooo!!!”

Turns out this cat – a 23-year-old former bartender named Joseph Garrett – started playing Minecraft about 20 months ago, recording his play and uploading it to YouTube under the name Stampylonghead. When his channel started to become wildly popular (in part for its clean, good-natured humor as well as his playing tips) he quit his job to manage the channel full-time.

Now he's got nearly more than 3 million subscribers. Two of them live here and tune in daily to see his latest video and backtrack through the hundreds they've missed.

Their own Minecraft worlds have been laying fallow.

I'm not sure that's such a good thing.

Especially if my kids start using English accents.

An epic in a fraction of a second

It always happens in a fraction of a second, or so they say. The bad things more than the good, or so it seems. A fraction of a second. No more.

I'm always holding my breath in those moments. Waiting. Seconds last longer than minutes as you wait, your mind playing out scenarios you hope aren't written in ink in this as yet unwritten script of life.

My husband is always telling me a person can't live in those moments. There's no room for anything else but worry. You have to move forward.

But he's not here. Directing.

It's just me … and my 10-year-old daughter. Ambling slowly, on our way to the park, behind a seven-year-old on a kick-scooter.

Anxiety hosts this particular party along our morning commute as I trudge along behind my son on the way to camp. I suppose I could drive the three blocks, but I don't want this specific fear to win.

The bridge between what my eyes see and what my mind imagines is always clogged with phantom traffic. But this traffic isn't invisible. A bottleneck of two-ton cars makes their way to the playground at the same time.

Inside every other one, a driver presses a cell phone against their ears, getting a jump on all the things they have to do in fewer than three hours their kids are in someone else's care. I have nowhere to be.

Tires screech somewhere in the distance. Not here, though. Not where I am slowly making my way back on this tree-lined, neighborhood street.

Traffic, that in my most panicked moments, always seems too fast for the road we are on.

My mind replays old moments, too. Like one from last summer, when the garbage truck took a swinging wide turn, clipping leaves of trees that would have been shading us only moments later.

It reminds me that anything could happen.

It didn't help that my son was kicking his scooter at least 200 yards past the break-nothing speed of my jog. Weaving like a drunken little imp on the sidewalk-less road between our house and camp.

I close my eyes. Washing away an image I don't want to see.

Only my voice – loud and panicked, and harshened by immediacy -- travels quickly through the space between us.

He stops to look at me but quickly swerves back to the sandy strip he was told to inhabit, between the lawns and the solid white line on asphalt.

I drew in enough breath to steady my swimming head.

Admonishments, now fully oxygenated, bubble up to my throat and catch there.

My daughter is faster than me, though.

“Don't do it,”  she whispers. “Don't yell at him now. People are watching.”

I close my mouth and touch her head. How is she so smart? How is she not the mother?

She is right.

The only control I have at this moment is over myself. Ranting about the dangers of the road, the limits of visibility and the risk of losing the privilege to scooter altogether is a close-range prospect. It is a rant that is best served calm and in person.

“Can I go now?” he hollers.

Silence.

He stays where he is until I catch up.

It's only a fraction of a second.

Armchair investigations

All I wanted was an address. It was innocent, really.

I had to send a thank-you note but only had a phone number. For some reason that escapes me, I didn't want to call and let them know I needed their address.

As if the reason I wanted their mailing whereabouts could somehow be perceived as nefarious.

“Yes … you got me …

“After your son came to my son's birthday party and gave him a really thoughtful gift, I wanted to come to your house late at night and toilet paper your trees.”

No. Really. A part of my mind thinks that way.

And my husband – often called upon to be the voice (at least in telephone calls) of our social life – can attest to how ridiculously hobbling this can be to an otherwise normal human.

So it is with genuine (but as yet undiagnosed) insanity that instead of phoning and asking for a mailing address, I turned to the internets, determined to find it myself.

After all, there is a reason I've been tossing printed phonebooks into the recycling bin since the turn of the century -- Switchboard, the online phone book.

But it wasn't so simple this time.

The name I was seeking didn't show up the way I expected. It was there all right, sandwiched between other similarly spelled names in different localities, but when I clicked on it for more information it led to a site that promised to tell me everything about this person.

And I mean everything.

Every conceivable record from marriage, birth, death, arrest, debt, college aptitude, political affiliations, and whether they “Liked” Coldplay on Facebook.

All mine for the snooping.

Oh, right … and it was perfectly secure. The person I was spying on would NEVER, ever, ever, in a million years, know that I was diving into the digital dumpster of their lives.

Truth be told, I felt a little slimy. I knew what this was, but still I found my clicker finger pressing down on the “Continue” button.

I felt a twinge of guilt as bright green bars of light scrolled through a time clock, as if it were uploading data from police stations, divorce courts and skip tracers from all over the country for my perusal.

I cringed as each imaginary upload accompanied flickering words … “Searching … arrest records.”

“Searching … court judgements.”

I knew where this would end. It would end at a page that demanded I not use this information to coerce, harass, evict, determine employment or otherwise infringe on the privacy rights of the person I had plugged into a search engine. And of course, I needed to give them a credit card number and pay them $99 for the information.

Click.

Search over.

I was laughing, but it wasn't funny. Had it been free I would have been tempted to swim in these embarrassing waters.

“What are you laughing about?” Ittybit asked.

"All I wanted was an address, but in order to get it, I would have had to join NSA.”

“That doesn't sound good. Now what are you going to do?”

“I'm going to have your father to call and ask them for their address.”

Short leash

The kids are gone for the morning. The house is quiet. The air outside isn't stifling just yet. It's just the dog and me puttering around. Mostly, she ignores me when the kids have left the building.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” I ask in her direction.

She sits down and drops one ear slightly. She seems perplexed by the word. Walk.

I feel a stab of guilt followed by relief. Ours is not an easy relationship.

I try not to use words in her presence that might trigger excitement.

I don't want to get her hopes up only to disappoint. It's hard to look at a hang-dog face.

That's not to say I don't take her places. I do. We go to the post office, and the bank, and for brief walks in the neighborhood. She's mostly respectable in public. Aside from a random squirrel that might trigger an exodus, she barely pulls against the leash.

That's not to say she's always easy ...

She looks at me with watery eyes, her nose wrinkles off to one side. A low growl escapes from her mouth though it's not really menacing.

“She's talking to me,” I think to myself with the conviction only a human possesses. “I suppose that's a yes for a walk.”

She lays down with a harumph, refusing to move until I say “Come on, Let's go” with a leash in my hand.

I don't think she trusts me. Or maybe trust is just another projection. I don't fully trust her.

Truth is, we haven't exactly figured each other out.

The kids and she, however, have reached an understanding.

As soon as the half-sized humans break through the silence of our misinterpretations, her face will lift and she will bound off in their direction. In fact, she will pain cry if they leave the house again without her. She needs to keep tabs on them while they're in her territory. She needs to chase their scooters and steal their tennis balls … at least until a varmint comes along that she has to vamoose.

She is the moon and they are the sun. She is relaxed around them in ways she is not around me.

In their absence, I feel as if we inhabit a black hole.

She wants to go to the office with me … but then she just barks when I talk to any one there.

I don't really know what it's about. She never barks at strangers. She only barks at me. And only when I talk to other people … or pet another dog.

I call her the “bad boyfriend” when she acts this way.

She doesn't take offense.

Coworkers laugh, because they know what I meant.

She only acts like this around me.

The insecure, commanding bark of a dog that doesn't let their human finish sentences in the presence of familiar people seems to draw a compelling parallel.

Of course it's not funny, though. The bad boyfriend isn't all that humorous in reality.

He isn't easily confined at home. You don't just give him a bone and lock him in a crate while you go out and live your life. He has thumbs, and, likely, a driver's license. And almost certainly a smart phone that, with the magic of modern technology, could be tracking some unsuspecting girlfriend's every move.

I'd be lying if I said having children – be they male or female -- didn't scare the bejeezus out of me, especially as they begin to orbit around puberty. I'd be kidding myself if I said every moment until they are happily ensconced in healthy relationships of their own, even in some distant future, didn't unnecessarily press upon my nerves.

I was a girl once. I know the ratio of bad boyfriends to good ones. I know the feeling of making the wrong choice … more than once.

Reading the news these days, makes me think the disparity has only risen.

No matter how irrational it seems, it's hard for me NOT to compare our beloved family dog with a potentially harmful suitor. … And the nagging fear that if harm does come it might very well be invited if not harbored.

But a part of me knows I can keep the dog on a short leash. I can't do that with the kids.

Not forever, anyway.

Not so foreign

I saw “Karate Kid” when it first came out in movie theaters. Since that evening in 1984 I've encountered countless children dressed in tiny white pajamas, and yet the experience of a class filled with little Ralph Macchios seemed entirely foreign to me.

There my son was draped in a suit of white muslin, one trouser cuff folded up, the other catching under his heel as he sidestepped across a room-sized mat. The white sash that held his tunic closed could have wrapped around his waist three times. Twice was traditional, and he had no intention of breaking with tradition.

The boy who stepped onto that mat, fist pressed against palm and bending into a deep bow, looked exactly like the kid who bounced into my car, charged over the seats with his muddy sneakers and had to be cajoled into sitting quietly and snapping his own seatbelt into place.

He looked exactly like the kid who threw his glove up in the air as he waited for the baseball to make its way into his section of the outfield. The boy who routinely sat criss-cross-applesauce during every other play. Coach can holler “baseball ready” all he wants, the term floats into the air and drifts away meaningless as he dances and stretches and plucks up grass by the blade. “I love baseball,” he insists. “I play great on the Wii.”

But this kid was different. Focused and alert. Watching every one's move and keeping in step. This was another sport entirely. And somehow he seemed to understand the language.

“Hey, buddy,” I yelled to get his attention. “Your sash is dragging on the floor. Let me help you retie it.”

Even my son recognized I seemed lost and in need of a translator.

“It's not a sash, mom. It's a belt. And I know how to tie it.”

Since he started taking a martial arts class I stand corrected. A lot.

The teacher isn't a master or a sensei, he's just “sir.”

It's not just a uniform or a gi, it's a dobok.

It's also not karate … or kung fu or Aikido … it's tae kwon do.

It comes from Korea, not Japan or China.

He riddles me with fact after fact, which I try to sort out with help from a careful comparison of dozens of Wikipedia entries. The variations, however, are lost on me.

What isn't lost on me is the stick-straight body of my normally fidgety son, in rapt silence, as he listens to the instructions of his new mentor.

As I watch from my place on the folding chairs, I am sure I couldn't duplicate the dance. Each step has a name I can't even pronounce.

It's all about the form. He moves through some basic stances. Foot plant. Foot plant. Swivel. Punch. Punch. Punch.

My son moves through this script fluidly and with confidence, needing only small corrections here and there. Leveling of shoulders, aligning of arms, position of feet. He finds the alignment on his own through repetition.

For an hour, twice a week, he seems like a different child. Focused and engaged. A little of this new stance even stays on him for a while after his dobok is in the laundry and he is swimming around in the tub.

He bows deeply, saying, “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” gently and unprompted.

Meditation in movement.

His teacher asks questions:

“Win or lose, does it matter?”

He and his classmates chime in unison:

“No, sir.”

“What matters is that you do your absolute best. It might not be 100 percent every day, but it's your best for that moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

And in that moment, it didn't seem foreign in the least.

Dawn til dusk

The day ended with ample time for a “family movie.”

We knew it would, whether the kids went off to dreamland on time or an hour late. That's how we roll on a Sunday night.

With darkness drifting in later and later, it becomes more and more difficult to convince the kids bedtime isn't connected to the light in the sky. They just think we're actively trying to pull the wool over their eyes by pulling the drapes over their windows.

The schedule is as much about nothing as it seems like everything:

Wake up. Breakfast. School. Lunch. School. Bike ride. Baseball. Dance. Dinner. Homework. Movie. Bed.

One activity morphing into the next as if it were a rope bridge over a raging river. Sure, it's dangerous but it's also a lifesaver.

Our kids can't seem to face that last week of school without powering down, and we can't face bedtime with sad-faced, belligerent children who feel robbed of their screen time.

Yes, I guess that means we are wimps. … We can admit it. School teachers wishing for a little more sanity as the 2013-14 academic year comes to a close are going to be sadly disappointed by us. We're not doing our part.

We're certainly not the parents we set out to be.

I'm sure we're not alone.

Children all over these United States trudge into school a few weeks shy of summer freedom with their zombie-like gazes or frenetic movements, and we parents should probably apologize.

Mea culpa.

It doesn't mean anything is going to change.

We know we can't do it all, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

What else is there? The more we do the more we get done.

We juggle work and play; baseball and dance recitals, science projects and field trips; not to mention running 5Ks in the morning and 4H meetings in the afternoon. We abandon the old when we start new things.

It's not as if it's all fun and games, though. Life keeps happening. And just as you think you have the juggling act down … the medical ball might bump up against the school ball and knock the work ball out of the rotation. Schedules have to be rearranged. Plans changed.

I have to keep telling myself that the change part is always the hardest.

That moment when you are heading in one direction and suddenly you find yourself turned around.

The job you didn't get. That test result you didn't anticipate. Going forward while looking back.

Some people just go with it … barely seeming to notice. But most people, I think, need at least a little while to adjust. They may just keep going in the direction they were heading until they run out of road.

I never cease to marvel at how we all seem to travel through this life on a path we think no one else has mapped. Not that their directions would have helped us much, seeing as how we don't all witness the same scenery flying past the windows of our souls.

It is all new to us, after all.

Such is life.

We might all end up at the same place, but there's really no single way to get there. At least, that's what it looks like in this brighter light at the end of the day.

Aught Seven

Time has just flown by.

He was born, and now he's going to be seven.

S-E-V-E-N.

Sprawled on the floor, surrounded by markers and dog-eared colored paper, he was charting a plan for what he expected to be The Best Birthday Party Ever.

It was going to be …

“Mom! How do you spell epic?”

“E-P-I-C.”

It was also going to be a sleepover; he was going to invite no one we knew; and the stupid, inflatable water slide we stored in a garbage can in the garage would not make a single appearance at this soiree as it had at the other six.

So … it was also likely to be a disappointment.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, dear. Just continue your planning. Pay no attention to me.”

He made it clear: He was not a baby anymore.

And he didn't want my help, except to bake the cake and remind everyone when it was time for presents. And possibly to keep the dog out of the pillow fort, which I could help build if I were not too busy making pajamas for all of his friends.

As I peered over his shoulder at the crowded page, I could see he was serious.

In three, neat columns he'd carefully (mis)spelled (in his best handwriting) out every detail of this party to end all parties:

“My party is going to be a sleepover. We are going to play video games and watch movies and eat popcorn that has real fake butter. ... You know, the kind you get in movie theaters that always looks yellow? That kind of popcorn.”

He had a guest list, an itinerary and a three-meal-menu that included all the basic food groups birthday parties typically deliver: pizza, popsicles, brownies, cake, cupcakes and popcorn. There would also be fruit leather, chips, pretzels and cheese curls. And what kid wouldn't want Lunchables for breakfast?

Token protein.

They would play Minecraft and watch movies and sleep on the couches (head to head, so no one got stuck smelling feet).

Every second was accounted for. Even my role as Chief Cook and Bottle Washer had been punched into a clock.

“Oh … and in the morning, could you make those little panda bears out of oranges that you made for Ittybit's friends on her birthday?”

It's good to feel needed, I consoled myself, especially now that I have been demoted from party planner to citrus fruit sculptor.

It's also good, I muse, that party planning has also given him the impetus to practice his soon-to-be-forgotten first-grade writing skills.

“How do you spell 'Fireworks'?”

“Um … let's see: 'N-O'.”

“But … ”

“I-L-L-E-G-A-L.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means your mother would go to jail.”

“But … Amah has fireworks every year for Dad's birthday. She doesn't go to jail.”

“Amah lives in a state where fireworks are L-E-G-A-L.”

He shrugs his shoulders and starts to erase his misspelled sparklers and bottle rockets.

“Wait! I know how to fix this,” he says with a grin.

He scribbles with delight at his own brilliance.

“Moov to ware firewoks are leegle.”

No problem. We have three, whole weeks. That's plenty of time.

We're even

It was a crazy, messed up, beautiful day. The kind of day that begs you to go outside and do something, even if all you can muster is to sit on the porch and drink coffee.

Cursing the pollen.

It was a beautiful day despite the sudden rain shower. And the low drone of constant bickering. And forgetfulness that ebbs and flows from morning to night like a tidal creek.

It's the kind of day that has you rushing around in the middle of it, trying to pretend you hadn't forgotten today was the big game … or the dress rehearsal … or the day you volunteered to chaperone.

 

You are right, I am certainly not the boss of you, child. But I'm not your employee, either. I'm not the unpaid caretaker of your misplaced library books, or the scout who knows by intuition where your uniform has disappeared to in the dark and overgrown forest that is your room.

But go ahead, kids, keep assuming I'm clairvoyant.

I'll keep sending you on wild goose chases. It amuses me.

I'm pretty sure I saw the dog playing with your cleats under our bed. Bring a flashlight. … And a dust mop.

Oh, I kid. … the kids.

Like the time she called me into her room in a panic, certain the cat napping on her bed was a doppelganger – a look-alike imposter who came in through the dog door on a rainy day.

Well .. I didn't kid her too much. I had my hands full trying to compare iris markings with family photos.

Of course, beautiful days aren't perfect. They can be filled with confounding contradictions. Like the moment, you notice the tiny fist-like buds of your peonies raised to the sun. Until you bend down to breathe in the fragrance and the sight of an army of red ants – trying to pry open each pink, silken finger – punches you in the gut.

Maybe it was the promise extended by such a summer-coming day that had me thinking about all the oppositional forces at work. Summer dangles itself like a carrot for some and looms over others like a long procrastinated chore.

Scrubbing the toothpaste globs from the kids' bathroom sink, for instance.

Minor quibbles, really.

Well … except for the rainbow-colored wad of chewing gum one of my moon-faced cherubs used to cement the toothbrush holder to the counter of the vanity. That one wasn't such a minor quibble.

That one required chisels and a permanent moratorium on chewable (but not swallowable) confections.

Not that I can't handle the grossness that perpetually oozes out of childhood's every crevice.

I've had all the inoculations, and stamps in every page of this passport.

Of course, that could be why I've been walking around in a haze. The half-sleep that would make me think I was a new parent were it not for the reality I am an old parent, whose kids are becoming more independent.

Who can do things like reach the shelf with the glasses and pour their own milk … when I remind them – for the eightieth time today – they are not the boss of me.

Say it with me: “I will not cry over spilt milk.” It's truly liberating.

“We're late,” I yell as I herd them out of the house. “Get in the car. Put on your seat belts. I'll be right there.” I scramble to find keys and wallet and gear we should probably just leave in the car. My mind is a blank as I grab items and stow them in a bag. A bat. A glove. A stuffed bear with a heart-shaped pillow.

No water bottle.

I run out the door and down the stairs.

It's cramped, the car is filled with things I should have donated yesterday, but I can just make out Ittybit's head in the center row. Seatbelt in place.

Good.

I start the car. Ease it backward out of the garage. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly.

My daughter laughs. …

“Aren't you forgetting something?”

“I don't think so ...”

“How about my brother?”

Doh!

She laughs and laughs. Giddy and eager to tell the story to anyone who will listen if we ever manage to make it to Little League.

“Just remember … I may have forgotten your brother, but you thought your cat was an imposter. I think we're even.”

Lost in the Weeds

Now that spring has finally sprung there is so much to do. The grass is overly tall, the garden is in need of tending, and the mulch huddled together in a pile (a zillion yards away from any landscaping) won't mosey on over to the hydrangeas and spread itself.

And though I really want to finish all these projects that someone else thought I should start (I hate pulling weeds), I am exhausted.

In fact, I think I might be sick.

Or maybe I just ate something that disagreed with me.

It is possible I am avoiding the world. ...

Whatever the reason for my after-the-kids-get-on-the-bus malaise – be it upset stomach or rainy day -- I find myself wanting to just lay on the couch and watch one more episode of Mad Men.

Before I know it, the bus returns with my children and I'm halfway through season two of “How I Met Your Mother.”

I'll just call it Netflix Syndrome. You tell yourself you'll watch just one show before you start your day and before long it's dark out and you've managed to plow though an entire season of 24 in less than a day.

It's embarrassing but true.

Ever since we made the executive decision to cut back on cable by finally embracing on-demand media streaming, I was spending every spare moment binge-watching all the situation dramadies I'd missed during the last decade.

Since 1999, if a show wasn't on HBO on Sunday nights between 9 and 11, I didn't see it.

So … beginning in March I've been making up for lost time.

I've seen every season of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, How I Met Your Mother, Orange Is The New Black, My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope, House of Cards and Lilyhammer.

Between spring cleaning and pool opening, I've tried to like a host of popular shows -- Arrested Development, The Office, Dexter and Parks and Recreation -- but I just couldn't do it. That's like nine-hours of TV hangover time I'll never get back.

It makes me afraid to even attempt Lost until the possibility exists that we might be snowed in.

And even though I've been mesmerized of late, I've also had my eyes opened to some stunning coincidences and the sad reality that I might have named my son after a television character I had no idea existed until yesterday.

It's quite the dilemma. We got rid of cable so we could save some money and get more done. The rationalization was that we'd stop wasting time watching the same old movies night after night, get more sleep and have energy to actually do something productive. Instead we were introduced to the cheaper drug of serial television on demand.

Now I have bags under my eyes, a garden of dandelions, and a lawn that is three inches taller than any of our neighbors' lawns.

I see it as a sign … If I could start the lawnmower I would mow the lawn. Luckily, however, there's a problem with a gas filter, and it looks like rain.

Of course I would feel guilty if I weren't at least somewhat productive. All the things I could be doing instead, I do during the shows … folding laundry, cleaning out the refrigerator, making the beds, sweeping the floors. The areas within eyeshot of a television are super orderly in my house.

I placate myself knowing that I am adding to my cultural understanding and enhancing social navigation as I pull old episodes of Weeds from the guide.

Eventually, the series will end and I will mosey on out into the world to pull the real episodes of weeds from my garden.

I might eventually get Lost in it.