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.

Letting off steam

As I read the instructions on the chamomile ‘aroma therapy’ shampoo bottle to make sure I’ve gotten it right (… do I rinse and repeat or is one wash sufficient?) the bathroom door swings open and a draft of cold air wraps a death grip around my cocoon of comforting steam.

A tentative voice cuts though the fog. … “Have you seen … ?”

Immediately, a new kind of steam swirls around me replacing the quickly receding mist from the spigot.

Before I even know what it is that I should be looking for among the tub toys, empty soap bottles and … oh, right, the whisk I use to make bubbles for ittybit’s bath … scattered haphazardly on the shower floor, I have lost patience as if it were that last sliver of soap through my fingers.

There are no keys, shoes (work boots or sneakers), wallets, pens, tools or utensils (except for that whisk) in the general vicinity of my shower. There are no cell phones, belts, black socks or that favorite shirt swimming among the suds that I can see.

Why is it, I wonder, that I am the keeper of the whereabouts of items big and small, which, for all intents and purposes, I might not even know what purpose they serve in the first place?

I am picturing the looming question and the steam is reaching my ears:

“Have you seen my collapsible flugal binder with the non-conducting elastic grip? I bought it yesterday, but now I don’t know where I put it.”

I don’t know, perhaps it’s with the expandable ra-mastan with the protective cover that came in the mail last week, I silently respond to myself.

Shallow breath … then explosion:

“Listen, I don’t know where your soccer clothes are, check the laundry. The mail is in the basket and your car keys are hanging on the hook /where they always are/! If you’re looking for your Leatherman: I think he left the building with Sarah Lee, but you might want to look UNDER that three-foot pile of flotsam and jetsam that’s been accumulating on the kitchen counter just to be sure.”

One would think I would be a little more sympathetic.

After all, I am the same person who loses my wallet at the drop of a hat and can never find my keys. The difference, of course, is that in most of those instances I am able to mentally retrace my steps and come up with a probable location in fewer than five degrees of separation.

Even when I think it’s a lost cause, such as the time I dropped my wallet in the Bowery and discovered it was missing on the train ride home, a few days later I found the wallet had miraculously appeared in my mailbox — credit cards, license and all (minus a four-dollar finder’s fee).

But I can’t think about any of that now, with suds stinging my eyes. I turn my attention back to the question feverishly answered but not yet asked.

“… Uh … I was just looking for the whisk. I was gonna make waffles. … Never mind, don’t worry about it. I’ll just use a fork.”

Thanksgiving needs more hurdles

In August I was so hungry I told my husband “I can’t wait for Thanksgiving.”

He suggested I make myself a sandwich, and perhaps that would tide me over.

Food holidays are the best of all. There are no sizes to get wrong or cards to address, and when the fourth Thursday in November rolls around the toughest decision any of us are force to make is what kind of pie to slab on our plate. Of course it’s a problem easily solved, just try them all.

Perhaps I haven’t learned enough about cooking to be intimidated by turkey day, or perhaps it’s just because I don’t have a love affair with food that makes the possibility of a kitchen disaster more fun than fearsome.

My mother once steamed a turkey over the stove after the element on her oven decided it was quits midway through a 30 lb. bird. She came up with the plan out of desperation, as she was hosting a houseful. The fact that her mother-in-law raved it was the most succulent turkey she’d ever had became a bragging right for my mother.

My own mother-in-law tells about the time the cloth she soaks in broth and drapes over the turkey disappeared following the final baste. It turned up during the meal, when, to her horror, her dog came coughing into the dinning room and retched up the rag.

We have friends who have scorched their lawns beyond repair or nearly lit their houses on fire by frying turkeys in the backyard. And there’s been talk of people cooking all kinds of things by accident along with the turkey — from band-aids to sink stoppers and even, sadly, pet rodents. Every time I hear the tales all I can do is furrow my brow and wonder —
WHY DOESN’T THIS EVERY HAPPEN TO ME!

I think those little catastrophes are exactly what our Thanksgiving needs. How else would we know to be thankful? How else are we to tell one from another if not by the year the turkey blew up, or the time the dog ate all the pies while we were watching football?

I’ve hosted Thanksgiving more than a handful of times, and the most exciting thing that’s happened is the time I forgot to remove the package of gore the people at the turkey factory leave behind.

I am by no means a perfectionist. There is no innate talent that causes the turkey to always be tasty, the potatoes to be fluffy and light or the stuffing to have just the right blend of seasonings. My husband’s specialty — creamed pearl onions — are always tender and savory. My mother’s gravy is consistently creamy and smooth, and the wine, thanks to my father, is always reserve and plentiful.

Somehow it seems as if there should be some obstacle that makes Thanksgiving a headache. It is after all a HOLIDAY.

I’m fairly certain that if the electricity went out in our house on Thanksgiving morning and stayed out all day, my husband would figure out a way to cook the turkey with a blow torch or a space heater. If it didn’t work, of course, we could be the first in our family’s history to serve a gathering of 10 hungry souls cold cereal and juice boxes. Now that would be a story we could proudly hand down to the grandkids.

A little leftover logic

For a society that has gone to the moon and back, figured out a way to send a 3,000-page manuscript through the phone lines (if you’ve got the time and paper to receive it) and brought the suburban shopping mall experience into our living rooms (or wherever you keep your computer), how is it possible that there are kids sitting at a school cafeteria table at 9 a.m. sinking their teeth into lunch?

One would think with all these time-saving technologies that have come to the marketplace in the past two decades, there’d be enough time for a midday meal somewhere round about midday.

I know we’re all wired a little differently, but I’m fairly certain there are few of us who are sitting down to eat our Wonder Bread sandwich an hour after eating our eggs and toast, but that’s just what’s happening in schools across the nation as populations grow and educators try to do more with less.

There are so many problems with education in this country, it may seem a little nitpicky thing to rail against such a practice as the time lunch is served, but I can’t help but think such inconsistencies are indicative of the problems and not aside from them.

How is it possible that this type of scheduling isn’t considered as inhumane and school-yard bullying? How is it possible that we all just don’t stand up and demand satisfaction?

It almost seems as if the more we know about nutrition, health and its impact on learning the less we are inclined to intervene.

Is it possible that convenience is something that we have come to rely on more than our sanity or even our own well being?

I bristle mostly because I picture my own ittybit, just a few short years from now, sitting on a bench eating her ham sandwich at some ungodly hour (presumably minutes before gym) and I want to scream, despite the fact that she routinely asks for, and I provide, chicken for breakfast and waffles for lunch.

I marvel at her choices: She’ll consistently pick green peas and yellow peppers over cookies and potato chips. She likes vegetables and meat, although she’s tasted chocolate and heartily approves.

My mom likes to remind me that she thinks we were all born with perfect appetites but our diet — whether it be self-imposed restrictions or monthly menu plans — is the monkey wrench that gums up the works.

Deep down I know she’s right, and I know the example I’m setting isn’t to be exalted. After all, I’ve been known to eat out of vending machines far too often, and practically live off of meals-ready-to-eat packages I horde in my desk drawer, ‘nuking’ them promptly at 10 a.m., starving because I’ve eaten nothing but leftover Halloween candy for days.

Perhaps eating a turkey sandwich at 7 a.m. wouldn’t be the worst thing I could do, after all.