The extra mile

How long had we been there trying on shoes? Maybe a half hour? Maybe more.

It had seemed to me to be a long time, anyway. The trip getting to the store was fraught with other commuters tailgating or performing automobile ballet and other magical maneuvers to get just a few feet ahead of us on the road.

I tried to relax by pretending there was a fire. Maybe they have an emergency to get to, and that's why they are so impatient. But I swore under my breath anyway.

Everyone always in a stupid rush to get nowhere.

She had her heart set on “combat boots,” or that's what she called the lightweight lace-up boots made of pleather that her generation would pair with a frilly dress and opaque tights. I didn't tell her about how my generation wore them, not after I saw the shadow of all the fashion possibilities parading past her eyes in the catwalk of her imagination.

And like any child about to get this weeks' heart's desire, she was thanking me profusely for this extra special spending spree.

Except …

Doh!

I forgot my wallet.

Typical.

Well, not exactly typical. Typical, for me, is walking to dinner with friends, having the wallet (unzipped) but not noticing as a credit card falls out of it like a single, solitary leaf windmilling away from its plastic tree.

Typical, as luck and mortification would have it, also involves friends finding it forthwith and spending the majority of the dinner hour making jokes.

Because, I can admit, my usual clueless has a humor all its own.

But I digress.

My daughter tries to conjure the card from thin air by going out to the parking lot to check the car as I dump out my bag's contents on the counter. Also a futile act, since I can see the card in my mind's eye where I left it … in a different wallet … on the dinning room table. At home. Twenty minutes away.

The lady behind the register is smiling her least awkward smile, not to mention apologizing to me for my own oversight.

My daughter came back into the store, arms lifted with the disbelieving expression of the tailgating drivers minus the anger.

Was it a minor or a major disappointment? I couldn't tell from her face. There were no frowns or tears. Just a half smile I couldn't decipher. She had planned to wear the boots tomorrow she told me; only I would be returning to the store at the same time to pick them up and pay for them. So she'd be wearing them in her mind.

But it was OK, she said, as the lady at the register tore a bit of tape, wrote our name on it and affixed it to our box, now stacked at the top of several others whose would-be owners also vowed to return at a later date.

It's just Picture Day tomorrow, and they don't show your feet.

And we drove home in a familiar silence that isn't exactly quiet since its filled with mild disappointment and pop radio banter.

I know I will drop her off at home, collect my wallet and go back to the store.

Who needs the hassle of a morning commute they don't need to make?

Especially when I'll get to see the official pictures: Her smiling face and unseen boots.

The bike path less traveled

Not long ago – and by “not long” I mean just prior to last Sunday – I had all but given up on the idyllic vision of our family riding bicycles through the countryside one day.

Now, I hadn't given up on this notion because of the lack of time or inclination on the part of adults, who, let's face it, aren't exactly the active sort in their off time. *Clears throat, cough-husband-cough, clears throat again.*

Nor was it my fear of winding, country roads with their dangerous blind curves; or newly licensed texting teens, Z-OMG; or even the middle-aged road ragers, some of whom have started making it a habit to show off the length of their middle fingers when we meet at the fulcrum of our weekend commutes – they in their cars, probably headed to a barroom at 7 a.m.; and me in my DayGlo-colored spandex, running at full jog along the road's shoulder, you know, sensibly.

No, my hopes for a family bike trip had circled the drain because of my youngest's insistence – at the ripe old age of eight -- that he would never, ever, never ever in a million years, ever ride a bike. Anywhere. Ever. Not unless it had training wheels, was tethered to a bike being ridden by his father, or was a part of some elaborate three-dimensional animated universe wherein he only had to stand in front of a blue screen and pretend to pedal. Then, and only then, would he even consider being anywhere near a bike.

No matter what I said or how I tried to convince him, no matter how many bikes he had to choose from, my son stubbornly stood his ground. He would not allow me, nor anyone else in our orbit, to run alongside him if there was even the remotest of possibilities they would let go of the two-wheeled death trap and watch incredulously as it catapulted off a cliff with him still astride, screaming in terror.

Because careening off a cliff as the whole world watches is what “letting go” apparently means to anyone who tries to define it.

Now, I must admit, a part of me felt a surge of relief at his intractability. Because of it, he would also never likely get a 35-pound bike in a tangle with a 10-ton truck. But the relief was tinged with sadness every time a six-year-old whizzed past us – training-wheel-free – on our way to the farmer's market.

But I was letting go.

And now I was moving on … to the grocery shopping part of my day.

I was even considering rolling the blasted training bike out to the end of the driveway just to be done with it. Maybe roll my own antiquated road bike right out there with it. Heck, the girl's peddle-pusher is over the hill, too. Ship them all out to the curb and dust my hands.

How many bikes had we acquired over the years anyway? This one is too small. This one is too tall. … A well-loved hand-me-down here, an unloved Christmas present there. It seemed our garage was a Goldie Locks and the Three Bears morality tale of bicycle ownership, except nothing fit quite right.

And then, as I was mentally cleaning out our garage in the cold cereals aisle, a text from my husband whistled into my phone.

Attached to it was a video of the boy riding the tiny bike at full speed around our quarter-mile driveway … sans safety wheels.

I let go of the idea of getting my garage back and remembered the middle-aged, middle-fingered roadways.

I took a deep breath and let that go, too.

Somewhere there's a bike path less traveled. And someday we'll get there.

A real eye-opener

He squints. One eye, mostly. The left one to be exact. I never thought any more of it than a quirk of personality hailing all the way back to the cradle.

His sister had oddities of her own when she was a baby. Like how she'd toddle around saying 'No' with an English accent; or how one side of her lip drew up into a tiny sneer whenever she parted the air inside her diaper.

She probably wouldn't want me to mention that the effects of infant effluvium made her grimace like a teacup-sized Elvis pretending to be a Beatle, but she's not speaking to me these days. It's not as if I'd understand her anyway. Sheeesh!

But while the girl's rock idol looks have shifted away from the coincidental to the deliberate as she matures, the boy has hung on to his concentrated wink as if it were his nature.

Which is probably why I felt stunned when his pediatrician suggested he see an eye doctor after his last physical.

“It's slight, but I think he has a correctable problem with his vision,” she offered and disappeared into the maze that is her office to find a list of referrals.

“Glasses,?” he asked in shock.

I nodded. “Maybe. … we'll see ...”

I tried to be non-committal as my own sense of shock trickled into guilt and dread.

Was this why his reading was lagging? How could I miss that he was as blind as a bat? Because, of course, this is where the mom-mind goes in the waiting room between preliminary diagnosis and specialist appointments: straight to wondering how the seeing-eye dog would get along with the family pooch.

His half-eyed squint turned into a gaze of tiny, flying daggers. He wanted answers, not shoulder shrugs and altered universes.

“I don't want glasses. I don't even need glasses. I see just fine.”

To which I just sighed and reminded my son that I'm not exactly the boss of him in this instance. That title would have to be transferred to the lady wearing the stethoscope necklace, who also gave him the clearance to pick out a few stickers.

“How does she know what I see?”

Honestly, I don't know how doctors can tell what a kid sees.

There he stood, heels against the wall, looking at a mirror reflection of the eye chart and holding one hand over his non-squinty eye. He was bouncing around from foot to foot as she asked him to read from the poster.

“Well, the words don't make any sense even if I could read them,” said my boy, without a smidgeon of self-doubt.

“Well, let's just try calling out the letters, then shall we?”

“Well, some of them look like numbers, so I'm not sure if I'm seeing the same chart.”

“Do your best.”

“E, P, F, T, O, Z, L ... L … M, N, O, P”

The alphabet song was a dead giveaway that he'd turned over his paper and handed back the test once the letters got to be slightly smaller than poster-sized.

“I just wanted to sing,” he noted by way of explanation.

So, we got to do it all again a few weeks later, this time with a specialist, in a darkened room, with the kid wearing a halo and space-age goggles.

“How's this?” asked the doctor as he spun lens after lens into place. With each click, he'd ask my son to tell him if the letters looked better or worse.

"I guess better. Although I think that S is a 5, which seems pretty tricky."

"Better or worse?"

"Definitely worse. It's all blurred out."

“Better or worse?”

“Better but also a little worser. Mom says worser isn't a word, but I think it should be.”

“Better or worse?”

“Oh, that's just terrible. I think you turned the S into a 5 just to trick people. And that O looks like a D now, too.”

“Better or worse?”

“Hey. That's pretty good. Better. Clearer, too.”

And so … you can imagine it came as an even bigger surprise when the doctor switched on the light and declared his eyesight … “Not that bad. I doubt he'll even notice the difference if I give him a prescription.”

Before I could clear my throat, the boy was making the decision.

“Oh, I DEFINITELY need glasses. My eyes are wide open, now.”

Sleep cycle

These days, at least around my house, sleep is like an errant teenager. It comes home late, sneaks out early, or locks the door and does all manner of things we won't talk about in pleasant company.

It's always worried.

When it does address you, it is sullen and what it relates is unsatisfying.

And no one is exempt.

I can hear sniffling from two rooms away.

And now there's a cough.

“I can't sleep,” announces the smallest voice, not a bit raspy from actually trying.

A light snaps on … and then off.

On again.

The toilet flushes. And then the faucet on the sink opens up.

But it doesn't close all the way.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

There are footsteps back to bed.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It just seems to get louder by the drop.

Soon, however, the girl can't stand it. She growls and swings open her door, using every ounce of her being to pound against the floor in protest as she turns off the tap and the light.

Her noise inferring neither were not her responsibility … but there she was putting herself out to have quiet if not peace.

“I need to sleep!” she announces into the air, knowing it would reach her brother … and her parents, who haven't twisted his arm any to toe the line.

The door slams and there is a roil of bedclothes.

Her unfinished thoughts persist in a tumult of tossing and turning.

We are half past the time where I can help. Now I have to wait for her to come to me.

And even then I have to be resigned to the notion that I can only listen and offer suggestions she won't take.

She has to make her own mistakes. And then blame me for them.

More tossing. More turning.

Sleep can't come in just yet.

And it won't visit the boy while it waits, either.

Sleep scrunches its shoulders and listens in the hallway for its chance.

Another sniffle.

Another cough.

The boy pushes past it once again and appears at my bedroom door in his too-small pajamas – his second visit in the half hour – rattling off complaints about the determination of Sleep to stay at a distance. It won't come … or it won't stay.

He is afraid bad dreams will hover over him in the upper bunk.

He doesn't want to count sheep or think any happy thoughts, the only two suggestions I have. And so I follow him to his room and settle down alongside him waiting for this errant guest to arrive.

I will know it by the deep and rhythmic breathing …

and the sound of questions turning into the sound of snoring.

“What's that noise?”

It's a tree limb rubbing against the house.”

“You can't really dig all the way to China, can you?”

“No, you really can't.”

“Are snakes nocturnal?”

“Not exactly.”

“Are they diurnal?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well then, what are they?”

They're cold-blooded, so they're active when they need to be and when it works out temperature wise. Could be night, could be day. It depends.”

But wake-life of reptiles isn't what's keeping him up. It's something else.

“Do I need glasses?”

“Probably. Maybe. I don't know,” I hedge. “We'll have to wait and see.”

“But I can see now. Why do we have to wait?”

“You see now the way you've always seen. But after you get tested you might see better. Then you'll actually see.”

Before he can ask another question, I remind him of my purpose here in the dark: To help Sleep find its way into the room. Because no good things will come if sleep doesn't visit.

And even if no good things ever come, you'll need Sleep even more.

“You really don't make sense when you talk.”

“I think I need your Sleep.”

Still sitting in the dark

The room was dark.

No one was talking.

Occasionally, a beep or a ping would start a war between siblings.

“You did that on purpose,” accused the girl.

“You set my house on fire,” lobbed the boy.

“It was an accident.”

“There are no accidents.”

Such are the pitfalls of weekends filled to overflowing with virtual entertainment.

“Let's go to a movie,” my husband chirped on this particular Saturday afternoon just as the kids were settling into their semi-weekly “School-has-taken-my-weekday-'Mindcrafting time'-and-sent-it-into-the-nether” computer games binge-fest.

And though he had given the order, it was up to me to rally the troops.

A roar went up from either end of the couch, where our two little potatoes had sprouted.

“Now?! We can't go now1 I'm not done building the super-mega-world out of emeralds and diamond armor, and I have to find all the sheep that got out of my Ultra Castle,” whined the boy.

“And I'm on the verge of finally getting a horse farm,” noted the girl, with exasperation.

“It'll all be there when we get back,” I say with utter certainty though I have no idea if the games have a pause button. “We're going to a movie, and that's final.”

The irony that we are swapping one static media experience for another on this fleetingly beautiful fall day isn't lost on me. But I am quiet as the kids snap shut the computers and shuffle around the room looking for their footwear.

Nor do I seem to care that I can't be bothered to sound at all enthused.

“How far is the theater?”

“Not far.”

“What's the movie?”

“I don't know. Something rated PG. Ask your dad.”

They don't seem to want to open that can of worms, so they dodder around scanning the floor for sneakers instead. I should feel relieved there wasn't more of an argument. And do feel a temporary relief that they're not acting like an air-conditioned cinema is the entertainment equivalent of a dank and musty cellar, where people like us throw children who complain. But that relief is shortlived.

“Found one,” the girl says to the boy and tosses the rubber-soled shoe across the room, striking him in the ankle. “It's yours.”

“OWWWWW! You did that on purpose,” he hollers at me.

“Say you're sorry,” I holler at her.

“Sorry,” she hollers back at him and throws another shoe in his direction.

I just stand there … mouth agape … catching flies. (Literally: local farms are spreading manure on their fields and flies have ventured forth).

I'm not sure it can be made any more clear. We are a cliché.

We are just a camera crew and a laugh-track away from being a 70s-era made-for-syndication sitcom or direct-to-video movie.

You know, the kind of show where the child is smarter than the parent. And the parent spends the whole 22-minute episode cluelessly puttering around the house looking for her sunglasses, which have been on her head the whole time?

Or where the kids, accompanied by an eerie soundtrack and no parents, insist on going down into the dark, cobweb-garlanded basement during a power outage when there's a serial killer on the loose.

You can probably guess where each of us would be cast.

I'm envisioning a brunette Hope Davis playing me while a hologram of James Gandolfini stands in for my husband.

The kids, on the other hand, will have to be played by their Minecraft avatars.

Eventually, we make our way out the door and into the car. Seatbelts are fastened, and we ease out of the driveway in the direction of our destination.

Soon we'll be seated. Side by side, in the dark, not talking to each other. Again.

I wonder if we can take bets on which of us will spill the tub of popcorn?

Time and space

What time is it?

I sense the panic before I hear it. Lights go on across the hall. There are audible sighs and other noises of discontent. The clamoring around starts next. Small items mostly, I can't tell what they are, but I know they are being shuffled and dropped. I can sense the disappointment next.

She did not find what she was seeking.

She harumphs around some more but doesn't call out for assistance.

A part of me wishes I were still asleep. The other part wishes I were awake and dressed and smiling some beatific parental smile at my daughter as she started her day.

But I am not that person. Not these days, anyway.

She hasn't needed me to prod her along, so I don't get up with her anymore. I lay in bed and listen to the tap run until the shower switches over.

Close the curtain, I think. Water is probably sluicing over the edge.

Later, I'll use the wet towel I find on the floor, by the side of her bed, in a heap of clothes that will greet me when I go into her room to shut off lights.

Why bother harping?

I turn over and cover my shoulders with blankets while she hums as she dresses and brushes her hair.

But I can't go back to sleep. I just put off for as long as I can the feeling of shock as my feet first press down on the cold floor. Like knives piercing bone.

I won't limp around long. I know in three steps I will feel fine.

But my feet haven't touched the floor yet.

What time is it?

I reach for my phone.

It's so early …

The sun hasn't even crept out from its nighttime roost, somewhere beyond the earth. ...

But I know by the numbers on the screen that it's almost too late. The bus will be coming soon and with it more panic.

I'm still in bed. She can't hear me ask the questions in my head, but they fill the space between us anyway.

Do you have your homework packed?

Do you have your shoes on?

Did you have any breakfast this morning?

Are you buying lunch today?

A curt “yes, mom,” with increasing irritation, is her answer each time. Or so I imagine.

Thing is, she has this all under control. Even if she's not doing things the way I would do them, things are getting done.

Downstairs, the refrigerator opens. Glass rattles for a while and becomes silent. The door alarm sounds.

“Let's not refrigerate the kitchen, shall we?”

But I didn't say it aloud.

The bottles shift and clink again as the door slurps closed. The beeping stops. I know she hears my voice in her head sometimes.

The television switches on, or maybe I hear chatter from a computer tablet propped against the coffee machine as she pours cereal, and then milk, and finally rummages for a spoon. She has a routine.

She will put the milk away, but she won't wipe up the spills.

I might be annoyed once I see it later, who knows? Sometimes just grab a sponge and sop up the angst along with the slop.

What time is it?

I already know it's later still. The sky is filled with light now, and the house is silent once again.

And then comes the real panic.

I get up and grab yesterday's clothes. I pull them on and find some scuffs. I make it out to the edge of the driveway before it's too late.

A milkshake in time

“My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,” sings my daughter in the back of the car on our way home from fair.

“And their like, it's better than yours,” her father answers in kind.

“Damn right, it's better than yours,” I declare as and the pair of them launch back into circular rounds of the risque song and we slowly inch along with the rest of the fairgrounds-leaving traffic.

It's late, past bedtime, but even rubbing his eyes the boy joins in:

“Maaaaaah milkshake brings all the boys to the yard! Our shake was better than yours,” he adlibs.

Of course, we were being literal as well as a little self-congratulatory.

For three of the five days of the county fair, our 4-H club had been taking shifts at the milk bar; a small shed tucked away on a back street of the fairgrounds, farthest from the midway.

The line always snakes around the building as people wait patiently for their vanilla shakes and hot fudge sundaes, each one dished up by a kid who can get into the fair for free because of their age.

It's tradition.

Tt had been at least 30 years since I'd been inside the pink-painted building -- or scooped ice cream into slick stainless-steel cups setting them up to spin on the milkshake machine for that matter – and the terrible sound of the metal rotors grinding against the inside of the stainless mixing cup reminded me of the rust that had built up on my muscle memory.

And, truth be told, as we stood there waiting for instructions on that first shift, I had to admit the rest of it wasn't coming back to me. I'd forgotten almost everything about the milkshake process that I'd learned while I was a 4-Her and had volunteered with my own mother “assisting” at the very same booth,

“Don't worry,” said our fearless leader. “It will come back to you. All I need you to do is rinse out the milkshake cups and keep the counters clean … you think you can do that?”

I'm pretty sure the sigh of relief that came out of me at that moment blew some napkins out of a basket five feet away.

Dishwashing and counter cleaning are my life, at least they are some of the chores I'm not unhappy doing.

Turns out milkshake making and “root beer floating” could be my daughter's life, and customer service seems to come to her naturally.

“Twenty-seven,” she yells, holding up a Blueberry Cheesecake Double-dip with a little whipped-cream in a dish. “Special order. TWENTY-SEVEN,” she hollers louder when she gets no answer the first time.

She smiles as the customer steps up, and she hands over the treat, saying “This was my favorite one to make. Enjoy.”

As I witnessed her little moment, I was so proud. The kind of proud you're not supposed to be. The kind of proud that comes from ownership, from having made something yourself with your own two hands.

Wash, rinse, repeat. That is my job.

Support staff.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

And I am happy watching her work.

Traditions like these are important, too.

“This really is the best thing at the fair,” said an elderly gentleman as he waited for his coffee thick-shake with chocolate syrup. When she calls his number and hands him the milkshake he compliments the club and its service. “It's lucky they have you. You do a fine job.”

She stands a little taller and smiles. “We're all pretty lucky, especially you. We're almost out of coffee ice cream.”

Another fair tradition.   

Just a regular Joe

Excitement was all around us. The crack of a bat. The roar of the crowd. There was even a dancing mascot balanced with cat-like precision on the concrete wall between our section and the outfield.

Then I saw the ball. It was headed our way. High overhead, ready to land somewhere un-gloved and un-helmeted with a thud.

And for the briefest of brief moments I was wondering “What was I thinking?”

Fully three-quarters of our small family had never been to a real live baseball game in our lives.

My husband, the exception, had been to Fenway when he was 10. … And blah, blah, blah something about how it was terrible and how baseball wasn't really his game. But I don't know, I had stopped listening after 'Fenway,' until his voice went silent and I was able to slip in “Hey, we're all going to The Joe on Monday night.”

Now … most people around these parts have been to the baseball stadium located on the Hudson Valley campus at least once since it opened in 2002, right?

Love of Baseball? Curiosity? Or just something to do on a lazy summer evening that won't cost you a house payment?

Well … To tell the truth, the thought never crossed my mind until some friends decided to purchase a block of tickets for a night of Class A short season play.

In fact, the whole room fell silent as my children wondered why on earth THEIR MOTHER would ever drag them to a game NEITHER of them were playing in?

And with foul balls cracked in wild trajectories over the stands, it seemed they might have been right.

I started to hold my breath with every 90-mile-an-hour pitch.

“This one's coming straight for us,” yelled a man in the crowd.

Sure enough, an incoming foul ball glanced off a neighboring shoulder and bounced into the next section.

The man who had “taken one for the team,” was, luckily, still smiling.

And strangely enough, so was I – pressed metal signs warning of the dangers of foul balls, notwithstanding.

Because all around me were signs of things I never expected. Signs of real memories in the making that aren't part of any year-end statistics. There is the grandfather who kisses his grandson's head. A father bouncing his daughter on his lap. A row of people smiling and laughing as their kids holler “batter up.” A man with a fishing net scooping up foul balls to hand to the kids in stands.

This was more than fun.

The score was 4 to 2, and my kids were going wild.

Sodas. Hot dogs. Popcorn. An ice-cold beer. … The only thing missing was the mechanical burp of a t-shirt gun, as the stadium reps tossed the freebies into the stands by hand.

My daughter, dressed in the shortest shorts she own and wearing her complementary baseball hat ironically, was busy creating a dramatic reading of the player stats as they flashed on the outfield screen.

Girls!

She lost her mind, and potentially her voice for the next few days, when trying to tip the Noise-O-Meter into the red.

But then a blast of music from the loudspeakers sent my son toward me at top speed.

“Hold this,” he hollered, thrusting a cup-full of freeze-dried ice cream spheres into my hands.

“This is my jam! I gotta dance.”

And with those words, the entire group of us – a club of friends and neighbors in the pursuit of running – were treated to an eight year old's version of locking and popping. His hip-hop style made even more entertaining by the alternating heights of already mismatched socks, and his new baseball cap worn backwards and on a tilt.

Boys!

“Do the worm,” his sister begged.

“Not enough room,” he responds as he reaches out to reclaim his space-age dessert and the seat next to me along left field.

Another lefty at bat.

“Another foul ball, headed our way,” announces the boy as if he were paid to. “Be on the lookout.”

And so we watched carefully and exhaled great shouts of delight when the batter knocked the ball straight into center field, setting the stage for a grand-slam homer.

“I have NEVER seen this team lose,” yelled the boy.

To which I just had to laugh. “Game's not over, champ. You haven't seen them win yet, either.”

Nope. I don't care who you are -- die-hard bibliophile or bookish baseball fan – it doesn't get much better than this on a summer-fading night.

Simply complicated

They were gathered around me like medical students crowding a hospital bed. They watched every move I made as if lives depended on their ability to bear witness.

And they were silent.

But it was my turn to ask the questions.

“How do you turn it on?” I asked the boy.

“This lever, right here, slides down,” he said, raising and lowering his hand in the air in front of him.

“How do you adjust the settings?” I asked the girl.

“I believe that knob underneath the lever has number markings. That's how you make adjustments.”

Good. Good.

Tricky question: How do you interrupt the process in an emergency?

“Hit this button right there,” said the boy with a smirk. “The one that says 'Cancel'.”

OK, almost ready … One more question:

“What should you never, ever, ever, ever do. ... Not in a million years?”

And they answered in unison using the tone-deaf-sing-song voice of pre-adolescent apathy: “Stick anything metal into the slots. … We know, we know. ... Can we just make toast now?!”

This was a momentous occasion, after all.

We have never, ever, in the dozen or so years of being a family, owned a proper toaster.

If you wanted evenly crunchy bread to slather with butter and jam in our house you had one of three options:

1) Let it go stale.

2) Stand in front of the toaster oven and burn all your fingers (as well as the bread).

3) Go to a diner.

Your wondering why you're reading this right now, aren't you? You are wondering: What kind of person doesn't have a toaster? What kind of rube can't toast bread in a toaster oven?

Well, I'll tell you.

The kind of person who secretly calculates the cost ratio of oven-to-toast-product efficiency. And then asks: How many ovens in a kitchen is too many? We already have a convection oven, a microwave oven and a toaster oven, do we really need the smallest in the series of nesting ovens to crisp bread?

Oh, wait. … That was my husband back there. He was the one questioning my sanity and my counter space as I gushed over how the kids had made their own whole grain “toast flags” at grandma's house. How they'd even looked up nations' flags to accurately represent in stripes of peanut butter and jam. Not to mention how cute Japan's center looked in a bright red, homemade raspberry blend.

“For the sake of their global education, we need a toaster.”

So off to the department store we went.

Picked out a cherry of a toaster. Now, I can't be certain, because I didn't do any in-depth research into the purchase. But it sure looked like a snazzy device, with its name-brand logo, its bagel-sized slots, its one-touch cancel feature, and its easily removable crumb tray.

We would not be burning our house to the ground because we'd been unable to empty a more difficult crumb tray, no sir-ee.

As we stood there -- mouths watering for the taste of toast-y goodness -- I started to wonder why I've neglected this simple culinary pleasure.

Wondering why I'd ever settle for burnt-on-one-side-soggy-on-the-other substitute the toaster over spit out at me all these years when a toaster was always just a hardware-store impulse-buy away?

But then reality has a way of needling in, reminding me that “simple” has a way of getting complicated.

Turns out, I am also the same person who buys a toaster, plugs it into the wall, gives their kids a five-part tutorial on the safety and efficacy of using counter-top appliances only to find out the toaster is a dud.

That's right. It didn't work. Fresh off the shelf and out of the big box store and … Nothing. No light. No heat. No toast.

I was speechless.

“I say we zap it with the mixer,” laughs the girl. “I'll rub the beaters together and yell, 'clear!' That should get it working again.”

“Wait. Hold on. Hold on. ... Since when do we have a mixer?”

Do they feel our pain?

“Do I need a pencil sharpener,asked the boy as he skipped alongside the shopping cart, thumping his feet in time with the clank of a rickety wheel.

“Nope,I answered with confidence. His third grade school supplies list was refreshingly brief:

Twenty-four pencils, two erasers, a large box of crayons, two glue sticks, two dry erase markers, one spiral note book, three composition books, a cube of sticky notes and a few yellow highlighters.

“But do I neeeeeed one?he asked again, prompting me to read the paper in my hand more carefully.

It was a crumpled, messy thing. All summer long I had taken it out of his hot little hands, refolded it and pegged it back onto the refrigerator above his natural reach but not above his much taller, chair-dragged-out-from-the-dining-room height.

“It's not time yet,I said gruffly, knowing that other families may be able to save on school supplies by buying early but not us. All those shiny new things would be soggy and used before September if they lived in our house too long.

“Are you sure I don't need a pencil sharpener,he interrupted my flashback with new urgency.

The only other items on the list two boxes of facial tissue and a box of gallon-sized resealable plastic bags we would find at the grocery store.

I turned the page over.

It was blank.

“No. Pencil sharpener is definitely NOT on the list.”

His face told me that somehow I had not understood his question, I had missed the subtleties of tone with respect to his back-to-school shopping voice, which was only slightly different from his 展hen is it Summer Vacationvoice and his 鄭re We There Yetvoice.

But, even he understood that his mom's School Shopping voice seemed a little too relaxed to be catching his meaning. He had to be more blunt:

“Can I have a pencil sharpener anyway?”

I didn't even speak I just nodded toward the cart. It was a supply-side demand that seemed a breeze compared to what I faced with his middle-school-entering sister, who stalked along behind us, staring at her list and muttering to herself as we crisscrossed the store.

She smiled faintly and her eyes glazed over as she unfurled the two-sided, tiny-print scroll that one might presume from its size listed every item available in inventory at the office supply warehouse.

“This may take a while,she said with an air of adolescent importance. There are so many things I need.

By the time we finished, the wonky-wheeled cart was having trouble navigating turns it was so overfilled with notebooks and binders, reams of loose-leaf paper, page dividers, index cards, pencils and pens, pocket folders and zippered pencil cases, markers and rulers, and tools I had to look up online.

“Is a 'four-function' calculator a standard device,I asked the cardboard display of scientific instruments, presumably visiting from Texas.

It never answered, it just mocked me with too many buttons and symbols I didn't understand.

“Mom, you're losing it,sang my daughter as she dropped an inexpensive calculator in the carriage. It was a pretty pink-colored plastic cherry on top of the haul.

By the time we got to the check-out line I was worried my credit card might just collapse under the weight of this pending debt. But I was more worried the forrest that gave its life for this school year would haunt my dreams.

And I just hope all the pencils my boy sharpens unnecessarily don't feel any pain.

A mother on the edge in Vacationland

The squabbling had reached a crescendo. Vacation wasn't even halfway over and already the meter on flailing tempers had run out.

Mostly, it seemed, the meter had run out on mine.

It always starts innocuously enough. A little theatrical play put on by vacationing cousins. The stage has a rumpled bedspread. The costumes are fashioned out of moth-eaten table cloths. When the plot meanders -- as it traditionally tends to do in these homemade productions – and the smaller of the relatives get antsy, the advice to break a leg, all of a sudden sounds literal.

Arguments escalate.

Growling starts.

Punches aren't pulled.

Timeouts become cease-and-desist orders.

Over and over it goes, rolling like waves in an ocean that is childhood.

As a parent, I try to make everyone happy. But it soon becomes clear that I am fighting a losing battle. As a parent, I feel, I have failed.

All along, my decisions have lacked decisiveness. I had tried to balance the waves while the middle ground I'd hoped to occupy eroded away.

And then the whole ocean seemed to crash over me.

Someone, I suppose, had to step in. But when that someone was my husband -- the man, who, up until this point had reaped heaps of praise for grilling the meals that I had prepared and washed up -- something inside me broke.

The words had come out of his mouth like legal decree from someone almighty.

Decision made. The end. All that's left is for him to dusts his own hands and turn on his heels and for everything else to fall into step behind him.

Only there was a wake from this top-down decree, and in it was a building storm and an open convertible waiting for the rains to come pouring inside.

I wanted to scream.

In my head I could hear the crystal-shattering notes as they headed straight for the intended target.

But when I looked around I saw a roomful of uncomfortable faces -- some of whom were probably wishing they were playing "Barbies" in the next room instead of watching me lose my bearings in the land of adulthood -- nothing came out but three overly calm words: “I am done.”

I'm not doing this anymore.

I'm not smoothing anything over. I'm not making anything nice. I don't want to be the monkey in the middle.

If this keeps up I'll end up just being the monkey slinging poo.

I am done being a referee.

I can't make everyone get along. I can't force Tab A to fit into Slot, B and I don't understand why we have to fix it to begin with. Hand the kids a roll of transparent tape and they will revel in their own handiwork.

So what if it's ugly?

So what if it breaks?

They can go right ahead and fix it all by themselves. They will use chewing gum or spit or the whole roll of tape. And in the end it will be a mess or a masterpiece of their own creation.

The credit will be all theirs.

Because I'm done. I'm off the clock. I'm not taking any calls.

Leave a message after the beep, I'll talk to you next week.

When I'm back from vacation.

Spitting images

“She's the spitting image of you,” said the lady behind the counter as she handed my daughter a sack full of candy with one hand, and me a fistful of change with the other.

I just smiled as I stashed the cash, but I could feel the tiny little room in the tourist-town trinket shop shrink into an uncomfortable silence.

Ittybit remained quiet, too. Though, something was different in her silence. Her face showed not just the pre-teen annoyance of being noticed at all – an always futile attempt to hide embarrassment – but also an embarrassment that has started maturing into a wound.

I knew that expression. I've worn it myself. It was merely a pink tinge on peachy flesh, but it burns like raw scrapes on thin skin.

She does NOT want to look like me. She doesn't want to dress like me … or talk like me … or make any of the same decisions I have made in my lifetime … ever.

As hurtful any of those thoughts as can be. … we've all had them.

And I suppose, all it really amounts to is that she wants to be herself: which, I try to explain, is really just the mirror image of the person she sees in photographs. ... If it's an image at all.

Our frail egos … wanting to be different … and the same, only uniquely so.

This isn't a proud feeling, though it is filled with pride. We love our parents and grandparents, we may feel safe looking into comfortable faces and secure leaning into their ample embraces -- but we don't want to look like them with their flabby folds and their furry moles.

We just can't help ourselves. And who am I to blame her?

She doesn't want to look like me – a 40-something matron with frown-lines and unnaturally colored hair – any more than I want to resemble my mother – a 70-something stroke patient with a crooked smile.

Moreover, who are we to blame them for noting a resemblance?

Don't we all fall into that same trap? On the surface, the words mean nothing. Just noise to interrupt the silence. Just throwaway sentiments we inflate in our minds to epic proportions.

I don't know why small talk often has big implications. But it does seem to be just the tip of an iceberg that has the potential to sink our foundering ships. Small talk is the reason the internet exists at all; to put all possible slights (not caused by dinner-table politics) in listicle form as a cautionary tale for all who have ever Googled in the past or who will ever Google in the future, whatever the search engine name.

Ten things you should never say to a new mother …

Ten things you should never say to an adolescent …

Ten things you should never say ever again to anyone …

Ten things you can add to the ten things we subtracted last time you were here …

Of course … until you find yourself among strangers, and ice must be broken … what else is there besides taking note of the weather and other random observations, such as: “Well, I can tell that you two are definitely related, you look like the spitting image of each other.”

“Spitting image. That's just gross,” she growls in deflection once we've left the store.

“You don't really look like me,” I tell her in reassurance, the same way my mother told me. “We have long hair and light skin and we walked in here together. The mind draws those conclusions, not the eyes.

“But next time maybe we should try an experiment. Next time, YOU should buy the candy and I'LL eat the candy. Let's see if they think you're the mom and I'm the kid.”

“That would probably just make me spitting mad.”

The great out of doors

At 7 a.m., when there was still breeze in the air and sun was yet to scald, the great out of doors seemed like such a good idea.

"We're going out," I had said to the kids.

"Can we bring our iPods?"

"No!"

"Will there be free wifi when we get there?"

"No, but there will be free woodlands."

Turns out my kids already know everything there is to know about the great out of doors, and it seems highly overrated.

For one thing, it's hot out there.

Know how I know? My eight-year-old tells me repeatedly of his suffering. He also reminds me that his socks are damp and his shoes are swamped. And that it’s all my fault.

Eight-year-olds are big on assigning blame.

His sister's job, on the other hand, is to remind me -- wordlessly, of course, but not without ample drama -- that good parents would have brought bug spray and water, and quite possibly a Sherpa, on this forced hiking trip into the wilderness.

But there we were anyway, sprinting around a mile-long forest loop, trying to get back to where we started so this particular trail of tears could end.

Sadly, we are not the people we imagine ourselves to be, and this outing proves it. We are neither rugged nor adventurous. And as a family, we don't have an intrepid bone between us. Insipid, I'm afraid, is more defining of our structure.

So we do what it is one does when they come to the sudden realization that you have become a cultivated mushroom.

You try and fake it.

"This will be fun," I command, not even trying to sound convincing. "You have no choice." Case. Closed.

But within the decision that has been made for them, they always have choices. And they know it. The complaint department is always open for business.

"This is the worst day ever," accuses the boy as he trails along behind. And you don't even care if I get lost. You. Don't. Even. Care!"

The girl is no longer speaking, she's just swinging her arms in windmill fashion around her head and sobbing in great big puffs of exasperation.

"Oh great! Ticks and mosquitoes and chiggers, oh my."

"Nature! It's all over me, get it off," is only funny when a cartoon giraffe says it.

"Next time we should bring only the dog," I say to my husband, whose only role in this haphazard outing was to hold on to the end of a leash and keep the only member of our family who was having a good time from chasing squirrels.

"Or at least earplugs," was his tepid response.

He didn't want to be here, either. But he understood why I did.

The house would still be there, a refuge from the stifling heat, its refrigerator filled with frozen treats and in its warren of rooms a safe haven where the tweets of electronic fauna go undisturbed.

It is placid enough, but ultimately unfulfilling.

Summer should be filled with more. It was when I was a kid. Bike rides and fishing trips. Camping under the stars. A whole day to let the sand wedge between your toes and the sun bake your skin.

SPF wasn’t even a thing yet, Neither was Stranger Danger or Lyme disease.

Times change and we much change with them.

Otherwise there will just be out of doors.

Salad fork, dinner fork, pitchfork

I know my patience level registers time differently than clocks usually do. Waiting for things to begin (like breakfast) and for things to end (like a baby crying) can seem to take forever.

I'm just having trouble imagining how the Internet village turned a negative dining experience for one little foodie, and her family's subsequent review of it at a Portland, Maine diner, into "high-fives" for the cook. But it did, and my Facebook stream was swimming in discontent.

"Good riddance, annoying children who pester me in the hipster eateries I like to frequent because of their boozy brunches." (Not yours, though. Your children are perfect just like mine. They understand the importance of humanely raised veal and locally sourced organic kale.)

Too snarky? Okay. You're right.

Parenting is hard. Business owning is hard. Personally, I'd rather not frequent a diner that takes 40 minutes to serve breakfast, and then freaks out when you order three pancakes instead of two. But by all means, high-five a cook who responds to a tantrum with a tantrum. It's your prerogative as a patron.

But don't think this story is really about rude parents or about crazy cooks.

This story is about the village. A village with pitchforks. This story is a story because people are supporting a cook, who is unapologetic for screaming at a crying child. She declares it was the right thing to do because it worked.

That's it? A serene dining experience is all that matters?

So many people in my little social web seem to think so. And right this very minute some of them are planning trips to Maine so they can “high-five” this new celebrity chef, who has struck a blow for all customers tall enough to ride the bumper cars.

Bully for them.

Parents have been mostly silent, oddly enough. Cowed, perhaps, by the villagers with their pitchforks.

You may be arguing about your own restaurant experiences: how cooks are volatile, how parents of young children are rude, you know … how much you have suffered. But if you go to Maine just to patronize this business, you go in appreciation of an adult losing her cool at a toddler.

It's also not beyond possibility that the owner just succumbed to the pressure cooker that is a commercial kitchen. Everyone is entitled to a bad day.

But celebrating rudeness with a special order of intolerance seems just as distasteful.

But there is one other angle I think we've all forgotten in this debate.

Restaurant owners who treat people of all ages with kindness, and who actually enjoy feeding people, make much better experiences for everyone, too.

Having been a mother of an occasional unhappy traveler, I have always been grateful for the kindness of strangers. I owe them thanks.

So to cooks who make substitutions ...

And to servers who give smiles with an extra bread basket ...  Or who fix a mistake I made as a parent (kid is crying because I ordered wrong, I know it's not your fault).

Even the folks at countless next tables, who not only talk to but also listen to my kids as they prattle on with exuberance for life ...

You are the unsung heroes. You are the proverbial village. And I wish to thank you for making our dining experience a joy.

A mid-summer night's wake up call

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep ….

4:30 a.m.

Who set that alarm?

There is no answer. Just the ear-splitting sound of a new day dawning without the warm face of the sun.

I stumble across the room and try to turn off the sound. I press all the buttons, rotate all the dials, flick all the levers and still it drones on with its digital shriek.

“Just unplug it,” says my husband tossing around the gravel in his sleeping throat.

Just then, the cat walks across my chest, carrying ill-gotten game in her mouth:  a sable cosmetic brush.

She tosses the brush into the air, and it lands with on the floor with a soft thud before she skitters off to attack the prize again.

Another beautiful summer day off to an officious start.

With each step I take, my joints protest.  But I forget about the pain of age and second-floor dwellings once I hear the sound of fat droplets of water cascading somewhere below me.

I start to breath again when I locate the source of the flood.

It's raining in Minecraft, so, naturally, my son is sitting in the living room clutching the game controller in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

“I'm just trying to make the game feel more realistic,” he says with a sideways grin. I wonder how long he's been awake, and if he's figured out how to circumvent our preprogrammed time restrictions, but I don't speak. I can barely think in syllables: Kitchen. (Two). Coffee. (Two). Now (One).

Problem: We're out of coffee. Didn't get to the store yesterday so there's no breakfast either. The cat skulks past still holding her blusher brush and jumps on the counter.

I wish there were a nuclear option for errant cats, but I know the trigger sprayer filled with tap water is the only sanctioned weapon. … Of course, it's never within arm's reach.

“Not good eating,” I tell her instead. “Too much hair, not enough meat.”

She responds by casually knocking over a glass that was half filled with soured milk. She walks past it, disinterested, as the white-ringed glass rolls toward the counter's edge, where I am lucky to catch it before it breaks into shards.

More rancid milk sprays in my direction. Perfect.

I am searching for kitchen towels to clean up the mess when I hear the cat's mewling answered by the dog's measured bark. I investigate only to find the animals making the racket are all inside the game.

I go back to searching for towels.  And soon realize every single one  –  be they bath, hand or kitchen – has found its way to an upstairs bedroom and is snaking around the foot of one bed or another. It seems amazing how yesterday's laundry has magically transformed into a colorful carpet of moss and pool water.

I pick them up and throw them into the hamper.

As I load the washer, I wonder if I am dreaming. I should pinch myself awake.

Nope. Not a dream. It's just a mid-summer morning in which I have spilled some detergent on myself as I try to activate the machine.

I am just the latest part of this hot mess.

Luckily the cat has chosen this moment to encircle my feet, trying to trip me no doubt. So I wipe my hands on her fur and head back upstairs to bed.