Channeling Erma

We the People

2009-01-23T09:42:00.001-06:00

Inauguration morning began for me in the soft darkness of dawn when my nephew dropped 6 of us off on the Virginia side of the Potomac. Our breath puffing out in clouds, our muffled footsteps the only noise, we walked on a pathway between the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. It seemed fitting. The headstones of the young men, most no older than our three sons, served as a reminder of the price that has been paid throughout the years so that we could be doing exactly what we were doing. We were about to witness and celebrate the exchange of power -- an exchange that had come about peacefully. An exchange that we were all responsible for.

My eyes were wet from more than just the cold.

We crossed Memorial Bridge, the Lincoln Memorial in front of us, the sun rising behind it. The enormity of the day, of the change that had come, pulled us forward.

By 7:30, my husband and I were in place on the Mall, midway between the Washington Memorial and the Capitol.

I'd wondered how we'd while away the time until the ceremony began four hours later, but I had no need to worry. On the Jumbotron in front of us, the "We Are One" HBO concert from Sunday afternoon was being shown. So we danced ("Shout" with Garth Brooks) and sang (with Stevie and Usher and Shakira) and cried (Springsteen's "The Rising" with a gospel choir). The spirit of celebration and change and hope filled the crowd.

And then it all began.

by Judy Merrill Larsen

And I'd thought I'd know how I'd feel, worried that I might be underwhelmed. I mean, what could compare to election night and his words in Grant Park? But this was so much bigger. I was witnessing history, a specific moment when everything changed and the world watched.

His words rang out and I felt myself relax. I trust him and his slim shoulders and his huge brain to carry the weight of the United States. I know the road ahead will be long and rough--but I trust him to lead the way.

He's already banned torture. With one flick of his pen, one scrawl of his signature.

And I was there. Along with several million other folks who I will never see again. But for that morning, we were family, united in hope and pride and optimism.

I'm still feeling the warmth.

The Mom Song

2008-12-16T11:08:00.000-06:00

This is not mine, but I never saw anything so Erma-worthy.

Moments of Thanks

2008-11-24T04:44:00.001-06:00

"You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine."

Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

Fourteen years ago, just before dinnertime on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, my seven-year old son was hit by a car. Now twenty-one, he'll be arriving home from college on Wednesday. We have much for which to be thankful. But that night, for a few moments, I wasn't sure I'd ever breathe a thankful breath again. When the neighbor boy burst into my house, yelling, "Eric just got hit by a car!" my world froze. I wasn't sure I could face what awaited me just outside my front door. Somehow, I propelled myself outside, after tossing the phone to the neighbor and telling him to call 911. When I hit the porch steps I heard my son's cries and I thought, Okay, he's alive. When I knelt by his side, I saw his feet moving and told myself, Okay, he's not paralyzed. And I knew right then we were incredibly lucky. And I was thankful beyond measure.

Later, after the ambulance ride, after the X-rays, after the doctor shook his head and said, just before releasing him, "He's fine. He shouldn't be but he is," I remembered the above Stegner quote. The salt had been just ready to pour down on me, on us, on our life. And then it didn't. But I knew how easily it could have rained down over our world. A different driver. A bigger, faster car. A shift in the trajectory of my son's body as it flew through the air. But, even now, I have to turn my mind away from those awful possibilities.

Our lives are full of such moments, but many times we don't even know it. We don't know what we've narrowly escaped, what's just missed us. And so, for what we know and don't know, I am thankful. For the times the salt didn't pour down and for the strength to continue when it did, I give thanks.

I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, but even more, I wish you a spirit of thankfulness as you go about your lives everyday.

Seizing the Day

2008-11-12T03:46:00.000-06:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Most of the time, my husband and I are pretty practical. We plan things. Save up for splurges. We organize.

Every Sunday we go over our respective calendars for the week. This allows me to plan menus and make my grocery list.

We're certainly no sticks-in-the-mud (hmm, should that be stick-in-the-muds? I don't think so) unless you ask one of our kids. But no one would accuse us of being madcap very often, either.

Except for when it comes to spur of the moment trips.

Like the time in Dec. 2003, we decided the day before to drive to Indianapolis for a Springsteen concert (two states and another time zone away). Did we have tickets? Um, no. But, we got them, we had an incredible time, and we both showed up for work the next day, more or less. (I believe my students did some free-reading or small group work. I don't really recall.)

Or the phone call we got early last month asking if we had any interest in Game Two of the playoffs at Wrigley Field (250 miles away). Why, yes, we did, thank you very much. We had to rearrange a few things (like work and such), but we went. And if the Cubs hadn't lost 10-3 we'd have had a blast.

So, it seemed par for the course that we decided, just last night, along with my sister and her husband, to use our frequent flier miles for a trip to Washington, D.C. in January for the Inauguration. Do we have tickets? Not yet, no. We're not even sure we'll be able to get them (but if you know of any, holler, okay?), but that doesn't matter. Along with experiencing history being made, we'll get to play with my sister and her husband and my brother and his wife (who have graciously offered up a place to stay). It'll probably be cold (but I hope not rainy) and most certainly will be very crowded and chaotic, but that's fine by me.

And I'm realizing that I'm in a position now to do the kinds of things I used to only dream about--pick up and go, make plans at the last minute, seize the day. All things I couldn't do when my kids were younger and my checkbook was thinner (well, at least the kids are older now). All the things I used to think were only available to the young.

Being middle-aged, empty/almost-empty nesters has perks I'd never dreamed of and which I'm happily latching onto. I might never have that pre-pregnancy firm body again, but I have some things so much better--perspective and confidence and the ability to say, what the heck, let's do it.

Middle-age. I highly recommend it!

Living History

2008-11-10T04:00:00.000-06:00

By Margy McCarthy

I hope all the celebration hasn't gotten too old, because this is my first chance to talk about last Tuesday.

*sigh*

Four years ago during the last few weeks before the election, I remember saying to an apathetic friend, "It has never been this important." And I believed that with all my heart.

You all know how that worked out.

So this time, we were in four years deeper,we were in over our heads- and it was that much more important. And this time I knew we had the candidate, and I got up off my rear and made the phone calls and attended the rally and wrote the blogs and the letter to the editor and, and, and... This time I walked my talk.

And look how this worked out!

I think I'm still glowing. Am I still glowing?

But it was more this time than just me doing the right thing to help get a necessary job done. This time we all did it. And you could feel it in the air- even here in Arizona. And you still can. Change- she is a-comin'.

This was son Snooze's first election. He voted early by mail. He phoned me a couple of weeks ago with his ballot in hand to talk about several of the ballot propositions, and we had a good time decoding the legalese and he made his decisions wisely.

I called for a sub on Tuesday because I knew I wouldn't be able to stand being cooped up in my room at school all day. I got up at my usual time and went about my normal getting-ready routines; rather than pulling into the school parking lot bright and early, I would pull into City Hall. When I went in to wake Shriek for school, she said, "Can't I just come with you today?"

And I thought- "Why not?"

So she did. She waited while I voted, and then we drove to headquarters. She regaled me with her observations at the polls- "There were so many people! All kinds of people- there was a policeman and his wife, there was the pregnant lady with her baby, there was the old woman who could hardly walk..."

When we arrived at headquarters, the place was humming like a hive. We got phone lists and settled down at the phone banks. I made a call so Shriek could see how to handle the paperwork, and then we got to it.

I have never been so proud of that girl. She was a trooper. Ironically enough, she found her social studies teacher's name on her list. "Mom, do I really need to call Mr. F? We know he won't be home." I told her to go ahead and call when she came to him, and then she could just mark NH on her tally for not home. So we made calls. She went through her script, and did a nice job, and as she finished one call, I heard her say, "McCarthy." Then she laughed and hung up. "Honey, why are you telling your last name?" I asked. "That was Mr. F," she said. "That was his cell number, he was on prep, and he answered. When I finished talking he asked me 'Shriek who?' so I told him!"

When I finished my call list several hours later, I found my daughter across the hall, compiling literature for the canvassers. Her enthusiasm was palpable. She caught me up on the voting lines around the country she'd seen on CNN. She chattered nonstop as we drove home, anxious to start seeing the returns.

And when she got back to school the next day? Mr F said she didn't have to make up the quiz she had missed. She got full credit. "You were out there helping to make history yesterday," he told her, "that's worth a lot."

The Day of Firsts

2008-11-07T07:00:00.000-06:00

I had a great job on election day. I was a runner. My first-ever election day job, from five-thirty to nine a.m., was to drive from one polling place to another dropping off Amendment and Proposition forms, "I Voted For Change" stickers (very important- not only for proudly wearing but also redeemable for Starbucks coffee, Ben and Jerry's ice cream and/or Krispy Kremes), yard signs, and t-shirts for poll workers. I was thrilled with my assignment (though I did covet the lovely neon green t-shirts of the poll volunteers- mine was boring pale blue) because I got to see the lines. The faces. I got to feel the electricity; the excitement on the city sidewalks and church parking lots. This vote didn't feel like any I'd ever experienced. It felt like it was super-charged with a current of promise.

At one polling place, at five-thirty a.m., the line swept from the building to the sidewalk and down a block. I walked up with my box of supplies to see cheering, smiles and high-fives between friends and complete strangers waiting in the dark to cast their historic vote. Older women waited on folding chairs, those in line near them helping to move them as the line began to crawl forward. I could have stayed all day, watching. There were no complaints about the line- not a hint of annoyance from anyone. It was as if the whole crowd knew that the long line was a wonderful sign of what the day might bring.

My daughter decided to vote at home. She left college with a carload of kids and drove the three hours to get back. Finally, at two-thirty in the afternoon, her little white Subaru pulled up to our polling place, the school at which she attended kindergarten. She was wearing a shirt that said, "Throw Parties, Not Grenades." That's our girl. Anyway, we chatted with the poll workers and finally wandered in to cast our votes, our first child voting in her first-ever presidential election. (Little did she know her vote would still not be counted toward the nation's total, three days later. Come on, Missouri! Go blue!) She looked excited, grown-up; completely confident in her choice. I had a hard time not crying.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty teary in general. I cried when my candidate's grandmother died. What a life she led. What a grandchild she raised! I'm sure she saw the outcome. I cried while last-minute canvassing when a tiny older woman with a heavy accent- a woman I could picture studying hard for her citizenship exam forty years before- pressed her hand to my arm and told me that she was too old to change our world, and asked me to do it for her. But most of all, I cried as I watched the 44th President-elect of our amazing country standing on a stage in Chicago with his beautiful family, side by side with a wonderful statesman Vice-President-elect and his family, their colors blending like a perfect artist's rendering of what our country should always look like.

For the first time, we've gotten it right.

Hallelujah!

Proud to be an American

2008-11-06T03:00:00.003-06:00

by Jenny Gardiner

For years Lee Greenwood's song, Proud to be an American, has been dragged out, dusted off, and exploited by a divisive segment of the population, used in a jingoistic way to portray the entire country in a way that seemed intended to poke the rest of the world in the eye. It became to some a lovely song that left a somewhat bitter taste behind.

Today, I have never felt prouder to be an American, Lee Greenwood or not. Having seen our democracy alive and vibrant and working as intended on Election Day was something that many of us who'd felt enormously disenfranchised deeply appreciated. It was a restorative tonic that was long overdue.

What I found to be most heartening was to watch the voting process in action while working at a polling station. Sure there were the usual cadre of voters, the ones who vote year in and year out. But then there were the new ones: the Latino couple, newly-minted citizens, casting their first ballot in a free country. Twenty-something young black men who'd never stepped foot in a voting venue, bravely venturing forth with pride to exercise a right they'd never contemplated before yesterday. There was the older black woman who was so flustered she couldn't remember her address when asked for verification, and had to prompt her daughter to answer for her. And then the many, many 18- and 19- and 20-year olds who have grown up feeling voiceless, finally feeling empowered to speak out. Countless times I choked back tears while watching democracy in action, while realizing that sure, our principles have been challenged, and we've felt undermined. But we have hope: an entire nation--really the entire world--feels a sense of hope that feels cathartic. It's simply overwhelming. In an amazing, pride-inducing way.

Transformation

2008-11-05T07:36:00.005-06:00

We did it. All of us. We voted and changed the world.

Now the work begins.

But we move forward with hope and wonder.

And we move forward behind a smart, brave, kind man.

IT'S HERE. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!

2008-11-04T04:44:00.006-06:00

It's a privilege. A right. And a responsibility.

A Volunteer Speaks Once More

2008-10-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

Canvassing. I never really knew what it meant.

Okay, I knew what it meant, but I'd never really thought about what it entailed until this year's election. I knew people did it, knocking on my door during my dinner-prep time just as the pasta was done or a baked good was finally to its golden-edged perfection and desperately needed to be removed from the oven. So annoying. This year, I am one of those annoyances.

This, I hope, will be my last election-topic post. I am frankly sick of the whole subject. I can't wait for it all to be over, and I wish the vote had been last Tuesday. I'm sick of writing about it- I'm sure you're sick of reading about it. But, I thought election time would be incomplete without a little taste, for those of you readers who haven't taken the plunge, of how it feels to be a canvasser. Canvasser? Is that a word? One who canvasses.

After showing up at HQ and attending a quick class which explained some of my thirty or so questions, I was assigned a canvassing buddy. My term, not theirs. Barry. Barry the professional canvasser. Chatty, friendly and super-quick on the issues. Good ol' Barry.

We were assigned a few neighborhoods in west St. Louis County; neighborhoods I knew would not be leaning, shall I say, the Obama way. I've sold real estate there. I know which way that wind is blowing, and it's not to the left.

Barry, as I said, had done this before. He knew the ropes, and zipped from house to house on the side of the street to which he was assigned. I, on the other hand, could barely figure out the paperwork for the first half hour. Once I did, I was cooking. I bravely knocked at the doors (Barry did NOT) of even the houses with McCain/Palin signs out front. At those houses, I explained that I had seen their campaign sign in the yard but was knocking anyway because of the large number of split voting homes we'd discovered in our canvassing efforts. It was a line I'd stolen from the head of the canvassers back at HQ, and it was a good one. It struck total panic in the eyes of those still willing to talk to me. Yes, I knocked and I smiled, explaining that I was an Obama volunteer just trying to update our records: Is Mary at home?

This is the thing: at last Saturday's point in the campaign, the canvassing effort was trying to identify whether registered voters we had been unable to reach over the phone were leaning one way or another. Eighty percent of the voters left on our lists, the ones they had been unable to reach, were between the ages of 18 and 26. College-aged. The kids who had just moved out on their own and hadn't yet changed their addresses. The little bird flying from the nest and voting for just the first or second time in a Presidential election. Still fresh birds!

I had a few doors slammed in my face. I had a couple of shirtless male door answerers. I had a few who were downright rude, one birthday party (which they re-titled a "McCain Party" when I showed up), one twenty-something who said that voting wasn't really his "thing-" Barry and I were all over that one- and a few who actually wanted to talk about Obama's plans for the country. The one I'll never forget, however, was a woman on King's Ridge. Gorgeous house, well dressed, really didn't want to answer the door. Looked seriously put out. She made me wish I'd worn better than jeans and my grey hoodie. She looked me up and down, I swear, and upon hearing I was a volunteer for Obama, closed the door halfway before even answering my question. According to my clipboard, there were three kids at her address. All college or young-adult aged.

I asked politely before she could close the door all the way: "Are Mary, Amy or Bill at home?"

"No."

Okay, smile and go on. "We're out today to gather information. Would you have any idea if they are planning to support Barack Obama in the upcoming election?"

She sneered. I haven't seen an actual sneer in a long time, probably because my daughter is off at college. It's a very interested facial contortion- it looks as if it takes some effort, and it's not attractive. It was strange to realize that, because of the name tag I was wearing, she REALLY DIDN'T LIKE ME.

"No," she said, sneer intact. "We vote straight Republican."

In a flash, she'd made me realize: this lady didn't have a clue how her kids were going to vote. And she was SCARED.

Her kids were off at college! For all I knew, they could be off at Berkeley! Brown! Hotbeds of- horrors- Liberal Activism! Kids have a way of deciding what they really are in college. Isn't that one of the reasons we send them away, for better or for worse? I was a registered Republican when I was eighteen, and look what happened to me- canvassing in a grey hoodie for a Democrat. For all she knew, her kids could be out canvassing, too. For Obama. I have to admit, despite the sneer, I felt a little sorry for her.

I smiled and marked "McCain" on my clipboard. I thanked her, said goodbye and listened to the big thump of the door closing in my face. Hey, at least she'd answered it, right?

I can't help but think that it's the 18-26 year olds who own this election. For one side or the other, we canvassers have talked to everyone else. I have hope! I think we can rock that vote, if we can just get them there! If only 18-26 year olds took the time to read the blog of their middle-aged moms.

So, I'm calling my daughter. I'm telling her to vote, and to take her friends with her. I'll tell her to do her part, to tell everyone she sees to vote, and she'll sigh heavily and think about the math test she has today or the mixer she has tonight. She'll say "Okay, Mom," and she'll move on to another subject. But, she will vote, and, come Wednesday morning, her world just might be more hopeful.

I'm sure the sneering lady is calling her kids, too.

I'm very nervous about election day. And for some reason, I can't stop thinking about the mom on King's Ridge. I wonder what she'll do if my candidate wins. I'm sure her nervousness, despite appearances, at least matches mine.

I wonder how she'll feel on Wednesday morning?

Multi-tasking for the Multi-tasker

2008-10-30T03:00:00.004-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

Okay, class. Today’s lesson is on multi-tasking. For the uninitiated, multi-tasking is the process of doing as many things as humanly possible in the same space of time: fixing dinner, cleaning dishes, feeding the dogs, writing a book, scrubbing the floor, fighting for world peace. It’s one way to maximize the limited 24-hour day.

It is a skill that has been honed throughout millennia by women in particular. Often times they receive their inaugural multi-tasking trial by fire upon the birth of their first child, whence they are called upon to perform such challenges as soothing a screaming newborn over their shoulder while picking up the burp cloth that’s inconveniently fallen on the ground with their toes while simultaneously attempting to clean up the projectile vomit said screaming child has just emitted while letting the barking dog out because the barking dog is what caused the child to scream in the first place. Oh, and cook dinner, dust the bookshelves and make the bed. While carrying a basket of laundry up from the basement.

Of course, when the husband comes home at the end of the work day and finds the new mother looking as if she just gave birth (again) and asks, “What did you do all day, honey?” implying that it looks as if she’d parked her butt in front of Oprah and didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom, a woman has to learn to cast that sphinx-like smile and just glibly tell her man, “oh, a little of this, a little of that” (either that or club him). But we know better.

Women are excellent multi-taskers. I have female physician friends who I’m sure could readily perform a C-section, bake a pie and clean the dishes, if only the operating theater were within reach of the kitchen.

Another friend of mine wins the award for multi-tasking. I saw her one time, shortly after her baby was born, on a neighborhood stroll. The baby in a jog stroller, the dog on a leash, and a book in front of her face. If that’s not an ambitious undertaking, killing three birds with one stone, nothing is.

I have found over the years that I can multi-task with just about everything. I read while brushing my teeth. Sometimes I clean my sink while blow-drying my hair. Check my e-mails, talk on the phone, feed the dogs, and clear my desk. You get the drift. I like to think of it as hyper-efficiency. My husband calls it ADD.

But I’ve found there’s one task that absolutely thwarts a person’s ability to seriously multi-task, and that is driving. Now, to a certain extent, we all multi-task when we drive. It’s an inevitable side effect of the process: checking mirrors, scanning the horizon, glancing over your shoulder before going into the passing lane. Even to the point that you might be eating a burger, licking an ice cream cone, or drinking hot coffee with one hand while driving. Who hasn’t steered with their knees occasionally?

Of course the cell phone has enabled those of us who spend an inordinate amount of time behind the wheel to at least partially fulfill the need to multitask. As a mother of three, I've spent several hours a day over the past decade or so couriering my charges to their various and many activities. At least with a cell phone I can take care of returning phone calls that are only interruptive when conducted at home, or catching up with someone I’ve neglected to contact in ages.

But I yearn for the ability to do more behind the wheel and long for the day that technology will catch up with a mother’s need to achieve while driving: how about a plug-in blow dryer so I can dry and drive at once? Or a way to fix dinner while stuck in traffic at 6 p.m.? We’ve all see those ambitious ones who boldly do the idiotic while behind the wheel: applying make-up, curling eyelashes, shaving, for God’s sake. That’s about as crazy as trying to perform a pedicure while tooling along the road. Those undertakings are obviously foolish. But really, I think the blow-drying idea is imminently do-able, provided of course that styling brushes are not required.

Having now ushered two kids through driver’s ed, where they learn to drive the way we’re supposed to drive, however, I realize that my days of ambitious achievement above and beyond the task of getting to and fro have drawn to a close: I now have a driving-age backseat drivers who are ready and willing to correct every little transgression I might possibly make while in the course of my daily driving.

Because after all, while idly sitting at a traffic signal catching up on my reading is a useful way to spend the forty-five seconds during which I’m stuck at the light, it’s probably more incumbent upon me to pay attention to other drivers. That is, not looking at what they’re wearing or how funny they look belting out a song alone in the car, but rather whether there are last-minute light runners who might impede my forward momentum once the light does change to green. Alas, it looks as if my days of multi-tasking are now limited to off-road moments. And that’s a good thing.

Ghosts, Ghouls, and Goblins, OH MY!

2008-10-29T06:16:00.004-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

When I was a kid, I loved Halloween. What was not to love about it? I got to wear makeup and collect scads of candy. I got to try on other personas and then go home and crawl back into myself. My favorite get-up was a gypsy. I must have been this at least 3 or 4 times. My mom would paint up my face (eyeliner! rouge! a beauty mark crafted from the mascara wand!). I'd wear bangly bracelets and big earrings. I loved it.

Then, when my sons were little it was fun all over again. One year, they were pirates. Another year green and purple dinosaurs. Then there was the year my older one was a police officer and the younger one was a prisoner. They really were cute.

We carved pumpkins and decorated the front porch.

But now, I'm not the quite the really fun Halloween mom anymore.

For one thing, the boys are both grown up and out of the house. And while I'm quite charmed with the little ghosts and goblins who'll ring my doorbell Friday night and tell me a goofy Halloween joke (that's a St. Louis custom--kids have to have a joke to tell before they get their candy. I love the ones that make absolutely no sense except to the seven year-old who made it up.), I have no patience for the older kids who'll tromp up on my porch later in the evening. The teens who thrown on a mask, grab a hefty garbage bag and think just because they want free candy it's okay for them to trick or treat. It's not, grow up, and get outta my yard.

Carving pumpkins has also lost its charm. A few years ago, Target had these great fake pumpkins. They look carved (especially when they're on my upstairs porch railing) and they light up when I plug them in. Voila! Jack-o-lantern fun without all the sliminess.

And then, there's the candy. Why, oh why, does all candy taste better in October? I mean, I know NOT to buy mini-snickers and other candy that I like. Because whatever is left over I will snarf. So my plan this year was to buy the mega-sized bag from Target with candy I don't like. The thinking being that since I don't like it, I won't eat it. Yeah, well, I've suddenly taken to craving plain sweet tarts, chewy sweet tarts, and sweet tart smarties. Craving to the degree that I always have one of those damn mini-bags in my purse and another in my pocket and a few in my car.

I'm thinking this is how a meth addiction starts.

You never think you'll like the stuff until you find that you do.

That's scarier than any ghost or goblin or teenager dressed like a ghoul. So will stepping on the scale Nov. 1, I fear.

For the Birds

2008-10-27T04:00:00.000-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

My parents were avid birdwatchers when I was growing up. They still are, but at forty-four I am no longer forced to be still and quiet in the back seat while they pull to the side of the road for fifteen minutes and pass their binoculars back and forth, all the while rifling through dog-eared copies of Roger Tory Peterson Field Guides. Yawn.

I hated birdwatching with the passionate boredom only a prepubescent girl can muster.

My son, on the other hand, outdoor boy that he is, loved birdwatching with Grandma and Grandpa. In his fifth grade year, while studying the states, the class was watching a film on the swamps of Florida and a classmate exclaimed, "Look! There's an alligator!" The class oohed and ahhed, and a few seconds later, Michael called out, "Look! A common moorhen!" Total silence. A few slack jaws.

On another occasion, several years earlier, he'd nearly swerved me into the ditch when a desperate scream of, "Stop the car, Mom! Pull over! There's a black-necked stilt!" erupted from the seat behind me. Once recovered, I had been the slack-jaw that time. A black-necked what? Who is this kid?

When I was in Flagstaff last summer, I did my writing outdoors. I prefer to write outside for several reasons; the main one being that if it's not brain-damage hot, there's nearly always something lovely to rest my eyes upon while thinking.

In Flagstaff it was birds. Eastern bluebirds, woodpeckers, nuthatches, orioles, robins, mountain jays, the noisiest hummingbirds I've ever heard, (bossy, territorial, and aggressive) and a tough-love mother crow and her three young. I wrote ten thousand words in that mountain aviary, proud that I could identify as many of my companions as I did, surprised to find myself proud of that, and pleased to have their company.

Upon my return to the desert I still found myself watching birds. On the mountain, it was hard to tell the mother crow from the babies. They were nearly as big as she. It wasn't until I'd observed them for several days that I saw her feeding them, and by the end of the week, she had stopped. They still perched next to her on the branch overhead- open-mouthed and begging. And she looked back at their pleading faces steadily, without a flinch. I could hear her crow-thoughts. "Find your own food now, baby. You have to learn to do this for yourself." And they did.

Here I have a mother ring-necked dove and her two babies. Their feathers are still fluffy but they can fly; this is their second day out of the nest, I think. They peck around a little, but mostly stare in a dazed way at the world. They don't seem very bright. She comes to feed them, and sit with them, and I think she's saying mommish things like, "There's a dish of cat food over by the house there, honeys, but the kibble is too big for your beaks. You'll have to wait until you're older for that." and "These dried out palm tree seeds are pretty good, but it takes a lot of them to fill you up."

Yesterday Lolita the cat spotted one of the little doves. I told her I would prefer not to see it murdered before my very eyes, but she ignored me. The little bird just sat there, all fluffy and googly-eyed and stupid as the cat inched closer. Just as I was ready to leap at her, in swooped the mother dove, landing awkwardly between the cat and her chick. She threw her wing out of joint and staggered across the yard. Lolita went after Mom, baby took off and perched safely on the back of a wrought-iron chair, Mom flew up, turned around, crash landed again, and drew the cat away.

I was duly impressed with her acting skills. That was an award-winning performance in my book. And I sat here shaking my head in wonder because we moms really are all the same.

"Find your own food now, baby. You have to learn to do this for yourself."

"You'll have to wait until you're older for that," and Over my dead body will you harm my child.

So now I'm wondering if she nearly flies into the ditch when they chirp, "Pull over, Mom! There's a human!"

Thirteen Days and Counting

2008-10-24T07:00:00.002-05:00

Thirteen Days Left. Thirteen days until this whole fiasco is over, and we can stop wondering if our country has learned anything at all over the past eight years. Thirteen days until, hopefully, we have a new President-Elect. I say "hopefully" because of that little Florida incident. You know, the weeks that made everyone named "Chad" want to change their names. What are the chances there WON'T be any recounts in this one? Say a little prayer, folks.

I spent the weekend, for the most part, in a political haze. It started on Friday afternoon with a call from a friend who has friends in high political places. Not the tippy-top, mind you, but high enough to get my family a meet-and-greet with Jill Biden on Friday night at tiny Jefferson College in Hillsboro, Missouri. We drove to the campus, not knowing what to expect, and were greeted by a crowd of about a hundred, lots of union signage, and one darn perky soon-to-be Second Lady. Drizzly night, fun group, good speech, adorable speaker! I knew I liked her when she greeted my fifteen-year-old son and his best friend with a, "What are you guys doing here on a Friday night? Any plans for the weekend?" They explained that they had an early cross country meet on Saturday morning and she then described the trail she'd run that morning. So nice. So normal. So never-shot-a-mammal-from-a-helicopter. So who you'd like to see in the White House.

My favorite sign at that event, by the way, was pinned to the back of a spectator's jean jacket. "Rednecks for Obama," it read. "Working for the man who will do more for the working man."

Well, okay!

Saturday morning- up early to pack supplies for the long day ahead at the Obama rally under the Gateway Arch. After several discussions about route and parking, my friend Cindy and I were surprised and happy to experience no huge traffic jams en route, and fairly easy access to the site all around... until we realized that we'd entered the Arch grounds on the wrong side, and the line to get through the gates, I swear, was over a mile long, at least four people wide. But did we give up? No! We had packed water bottles and bags of mixed nuts, for goodness' sake. Like little Girl Scouts, we were prepared. We walked and walked to find the end of the line, ending our hike with little hope of actually making it through the gates before Obama began to speak. After nearly two hours in line, we found ourselves positioned directly under the arch with twenty minutes to spare. The line, in fact, was one of the highlights of the day. What a jolly group! It was electric; every age, every race, every background imaginable, with the same shared hope. Leadership.

My favorite moment of that day? Looking out over the sea of 100,000 people (had I known how many people were there I might have gotten a little jittery) under the beautiful, shimmering arch and knowing we all had something in common. So cool!

The weekend ended with a trip to my daughter's alma mater- Kirkwood High School. It had been announced at the Obama rally that Bill Clinton would be speaking at the high school on Monday night. Bill Clinton! At our local high school! We had to get in. So, again we faced the line, this time snaking around a high school parking lot. We knew we'd be in luck to get in at all; we'd taken our spots way late. Again, Lady Luck stepped in; this time in the form of an old friend of my husband's with a VIP pass to get into the main venue, front row. ONE pass. So, although he didn't have the nerve to step to the very front, my son has now seen Bill Clinton speak in person. Twenty feet back. I, on the other hand, have now heard Bill Clinton speak while sitting on a wooden gym floor, next door to the building in which he spoke, along with a few hundred others. It was still fun, still special, and still the best speech I've heard in a long time. Then, to see the excitement on our son's face... what a night. I have always been, and always will be, a Friend Of Bill.

Has it seemed easier this year to get involved? It seems that way to me. Maybe it's because I'm older, and it all makes more sense. At any rate, there's still time to volunteer for your campaign. My friend Bill asked me to ask all of you to make a commitment in these last weeks, or days, to help. Get involved! To talk to friends and make sure they vote, for which ever candidate they prefer. Of course, I hope you'll support my candidate! I'd be happy to discuss with any reader the reasons for my choices: feel free to comment, and I'll make sure I get back to you, but PLEASE, no matter what: VOTE.

Hey, I just looked up and noticed that it's after midnight.

Twelve days and counting.

Straighten Up!

2008-10-23T03:00:00.001-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

I straighten my hair. Admittedly, that fact by itself is really quite unremarkable. After all, technology has gotten to the point that many, many women once cursed with unyielding kinks and obstinate tangles can now boast of that enviable straight hair usually featured on Pantene shampoo commercials.

No, what makes my admission somewhat bizarre is this: I already have straight hair. In fact, for the better part of my youth and well into my twenties, I went to great lengths to deny its natural state and instead curl the living daylights out of it.
Over those many years, I acquired an assortment of curling irons and brushes of varying curl-creating proportions; I even sported the occasional neck burns from dropping them on myself, and scalp-scalds from the steam function on the wand. My bathroom counters bore the telltale scorched plastic scars of a serial hair curler. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I even owned a purse-sized cordless curling implement, for those tricky occasions during which I couldn’t be caught dead with straight hair but had no access to electricity.

Along with my daily heat-induced hair fraying--more like frying--I periodically attempted to chemically induce a wave to my hair with one of those skunk-like permanents. Although in retrospect, I can’t recall when I’ve had more bad hair days than when my locks were under the influence of those pungent ammonia-laden toxins.

Despite my decades-long attempts to achieve that Andi MacDowell head of soft, cascading ringlets, I was never quite able to recreate the look, much to my chagrin.

It wasn’t until a rogue hairdresser decided to take flagrant liberties with my hair, creating what he dubbed the “firecracker” perm, that I decided I’d better accept my dreary straight hair as the lesser of two evils. The end result of that hairdo was more like a “safecracker” perm--as if my head had been locked in the safe when the explosives blew it open. Not a pretty sight.
So I settled for my more natural state. That same hair that a high school boyfriend once said reminded him of his pet Irish setter’s. Okay, so the fetching-a-stick-while-bounding-through-the-fields look is fine for a dog, but for me, not so much. But what could I do?

Not much, until one day not long ago, when my hairdresser--a veritable Rodin, with what he’s able to sculpt out of my mop of hair--started using a straightening iron on it. Now, for all I know, he was merely trying to fix a mistake he’d made when he dried it. I don’t know. But one thing is certain: my hair looked better after he’d used that thing on it.

And so I bought myself a straightening iron. Someone else at the salon urged me to try the straightening shampoo and condition, as well as some other product that renders my hair as Teflon smooth as a bobsled run. Gullible, bored, or desperate, I took her up on her suggestions.

So while for the past fifteen years, I have enjoyed a relatively maintenance-free, albeit boring, hair care regimen, I’m back to my old tricks. But this time, rather than trying to undo the plank-straight hair of my birthright, I’m spending far too much of my time, money and energy trying to merely improve upon it. Kind of straightening it better.

Now, you may think I’m crazy. And you might be right. And while this probably seems like a shining example of the emperor who has no clothing, I’ll persevere. Because I like to think I’m simply optimistic, and that eventually, I’ll get it right, and I’ll achieve the hair I’ve always wanted, whatever that may be.

So last week my older daughter--graced with gorgeous chestnut colored hair as long and straight as a stretch of Oklahoma highway--came home from the hairdresser with a strange request.

“Mom,” she said. “I really need you to get me a hair straightener…”

Now, this child has the sort of hair some women pay good money to replicate in hair salons. But I guess the grass is often greener--or straighter--on the other side of the fence.

I shrugged, opened the drawer and pulled out my own flat iron and handed it to her. If nothing else, it was good to know I’m not alone in my inane pursuit. Maybe I’m not so crazy after all.

Swinging in the Heartland

2008-10-22T05:06:00.003-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

I've lived 35 of my 48 years (including the last 28) in the midwest--Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. Fly-over country to you on the coasts. The Heartland.

I love being a midwesterner . . . it's solid not flashy. Practical not trendy. (Although I do seem to remember that the Crocs craze started here. Sorta defines us, don't you think?).

By no one's definition would I be considered a swinger.

But, man, oh man, am I starting to understand all the excitement in being a swinger. And it's changed my life. My husband's, too. It's crazy. Hot. Exciting. Even, dare I say it, sexy.

For the first time ever I'm living in a swing state. Oh, yeah, baby. Missouri rocks!

For example, on Monday, John McCain, Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton were all within a stone's throw (or short drive) from my front yard. Hubba hubba.

This weekend, Obama drew 100,000 people to a rally in downtown St. Louis. That's 15 miles from my house. I mean, he was practically on my front porch. Plus, in the last week I received calls from Michelle Obama and a bunch of pollsters. After all these years of feeling like my vote didn't really matter and my opinions counted even less, everyone is vying for my vote and complete strangers want to know what I think. (Too bad my kids are less interested in my opinions.)

Seriously, it's pretty cool. Democracy in action. Neighbors--even ones with dueling yard signs--are out talking and walking and participating in this every four-year political experience. Never have I lived in a state getting this much interest during an election. Never has it mattered more.

And, oh baby, does it have me excited. Swing high, swing low, swing all over the place--Missouri is where it's at right now and I'm loving it.

(Also posted on my author blog.)

Senior Day

2008-10-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

Saturday was Senior Day during our high school football game (the last home game of the regular season)...all the seniors in football, cheerleading, dance squad and marching band were escorted by their parents out to the field before the game, one by one, and the moms were given carnations.

It was a very sweet ceremony, although of course Younger Son failed to tell us about it until the night before. (However, we were apparently much more informed than many fellow band parents; several mothers were there with wet hair, having been called while in the shower that morning by their forgetful children.)

Naturally, I got a lump in my throat as my husband and I escorted our youngest - so tall and slim in his snazzy band uniform - out on the football field. Taking our place in line, among parents and kids we've known the majority of my children's lives, I realized how much I'm going to miss all this.

Of course, when our oldest graduated and went to college, I understood immediately the loss of a major presence in the house. So I'm prepared for that - the empty room, one less plate at the dinner table, etc.

But with this one, the last one, there's something else I'm starting to realize we'll miss. He's been so active, so social in school and all the different activities, and our lives have been built around that. Not just the day-to-day scheduling (although that's major). But socially, too; our friends are mainly the parents of his friends, even if we primarily see each other at band activities and football games and homecoming dances. But still, that's a major part of our lives.

And next year, it'll be gone. So, possibly, will many of these parents. Because of course, even now we always end up talking about our kids, and the shared experiences we've all had with them. Without that, will we remain friends? I don't know. When will we even see them?

And the kids - those kids! I've known them since Kindergarten! My husband coached many of them in soccer, pre-Kindergarten right up to 8th grade. I bossed them around in Drama Club in grade school, chaperoned countless field trips, drove them to many early morning band practices. And of course, fed them. Snack after snack after snack after snack...

I'll miss them, too. Almost as much as my own son. My life will be much smaller without all of them - and my house will be much too big.

That's what I realized Saturday, for the first time. Between the football game at noon, and driving to the marching band contest at 7:30 PM, my husband and I had a quiet day. A very quiet day. Just the two of us. At home. Alone. What with the poignancy of Senior Day and all that it reminded me I'm going to miss, and then the eerie silence of two aimless adults puttering around the house - I truly understood how different our lives will be this time next year.

I'm prepared to miss my youngest. I'm not sure I'm prepared to miss all his friends and our friends, too. And what do two adults do with themselves on a crisp Saturday afternoon in the fall, without football games and marching band competitions to go to?

I guess I'll find out. My husband said it best (because he's a very sensitive man, and felt all the things I was feeling that day, too). He said that it's not only that our sons are embarking on a new, scary/exciting part of their lives, but we are, too. The difference is, of course - they want to. And we don't.

Kids. They change your lives in so many ways. Even - especially - when they leave.

Front-end Alignment 101

2008-10-20T04:00:00.000-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

I snapped a damned underwire last week.

It hadn’t poked through to the point of stabbing me in the ribcage yet, but I was aware enough of it to have fleeting moments of paranoia regarding the symmetry of my boobs. One does not want to be distracted by fear of boobal asymmetry when one teaches eighth graders. Not even fleetingly.

This undergarment malfunction led me to examine the other contents of my lingerie drawer which- while not wire-snapped per se, were in equally dismal condition. It is fortunate indeed that I am a careful driver and not accident-prone. Any EMT’s called to my aid in the past few months would have gagged on the spot.

As my level of respect for those who risk their lives every day for their community is very high, I was naturally compelled to go out and do something about it.

I shopped.

And while I shopped, I became aware of certain incongruities.

Margy’s Laws of Foundation Garments:

LAW I: The variety of styles available and likelihood of sale prices are inversely proportionate to cup size. That is to say, if the bra itself is primarily for decorative purposes and a band-aid would suffice, there are abundant choices. Like this, for example:

Or this:

And, although I didn't see this particular model at Mervyn's today, fried egg girls can even get one of these:

Never been a fried egg girl myself.

My size is always in the back of the rack, so as I dug into the darker recesses-- unable to see the actual bras, of course, groping blindly for size tags- I became more and more despondent. Real breasts seem to be no longer in fashion- but, oh! Wait! There's one! Pull it out and TA-DAH! Look what they have for me!

Lovely.

Keep looking.

Which leads me to LAW II: The more particular the sizing of the garment = the more inconvenient the display = the messier the department.

Seriously. How many hangers can they squeeze onto one 12-inch steel hook? At roughly 1/4 inch each, that's potentially forty-eight bras per hook. They then pack those hooks together so as to render it impossible to reach between the rows to remove one from the back. No wonder the Flatsy-Patsies are all over the floor! (Maybe that's why they're always the ones on sale!)

LAW III: The necessity of hanging a piece of apparel in your closet is inversely proportionate to the odds of being sent home with a complimentary hanger.

AHEM-- DOES ANYBODY OUT THERE REALLY HANG UP THEIR UNDERWEAR?

Sequins in Bulldog Purple

2008-10-17T07:00:00.004-05:00

My daughter has a new sequined and organza ruffled purple dress. I know it sounds garish, or Barney-ish, but it's not. It's beautiful, and even prettier because she paid half. She's planning to wear it to her first college formal, the first week in December, on the arm of her new college boyfriend. (Let's hope the boyfriend lasts as long as the dress. We all know how that can go.) At Truman State University, purple is the color of their Bulldog mascot. It's fitting, I think, that for her first college formal, she's wearing Bulldog purple sequins.

We got the dress today on an unexpected afternoon shopping trip. She drove into town, with the boyfriend, to get her beloved retainer fitted. She stepped on her retainer a few weeks ago and had a new one made; the fitting was the last step. So, while she was in town and boyfriend was getting a haircut, we fit in some shopping time for a few "necessities." Should sequins have been on that list? I think not, but it was fun. Better than fun. It was wonderful.

I am getting used to the idea of my daughter being at college. Truth be told, I have done pretty well with the whole transition, and you readers already know. I'm getting to sleep before 2 am these nights, and I like it. She's happy. She's loving her life, and making plans. I'm thrilled for her, and have had no problem filling the daily time that was taken up by child #1 with either child #2 or a host of other work or activity. But, out of the many things I do miss about my daughter, there is one special activity that we shared, I realized this afternoon, that I have been longing to do with her. No, it's not gardening, or arts and crafts, or volunteering, or exercising. I have to confess. It's shopping.

I want you to know, I'm not talking about over-the-top, eye-glazing spending frenzy. I'm talking about Marshalls, and TJMaxx, and Target. Okay, sometimes Express, because they have really good sales. But the best shopping, by far, is the shopping for formals. I love going shopping for dances, and I always have. Maybe it's because some of my favorite memories of time spent with my mom were shopping trips for dances. Maybe it's because there's such an air of possibility in these shopping trips; this could be the best dance ever. The date could be perfect, the night could be perfect- the dress should be perfect, too. Fit for a queen, or a princess at the very least. There's a Cinderella quality to preparing for a formal, minus the singing birds and sewing chipmunks, that just can't be replicated when shopping for jeans and sweaters. No, shopping for dances is my specialty; my area of expertise. And, very often, the downfall of my checkbook.

We have a closet full of dresses. We started our dress collection in seventh grade with Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, which were so much fun they made our United Methodist daughter want to convert, and we haven't stopped since. Six years later, of course, those dresses are long gone. They have been replaced. We McKones may not live in the lap of luxury, but by God, we've got a lending library of dresses. Formal, semi-formal, sequined or just sleek, long, short, we've got 'em all. Not super-expensive, but super-fun and always available. It is my goal that every dress be worn at least twice. Four or five times- I'm a happy camper. Let's use them up, ladies, that's what they're here for. And when we're done with them, if they haven't been lost into someone else's closet, it's on to charity. Plenty of use left! During Prom and Homecoming seasons during high school we often had sessions in which my daughter's friends would come and try on the dresses they'd most like to borrow- first come, first served. It's a good idea, and my daughter has borrowed quite a few (thank God) through the years, too.

I wondered what would happen when my daughter left for college. I hoped she'd have formals to attend; she does. I'd hoped she and her friends would trade and share dresses; they will. But, they have to have a few starter dresses, don't they? Seeds for the formal garden, so to speak? We had a lovely afternoon of getting the necessities: sorority required black skirt, new cardigan, shampoo. But, we also merged into the world of college dances with a sparkly, swingy Bulldog purple dress that I'm quite sure will make an appearance at every dance Truman State holds this year on one girl or another. Like sands through the hour glass, so the tradition continues.

We are doing are part to keep the economy strong, one sequin at a time.

Go Bulldogs!

I Am Not A Gardener

2008-10-16T03:13:00.001-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

Contrary to my surname, I am not a gardener. I kill everything I try to grow; thank goodness that hasn't applied to my children or pets.

So perhaps because of that shortcoming, I have the utmost respect for those with a gift for cultivating the soil and reaping a bounty of fantastical fruits and vegetables from a pile of compost and soil. Particularly because the only manure I am good at cultivating is the verbal kind.

I guess this is why I so look forward to my weekly visits to the farmer's market, that Saturday morning Mecca for devotees of all things farm fresh. And why I am sad that this weekend marks the end of the season. Because it is there that one can revel in the finest and freshest of what nature has to offer each summer, without sullying a fingernail, wrenching a back, or being maimed by an onslaught of mosquitoes and other predatory insects, all of which prevent me from favoring gardening as a pastime.

For years it was a tradition for my son and me to rise before dawn to arrive at the farmer’s market for first pick of what’s available. Now that he’s in college, he's rarely home to join me, and so instead I go as his emissary. And without his voice of reason, I am doomed to fall prey to my produce-shopping downfall: excessive culinary ambition.

You see, something about the farmer’s market elicits overly grandiose plans in me. I don’t exactly intend to shop to excess. But overbuy is exactly what I do. Like a man who, in the heat of passion, prematurely blurts out false declarations of love, I, in my farmer’s market fervor, end up scooping up far more than any reasonable person could actually use before it goes bad. And like said man, I am sheepishly left to compensate for my foolish impulsivity.

By the time I leave the place each Saturday morning, I have flats of berries (after all, I can freeze them for future use!), sacks full of tomatoes (can you think of anything better than fresh-picked heirloom tomatoes on a hot summer’s day?), a dozen plus ears of corn (you never know what last-minute entertaining demands will arise), and lettuce for the masses.

I know that this binge-mentality is downright insane. All I need to do is return home after my shopping venture to realize that I have a crisper drawer full of the previous week’s spoils, spoiling. So before I can even put away what I’ve bought, I must weed through the detritus of my previous farmer’s market extravaganza, shifting and cramming to make room for what’s newer, better, of the moment.

There is that moment of relish that justifies it all, when I bite into a strawberry whose flood of sweet juices reminds me of why I go so overboard. Or with that first intoxicating morsel of local corn, so fresh the kernels are as tender as a baby’s skin. Or when I realize that my kids will eat vegetables, as long as they taste not chalky or overly processed, but as nature intended then to taste--with a hint of sweet and a burst of flavor, thus planting a seed of memory that will at some point leave them wanting more.

Sure, there are the many downsides to my excessive farmer’s market indulging--the swarm of fruit flies that invariably settle into that bowl of ripe peaches on the counter; the inevitable cucumber I find lost at the bottom of the vegetable bin, long past it’s days of use and rendered a puddle of its former self. And when I return home from my my market foray, my husband gets a little stressed out.

“We'll never be able to use all this!" He laments, wringing his hands in despair at my inability to choose more pragmatically.

And I know he’s right. I’m the first one to admit that my culinary ambition far exceeds my allotment of free time in which I can devote myself to cooking. And so, week in and week out, I over-shop and watch things rot, while I open my refrigerator door and think, “Damn, I really should do something with those fava beans before they turn black in there!”

But on those occasions in which I find my time and interest intersecting at just the right moment, and I do get around to peeling and quartering the thirty peaches for fresh summertime pie, I know, for a brief moment, the effort and expenditure has been worth it.

And if nothing else, at least my money is helping to support that dying breed of artisans, the hard-working local farmers who toil in their fields despite the heat, the rain, the bugs and the backache, to provide us with the finest local foods available.
And as long as they keep up their end of the bargain, which keeps me out of the garden, I’ll continue to support their efforts by successfully depleting their stocks, well into the autumn.

And when I pull out a my bag of frozen blueberries in January to bake a pie, the smell and taste evoking memories of summers past indulging in a succulent slice of pie on my grandmother’s back porch, I know my excesses were worth it, if only for a fleeting moment.

Turn, turn, turn

2008-10-15T01:39:00.004-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Sitting here on my sofa, looking out the windows into my backyard, the leaves that just a week ago were still the deep green of late summer are now shades of gold and orange with hints of the vibrant red that will come in another week or two.

When I went out to get the paper this morning, there was a definite chill in the air and fallen leaves fluttered at my feet.

Time is passing and while it's usually not this noticeable, the signs are everywhere right now.

My younger son will be home for a few days--and I'll make apple pie and chili and banana bread, all favorites of his. I'll also wrap a big box for his birthday. He'll be 21. I can't quite get my brain around that. Not only am I no longer the mother of toddlers; I'm not even the mom of teenagers. That can mean only one thing: Damn, I'm old.

Are you like me . . . no longer a reliable judge of people's ages? I still sorta think of myself as younger. Or at least as not as being seen as middle-aged. This summer my husband and I took a younger couple from work to a baseball game with us. The wife was pregnant with their first baby. She and I chatted about diapers and childcare. It wasn't until we were driving home that it occurred to me that they probably didn't see us as contemporaries but as their folks. Eek. At least I didn't mention my hot flashes to her.

I still think I'm fun. Hip in a midwestern kind of way. I work out. I haven't yet turned into that weird old woman on the corner who hoards cats and swills metamucil. But, I'm closer to her in years than I want to be.

I've always claimed that since my grandmother lived to be 103, I won't be middle-aged until I'm 51 1/2. That gives me 3 more years. But unless I start handing cards out to people I meet, they're not going to get that news flash. And the stiffness in my feet when I get up in the morning (what the heck is up with that?) is also a not-so-gentle reminder that these bones have been serving me well for nearly a half-century and they might be a little tired.

The seasons and years swim by and so much of the time I'm in too much of a hurry to stop and savor them. Here's my declaration: that rushing stops now. The leaves are gorgeous. There are apples to pick and birthdays to celebrate and even sore bones to attend to. My son will be home. And he still laughs at my jokes. We can sit out on the porch and have a beer and talk. And, because of the hot flashes, I might not even need a sweater.

CRS and Caprese Salad

2008-10-13T13:20:00.001-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

There were a number of times in the last week when I remembered I needed to post today.

One might think that because I am on vacation for two weeks, there would be time aplenty to rein in a page and a half of concrete thought. If I were relaxing on a beach somewhere with a trashy novel and the surf lapping at my toes, or sitting on the deck of a mountain lodge snuggled in a soft sweater against the cool fall breeze with a glass of pinot noir in my hand as I watched a red-tailed hawk circle on an updraft- I would be filled with writerly inspiration. In either of these scenarios, (or for that matter, any number of others) my mind would be strong, focused, and calm.

That, unfortunately, is not my reality. But perhaps my reality is more Erma-like anyway.

In addition to bouts of “desert spring cleaning,” getting the plants ready for my winter garden, volunteering to make political phone calls, and scrubbing toilets, it appears that I also have CRS. Here it is, Monday morning, and I was innocently sitting with my coffee and flipping through a magazine on the patio when Ohmygosh, it’s Monday morning and nobody posted on Erma! flashed through my brain.

Trust the caffeine to break through that CRS haze that way- I do have infrequent moments of clarity. Sadly, they only occur when I am sipping coffee and flipping through magazines.

So. Here I am.

Snooze will be descending from the mountain this weekend for his first visit home since the big move. We visited him there a few weeks ago for a two-day respite from the searing heat of the desert, and were given a tour of his apartment which was nicely furnished with his bed from home, a TV, and the Everest of laundry piles. We spent part of our time that weekend combing the Flagstaff Goodwill for dishes and cookware, and part buying groceries so he can eat at home more often. There really was no point in buying a hamper.

But this will be the first time he’s been back in my kitchen. I have been instructed that he will be in dire need of lemon chicken with capers and rotini with pesto, along with a big bowl of Caprese salad the minute his feet hit our property. I’ve already purchased the fresh mozzarella.

It’s nice to know that I’ve been missed.

Too bad he no longer has a bed here.

Too bad he doesn’t own a suitcase large enough to contain his entire wrinkled wardrobe. (heh)

But he will bring his appetite. And I have missed watching him eat.

My New News by Barb McKone

2008-10-10T07:00:00.003-05:00

I don't want to talk about the economic crisis, I really don't. I don't want to talk about the real estate crisis, or the election- packed to the gills with stupid politicians and slurring comments about candidates hanging out with terrorists- or how the whole mess has somehow affected whether or not I can afford to get my hardwood floors refinished next week. I don't want to be negative, or whiny. So, I will instead tell you how the past few months have affected my life, every single night at six and ten.

I can no longer watch the news. It's been so long since I've viewed the network news, I couldn't even tell you how Katie Couric is doing these days. And now that I think about it, I can't tell you who the other anchors are. I'm pretty sure one of them is that cute Brian Williams, but I'm not sure.

I have to turn over the paper when it is delivered every morning, after my husband roots around for the sports section and tosses the rest of it on the table. It's so damned depressing, I just can't stand to see it. But, I feel a true need to be informed. So, I've changed my viewing habits.

My new anchors, my only anchors, are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

I've been watching them for years. When Colbert left Stewart's show I was disappointed- I'd always loved their chemistry. Now that I'm used to the new format, I've fully signed on.

I know I shouldn't admit it! But the news these days is so very bad; I need a news show that makes me feel GOOD. I need an anchor with sarcasm so thick it's hard to see the doom within. Jon and Stephen are my men. I still get the news! It amazes me to find that I'm still fairly well informed, even though my news of choice is considered comedy. I want to learn about the economic crisis through the eyes of Jon Stewart, who always nudges me into remembering that I'm not the only one who is suffering. I want to get the latest on the election from Stephen Colbert, who just suggested that George Bush seemed to be hitting his stride, and that "maybe we should just suspend the election." Isn't his standard of "truthiness" exactly what the current administration has been using as their standard for for two terms now?

So, when the rest of the world is getting depressed while making supper, I will continue to blithely either watch "Wheel of Fortune" (yes, it's still on) or turn off the TV. I will wait until bedtime to get my news, then go to sleep with a smile on my face after watching some poor schlump who has agreed to be interviewed about his part in some crisis or another. Where do they get these people? Don't they know what they're in for? As I watch them squirm, I assure myself that no matter how bad they look now, their kids will at least have a cool story to tell at high school. "Did you see my dad get drilled by Samantha Bee last night on the Daily Show? It was HARSH."

With my guys, even though we might be going down, we're going down laughing.

Three Dog Night

2008-10-09T03:00:00.000-05:00

By Jenny Gardiner

Every night, just before the stroke of midnight, I hear what sounds like a dog being brutally murdered just beyond the confines of my bedroom window. The first time I heard the noise, I bolted from my slumber, peered outside into the charcoal-darkness, only to see nothing. The sound appeared to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. I was afraid to go outdoors on my own to investigate. I have a vivid imagination by day, a macabre one by night. Could these noises have been perpetrated as a decoy of sorts by a murderer, intent on breaking into my house and bludgeoning my family to death?

The sound--a howling, yelping, please-don’t-beat-me pack-animal kind of sound reserved for great distress--persisted for about ten minutes. On that first night, even my own dogs awoke, howling relentlessly, joining a chorus of other dogs in the nocturnal bark that had ensued throughout my neighborhood. When the clamor finally subsided, I retreated to sleep, taking comfort that my own watchful canines were guarding us from intruders.

Since that night, I have grown to expect to be aroused from my comfortable sleep by the beaten-dog sound, and every night, without fail, I hear it. While it is a sound of pain, I now recognize it as simply the very vocal wail of a hound, left outside by his owners, either oblivious or unconcerned about their pet’s disturbing nightly cacophony.

I’ve thought about getting in the car and driving around to follow the noise until I can find the offender, except it’s impossible in the vast night air to determine from which direction the sound is issuing. Plus, it’s warm and cozy in my bed, despite the rude awakening. Why add a brusque slap of cold air to my already adrenaline-charged body.

Fact is, barking dogs can be a problem. I know: I own such an offender. We call her the bark-a-holic. And because of her, I’ve got a little more tolerance for such offenders.

Bridget, an Australian cattle dog/Alaskan Husky mix, was an impulse buy. She charmed her way into our lives a few months after the death of our 10-year old Labrador, whose allergy-addled body had cost us a fortune in veterinary bills. We had vowed a lengthy period of dog abstinence, both to recover finances and to heal the heavy hearts of our children who had been gravely saddened by her death. We weren’t ready for another dog when we encountered a rescue league volunteer showing off an adorable puppy from an abandoned litter. With sapphire eyes that sparkled and pigtail ears with which my kids became instantly enamored, the dog plied her charms. How could we have done anything other than impulsively bring home the docile pooch? Plus, we were saving her from dog pound death, we were certain.

A trip to the vet, a diagnosis of parasites and a treatment of medicine, and our passive pup became a dominant tyrant, intent on ruling our roost, listening to nothing but the voices in her head and the call of the wild, something with which she’d clearly become accustomed after wandering alone along the back country roads for however long she did on her own.

No amount of dog training would undo what nature had already established within her, much to our dismay. Thus we had to learn how to outwit the dog. Bridget loves the night air. I suspect in a past life she was a vampire or something, because she prefers nothing better than to prowl in the dark, and to warn off any invaders from her terrain with her lusty bark. I have a feeling sinking her teeth into something might provide a good deal of satisfaction to top off her evening foray.

At first, we’d let Bridget go outside in the evening. We learned soon enough that as easy as it was to let the dog out, it was equally impossible to lure her back in. No amount of kindness, reprimands, or Scooby Snacks would induce her to come inside. Instead, she remained on the periphery of our yard, barking with unyielding fury at the unseen deer, foxes, maybe even coyotes in the woods behind our house. We therefore learned after a few nights of such futile attempts simply not to let her out after dusk. But she was wise to our ways. Soon we realized that we couldn’t let her go outside within a couple hours of dusk, like some werewolf that became dangerous upon sunset. Our contented afternoon dog would realize as the sun was descending that she’d better make herself scarce or she’d be trapped indoors all night.

In the meantime, we had an out of control dog that barked. And barked and barked and barked. We live in the country. Well, sort of. In a neighborhood, but in the country. Close enough to engender the ire of neighbors if your dog keeps them awake at night. And so it was that our neighbors began to loathe us.

“And bark and bark and bark--” I overheard my neighbor relaying to another neighbor at a Christmas party that first year.
I looked over at her. “You’re talking about Bridget?” I asked, half hoping that by putting that possibility out there, it would not be the case.

“In fact, I am,” she said. I didn’t sense much warmth in the answer. Exasperation? Perhaps. Who could blame her?

Oh, God, I needed to do something. We were new in town. The last thing we could afford to do was tick off the neighbors because of a nuisance pet.

Each time we devised a plan to keep Bridget housebound, Bridget would devise a plan to the contrary. In fact, she grew bolder and began breeching the electric fence. So well before the sun went down, she’s steel herself up, get a running start, and yelp her way through the power zap (we’d already resorted to the “stubborn dog collar” to preclude such episodes, but no such luck). By now, Bridget had an interesting yet imposing look about her. Gone were the frisky puppy pigtail ears, and in their stead, tall, pointing, imposing dog ears. And rather than the sparkly ocean-deep blue eyes, they’d morphed into pie-eyes: a cold hit-man shade of ice-blue in one, and part ice-blue, part brown in the other. Her tail curled up in a statement of power, and overall her appearance was one of “I can kick your butt so get outta my way.”

Needless to say, the neighbors were unimpressed, yet duly intimidated. Bridget had gotten her way. The first time we’d attached the stubborn dog collar on Bridget’s neck, we felt terrible. To powerfully zap the dog seemed downright cruel. And when she broke through the perimeter and got zapped, emitting an ear-piercing shrill that was immediately replicated by our talking parrot, it seemed all the crueler.

But soon enough, I was called upon to do greater battle than just the nine-volt neck zapper. On a cold February night, I hosted a party. My husband was out of town. I had the kids upstairs with a babysitter, and had a hundred plus women for a ladies’ night out bash that went off seamlessly, but for the incessant barking of Bridget in the mudroom. Frustrated by her intrusive behavior, I closed her into the dog crate for the duration of the evening, covering it with a sheet to seal her fate that night.

When the party had ended, I guiltily freed Bridget from jail. She was happy to see me, glad for the attention, and boy, she must have had to pee. I had a lot of clean up to do, and as I was carrying a bag of trash outside, Bridget dashed out the back door.

Now, earlier that day, my next-door neighbor had mentioned she couldn’t come to the party because she had to get up at four in the morning to catch a flight out of Dulles. So the fact that my dog decided to start barking at invisible boogeymen in my back yard at 1:30 a.m. would not hold me in good stead with my sleep-deprived neighbor.

I begged, cajoled then cried for the dog to come in. I ran down our expansive and steep backyard hill to try to catch her, but she has the speed and gait of a cheetah, and I that of a lumbering elephant, especially half asleep and after a couple of glasses of wine. I was gasping and wheezing as I chased the dog up and down the hill, her always ten strides ahead of me.

My first brilliant idea came straight from the cartoons of my youth: to lure the dog with the cat. I found one of our cats asleep on the sofa and took her outside, dangling her in front of Bridget’s line of vision. Normally, the dog--who herself is designed like a cat poised to spring into action--would take the bait. But she was making me suffer retribution for having missed out on the party fun, and wouldn’t budgee.

My next idea wasn’t very effective either. Desperate for something that could be launched at her to stop her in her tracks, I called the all-night emergency vet.

“I was wondering, if I spray that high-powered wasp spray at a dog’s eyes just to temporarily stop her, could I do permanent damage?” I foolishly asked.

“Uh, ma’am,” said the suspicious voice on the other end. “Can I please have your name and address?”

Not wanting animal welfare services to come after me, I hung up and put on my thinking cap. Surely I could outwit a dog!

With tears of frustration and exhaustion streaming down my cheeks, I sat on my deck, overlooking my dauntingly steep and wide backyard, desperate to catch that beast but--without a lasso and several years worth of rope training--unable to do so. And then it dawned on me as I stared blankly at my gas grill…

I quickly turned on the grill to warm it up (though warming it up was irrelevant, really). I went to the freezer and pulled out a package of Nathan’s famous all-beef wieners. And I slapped one on the grill. At two in the morning, there I stood atop the deck, my gas grill emitting the tempting aroma of a summer barbeque in the dead of winter, me hoping desperately that my obstinate barking dog would be lured by the aroma. Wise and mistrusting, Bridget reluctantly approached the grill, but never close enough for me to latch onto her collar. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Each time I approached her, she backed off.

Finally, she bolted back down the hill. But I wasn’t done. I grabbed the hot dog from the grill, and slowly meandered down the pathway, approaching the dog. “Here Bridgey-widgey,” I cooed, really wanting to say, “Come here you wretched spawn of Satan.”

I waggled the hot dog in front of her, and finally she made the false move. I snatched her collar, tossed the hot dog into the woods (I was damned if I was going to reward her hour-long display of bad dogsmanship!) and marched her sorry butt back up the long hill and into the house. I’m pretty sure the victorious refrain from Peter and the Wolf was playing in my head.

The other day one of my neighbors asked if I’d heard the mournful wail of the midnight hound.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve learned to deal with it, though.”

After having experienced my own cold night with a hot dog or two, a little hound dog wasn’t going to stir me from my warm winter slumber.

Smack in the Middle

2008-10-08T05:34:00.002-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

My parents are arriving for a visit today. I'm really looking forward to having them here. I like them. They're fun and smart and easy to have around. (Well, as long as we don't try to discuss the upcoming election . . . .)

But, as I've been getting ready for their visit, I've realized how the tables are turning. And it all feels a little bittersweet.

My parents are still in excellent health (that sound you hear is me knocking on wood), but they're also getting older. We celebrated my dad's 80th birthday this past spring. My mom turned 78 in July. I know I'm lucky that they are still so mobile. I mean, heck, they're driving all the way to Missouri from California.

And there's the rub. When I was getting the guest room ready for them, I was careful to make sure there weren't things they could trip over. I worried that we don't have grab bars in the shower. I hope the stairs won't give them trouble. I bought new pillows and a comforter for the bed. Plus new reading lamps.

Years ago, my mom would come to help me out with my babies. Then, when the boys' school calendar was different than mine, she'd come to babysit them for their spring break (because I would still be teaching). I'd get home and all the laundry would be done and dinner would be cooking. Ironing that had piled up since her last visit would be hanging in my closet. She'd always slip me a crisp twenty dollar bill (or three) as she left.

A year ago, I went out to help them when my dad had to have surgery. And I cooked for them. And ran to the grocery store. Bought books I thought my dad would enjoy during his recovery.

I learned how to take care of them from them.

Just yesterday morning, when they called me from my uncle's, to firm up when they'd be arriving this afternoon, I told them to drive carefully. Gave them a few tips about the route they'd be taking.

And all day today, until they pull into my driveway, I'll be whispering little prayers and keeping my eye on the weather, just as they must have done more times than I can imagine when I was driving. And as I still do when my kids are behind the wheel, as I'll be doing (again) later this week, when my son will be driving 200 miles to come home from college to see his grandparents.

And I wonder, how did it all happen so fast? Where did the years go? When did I become the one worrying? The one looking out for and protecting?

I'm not quite ready, but I have to be.

The Fun Mobile

2008-10-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

My car is no longer my own. Any parent of driving-age kids knows this. Your radio stations are mysteriously re-set to music that makes your ears bleed. The driver's seat is always pushed so far back, you need stilts to reach the gas pedals.

I've been through all this before, with my older son.

But my younger son - ah. He's a different animal entirely.

The older one was neat and quiet. He drove the car - but that's all it was for him. A means of transportation from point A to point B.

But younger son is a riot. And my car is no longer just a vehicle. No, it has become the FUN MOBILE!! A party on wheels!!

I get in it, and I honestly have no idea what I'm going to find there - I'm ready for anything, really. I wouldn't be surprised if one day I opened the door and a wild goat greeted me. For in the last few weeks, here is but a small sampling of the items I have found inside my formerly staid middle-class vehicle:

A fake mustache, glued to the middle of my steering wheel.

A dirty Razor scooter (found abandoned at a local park); it was too good a find to pass up, even though it's far too small for a 17-year-old. But who knows what good use those wacky teens can put it to?

A stack of 2009 calendars featuring cute kittens and sad-eyed puppies (there was a special at the nearby Dollar store, and apparently, hopped up on Vitamin Water and Kit-Kat Bars, my son and his friends found them hi-lar-ious as potential gag gifts).

An empty roll of Saran Wrap. (At first, I wondered if some of the kids were practicing really, REALLY safe sex - but then I realized it was for wrapping up each other's cars, after I went out one morning and couldn't open my door because it was - Saran Wrapped.)

Various items of clothing. But fortunately, items of outer-layer clothing (like sweatshirts and jackets). Because if I ever find any inner-layers of clothing (like underwear), I will FREAK out.

One morning I noticed they had duct-taped over the H-O-N on the spare tire that hangs on the rear of my car, leaving only the DA. Which, apparently to a bunch of 17-year-olds, again - hi-lar-ious. But then I pointed out that if they'd taped over the N-D-A, they would have left the HO. Now they think I'm an evil genius.

An ancient (as in - the boys played with it when they were toddlers) sock puppet of a dog, one ear now gone. Apparently, driving around with this sock puppet hanging out of the window, barking at unsuspecting strangers while hip hop music blasts from the stereo, again - hi-lar-ious.

The usual empty bags from fast food places. Although, for a bunch of AP class-taking seniors, they have proven themselves to be pretty ignorant about the length of time a soft drink can remain in a wax paper cup before it completely soaks through and leaves a small orange-flavored flood in your cup holder.

The glove compartment, surprisingly enough, has remained unsullied. Again - for a bunch of AP class-taking seniors, they're not the sharpest tools in the shed.

Now, there are no dents or scratches. Or drugs. Or used condoms. So all in all, I know I can consider myself pretty lucky.

But I can't help but wonder -

When do I get my own version of a FUN MOBILE??

Facing My Ballot

2008-10-06T04:00:00.003-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

Voting is meant to be a private matter. But as I face my ballot on November 4th, I suspect it will feel a little crowded in my booth.

To anyone else at city hall, I appear to be alone as I walk through the door, alone as I take my ballot in my hand, alone as I turn my back on the room and have my constitutional say.

But they are mistaken. I am not alone.

As I face my ballot on November 4th, I face it as a mother. Although I am not in their physical presence, my children accompany me to the booth. They stand beside me and I am overwhelmed with the necessity of doing what is right by them. I must bequeath them a planet that is healthy and clean. I must provide them with the educational and economic tools to face their futures. I must promise them the experience of living in a nation that is respected and looked up to by the world- a nation that leads through vision, peace, and integrity, rather than vengeance, fear, and greed. I must give my children a country they can look to as example of how they should live their lives.

As I face my ballot on November 4th, I face it as a wife. My husband of twenty-five years steps into the booth with us, crowding me and the kids. A former United States Marine, who then spent another decade and a half working for a military contract, he looks over my shoulder as I face my ballot, and I face it as the wife of a man who served his country with honor up to and including the day he knew he could no longer be in any way responsible for what was happening in the name of that nation. I face it as the wife of the that man whose conscience required him to accept a smaller paycheck so he could sleep at night.

As I face my ballot on November 4th, I face it as a daughter. My parents enter the booth, and we all squeeze closer in the already-crowded stall. Married for fifty years, these two people set a standard I still struggle to attain. They were people with a vision, they saw the broader picture; they planned ahead, both for themselves and for the world they called home. They recycled before recycling was cool. They gave of themselves at every turn when they were needed, and believe me, they were needed everywhere they turned. They lived their lives morally, prudently, and thriftily, and now when they should be reaping the rewards of a lifetime’s hard work- a mismanaged national economy teeters on the brink of collapse.

As I face my ballot on November 4th, I face it as a teacher. Dozens of my colleagues join me and my family in the booth. Together we examine the ballot for reform to NCLB; for the crucial funding that will allow the law to work. We look for the policies that recognize and reward us for the thankless work we do every day and that support schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.
It’s ridiculously crowded now, yet I sense that still others have joined me. Glancing over my shoulder, I see that my students are squeezing into the poll- all 2000+ I have already taught, and the thousands yet to come. They look at me expectantly, and I can read the question in their eyes: Isn’t there more to an education than knowing which bubbles to fill on a standardized test?

As I face my ballot on November 4th, I face it as a friend, as a sister, as an aunt, a writer, a cousin, a daughter-in-law, and a niece. I face my ballot as the granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants who came to this country with their hearts full of hope for the future. Full of hope for me.

And I face my ballot as a woman.

I am far from alone as I face my ballot. I look around and see the smiles of so many people whose booths I will also crowd; people I love and who love me. Looking further, I see faces of people I’ve never met with whom I share a common purpose. We’re all in this together, they whisper. I wrap my arms around every one of them, and together we reach for the pen.

And as carefully as if this were the biggest standardized test of them all, we ink in the oval next to Barack Obama’s name.

Polident vs. Pollyanna... Thoughts on the Vice Presidential Debate by Barb McKone

2008-10-03T07:00:00.002-05:00

Well, there's one thing I can say without question regarding both Vice Presidential candidates, post-debate. They sure can smile. Blinding, beautiful smiles that span the generation, or two, between them. Biden is the handsome, white-toothed Senior Smile that lights up an auditorium. Palin is the sassy, sexy Supportive Mom Smile that lights up a sports complex. Oh yes, there, folks. It's Polident versus Pollyanna.

Okay, she's not really a Pollyanna. I just liked the way it sounded. No, I'm pretty sure she's genuinely concerned about the free-falling economy. I don't know. She didn't answer the question.

I'm pretty sure she's got great ideas for saving us from the sub-prime mortgage debacle. I don't know. She was too busy "you betcha"-ing to answer the question.

I'm pretty sure where she stands on benefits for gay and lesbian partnerships. I don't know. She only kind of, sort of answered the question.

I'm pretty sure she... well, you get the picture. And when my new hero Joe Biden dared to broach the "Bush" subject, he was accused of living in the past. Hey, Sarah- it's not considered "the past" if we're still living in it. As Biden so beautifully put it, the past is but a prologue. The scary thing is, he's absolutely right.

I actually thought Ms. Palin did pretty well- much better than I expected. I'm glad. She seems like a nice person, despite that horrible killing-the-wolves commercial, which, in my opinion, is too violent for prime time and should not be on the air. Y'know, she's Josie Six-Pack. Fun at a football game tailgate, if you just stay away from talking politics. Nice as she seems, I can't get over my frustrations about the questions not answered with anything more than a wink and a smile, a snappy comeback or a cheerleader's "yea America" one-or-two-liner. I'm a cheerleader type. I understand the mind-set. If you've got that in you, you just can't help yourself. But, see, I'm not running for office. If I were, I'd answer the questions before leaning toward leading the crowd in the "U.S.A." chant. Who knows? Maybe that's what they want.

I couldn't help standing and cheering when Biden finally silenced all that "maverick" talk by explaining why John McCain wasn't one. And God help the poor person sitting next to me on the couch if I ever, ever hear the word "maverick" again.

But for me, tonight's debate came down to one word. Nuclear. Not nucular, NUCLEAR. I know it may sound trivial, but, it's just not. Not anymore. I don't consider myself to be a language snob at all; I make as many mistakes as the next person. But, I'm not the President of the United States. Or the Vice President.

I cannot be expected to sit idly by and listen to another administration mispronounce such an important word. It's a big word. A scary word. A word that should be handled, and pronounced, with care. I agree with my friend Judy. I want my President to be smarter than me. I want to see the photo of the White House and know that a very smart person is sitting at the big desk. It's just reading. Sound it out. NU-Q-LAR? No. NU-CLEE-AR. I believe that Sarah Palin is smart. Very smart. Do you think she pronounced it that way because she doesn't want to embarrass George W., or because of the 8-year lapse in correct pronunciation is it now considered acceptable? Seriously, I'm wondering. Thanks, George. Another little gift you've left us.

As an American, I've never been scared for my safety a single day of my life. I take for granted being free. I've rarely felt insecure about my country's decisions. (Except for an eight year period in my twenties that shall remain nameless) I've always been proud to be an American, shmaltzy song or not. This has been a bad year for those feelings of pride; they're harder and harder to find. I was proud of Joe Biden tonight. Really proud, and it felt great.

So smile that big Polident smile, Joe, (Is it okay if I call you Joe?) and win one for those of us who need someone who answers the questions. And correctly pronounces all of the words.

2008-10-02T03:30:00.003-05:00

As I pondered what I wanted to say in this post, I realized I'd recently read a commentary circulating in emails from EbonyJet.com that I felt really encapsulated much about what is, in my humble opinion, important about the upcoming presidential election.

So at the risk of being lame, I am going to reprint Goldie Taylor's words, because I find them to be so eloquently put. I hope you'll take the time to read them:

"I have been a mother all of my adult life. A single working mother. I put off dating, took menial jobs far beneath my qualifications and baked my share of ginger bread cookies for PTA Night, all so that three incredible children could have better. I chose their lives over mine. I don't have to tell you that it wasn't easy. Unfortunately, my story, our story, is not
unique.

We slept in cars, bought groceries with food stamps and prayed for a better day. When that wasn't enough, I put myself through school at Emory University and took a part-time job as a staff writer at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. That was over a decade ago.

Along the way, things got better. I've been an executive at two Fortune 500 companies and a practice director at two multinational public relations firms. Today, I own an advertising agency and I've authored two novels. A third and fourth are on the way, God willing. All of this was possible because somebody laid a brick or two on the road for me.

A few weeks ago, I woke in tears. It was my 40th birthday and certainly not a time for sadness. Rather, I cried in joy because for the first time I realized and could embrace the value of the struggle. The bright little girl, who once cried in my arms because we didn't know where we were going to live, was headed off to Brown University. The small boy who had been the "man of the house" far too soon was now truly a man. And the tiny, angelic baby who had come to this world precious and innocent just 15 months after him was now a 16 year old girl headed out to her first job interview.

For all of this, maybe I should be proud of a woman like Sarah Palin. Maybe, just maybe, I should be rejoicing in John McCain's selected running mate.

But I'm not.

I'm not "bed wetting liberal" nor am I a "right-wing zealot." What I am is a working mother. And I cry foul.

I won't, for a moment, denigrate her experience or lob spit balls at her family. I will, though, take issue with what she knows. Or more succinctly, what she does not know. Living in Alaska, I'm not sure how much she knows about the people living in inner city Baltimore. I don't know how much she cares about the 125 murders this summer in Chicago. I have no idea what she believes about HIV/ AIDS and the havoc it wrecks on Black women or the cancer rates in East St. Louis. She hasn't said nary a word about Hurricane Katrina or the infant mortality rates in Appalachia.

I do know that she's a life-time member of the NRA, a proponent of individuals who wielded the very weapons that killed my father and brother. I do know that she “lives really close to Russia,” but I'm not so certain she is ready for Putin. I know she wanted to ban books for public libraries and sex education in schools, but that her 17 year old is pregnant and preparing for a shotgun wedding. I know that she loves her husband enough to allow him (and probably did herself) use her office to settle a personal score--one that the McCain campaign would now like to cover in under a blanket of Juneau snow. I know that the Alaska Independent Party, and its secessionist platform, was enticing enough for her to attend its conference (and for her husband to become a card carrying member). Does she love her country? I'm sure. Enough to support those who want to leave it.

But I have no earthly idea what she knows (or could possibly know) about national domestic policy or foreign diplomacy. For all of her working class values, she never once mentioned the Middle Class in her diatribe that mocked her opponent's experience. Having been the mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,000 at the time) and governor of Alaska (a state a smaller than the county I live in) for a little over a year, she felt she was qualified to do that. And obviously, so did John McCain.

If she's qualified, then so am I.

But in this country I love, she has been afforded the ability to run. The very constitution she says doesn't apply to the men at Guantanamo says she can. But this is about more than that.

As Gloria Steinem said in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, "Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie."

The good news is thanks to Shirley Chisholm, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angela Davis, Condoleeza Rice, Anita Hill, Madeline Albright, Maxine Waters, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilary Rodham Clinton and a slew of others, there are 18 million proverbial cracks in the ceiling. Our collective political and economic power is due to the strides (and leaps) they, and others, took on my behalf.

I am grateful. I am deeply humbled to stand on the bricks they'd laid before me.

But, whatever our struggle was (and is) that last thing I want is to be patronized. Just as I cannot support just any African American who decides to offer themselves up for public service, I will not toss my vote to someone just because we share the same chromosome mix. To do so would dishonor the vow I made to my children, to myself. I did not vote for Al Sharpton, wasn't old enough (nor would I have) voted for Jesse Jackson and I certainly will not support Sarah Palin. Identity politics, especially in this case, are a sham of the worst order.

When I cast my vote, it will be for people who will lay more bricks for people like me. It will be for people who will put diplomacy before war, challenge us all to provide healthcare for the sick, help another child go to college, and check the special interests in Washington. This fall, I'm not looking for a woman.

I'm looking for a brick layer.

I could care less if that person hasn't spent "enough" time in Washington or can "properly field dress a moose". I could care less if that person likes hockey, soccer, football or table tennis. I could care less if they graduated from Harvard or the University of Iowa. I'm a Christian, but I could care less if they are down with Deuteronomy, Leviticus or Numbers. I want them to uphold the Constitution.

So no, I will not sit idly by as they attempt to suspend habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay, engage wiretaps on American citizens without a warrant, and hide behind executive privilege when they are caught firing attorney generals based on how well they tow the Republican line. I won't let them cost us $12 billion a month fighting a war that should have never been authorized and never been waged. Not while working people lose their homes to predatory lenders and watch as we bail out the financial institutions that created the housing crisis.

I will not, in the name of history, vote for a woman like Sarah Palin who does not share my values.

But here’s what I will do.

I will continue raising money for Barack Obama. I will get on the phone again and call people in distant states I've never met. I will e-mail, call, and knock on doors until the final vote is cast. I do this, not because he shares my skin, but because I admire his principals and he shares my values. I do this because Barack Obama is more than a community organizer, he is a bricklayer. And he sees -- just as he sees the light in Michelle's eyes -- my struggle, my worth as a woman."

Goldie Taylor is CEO of Native Brand Communications and chairman of Goldie Taylor OmniMedia, LLC. She is the author of In My Father’s House (Wheatmark, 2005) and The January Girl (Madison Park, 2007 & Warner Books, 2008) and is currently working on her third novel, Come Sunday. Taylor and her children live in Atlanta and New York. For more information, visit www.goldietaylor.net or her blog Second Day at www.goldietaylor.wordpress.com

Think. Vote. Please.

2008-10-01T05:45:00.006-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Earlier this summer, a picture on the front page of The New York Times stunned me. And it haunts me still. It was of a little boy, a toddler, with both of his ankles in casts. He was from one of the African nations struggling to have fair elections in the midst of war. Men had come in, and when his mother refused to say where his father was and how they had voted, they shattered the little boy's ankles.

Think about that for a minute if you can. Think of the terror and horror his mother endured. The pain of the little boy. These were people who faced brutality and possible death just for trying to vote.

We have an election on the horizon and while there has been lots and lots (and lots!) of words said and written about it, there are people who won't vote because they are too busy or they just plumb forget or they don't care. There are also people who will vote without being informed. They'll vote one way because of hair style or skin color or internet rumors that are e-mailed and forwarded by idiots (sorry, Dad.).

And I want those people to think of that little boy and his mother.

I'm voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. There, I said it. For all to see. And with no fear of harm coming to my family or me.

I believe that Obama is our best chance for change and hope and a positive direction for our country. I believe that Obama as president can help America regain her stature and good standing in the world. I like that he's smart. I want a president who's smarter than I am. I firmly believe that he wants the same things for his family and their future that I want for mine. I trust him with my economic future. I agree with him on most social issues. I wish he were more adamant about gun control, but I can't have everything. I support what he proposes for health care.

Do I know every last detail on all his positions? No. But I have listened and read enough to trust him and his vision for America.

This past weekend, I walked through a few neighborhoods in my town, canvassing for Obama. I chatted with neighbors who are undecided, who have decided for the other side, and who agree with me (and asked for yard signs). Everyone was friendly (okay, one woman was a bit crotchety) and what struck me was the thoughtfulness of those I talked to. One woman in particular said she was really struggling; she likes Obama, but she's pro-life. She couldn't decide what to do. And while I wished I could sway her, I know she has to decide. But she's thinking about it which is the most important.

I wish I could go door-to-door in more neighborhoods, more states. I wish we could talk to and with rather than at.

This election is too important to hand over to the talking heads on Fox News and MSNBC and CNN.

Think of that mother in Africa and her little boy.

And please vote.

My Campaign Ad

2008-09-30T06:00:00.002-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

Well, here we are at the beginning of yet another uneventful week...I mean, it's not as if we're on the verge of economic collapse, the election itself is in doubt (if one candidate is to be believed)...Oh, wait. Yes, it is.

I am usually loathe to talk about my political beliefs here. I know it can get so contentious, and I'm hardly an unemotional person. I get very, very passionate. So I try to keep things light and merry, most of the time.

This post, really, isn't about what I believe. (Although for the record I think Barack Obama is our only hope. He alone has acted rational and presidential these last few days, and yes, I thought he won the debate. And I'm sorry, I can't help but believe McCain is the one, the only one, who inserted partisan politics in the bail out negotiations. (Well, aside from Nancy Pelosi yesterday - sigh. But still, that can't be the only reason the bill failed.) And to talk about cancelling the debate? Now, more than ever, we need debates. Saying now is not the time for one of only three non-partisan official opportunities to see and hear both candidates, side by side, is ludicrous. And neither candidate needed to be in Washington because neither candidate is the Treasury secretary, chairman of the Fed, nor even on the finance committee involved in negotiations. Also, watching Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric made me physically ill at the thought that this person might be president some day. Although it sure made for a lot of fun when Tina Fey re-enacted it on Saturday Night Live!)

Anyway.

These are my beliefs. But here's the thing - they shouldn't be yours, just because someone like me spouts off at the mouth.

I came to my beliefs on my own. And that's what I want to urge everyone to do, regardless of political party. Watch, read, listen - to the candidates themselves. Not the pundits. Not the blogs. Not cable networks that try to cloak opinion as "news" - and yes, I'm talking about Fox "News" Channel.

There is so much spin, so much misinformation. I get emails daily from people who should know better, who try to tell me things like Barack Obama eats little children. People pass this stuff along as truth. They don't bother to check it out; they just swallow what they're fed, without question. And pass it along as gospel truth.

Folks, most of the crap we're force fed, on a daily basis, is just that. Crap. The Internet, and email, has really made it easy for people to pass this on. And people, I think, want to believe what they want to believe. If crap shows up in their inbox, or on TV, and it happens to reflect what they want to believe is true, then - they believe it.

This is what concerns me, as we enter the home stretch of this election season. This is what I urge:

Check it out. Check everything out. Watch with your own eyes, listen with your own ears - and don't believe the spin from the pundits. The Internet may have given rise to a lot of crap, but it also is extraordinarly helpful for sorting out the truth.

If you missed the Palin/Couric interview, don't go over to Fox and hear what they had to say about it. Go to YouTube and watch it - all of it, not a mix of it - yourself. And make up your own mind.

If you get an email that says Barack Obama eats babies, go over to a wonderful site called FactCheck.org. This is a completely non-partisan site dedicated to telling the truth about both candidates. They address all the crap, and sort it out, and give you the facts. Just the facts.
Snopes.com is also an excellent resource.

So - please. Just open your eyes, your mind. Make your own decision. Ignore the crap and the hype. And -

Vote. Of course, for heaven's sake, get out and vote.

I'm Melanie Lynne Hauser, and I approved this message.

Eye on the Prize--Visualize! By Suzanne Macpherson

2008-09-29T17:19:00.007-05:00

My new mantra is VISUALIZE OBAMA. Because I truly believe that if we focus our minds to that outcome it will unfold. I know there are many people out there that that will connect with this idea, and I know this little bit of cyber chatter might reach them. I send it out like a little breeze rustling our consciousness.

This means turning our heads away from all the press, polls, predictions of doom, and bad news. Actuall,y it's not a bad time to just Zen out a bit, is it! Curl up with a book or sit in the sunny yard for a while, not letting it all make us crazy. Step away from the TV. Yes, I honor the stories, but for me the power lies in visualizing a better tomorrow.

I'm imagining Michelle leading tours of the White House. I'm seeing the girls romping in the rose garden. I'm seeing the Obama family Christmas tree. Hold a space for this outcome in your imagination and give it time. water it like a plant. Imagine it blooming. brush away fears and keep our eyes focused on the energy of change.

Imagine peace.
Imagine no hunger.
Imagine a brotherhood of man.

John Lennon was trying to tell us something.

Vote, Volunteer, Donate, and --Visualize

I'm So Hot (And Not In a Good Way) by Barb McKone

2008-09-26T07:00:00.003-05:00

I can't wait until Paris Hilton is forty-nine.

I can't wait to witness the "Entertainment Tonight" moment in which she stifles her "that's hot" catch phrase because she realizes the trickle of perspiration traveling from her forehead to her chin can actually be seen on national television. She'll coyly turn her head, smile, pout, cover it up. But we'll know. Those who have gone through it will know.

She will, of course, have a different catch phrase by then. Probably something deep like, "That's deep." Who knows?

All I know is, I'm hot. And not in a good way.

I'm the girl who has always slept in sweatpants and socks. My husband has accused me of wearing this armor to ward off advances on super-sleepy nights. Not true. Well, not entirely true. The truth is, I'm freezing. Or at least I was. I fleece up because I've always been the cold one, my whole life. I'm the one with the ice-cold toes on summer nights. I'm the one who buys a sweatshirt on vacation when everyone else is buying flip-flops, and needs an extra blanket on family movie night. Being that person, I cannot express the surprise of realizing, while sitting comfortably at an evening college football game in a tank top, capri pants and sandals, that the rest of the cheering throng was in sweatshirts and jeans. Some were blanket huddling! WHAT IS HAPPENING? If my life were a movie, the trailer voice-over would say something like, "She was a wife, a mother, a friend. Until she started melting, from the inside out..."

From what I gather, women start this hormonal hell anywhere from thirty to sixty. I say, "I gather," because no one seems to talk about it until I bring it up. When I fan myself and say, in a group of middle aged women, "I'm so hot, and not in a good way," it's as if the dam has burst. Stories of hot flashes in workplaces and on college visiting days abound, and it always makes us all feel better. I have a friend who experienced her first hot flash while on a plane to Florida. She made the pilot, who had started taxiing the runway, turn back and let her off. She thought she was dying. Although mine started sneaking up on me rather than hitting me over the head like hers, I can relate. It's quite a shock to the system.

I have friends completely finished with "The Change" by the time they're forty-five, and others who haven't started the dread sweat-fest by the time they're sixty. It doesn't seem to matter, except that my sister says that her doctor told her that having your cycle intact for as long as possible keeps you looking younger. This doctor has patients who medicate to sustain the whole thing. Too late for me. At the rate I'm going, I'll be looking sun-dried by the time I hit the big 5-0.

So, where does all this leave me, besides in my own personal puddle? I guess I'll get one of those hormone scans. See my doctor. All that good stuff. In the meantime, I'll just be really shiny and hope for an early fall. This year, I look forward to the nip in the air more than the change of colors. Come find me at the football games; give me your advice on this subject.

I'm sure you'll be able to pick me out. I'm the one in the tank top.

Weather or Not

2008-09-25T03:00:00.001-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

Right around this time a couple of years ago, we found ourselves bracing for the onslaught of Hurricane Isabel, a storm that wreaked a punishing havoc throughout our region, an area not known for hurricane vulnerability. For days preceding the hurricane, in my household we held vigil over the Weather Channel, trying to glean some nugget of information that would give us an edge over the storm, provide us with that comforting element of assurance that would carry us through the worst of it. Or at least offer up some entertainment while waiting for the roof to blow off the house.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve again seen these tropical tempests dominating the headlines. And we all know that when bad weather approaches, anyone with cable or a satellite dish turns to the Weather Channel for guidance, in much the same way that we tend to gawk as we drive by a car accident along the highway.

What did we do before there was the Weather Channel? Does anybody remember those dark prehistoric days, when our only chance to find out what great weather disaster was soon to befall us was to tune into the local nightly news? Where some helmet-haired news anchor-wannabe in an ill-fitting polyester suit served his penance before the blue screen, spewing out weather forecasts he probably barely understood himself?
I remember those days, but only vaguely. Long before we could sit down with a glass of wine, tuned--at least until the power would go out--to Jim Cantore, Bill Keneely, Marshall Seese, or whatever Storm Expert of the hour is on, and a handful of interchangeably perky women in conservative suits coaxing us through our anxiety, as the storm thrashes our rooftops and the winds batter the surrounding trees.

I remember those days, before we got to laugh as Bill, and the other strapping young weather hotties, would entertain us by being blown hither and yon like dry leaves on a blustery late autumn afternoon, their signature Weather Channel rain gear inflated by hurricane-force winds to make them appear as if they too, would soon be swept skyward, along with the flying debris which they so successfully dodge.

One wonders if our weather stud muffins have low-level staffers or interns, relegated outside the camera shot to safeguard the handsome meteorologists, ready to absorb the blow from the roof shingles, the street signs, the heavy branches being flung through the air so randomly. Is there a hierarchy of saveability for these Weather Channel field operatives? Who is more expendable in a deadly storm? Do they have better life insurance than the rest of us?

I appreciate the Weather Channels’ ability to induce laughter in an otherwise somber occasion, as the reporters’ microphones are swept from their clutches when a sudden 135-mile per hour wind gust swoops down. As rain pummels their faces, the ladies’ mascara obviously waterproof. The willowy female meteorologist, poised beside a two-ton potted palm that has just been blown over by the gale-force winds, as she stands there in the driving rain in her chase-me beat-me pumps. Pumps! In a hurricane? Somebody get the woman a pair of L.L. Bean waders, please!

The Weather Channel has taught me to have strength under duress. That I, too, can withstand the torrent of nature, if only I have a trademark blue water proof jacket, a pretty good television face, and a sense of humor in the face of disaster.

Sometimes people reflect wistfully on days gone by, on how much better things used to be. But I for one never want to be without my beloved Weather Channel when disaster strikes. Yeah, it may be a little macabre to be kicking back on my living room sofa while I watch peoples’ worldly possessions soar past the camera’s lens as the storm takes hold. But in these days of reality TV in which we all share bizarre intimate details of others’ lives, the Weather Channel’s 24/7 coverage of weather disasters is reality TV at it’s finest.

Keeping up with Nobody

2008-09-24T05:34:00.004-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Here are the things that got me most excited this past week--a new toothbrush, new bras, and making homemade pesto.

I know, you're thinking: whoa there, girlfriend. You're cuh-razy.

And at some point in my life (I'm not sure when exactly), I would have thought that was pretty pathetic and perhaps I needed to get out more. But, the thing is, I don't find it pathetic at all. I'm saying this in all truthfulness--I'm pretty tickled about these things.

I mean the toothbrush is an OralB cross-action vitalizer plus. In hot pink, no less.

Sigh.

I know, I should be a tad embarrassed but I'm not. I'm holding my head up high (what with my squeaky clean pearly whites) and standing a bit taller (thanks to the Soma Intimates Vanishing Lace Bra with little air pocket insert thingies) and looking forward to all the ways I can use the pesto I made.

And it all got me to thinking.

Here's what I realized.

I like being at the stage of my life where I don't need non-stop excitement--and, um, given that my husband and I have 5 kids between the ages of 16 and 24, and we're a "blended" family, to boot, so that we've come to see non-stop excitement as often involving calls in the wee hours of the morning when we'd both rather be sleeping, or interesting notices from various schools and/or authorities, or even just those plaintive looks from said children for more money/fewer questions from the old parental units--we've come to embrace the calm. The placid. The quiet.

And I'm really glad I've reached the point in my life where I don't feel like I'm missing out if I'm in bed by 10:30. Or if I don't have plans every night of the week. I'm more than okay with the thought that there are things happening and I don't even know or care that I'm missing them.

I spent the latter half of my twenties changing diapers, and burping babies, and juggling bills and occasionally feeling like I was missing out on some sophisticated single life (think Sex and the City before it was even created). Not that I was doubting my choices--marriage and motherhood. I just remember wishing I could try out the other path, experience what I was missing. In time I realized that what I was missing was probably mostly hangovers, sexually transmitted diseases, and feeling like my biological clock was running out.

But, you know what they say, the grass is always greener, right?

Then, I spent my thirties as a single mom. Knowing I was missing out on that nuclear family life I saw in too many commercials and TV shows.

But now, in my forties (which I get to hang on to for another year and a half!), it's great to not be wondering what else is out there. I'm not trying to keep up with some standard some screenwriter established. I can get excited about a boffo new toothbrush. Or bras. And still get a decent night's sleep (well, except for waking up for no discernible reason at 4:23 a.m. much too often).

Besides which, I have to rest up because three of my shows (Survivor, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives) are starting this week and I need to save my energy to set the DVR to record them.

Gilding the Lilly

2008-09-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

It’s funny. Back when my husband and I were young parents (which was just a year ago; as soon as our oldest went off to college we became old parents, it seems), we used to plan date nights fairly often. It was a big deal, a special event, just the two of us; precious alone time.

Now, over the years, we’ve both come to work more or less at home (when he’s not traveling), and so we see each other fairly often. Sometimes, too fairly often. So now that we don’t have to plan for a babysitter, now that we have pretty much every night open to do whatever we want just the too of us — we don’t. Do. Anything.

We stay at home in our sweatpants and sweatshirts, week nights, weekends; we hide out here, and we watch TV, and we eat casseroles and grunt at each other, and suddenly, we’re in danger of becoming Archie and Edith Bunker.

Why is it, I wonder, that when it’s a huge effort to find the time and money to go out, you do it far more often than when you have loads of time, loads of options?

Well, this past weekend, we roused ourselves with a great effort and made reservations for Saturday night. I even put makeup on, and I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d done this until my husband asked me what on earth I’d done to my eyes? Mascara, I replied, and realized it had been months since I’d put mascara on.

Again — a conundrum: Why, when you’re young and pretty and don’t really need it, you spend so much darn time on makeup and hair and stuff, but when you could really use the help of a good concealer and lipstick, you just can’t be bothered? I dunno. I only know that I used to put makeup on, every day, even when I wasn’t going anywhere, and when my husband was about to come home I’d run upstairs and freshen it up a bit, fluff my hair. Now, though, he’s home all the time and I’m running around in sweats and nothing on my face, not caring at all. (And it's not just me; let me just say, it would be nice if the man showered before dinner most days.)

So all of this is just to say — boy, it’s been a long time since either of us have really tried to, well — dress up, do something special together, make an effort. Lately my hair’s an unkempt mess — I haven’t had a cute haircut in ages; I’ve started buying my clothes at Kohl’s and Target instead of Ann Taylor and J.Jill, I’m using drugstore makeup instead of driving all the way to the mall to go to the MAC store….in other words, I’m in a rut. I’m becoming the kind of tired, slightly deflated woman I see in the grocery store at 3:00 PM (the time when all of us older women shop because all the young women with babies are busy picking up their kids from school), pushing her half-empty cart, clad in sweats and sneakers with her gray roots showing, hair pulled back from her face with a plastic barrette. Buying both bran cereal and packaged underwear, because she doesn’t want to make an extra stop.

So it was nice, Saturday night. Nice to put on a pair of jeans instead of sweats, high heels instead of sneakers, an underwire bra instead of a sports bra. Nice to spend a lot of time in the bathroom on my hair and makeup, trying to get it just right. Nice to appreciate my reflection in the mirror; nice to appreciate my reflection in my husband’s eyes when I descended the stairs like Norma Desmond. Nice, too, to imagine, anyway, that men in the restaurant might have looked at me twice.

It’s good to shake things up, I guess. It’s good to plan a special night out even though we see each other all the time, there’s no lack of “quality time” between the two of us.

And even though, at a certain age, I think it’s normal to be tired out from decades of expensive, expansive upkeep, somehow, we must rouse ourselves. We must not give in to the temptation to buy packaged underwear at the grocery store. We should spend some time and effort and money on feeling pretty, feeling special, feeling prized.

After all, we’re worth it. More importantly — we’ve earned it by now. And really, back when we were young and firm and obsessed with this kind of thing, we hadn't. But now, we have.

I need to remember that, from time to time.

Changes in the Air

2008-09-22T04:00:00.000-05:00

by Margy McCarthy

My baby book is a gold-embossed, 60’s vintage, faux leather photo album bound with a silky cord. The mostly black-and-white photos that fill it are adhered to the pages with tiny triangular corner tabs. Among the snapshots on the very first pages are a series of pictures of stark, bare tree branches against a clear autumn sky.

This was my baby’s eye view of the world from my buggy, captured in perpetuity for my memory by my mother as she walked me in the parks of Kansas City in September of 1962.

Today is the first day of fall. It is also the first day of my forty-sixth year of life. I like that these two events have aligned for me this year; I do not remember them falling together this way before and I am greatly heartened by the auspiciousness of their synchronicity. I have always felt a rush of familiarity at the turn in the air from summer’s warmth to the crisp tang of autumn; it was like coming home. I was one of those kids who loved new school supplies, the smell of a new box of crayons, notebooks full of blank pages of promise, and a brand new supply of sharp yellow Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencils. I loved the start of a school year- perhaps because a school year, like me, began fresh each September.

It’s my personal New Year’s Day. This year maybe more than any other that means something to me.

It might seem that with AARP looming on the horizon I have begun to “feel my age,” but other than requiring more moisturizer than I have in the past, no longer being a single-digit pants size, and occasionally shrieking at the mirror in the morning when I discover an inch-long chin hair that miraculously sprouted overnight-- (or at least I hope it did! What if it’s been there for a week and I didn’t notice? Yeesh.) I don’t feel any different than I ever did.

It’s the other changes lately that make me appreciate the gift of a clean slate and opportunity to reflect mid-year. Changes like the son who moved out of the house and on with his life. Or like the daughter whose social life and morning toilette no longer require so much assistance and guidance from old Mom. These changes give me new opportunities to explore and learn and continue to evolve into the person I want to be.

Happy first day of autumn to you all.

Blue and Golden by Barb McKone

2008-09-19T07:00:00.001-05:00

My son is feeling blue.

His first homecoming dance, Blue and Gold, is six weeks away. For the past four fall and spring seasons, our daughter has supplied a constant rattle of dinnertime dance invitation updates. She regales us with stories of creative invitations carried out in the cafeteria or on the school intercom or at the football game, acting out the parts and leaving us breathlessly awaiting the invitee's response.

Back in the dark ages, when we went to dances, being invited went as follows: pick up the phone, pray for the right voice on the other end, listen politely and answer with an excited or polite "yes" or "no, thank you." Simple, right? Well, the invitations, they are a-changin'.

My daughter was once asked to prom in song, her would-be date boldly interrupting their choir class to perform his invitation to a giggling and hooting audience. He also brought her a cookie cake he'd decorated himself- stick figures dancing, with "Joe" and "Grace" printed underneath the dancers in charming boy scrawl. After his performance he had her circle the word "yes" in gel frosting to give her answer, which she did, to a cheering audience. While I'm usually shaken by the "progress" of today's teen world, I have to admit, I like this new system of getting a dance date. It's imaginative. It's romantic. It takes guts and shows the real measure of the man. I could frankly do with a little of the same from my husband from time to time. (Just once, I'd like to be asked to the movies with some panache. Or, asked to the movies at all.) It does, however, up the ante for the slightly shy sophomore boy asking his first date to homecoming.

His first date. Awwww.

And that's just problem number one. Problem number two is that even though Blue and Gold is six weeks away, many of the girls my son would like to take have already been asked.

There are those prime girls that encroaching upperclassmen have "stolen," as my son tells it, from the sophomore class. There are those girls who have established boyfriends within their class. So, in a class of only 100 kids, we're already down several potential dates. My son doesn't intend to stray out of the class. He's loyal. The phone lines are lighting up, and my son is dragging his feet. I don't want to create a panic, but honestly- he's got to get on the stick. Stake his claim. We all know how this works. It's like a run on a bank. Sneak in before the doors close! We broached the subject at dinner tonight; he ignored us so completely I wondered if he was actually listening to his i-pod. He's clearly no Joe. He's not much looking forward to the task ahead. He will be using the tried and true phone invite, I think. He'll save the theatrics for senior year.

Six-and-a-half weeks from now, I will provide an update. No names will be used, of course, to protect the innocent. In the meantime, it's just another milestone that screams, "You can't stop this! He's growing up!" After the first dance invitation, can Senior Prom be far behind? I hope I'm with good friends on Blue and Gold night when I wipe my eyes to take the photos of my sweet boy in the suit we've yet to buy, pinning a corsage on dance partner to-be-named-later.

Okay, so I'm a little blue, too. But, I know it will be okay. My son likes to dance, and I know he'll ask a nice girl. So, as milestones go, I have a feeling that this one will be golden.

Self Help Help

2008-09-18T03:00:00.004-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

These days it isn’t hard to find a self-help book for just about anything. As I was dusting recently--something that I need a self-help book to motivate me to do--a quick perusal of my book collection revealed that I am obviously in need of some kind of self-help.

Whether wrestling with co-dependency problems, battling food as an emotional crutch, yearning to tame the strong-willed child, or living with a neurotic dog, I’m clearly searching. At least when I’m in a bookstore.

Maybe I’m just drawn in by the clever covers, with their all-encompassing cure-whatever-ails-you titles. Or maybe the notion that simply reading a 200-page book will solve all of life’s problems appeals to me.

So I end up buying these books. When I get home, I optimistically set them next to the bed, assuming I’ll pick one up before drifting off to sleep. But then when bedtime rolls around, the last thing I want to do is:

a) Confront my problems when I’m too tired to even think about them, and
b) Read anything that involves thinking.

So eventually, when I get around to cleaning (see “Talking Dirty with the Queen of Clean” by Linda Cobb), I shift these motivational tomes onto the shelves of the nearest empty bookcase. And there they sit, safe in the knowledge that they will be left untouched--not to mention undusted--indefinitely.

If only I could glean information through osmosis, then I would have solved my problems with denial, PMS, disorganization, and the latest one, ADD. I would know exactly how to approach handling my teenaged kids so that they don’t hate me and end up in therapy one day (see “GET OUT OF MY LIFE…But First Can You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?” by Anthony E. Wolf). I would know how to take charge of my life and make something of myself (as per “If Not Now, When?” by Stephanie Marston).
But instead, I feel a knot tighten in my stomach as I realize that I have failed in the first step to self-help: getting help. Well, maybe it’s the second step at which I’ve failed, because, after all, I did purchase the books. And that step is learning about the problem and how to find solutions to it. So far the only thing I have mastered is how to dust around them. And truthfully, I hardly ever even do that.

I think what I need is a self-help book on using my self-help books. Something that will motivate me to pick up one of these useful ditties and read it, say, when I’m otherwise disposed in the loo. Or in line for pick up at the kids’ school. Or while brushing my teeth at night. Maybe I just need Dr. Phil to whip me into shape. Or maybe I should just drop the self-help books altogether and pick up a copy of People Magazine to read at bedtime; then I’ll feel better learning about everyone else’s problems instead of worrying about fixing my own.

Major (In)Decisions

2008-09-17T05:00:00.004-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

You know, when I think about it, I have no clue what most jobs entail. I mean, okay, a heart surgeon probably operates on hearts (I do watch Grey's Anatomy after all.). I'd guess a ditch digger spends most of his or her time digging ditches.

When I went to college, I quickly became an English major. It meant I could read books (one of my favorite things to do) and write (another favorite thing to do). I gave very little thought to what I "would do with it." Much to my father's dismay. I still have no real idea what an English major does . . . for a living wage, anyway.

Near the end of my junior year, I called my folks and braced myself. I'd decided to double major by also getting a degree in secondary education. I worried that they'd be upset that it was going to take an extra semester and summer school. They were so thrilled that I'd be employable that the extra money never mattered. Teaching is sorta like heart surgery in that most people have a general sense for what the job entails (until you're actually in the classroom and facing those kids for the first time. Then you think, holy moly, what did I get myself into?).

This is on my mind because my younger son recently informed me that he's probably changing his major and he wondered what he should switch to. And even though I sent him an e-mail full of suggestions (mostly culled from his college's website of "available majors"), I have no idea what to suggest for him and he's at somewhat of a loss too.

Because, other than some very specific majors, we have no real sense of what jobs any given major will lead to. I mean, take "Business" for example. What does that mean? (Other, of course, something I'd have no interest in.) Or Poli Sci? (I mean he's never going to run for office.) Geography?

And even more confusing, when he thinks of a job he might want, no specific major screams out at us. Wouldn't it be nice to go back to the days of education for education's sake? When the idea was to learn things, to broaden your mind, and become a thoughtful thinker? Then, you would go and apply for a job and simply having the diploma was what mattered.

But no, now kids practically are supposed to decide in middle school. And start preparing right then and there. Am I the only one who thinks it's a little depressing that high school kids have to use their summers to pad their resumes rather than work on their tans? (Hmm, I can hear you muttering, Well, Miss-Not-Mother-of-the-Year, maybe your son wouldn't be in this quandry if he'd done something other than work at pizza parlors all through high school.)

But I'm still a big believer in kids being kids. In kids having enough free time to get bored and figure out what to do about it (hopefully without involving drugs and alcohol. Oh, and sex.).

Is it just me? And my sweet, hardworking, but slightly unfocused kid?

We're leaning to general business, but not with much excitement. And that makes me sad.

Ideas, anyone? Anybody out there have the answer? Anyone? Bueller?

To Think or Not to Think

2008-09-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

So I was thinking about something the other day.

I know, this is always a dangerous exercise. I should know better. Thinking can only lead to bad things, like impulsive acts of kindness, or fits of aerobic exercise, or a sudden urge to declutter-ize your life, which usually results in throwing away really sentimental family heirlooms or dusty bric brac that your mother will later tell you came over on the boat with Great Grandma Agnes, and was worth a fortune.

So I shouldn't think. I think I know this - oops! Did it again!

Anyway. I was thinking. And I was thinking about how, lately, I've been feeling kind of adventurous. Compelled by a recent burst of creativity, I actually had an impulse to hop a plane and fly to Europe all by myself to do some research for a new writing project. I could envision it so clearly, where I needed to be, how I could pack the most amount of research into the shortest amount of time; I could see myself walking down some paths I need to see with my own eyes, touching some walls, smelling air that is foreign to me, but very important to the setting I wish to create...oh, I just had such a fearless impulse! My heart soared, my fingers itched; I actually looked up flights and places to stay. I remembered where my passport was. I realized I have no real obligations keeping me here, my husband and younger son can certainly spare me for a few days.

Truly, my whole body thrumbed with anticipation, I felt so free and fearless and there was absolutely nothing holding me back anymore. Nothing, that is, except -

Money.

And this is the thing I was thinking. When I was younger I had so many fears, and then they got all wrapped up in my family and their need of me, and mine of them, and then my fears took on greater meaning because if something horrible ever happened to me, what would become of my children, and of course, there was no way I could ever just take off and do something adventurous even if I wasn't afraid, because of them.

But now? They don't need me every day, or even every week; they're almost grown, I don't have to worry so much what will become of them if I'm suddenly kidnapped by white slavers, and lo and behold, it seems as if I've outgrown many of the fears that hobbled me when I was young. I've reached the age where I can say, "Well, so what? I've had a good run here in the suburbs; now it's time to see what else there is."

I've reached the age where I'm no longer attractive to white slavers, too.

However. I've also reached the age where, because of the kids and college and certain career, uh, rest stops, I have less disposable income than ever. And thus, have to remain at home and content myself with Wikipedia and virtual tours of places I can't afford to visit.

And I think this is one of the cruelist ironies of the empty nest. We have the time. We have the courage.

We don't, however, have the money.

So I was thinking about all this, and of course, I got a little depressed. Which leads me back to the beginning of this post, which is -

Thinking is highly overrated.

(So, perhaps, is a college education.)

Football Circus by Suzanne Macpherson

2008-09-15T12:28:00.009-05:00

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead. Erma Bombeck

And so it begins. I’ve seen worse, mostly in television sitcoms and movies. Jerry McGuire comes to mind. Phrases like “use your inside voice, honey,” comes to mind, if my husband could actually hear me over his own bellowing.
I do have to loudly applaud the person that invented wireless headphones. Kudo’s for making all that static football background noise funnel into my husband’s ears instead of my entire house, although he does look like a complete lunatic screaming at a silent television. Oh wait, he is a complete lunatic- from September to whenever football season ends. Lunatic.

Can they hear you yet, honey?

I tried, I really did. The closest I came was when one of my sons played freshman football. I love fall, I love all that traditional stuff, you know, plaid blankets, warm sweaters, thermos of coffee, little bit of whiskey in there, okay just kidding. Rah Rah Rah! Freshman football is hilarious. It’s like watching circus clowns. No matter how serious they try to get about it, there are three good kids on the team and the rest are Bozo’s. My kids definitely had a red rubber nose under his helmet and I think I saw some rainbow hair sticking out. And after years of little league where the games take an average of five hours, football was a cinch!

So when my husband took us to a college game I figured it would be fun-- like a circus right? Well guess what? When those clowns grow up they are still running around the field with this ball trying to get it over the line and its just as stupid as it was when they were freshman but now they take it way way seriously! At that point I knew that football would not be something I shared with my husband.

I’ve learned that there are usually great movies on Sundays (I just finished watching Along Came as Spider-wow.) My daughter and I do lots of bonding while the guys do football, and Monday nights I signed up for the professional choir in our area while my daughter is taking tap lessons. Obviously both of us have learned to escape the seasonal insanity known as football season! I know plenty of women who love football, but I’m sorry to say, I’m not in that club. I seem to remember a movie with Lauren Bacall about her sports reporter husband married in a whirlwind romance called Designing Women: His world was all about guys and dolls, her world was all about gowns and glamor! Oh ya, that's me, glamor gal.

See you for chick cocktails at 5 on any given Monday during football season!

The Substitute Zone by Barb McKone

2008-09-12T07:00:00.001-05:00

The Substitute Zone by Barb McKone

Three days ago, I was a kindergarten teacher.

There wasn't really much teaching involved. I was a substitute for the day.

During this lovely mid-life crisis, while I try to figure out what exactly I'd like to do for the next 15-20 years to help support my family, I decided to get myself on the substitute list. Just for kicks. Grocery money, plus. Perhaps even pay for my daughter's college textbooks and sorority dues. You know. Real estate hasn't seen it's greatest year, and making a living as a writer just might be a better mystery than my last novel. So, here I am at the corner of "What have I been doing for the past few years?" and "What now?" That corner is smack-dab in the middle of what I like to call The Substitute Zone.

The Substitute Zone is a frightening place. First of all, and most shocking, is that the substitute, even if in a cute new sweater she cannot afford, is thoroughly invisible. High school and middle school students can't see the substitute, unless she is giving a test or administering CPR. I swear, it's true. If the substitute is working the elementary grades, however, The Zone is a different place. In grades K-5, the sub is Queen For The Day.

It was fun, for the first hour or so, to be adored. The kindergartners waited for every word I uttered with breathless expectation. They were funny. Precious. They drew me pictures. They needed me for more than passes to the restroom or library- passes that generally assure that the sub will not see the passing student for the rest of the class period. But, by the second hour, I realized that kindergarten subs are actually needed to a frightening level. My kids are in high school and college now. I had no idea just how out of touch I really was with the tiny ones until I found myself lifting a kindergartner onto the one toilet over six inches high in the entire school. It must have been a teacher's hideaway toilet that we happened to stumble upon while trying to find our way back to the gym. All I know is that my kids knew how to "hold it" when they were in kindergarten. Didn't they?

Kindergartners run in packs. Watch out, they can take you down. Walking from station to station, from the library to the art room, I wore a thick skirt of five-year-olds, clutching on to me, clinging to me like a life raft. By the end of the day I felt like I might need to shower in Purell. Honest to God, how can so many kids have colds at the same time? It was while lining up for dismissal that I decided to never enter the Kindergarten Zone ever, ever again. According to the cheerfully-colored sheet by the classroom door, I had one bus rider. According to the kids lined up neatly at the door in "Riders," "Walkers," and "Bus Riders" categories, with just five minutes to spare, I had four. Four first-time bus riders and absolutely no information about what bus they should ride. I pictured the headline. "Kindergarten Sub Sends Helpless Students Home on Wrong Buses." I pictured frantic moms and furious dads and an orange jumpsuit. I found a TA and dispatched her to the office while the three lines waited on the alphabet rug. Even with the help, we still had several kids in tears. I went from "the greatest sub ever!" to the weird lady with the sweaty face trotting nervously from bus to bus. I watched the news. They all seem to have gotten home okay.

So, yesterday when I got the morning call to duty, I swallowed hard before signing on. Middle School Science. Oh boy.

The day went fine. As I said, I got little to no attention, which, after kindergarten, was just fine with me. They were forced to talk to me in a short assigned discussion about their most recent experiment. Other than that, I was only there to find and hand out the colored pencils. Lunch, however, was an experience. Being invisible comes in especially handy in places like the lunch room. Being invisible, the substitute can learn all kinds of interesting facts if she listens carefully enough. At yesterday's lunch I sat, by myself, of course, at a table by the far wall. The only other people who sit at the tables by the wall are the students who also don't want to be seen. My table was next to a table of what Hollywood would categorize as "misfits," or "nerds"- you know, the billionaires of the future. I'm certain Bill Gates used to sit at a table just like this one.

They were talking about some sort of internet game in which they liked to use swords. The boys described their deadly battles with all sorts of creatures in great and lurid detail while the one girl at the table listened quietly. Intently. Being a cinematic type myself, I couldn't help but recognize the potential teen move story line: shy girl trying to hide behind her mane of too-long hair befriends quirky table of boys. Enter substitute teacher who recognizes her hidden beauty and offers makeover. She's stunning. Unrecognizable. She's asked to prom by handsome school jock with jealous girlfriend who plots shy girl's demise at dance. In climactic scene, lunchroom table of boys who have just won state science competition hear of plot and save the day with catapult invention that sends icky jock-girlfriend flying. Shy girl wins Prom Queen but also wins what she wanted all along: the heart of head lunchroom misfit, who of course turns out to be a total stud when his glasses fall off and he gets a little dirty.

My lunchroom musings were interrupted when I had the opportunity to get a closer look at the long-haired girl and realized that she was actually a long-haired boy. Oops. Scratch that video montage of shopping for the prom dress.

It could only happen in The Substitute Zone.

2 Old 2 Go Back 2 School Shopping

2008-09-11T03:00:00.009-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

*slight disclaimer: I wrote this for my newspaper column three years ago but didn’t dare run it, for fear of repercussions from my teenagers once they saw it in print. I figure they're blissfully ignorant about my blogs, so I’m safe, finally having found a venue in which to vent on this subject.

Okay, I realize that I run the risk of appearing like a frighteningly middle-aged mother with what I am about to write. Alas, as a frighteningly middle-aged mother, I no longer care if that’s how I come across, so I’ll take my chances.

I recently had the eye-opening experience of back-to-school shopping with teenaged girls, and at the risk of sounding like an old fart (I know, I know, merely acknowledging that means that I am one), I cannot believe how clothing has changed since I was a kid.

After spending hours at the likes of Hollister, American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch, the first thing that sort of depressed me about the current state of dress--or undress--was how downright sexual all teen clothes are. When I was a teen (back when they invented the wheel), clothing styles were downright goofy-looking. Nary a vampish outfit could be found, were we to know to look for them. In fact, I still remember a style of shoes that everyone wore back then--they looked an awful lot like those orthopedic shoes that very old people wear when their gnarled, arthritic feet can no longer accommodate a traditional shoe style. Trust me, there was nothing provocative about them.

Nowadays, it’s virtually impossible to find clothing for teens that isn’t seductive by its very design. Which tends to make me a little bit leery, especially after having recently lingered in the stores targeting these teens. Never before in my life had it been more glaringly obvious that I am so past my prime, and that these kids are so at theirs, perhaps, sometimes by the ripe old age of 13. The choice of clothing was extensive, but limited to basically two things: tops that leave little to the imagination and bottoms that require a professional wax job to wear publicly. There’s no doubt that this clothing looks fantastic on a young, lithe, body, all toned and tanned and raring to go. But is it right for middle-schoolers to look so, uh, hot?

Now I’m going to sound like a granny again, but back in my day, girls didn’t take on a sexualized appearance till they were much older--college, or beyond. In fact, I’m pretty certain that I bypassed that stage altogether. I went from Health-Tex stretchy shorts-sets to leggings and oversized shirts. Nowadays, girls, through contemporary fashions, are becoming more and more sexualized even before puberty. So much so that I found it challenging to find appropriate clothing for my 11-year old to wear without drawing the unwanted attention of any male from the age of 13-on up.

Another depressing observation I made during my recent shopping forays: while milling about these clothing stores, I couldn’t help but notice the profusion of undernourished girls honing in on the size 00 rack. I told my daughter (to her great embarrassment) that an awful lot of girls at the mall could do with a hearty meal of mac ‘n cheese or something equally carb-laden. It seems odd that in a country of such plenty that denial of food is essentially a fashion choice.

Which reminds me of something. I remember in college there was a pizza shop on College Avenue that pumped out its oven exhaust onto the passersby in front of the store. They knew that the aroma of pizza (albeit a mighty overwhelming smell, with the force of those fans) would lure buyers into the shop to spend money.

So right next to Abercrombie is a Mrs. Field’s cookie shop. Which used to waft cookie aroma in much the same way. However, Abercrombie--perhaps in a veiled effort to ensure their buyers remain stick-thin so they can buy their wares--now forces out massive levels of noxious perfume odors into the mall, overpowering whatever cookie scent might still exist in the shared airspace. And something about that Abercrombie perfume just screams Sex! Sex! Sex!

I don’t dare elaborate (much) about the barely-subliminal visual messages being bombarded at teens while they shop, either. Let’s just say that the jaw-dropping “packages” on the two-story tall posters of extremely sexy young men with zippers lowered enough to reveal that yes, they do wax, was downright astounding. Why, some of the shorter kids shopping were just about eyeball-to-um, balls, though their balls had nothing to do with an eye. Oh God, I guess if you get really factual about it, an eye would have been involved, too. Had those men have been completely naked, which they weren’t. Completely.

I am really not a prude. I’m an easy-going middle-of-the-road mom who has a high threshold for all things teen. And honestly, as I sat there being blasted by hearing-depleting music cranked well beyond AC/DC concert level, I quite enjoyed gazing at those enormous Abercrombie posters, even though I felt a bit pedophile-like lusting after guys probably old enough to be my kids. But really, must we lash these teens in the face with this? Whatever happened to subtlety?

I suppose I’m lucky that I’m not out shopping for toddlers any more. Lord knows that’s likely the next line of attack for slut-wear, now that it’s become the norm for anyone over the age of eight or nine.

In the meantime, I’ll bide my time, trusting that the days of leggings and long shirts just has to come back into vogue. In the meantime, you can find me in my granny pants rocking on my rocker. Maybe crocheting something useful, like a shroud, for the age of innocence, May it rest in peace.

Las Vegas Redux

2008-09-10T05:12:00.004-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

The first time I was ever in Las Vegas, February 2007, didn't go so well.

It began with me in tears, somewhere in The Venetian, dialing up my husband on his cell phone. He was there on business; I'd flown in to spend the weekend with him. I believe our conversation started off with me trying not to sniffle and whimper like a total girl, but failing miserably. I was completely lost, I'd been lugging my suitcase all over the fake Venice "marketplace" and I could no more figure out where the actual hotel started than explain the game of craps to you. My husband asked if I could tell him where I was. I looked around and then said, "Across from the Oxygen Bar." He told me to stay right there and he'd be there in a heartbeat.

Later, after a cocktail (Or, um three. Maybe four.), I apologized for my emotional meltdown. Then I made an appointment for a "raspberry sherbet pedicure." I felt better.

Then, the next evening we decided to walk down The Strip and soak in some of the ambiance. Ambiance that consisted of swarthy men handing my husband baseball cards which advertised "barely legal asian blondes." Hey, hello, I wanted to holler. Do you not see me? The blondish non-asian woman holding this man's hand? We're with each other. See, we have these rings which suggest marriage?

I decided a few more cocktails would help. They did.

By the time we left, I was referring to Vegas as "Disneyland on crack." And I'm not a big fan of Disneyland. Or crack.

So, why am I willingly hopping on a plane tomorrow to join my husband in Las Vegas? Well, um, it's practically free. There's that. And I believe in second chances. Plus, we'll be at The Bellagio, so maybe I won't get lost in plasticland.

But more than that, and more than two nights away with my husband (and no kids) in a fancy hotel with room service and beds I don't have to make and bathrooms with big plushy towels (and robes!! God, I love those hotel robes.), there's the fantasy aspect of it. (Stop. Wait. Get your heads out of the gutter.)

Specifically, Frank Sinatra.

Is there anyone cooler? (Maybe Springsteen. Or Dennis Quaid but they're not Vegas-y.) Now, I know that The Sands and The Stardust have both been razed. And I know Old Blue Eyes has been dead for a decade. But there's a coolness factor that he still knocks off the charts. (Or is that just me?) And I know that The Strip isn't the same as it was in the Rat Pack glory years. But I can pretend.

A cocktail will probably help.

(cross-posted over at Not Afraid of the "F" Word)

His and Hers

2008-09-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

A Play in Two Acts

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

Act 1

Melanie, packing to leave on an overnight business trip:

Running back and forth between closet and full-length mirror (inconveniently located in the boys’ bathroom, requiring much stepping over discarded Q-tips and globs of toothpaste), she tries on various combinations of outfits: the black denim skirt and the mauve-and-black camisole, the camel jacket, the dark blue denim jacket, the white skirt, the camisole again, now the black wrap shirt, repeating the above combinations with both the black boots and the mauve ankle boots. Finally she decides on two combinations, decides to bring a pair of jeans and a nice sweater just in case, runs downstairs, irons everything, brings it back up, but doesn’t put it in huge suitcase just yet. Now to think about the makeup: Is mascara necessary? Decides that yes, it is. How about lipstick? Yes, but she’s not sure which kind. And don’t forget the moisturizer(s)! Everything goes into a separate makeup bag. She packs the curling iron, the flatiron, all the hair care products (approximate weight: 100 pounds). Oops! Forgot about purses! Need appropriate purses. BUT — must also have a briefcase to carry around laptop. So she tosses two purses into the suitcase and decides to carry the briefcase separately. OH! This IS a business trip, isn’t it? Don’t forget the business cards, postcards, a couple of copies of book. (She can't locate business cards at first, though; eventually they're discovered holding up the uneven leg of an end table in the living room.) She then goes back and tries on outfits — this time with different bras, to see if silhouettes change significantly. (They do.) Then Melanie wonders if control top pantyhose is necessary; tries everything on once more, this time with control top pantyhose, and decides it’s definitely necessary for one outfit, but not for the other. Throws pantyhose into suitcase. She wonders if she’ll have time to exercise; decides she’d rather be safe than sorry, so packs exercise shoes, shorts and shirt. Also socks. Don’t forget underwear! But — is underwear necessary for control top pantyhose outfit? She decides that it’s not. But takes an extra pair anyway.

Entire scene takes approximately two and a half hours to enact.

Act 2

Her husband, packing to leave on a week-long business trip:

He digs around in dirty clothes hamper, removes a pair of unnatural fiber pants guaranteed never to wrinkle, sniffs the crotch, thinks a moment, shrugs, throws them in teeny tiny little gym bag. He grabs two of the approximately five thousand blue long-sleeved Oxford collar shirts in his closet (also made of unnatural, wrinkle-proof fiber), wads them up, puts them in bag. Throws one of two thousand blue striped ties in for good measure. Tosses in mini shampoo he stole from the last hotel stay, zips everything up, grabs computer bag and is good to go.

Entire scene takes approximately three minutes.

End of play.

Too Much Time on My Hands

2008-09-08T04:00:00.000-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

I keep telling myself that this is my time.

For several weeks now, I have been down by half my offspring. The floor is no longer littered with gigantic dirty socks, I find less dirty dishes waiting on the counters to greet me in the mornings, and my laundry piles have shrunk beyond recognition.

On the other hand, I have not figured out how to cook appropriate quantities of food for those of us still here. Losing a teenage boy from the table is akin to a hungry platoon gone AWOL from the mess hall. The leftovers threaten us from every side; towering piles of delicious food teeter on the brink of no return- food that only a short time ago would have been consumed by a group of whispering teenagers skulking around after a late movie; plundering my kitchen by the light of a humming microwave.

I am putting out an APB on new recipes that call for milk. Send me your cream soups, your sauces, your smoothies-- I can’t keep up with a gallon a week any more.

Other adjustments have been easier; I have discovered to my delight that Shriek- the lone baby bird remaining in the nest- may well need a new blog name. The crystal-shattering squeals that were the soundtrack of our everyday routines are a vague and distant memory. When her brother phones (which is quite often) their conversations are of new, mature, moderate tones and peppered with soft laughter.

Huh. Go figure.

Shriek has also taken up the slack with regard to chores without complaint. She carries out the trash, empties the dishwasher, cares for the animals without the previously constant refrain of, “Why do I have to do it? I did it last time!” even flickering through her mind. She is amply rewarded for her willingness- paid in nail polish. Nail polish is the currency of modern thirteen year old girls.

I am suddenly at home by myself more than ever. With Sparky at work and Shriek away more and more for movies, or shopping trips, or overnights with her friends; the house is quiet, cool, and mine alone. It occurs to me that I actually have time to do the things I blamed holding two full-time jobs (teacher and mom) for preventing me from doing. I can start on that new novel. I can read uninterrupted. I can rise earlier and walk for miles along the canal to jump-start the diet I have procrastinated and simultaneously discover writerly inspiration in the wingspan of egrets, the downy fluff of ducklings, and the life-affirming promise of citrus trees heavy-laden with the winter crop of fruit.

I could do these things. Of course I could. I have lots of time. I could do these things and more. But I find myself looking at the time I have available now the same way I look at the huge bowl of leftover scallop scampi, or the half-full gallon of milk whose expiration date mocks me, or the lone giant sock pulled from under the couch.

I need to readjust.

Yes, I AM Ready! by Barb McKone

2008-09-05T06:00:00.001-05:00

Yes, I AM Ready! by Barb McKone

I'm a change resistor. That doesn't just include things like having a hard time donating the old pair of jeans I haven't fit into for five or six years to someone who might actually be able to zip them, or not being able to fully commit to looking for a larger house even though we're bursting at the seams and my realtor's license is getting stale in my broker's drawer. No, my disorder is also seasonal. I resist the changing of fall to winter because I so love wearing my Talbot's orange fall jacket, winter to spring because I haven't used my crock pot enough, and spring to summer because I haven't yet planted my zinnias. But mostly, I resist the change of summer to fall because summer just isn't long enough. Peaches are still in season, and in Missouri, it's still hot enough to swim. I have a new bike! There are trails to be blazed! So, why is my daughter off at college, and why are my boys back at school? The end of summer.

Sigh.

I never think I'm ready for changes, but, when I'm forced to face them, I find they're really for the best. I remember when my youngest child was finishing up his fifth grade year at North Glendale School, the wonderfully tiny neighborhood elementary school both of my children attended. I'd watched the outgoing moms march in the end-of-the-year parade for years with tears in my eyes, dreading the day it would be my turn. They walked arm in arm like soldiers bracing for the next phase of their lives: the MIDDLE SCHOOL years. It looked scary. It looked sad. And yet, when I marched in the parade, I was shocked at my lack of emotion. Marching along, I thought about what time baseball practice started that night, whether or not I should bother turning in my receipts for the class party decorations one last time, and what to make for dinner that night. What time would my husband be home? He was still in exams. When it came right down to it, I was ready. More than ready. Truth be told, I haven't been back to the old school much over the five years since my son finished there, unless I'm walking or riding their track. Time to move on.

Cue soundtrack: To everything, turn, turn, turn...

This summer has been hard to let go of.

First of all, my daughter is off to her freshman year of college, as most of you already know. I dreaded the transition. I dreaded feeling panicked in the middle of the night, wondering where she was and what she was doing. That feeling hasn't come. I'm feeling pretty good. Calm, in fact! She sounds fine on the phone; much happier than she was here, with me, for the past few months. She'd been "dirtying the nest;" a school-counselor-official-psych-term for the strife we've had at the hands of our five-foot-two powerhouse of a daughter, all summer. It's perfect. Our nest is fully dirtied. Beyond dirtied. She was ready to go. SO ready. She's where she needs to be. She's living the life she needs to live. We've done all that we can do. I didn't think I was ready. Turns out, I underestimated myself. I was.

Secondly, I'm believe I'm into a full-scale mid-life crisis. My husband being a teacher, I live on a school calendar. Fall means I have to make decisions I've been putting off. Fall means a decided lack of playtime. Fall means I should probably decide, yet again, what I want to be when I grow up. Great. I've been making lists all summer. Now, I guess I'll have to use them.

And, then, there's the son. He's always been huggy, loving, adorable. He suddenly has hairy legs. He's sullen. He sometimes forgets himself and jumps on the dogs and uses his old, squeaky voice: "Puppies! Where are my puppies?!" It's short lived. He soon remembers his new, cool persona, lowers his few utterances by a couple of octaves, and goes to his room to listen to music or scan You-Tube. Damn that new I-Touch. I didn't buy it. It was a freebie with computer purchase. I don't want my sweet boy to change, but clearly, this is a tide I cannot force back. I will keep my mom-radar on full alert. I will take any chance for a hug I can get, even by trickery, and I'll hold on for the ride. Thankfully, he's still forgets himself and occasionally smiles. We take what we can get.

So, what's next for me? First off, admitting that yesterday, the first day of school for my husband and son, was not that all that traumatic. We survived the day. My son likes his classes, and he took the time to lie on the floor at my feet and actually TALK about them before demanding supper. And, I have to say that I'm feeling a sudden urge to find my crock pot and accompanying cook books. (Any great recipes? Send 'em my way!) Then, there's always the call of the shiny dry-cleaner bag encasing the orange Talbot's pea coat. Yes, it's looking a bit worn, but I'm loyal. It's still my favorite October friend.

Okay, I give. Fall is almost here. I'm feeling okay about it. Excited, even. As always, when it comes right down to it, I'm ready.

Slow-Cooker Stroganoff, anyone?

What a Week

2008-09-04T03:00:00.003-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

Sometimes as a parent of teens you have to just thrust the white flag of surrender as high up as you can get it, and give in to everything. And other times you just have to let the steamroller crush you, crush your willpower, crush your stamina, sometimes even crush your hope (but just don't let it stay crushed).

That was the kind of week we had in my town. Last week we'd been dealing with our youngest struggling with a tough transition to a new school. Nothing was clicking and we watched a happy, cheerful, very agreeable kid become sullen and obstinate in the blink of an eye. Which was frustrating, because you hear stories of kids who reach these crossroads moments in their lives, when something changes and it's something that person simply does not cope well with. And they change, often for the worse.

Over the weekend I think a full moon settled over this part of Virginia. Labor Day weekend, kids intent on a last hurrah before school started (except that for most kids here, school had already begun). A big college football game supercharged the atmosphere that day to begin with, and those teen revelers had to keep the momentum going at game's end.

For the younger teens? A night of egging houses, knocking down mailboxes, and just general mayhem that causes homeowners hassles and a bit of agita.

For the older teens? Milling about near the pool, kids hooking up in all sorts of places (rumors of a naked girl near the pool and another naked one in flagrante delicto in the pool (with, if rumor stands, a host of onlookers).

(In case you were wondering, it wasn't a kitty and a puppy in the pool...)

Did I mention that some of the teens broke into the pool--broke the fence down, broke into the pool house, stole all the beer and candy and snack food, partied all night poolside, trashed the place, and then denied it?

Now, we live in a small town. Everybody knows everybody. And I feel extremely fortunate that our oldest child is not even in town, and our other two were home with us that night, so we didn't have to worry whether our kids were either involved or on the periphery of the events that unfolded. But we know plenty of kids whose names have been bandied about as participants or at least onlookers. And a few parents who are mortified and mad as hell at their teens' abysmal judgment.

Monday at the pool saw a revolving door of cops questioning kids. A lot of sober-faced kids coming to reckoning with their idiotic wilding behavior. And no doubt a lot of regrets. Of course for a few of these kids, regrets won't count. Rather they'll face breaking and entering, vandalism and theft charges. They'll lose their spots on their sports teams and positions of leadership at their schools. And deservedly so, though guess what? This will only provide them with far more idle time in which to wreak havoc upon things.

Of course the pool on Monday was chock full of folks with immense outrage, and rightly so. And plenty of finger-pointing to go around. there were a couple of girls with dreadfully tarnished reputations (one of whom apparently was not naked as reported, but had been at the wrong place at the wrong time making out with the wrong guy and got pulled into the whole story because of her proximity to it. The other girl? I hear she's denied it, though apparently it was caught on security cameras. Maybe she can see herself on YouTube...

We took away plenty of lessons to harp on with our kids: guilt by association can be just as damaging as guilt itself. Just because you say you didn't commit the act doesn't mean people are going to believe that, and when rumors take on a life of their own, it's hard to dissipate them. A lesson you can repeat ad nauseum, but until they witness it in action, is meaningless. So perhaps those of us who were merely sideline witnesses owe a debt of thanks to the boneheads who committed the offenses.

And then it all got put into perspective Tuesday morning with a phone call my daughter received first thing. Some girl at her high school killed herself over the weekend. Reports are the usual teen angst was to blame: she'd broken up with her boyfriend, had a fight with her parents. And the rest, sadly, is irrevocable history.

And this morning, an obituary for a baby born several months ago to a teenaged girl whose brother played on a soccer team with our son. He apparently died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Such hard and cruel life lessons for someone who is still a child.

Those teen years are tough. Tough on everyone. Tough on the teens, tough on the witnesses, even, and sometimes tougher still on the parents. No one comes out of the teen years unscathed. But it does make one so grateful for small mercies, so thankful when things go right. Because sometimes it can go so horribly wrong.

The "M" Word aka "mother-in-law"

2008-09-03T05:11:00.003-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

I don't know about you, but I certainly grew up hearing mother-in-law jokes (not in my own family of course. Never. Ever.)

There was even a really stupid late-1960's sit com (I guess that's redundant, huh?) called, you guessed it, "The Mothers-in-Law". Starring Kaye Ballard and Eve Arden, the story line had these two women as neighbors who, while diametrically different (one liked to clean house and cook; the other didn't), were best friends and when their kooky kids were in college they fell in love and got married (natch) and since both moms wanted to be underfoot the kids lived in a renovated garage apartment between the two houses.

Hilarity ensued.

It seems as though M-in-L jokes have been a staple of comedy forever.

I remember one of the first times I realized I might be on the butt end of one of those jokes: I was pregnant with my younger son and frantically trying to finish a darling cross-stitch pattern to go over his crib. (Okay, real quick, did any of the rest of you cross-stitch? Do any of you still do it? Cause if so, I've got scads of floss and patterns and unfinished projects I can send your way.)

Anyway, I was showing the finished, framed product to a friend who was oohing and aahing appropriately when I blurted out, without even thinking, "Yeah, and when he grows up I can give it to his wife when they're about to have a baby and she 'll show it to a friend and say, 'I have to put this in the nursery because Eric's mom made it.' And then they'll both groan."

My friend, who was also a mom of a boy, looked at me and we knew. If we weren't careful, we were someday going to be the butt of jokes and snide comments from the women who'd married our sons. (Little did we know how much practice we'd have as the mothers of teens.)

ACK!!!!

Now, let me be clear. I'm not yet a mother-in-law. And I'm not in any real rush. I'm even in less of a rush to be a grandma just in case anyone's wondering. For one thing, I'd have to find that silly cross-stitch picture. It's, um, somewhere in the house. I'm almost positive. (Yeah, I'll be more the Kaye Ballard role, I'm afraid.) But I seriously used to worry about being pushed aside. You know there's that stupid saying "a daughter's a daughter all her life but a son's a son 'til he takes a wife." I mean who the flip coughed that one up? And I also know that a wife's mom has her own bad rap from son-in-laws.

I'm here to call a moratorium on all M-in-L humor.

Because I'm also here to say that I just spent a weekend with the queen of mothers-in-law. She has it down to an art. And a science. She embraces everyone. She makes cookies and fluffs pillows and smiles. She's interested in everything her family does and is the biggest cheerleader for all of us. She encourages us all to be who we want to be and if she flinches at a grandchild's piercing it's always done in private.

Almost her entire extended family (kids, in-laws, grandkids, great-grandkids, nieces, etc.) gathered this past weekend to celebrate her 90th birthday at a Cubs game. She had a blast. (We'd also gathered last spring on the actual day, but she's so cool we wanted to celebrate again!). She's funny and smart. And she rolls with life.

So, Kaye Ballard and Eve Arden, you need to step back and learn from the master.

And so do I. Thank goodness I've got time.

"Mom" is Not Another Word for "Friend"

2008-09-02T07:00:00.003-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

I’ve been trying to catch up with my younger son, the one still in high school. For one more year. Then he'll be gone. Then I'll cry. A lot.

Anyway, while he's still here, I thought I'd, you know - talk to him. (I know, I know - what was I thinking?!) But he's so busy this senior year, and I'm busy, and my husband's busy, and it’s all good. Because if I wasn’t busy right now I’d be drinking.

However. Being busy means I’m worried that I’m not on my game, as a mom. So the other day, I did the unthinkable. I asked my son a question or two about his day.

Oh, the horror!

We had a little showdown about this. I asked — one too many times, it seemed — how school had been. I inquired about homework. I asked about his friends.

I received one-syllable answers to my questions, but I persisted anyway, looking for signs of drug use, alcohol consumption, tobacco stains on his fingers. There were none of these — thank God! — and I didn’t think there would be, but as a parent of teenagers I’m constantly told by the media & high school counselors that these things WILL happen to my children. Even though my children are the geekiest of the geeky, the nerdiest of the nerdy; computer & videogame & anime savants who still like to play “Cranium” with their friends on Saturday nights. Doesn’t matter. I’m told that all teenagers turn into drug abusers at some time in their lives. I, as a mother, am naturally anxious about this.

So I ask questions. So sue me.

My son got a little exasperated with me the other evening, though. I explained that lately, even though we’re all in the same house, I miss him. I miss him telling me about his day; I miss knowing every little thing going on in his life. I miss him because when he is here, he's always in his room or on the computer.

He frowned, but I could see that he almost understand what I was trying to say. But then he said, “But I hate it when you ask me stupid questions about, you know — stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah. Like when you come up to me on the computer, and I’m playing a game, and you ask me about it. Or if I’m watching a TV show and you want to know about a character in it.”

“But I’m interested — I’m interested in your life, I just want to know what you like and all…”

“But Mom,” he said. So patiently. “I don’t want you to be my friend.”

Ouch.

I didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t want me to be his friend? He didn’t think I was hip and cool and someone he could just hang out with? Who did he think I was? My own mother??

Oh.

Yes, I guess he did.

Double ouch.

He further explained to me that it was OK to be his mom — and as such, he understood that I HAD to ask, on occasion, about school. But to show an interest in his hobbies, his passions, to pretend to be interested in his music — that wasn’t OK. In fact, it bordered on downright creepy.

“I don’t need you to be my friend. I just need you to be my mom,” he kept insisting.

But…but…

I want to be his friend. More importantly — I want him to be MY friend.

He's smart and funny and has terrific opinions about life. On the occasions when we do just sit around and talk about stuff — occasions which I know now never, ever to mention for fear of them never occurring again — I enjoy the hell out of him. I’m OK with the fact that he no longer needs me for everything. (Well, I’m not OK with that, but I’ve learned to suppress my despair.) I thought, though, that the pay off would be this smart, funny young man with which to share my life, my thoughts, the stupid things that happen during the day. A friend, in other words.

So when my son informed me he didn’t need a friend, he just needed a mom, I was a bit, you know — devastatingly crushed.

I guess we never stop being The Mom. On the one hand, that’s comforting. On the other, it’s demoralizing. Maybe it’s just too soon. Maybe my son is just in this place where he's not quite an adult, definitely not a child, and he's just starting to figure out his own place in this new world — he doesn't need to figure out my place in it, too.

I guess, like always, it’s my place to stand back, quietly accept my role, however disappointing, but be vigilant for any hopeful sign that he's changed. Constantly watching, as I always do, and I always have. Waiting for my chance to be his friend.

But until then, I’m The Mom. Forever and ever. Amen.

Our Lady of Blessed Peace and Quiet

2008-09-01T00:01:00.006-05:00

By Suzanne Macpherson

“I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go into overload and blow up.” Erma Bombeck

Sounds like menopause doesn’t it?

Happy September! I’m the new girl on the block. I’ve been an Erma devotee for many years and am proud to join the channeling.

Two more days. The leaves are hanging in there, the kids are poised for re-entry and me, I’m ready to write!

True confessions—I have never been one of those mothers who choked up and cried when her baby left for the first day of school. Well, maybe the first child, and okay, maybe kindergarten. But after the fourth and final child I was booting her out the door with a new notebook, a new Ticonderoga #2 pencil, new tennis shoes, a shiny red apple to plunk on the teacher’s desk, and a hearty “buck up honey, you’ll be fine.” Okay, I’m just kidding. I made sure she was in her cutest little outfit (see photo) and safe behind the proper desk before I went out in the hall and did the happy dance.

Doing the happy dance in the hallway of our elementary school ten years ago was how I met my kindred spirit moms. An irreverent posse of women ready to party har-tee when the first September school bus finally took us out of our summer misery. We instantly created the First Day of School Bakery Visitation and Caffeine Blowout.

We have a patron saint too: Our Lady of Blessed Peace and Quiet.

Guess what? Eleven years later, we’re still celebrating.

No more frothy caramel laced summer frappuchinos for us. no sir! We go straight for the hard stuff: Double tall mocha, full fat, full chocolate, OH baby, buzz me now! Forget the low fat bran muffin; we’ve taken this day to its full cream cheese Danish potentiality.

These days after the "first day" party we all go home to shovel out the house from three months of summertime and the livin’ is easy. This is when all that sugar and caffeine come in handy. When you have teenagers, it’s like a frat party gone bad.

I have three boys and one girl. Boy one (A) and Boy two (B) are respectively: A) Married to the coolest girl in the world, employed as a chef, and B) Living the good life in San Francisco, working as a journalist writing for The Onion and other publications, free of parental support for the most part.

Thing Three (boy 3) and Thing Four (“finally, a girl!”) are living at home. I TOLD Boy 3 if he left food around the room eventually some type of animal would move in and live with him. Or maybe it was the mouse that laid a trap for a teenager. His very own teenager to feed him granola bars and leftover chocolate pudding in individualized cups. Interesting thought. Who DID order that mini-fridge?

Girl of course is completely organized and has made an itinerary broken into half-hour increments, posted on the wall. Before you shake your head because your girl isn’t like that, rest assured this is actually . . . not . . . completely . . . true. It has taken three weeks of nagging/bribes/yelling to get her to pull it together. The itinerary part is true. It was a grand way to procrastinate the full cleaning of her room. But that’s a whole other subject- procrastination.

Two more days and I’m going to dive into that novel writing thing I do like a sinful dessert I’ve been saving for three months - but it’s not stale.

Till then I’m going to light a candle to Our Lady of Blessed Peace and Quiet.

Tales from the Land of the Happy Housewives

2008-08-30T08:00:00.001-05:00

an interview conducted by Jenny Gardiner

Today we are departing from our usual Erma-esque ways and have a guest author visiting. Ellen Meister, Judy and I are members of a group of authors called the Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit and when we have new books on the market, we try to help each other get the word out to readers who might be interested in their books. You're probably already familiar with Ellen's wildly successful novel, SECRET CONFESSIONS OF THE APPLEWOOD PTA, which is straight up our alley. Ellen's latest, THE SMART ONE, will certainly appeal to all of us mom-types as well.

Thanks for stopping by, Ellen! Please tell us a little about your book.

THE SMART ONE is a sister story with a bright voice, a dark crime and more humor than I expected. (Sometimes my characters surprise me!)

The three sisters in this book mix like oil, water and hundred-proof gin . . . a combination that threatens to combust over family tensions, suspected infidelities, a devastating accident, a stunning confession, and the sudden reappearance of their handsome, now all-grown-up former neighbor, Kenny Waxman, who's back in town making his mark as a TV comedy writer.

It seems like the sisters will never understand where their differences begin and their own destructive tendencies end. Then they discover a decades-old body stuffed inside an industrial drum and begin a bold, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious journey that will either bring them together . . . or tear them apart for good.

What got you writing in the genre in which you write.

I really never think about genre. I just write the stories that appeal to me. So far, that has meant writing books that explore female relationships. (My first book SECRET CONFESSIONS OF THE APPLEWOOD PTA was, at its core, a friendship story. My new book, THE SMART ONE, is a sister story.) My publisher markets these as women's fiction, which is fine with me, though I hope that men feel free to read them!

Favorite thing about being a writer?

I love this question! My favorite part is hearing from readers who I've touched in some way. That makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Least favorite thing about being a writer?

The despair hits when I realize I have to unravel a large chunk of a novel in order to make a change. It's so overwhelming. I start out in a panic thinking there's just no way I can do it. Then I roll up my sleeves and get to work.

What is the most interesting thing that's happened to you since becoming a published author?

It's been such a surprising journey of highs and lows that it's hard to pinpoint one thing. But certainly one of the most gratifying experiences has been meeting other authors. Writers are my rock stars, so when I get real face time with one of my literary idols it makes me giddy with joy.

Lastly, I am a big fan of pie. Banana Cream is my favorite, hands-down. So I always have to ask authors this: what's your favorite type of pie?

Pecan!

Thanks so much Ellen, for stopping by! I'm actually off to make peach pie with the last of the summer peaches here in Virginia!

ellen

Re-Direct Me, Please

2008-08-29T07:00:00.001-05:00

Re-Direct Me, Please

by Barb McKone

Way back before college bills, before cell phones and I-Pods and hot flashes, we parents learned a very basic parenting skill. Those who didn't learn it were washed away in the swift and horrible tide of endless dealing with every single question and problem our children posed instead of just a manageable fraction of them. That skill is called re-direction.

One of the greatest things about re-direction, or distraction, is just how darned often it can be used. And, if used properly, it has nearly a one hundred percent success rate. When the child is very young, crying over a stubbed toe, the mom, while rubbing said toe and consoling, says to crying child, "Guess what?! I bought some bubbles at the grocery store today!" or even just, "Ooh, what a pretty cloud. Have you ever seen a cloud that looked like a pony before?" Sore toe forgotten. But, that mom had better have those bubbles. Re-direction is the art of replacing one situation with a new, more acceptable situation or just diverting attention long enough to direct that attention to another subject. When the child is in middle school, anxiety over some terrible assignment or grade on a test may be replaced by: "Hey, don't you think that new boy in your class looks like a Jonas brother? " or perhaps just, "All right! New episode of Lost tonight! Do you have time to watch?" It may not be quite as successful, but, temporary distraction is better than none at all.

Life has been busy lately. I believe I've fully given in to the mid-life crisis. Between fretting about jobs and sending kids off to college and late-night calls from the emergency room by that new college freshmen and inexplicable wakeful moments in the middle of a perfectly good night's sleep, I've been feeling a little overwhelmed. Isolated. Exhausted. Bogged down and just, well, down. Self-absorbed, perhaps, without realizing it. And until tonight, I didn't realize what I needed.

I needed to be re-directed. And I was, tonight, by one historical televised moment.

Even though it's been understood for months, I almost couldn't believe what I was watching. It was surreal. I'm sure many in the generations ahead of me were shaking their heads in disbelief, but my generation always knew it was possible. We knew it would happen some day, but wondered if it would occur in our lifetimes. There were times it seemed less probable than a man walking on the moon must have seemed fifty years ago. We have an African American Presidential nominee. And what a nominee he is.

Regardless of political party or background, any American has to admit that tonight was truly historical. I watched the acceptance speech with tears in my eyes and a combination of awe, joy and fear in my heart. It was awesome, wasn't it, to see that diverse crowd, cheering their unified support? To hear the words of promise and change? To think that we might, just maybe, really be less dependent on foreign oil in ten years? And it is terrifying, isn't it, to think of the danger posed to this man and his family? And what about the pressure, should he win, of being the first person of color to lead our country? Just the thought of it makes me quake in my slippers.

So, I've got something else to think about tonight. Something new. I'll sleep better, knowing that we are a country willing to shake things up a bit. I think I might even go to bed smiling instead of worrying. My thoughts have been re-directed to a world of optimistic possibility. I may get that wonderful new career! I may get through an entire week without a parenting crisis! I may even, at long last, not wake up before sunrise and end up cleaning instead of sleeping. After all, anything is possible! If you don't believe me, just ask Barack Obama.

USURPED BY THE LUNCH LADIES

2008-08-28T03:00:00.002-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

I've been trumped by the hair net brigade. The lunch ladies. The ol' gals who slop swill on a plate day in and day out!

My ace in the hole as a mother has lost its curb appeal, if you will, thanks to food services at my son's university.

When your kid leaves for college, a mom has little pull remaining. Not much to draw that child back home again. I mean let's see...On one hand, you have your parents nagging, telling you what to do, telling you when to do it and often how. On the other hand, you can be off on your own, very little obligation but to pass your classes, and have fun and party till the wee hours and hey, who'll ever know?

I fully realize that part of the charm of going away to college is this lure of the illicit: we're gonna drink and maybe do drugs and stay up all night and do whatever with whomever and nobody's gonna do anything about it!!!! those students say with their thumbs in their ears and their fingers flailing upward in a nah-nah-nah-nah-nah way. But at least eventually the mom-made meal lure would bring them back home, at least fleetingly.

When I was a kid, one of the few things I looked forward to upon my return to the home front was a good home-cooked meal. I will never forget one of the really depressing side-effects of ingesting dining hall food back in my day--- it turned everyone's poop orange! Maybe this was because it was during the halcyion days of Red Dye #40, I don't know. But it was, at the least, disturbing. Talk about mal-nutrition!

My freshman year dining hall experience ran the gamut from the infamous (and much-loathed) chili-dogs to a fine-dining item known as "shrimplets": a glob of batter with dessicated shrimp flakes mixed in, molded into the vague shape of an actual piece of shrimp and deep-fried to golden goodness. I knew it was time to get home to a good meal when shrimplets on the menu began to sound tasty. At least if dredged in copious amounts of ketchup.

We also had what was at the time the very cutting-edge new-concept salad bar. But this was in the early 80's, so the salad bar was doused with heaps of sulfites to preserve it's "freshness." This, however, left a bitter taste and had an undesirable mouth-numbing after-effect that left me generally eating only the chow mein noodles on top and none of the wholesome veggies beneath.

My son, on the other hand, is attending a school that touts one of the nation's top-ranked dining hall experiences. So great is the food that it the fact is oft repeated as mantra by most students, faculty and administration. Harvard might boast about its superlative education, but this place, dammit, they've got you by the balls with fabulous food.

When we went to orientation this summer, I was dragged kicking and screaming (almost literally; I detest cafeteria food and had been looking forward to finding a nice restaurant in town, enjoying a leisurely glass of wine and some actual food, not modern-day shrimplets) into the dining hall. My husband insisted. "We have to get the entire college experience," he crowed at me. Why, I have no clue. I'd already attended college, escaped dining hall food with a large supply of ramen noodles, and had no desire to stroll down that Memory Lane again. But I relented so as to not have a hissy fit in front of my son and his potential peers.

When we arrived in the dining hall, I almost heard a choir of, well, not exactly angels, but something that would indicate this place wasn't serving chili dogs. A quick glance around revealed dining stations everywhere: Italian, Chinese, Mexican, sushi, vegetarian, breakfast-for-dinner, a dessert bar (our dessert was one item, rarely something one would choose to eat if given the chance to eat either that or gnaw on one's own flesh). Hell, they even had a churrascaria. Who goes to the trouble to have a churrascaria for a bunch of college students who would gladly eat shrimplets if given no other options?

Now my husband has never met an all-you-can-eat venue that hasn't thrilled him to the core of his very being. He rises to the challenge and slathers his plate as high as it'll hold the food. And goes back for more. And more. And more. He was a very happy camper at the dining hall that night, particularly as he gloated at me, the doubting Thomas, who wanted nothing more than to hate the food and toss it over his head. Take that, dammit, and gimme my glass of wine and my goat cheese appetizer! While the food wasn't exactly Michelin star-ready, I'll tell you this: that Freshman Ten would rapidly have compound into the Freshman Forty for me, especially considering the dessert bar included cheesecake, belgian waffles with ice cream, even mini creme brulees. Ooooh, la la!

Now when my oldest brother went away to college, I, the loving, baking-obsessed little sister that I was, whipped up a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to send him. Back then shipping things wasn't as simple as it is today. We didn't keep packing materials handy, things took ages to get to their destination. Undeterred, I rifled through the house and found soft packaging for those cookies: I securely buffered the batch with cotton balls, jammed it into a shoe box, and sent it on its merry way. Where it no doubt sat on a variety of sweltering trucks in the early days of September en route from Pennsylvania to North Carolina over the course of a week. By the time my brother got my well-intended gift, the cotton had glued to the stale cookies and there was to be no salvaging of the things.

I entertained the idea of sending my son cookies. This time I could even overnight them so they wouldn't be stale. And I'd avoid the cotton balls in favor of maybe bubble wrap. The only problem is my cookies will be no draw, compared to the four-berry tart, mousse au chocolat, and the myriad other desserts at his daily disposal.

By extension, those meals he might yearn for served up with my loving hands will pale in comparison to the lobster, tenderloin, sushi and lord knows what else they're offering up at that place.

I want to lodge a complaint! They're making school so desirable that my son will never want to come home!

I guess the upside is it's making my husband want to re-enroll in college, just for the meals alone. Maybe I can talk him into that, and I'll be off the hook for cooking dinner for a couple of years: not such a bad downside to being usurped in my mommy role, eh?

Feeling my Age . . . Whatever it is

2008-08-27T06:00:00.006-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Okay, I know, by looking at my driver's license or passport (or, quite frankly, in the mirror in the harsh light of day) that I'm 48, that I could stand to lose a few (10? 15? 20?) pounds, and that under no circumstances will I ever regain that youthful flat stomach I once had. I know that. And for the most part, that's fine. I like being an adult. Like that my years give me some clout.

But, I also have to admit that my internal sense of how old I am doesn't always mesh with my actual stats. You know, I'll be feeling cute, walking down the street or hanging out with friends, and I don't necessarily feel middle-aged. Or old enough to have two kids in their twenties (Eek!). But then a clerk will call me "ma'am" and I realize the world sees me differently than the way I think of myself. It's like someone has just shoved a mirror in my face and said, "Hey Lady, take a gander at this." And it's not always pretty.

The first time this hit me upside the head I was much younger. 31 to be exact. I was ice skating up at the municipal rink with my sons. I was pretty smooth. I mean I couldn't do spins or anything, but I could turn and stop without falling. My kids thought I was pretty boffo. And then I wiped out. I hit my head and the head band I was wearing flew off and skittered across the ice. My pride was a bit bruised, but other than that I was fine and dandy. Until the "skating guard" (some high school boy with black skates and a whistle) came over to help me up. I assured him I was fine and he sent me on my way. But not before handing me my head band and saying, "Here's your hair piece." In his eyes, I was some old mom who'd narrowly escaped breaking a hip and needing a wheelchair.

Another time, just two years ago, I was walking across a college campus with my older son. It was a gorgeous spring day, and the campus was teeming with students playing volleyball and soaking in the sun. We were having a good time and laughing and while I KNEW I was a mom and not a co-ed, in some part of my brain I thought, hmm, I remember this, I fit in. Then a frisbee whammed me in the back of my head, I stumbled a half-step, and I was suddenly surrounded by nervous looking young men (my son included) who were worried about me. Because to them, I was old. I was a mom and for all they knew I was about to have a hot flash.

But, Saturday night I was transported back to feeling 17 again. For almost 4 hours. And I was young and thinner and so was everyone else around me. I was on the floor for a Bruce Springsteen concert and I was BORN TO RUN, baby. For 3 hours and 20 minutes I danced and sang and cheered and raised my fist high because tramps like us were out on the streets (oh oh oh oh oh!) and dancing in the dark. Now, there are plenty of reasons I love Springsteen--his songs resonate with me unlike any other, and he's still (at age 58) totally hot in a pair of jeans, and he's been the soundtrack of my life for more than 30 years. But, for me now, approaching 50, I especially love that his songs make me feel like dancing and rocking and rolling. When "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" comes on the car radio, I'm dancing in my seat and am a teenager again with my whole life in front of me and the road is wide open. And no one can convince me I'm old.

Of course, when I got home I soaked my swollen feet which I hadn't had to do the first time I saw Bruce 28 years ago, and when I was trying to fall asleep, the music still pounding in my soul, I had to get up and take a Tums because the glass of wine I'd had when I was soaking my feet brought on some heartburn.

So I'll keep holding on to the warm memory of Saturday night. And when I'm feeling stiff and old, all I have to do is put a Bruce CD in and hit "play."

p.s. And, no, that's not me in the picture (although in my mind, that's how I looked). It was a young girl he brought on stage to dance with him during "Dancing in the Dark."

A Box That Rocks

2008-08-26T07:00:00.000-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

My husband just amused himself by making a little kitty fun house for our cats. He took a big box, cut three holes in it, each one on a different side, and put it down in the middle of the living room floor. And sure enough, as I’m typing this one cat is inside and the other one is outside and they’re batting at each other and chasing each other around it and it’s very cute.

And it reminded me of times gone by, times when all I needed was a box to make me happy. I wish my needs were still so simple.

When I was growing up, my dad owned a small appliance store. (Not a “small appliance” store, but a small store that sold appliances.) Occasionally he’d bring home these huge refrigerator and stove and dishwasher boxes for my brother and me to play with. That was just the best. We’d construct houses, forts, entire cities made of boxes. We’d bend them and stack them and tear out openings. They seemed huge to me, too. Boxes twice as big as I was. I’d think that I could really live in them, forever. Of course, back then we didn’t have a lot of other stuff to play with. No videogames or computers or 500 channels of cable TV. Mainly just dolls and books and board games, and in the summer we spent a lot of time outside because there was just as little to do inside as there was outside, and outside was more fun because dirt was involved. So those appliance boxes were just the best. Until it rained, of course. Then we’d have to tear everything down and put it out for the garbage man, and wait until the next time Dad brought home some boxes.

Eventually, of course, I grew up and became kind of prissy, to tell the truth. Dad stopped bringing home boxes. But when I married and had kids, I got to return to that time again, just for a little while.

I remember oldest son’s first Christmas. My husband and I are pretty reasonable people, in spite of what you might think after reading this blog for awhile. We knew that it would be ridiculous to spend lots of money on an eight-month-old who still thought his fist was pretty entertaining. We left the major spoiling to his grandparents and uncles, and his father and I bought him just a couple of presents, mainly based on the size of the boxes. He spent hours and hours playing with those boxes — the actual toys being ignored. He stacked them and put them over his head and drooled all over them and we didn’t care. In fact we thought it was very amusing and congratulated ourselves for being such practical parents.

And when the boys were toddlers, we’d construct elaborate forts out of blankets and cushions and pillows and keep them up for days and days. They slept in them, even, and I’d bring them little snacks and even pretend mail, like they actually lived there and fun was had by all.

Then, somehow — it all got so complicated. Someone got them one of those mini Jeeps that had to be recharged all the time. Someone else got them one of those Playmobil sets — I think the first one was a gas station — but it was far too complicated for the boys and so I ended up spending hours and hours putting that thing together, from an instruction booklet that was about 500 pages long. Then the boys discovered videogames, my husband and I became enablers, and all of a sudden play time became this complicated set up of cords and cables and consoles and outlets. Then came the computers, the iPods, the portable DVD players….

And life — or at least the things that give us pleasure — became complicated. Even for me. To be honest, I’d much rather spend an afternoon shopping at DSW for the latest platform-soled Mary Janes, stopping at Starbucks for a double tall nonfat easy caramel caramel macchiato, going to Sephora to sample lipsticks, then dropping by J.Jill to see if there are any cute skirts on sale — than play with a box.

But still, sometimes I wish I was young, and the boys were young, and we could be happy with just a fort made of blankets, or a sunny afternoon, or a found penny on the sidewalk — something simple. Something uncomplicated.

Like the endless possibilities of a cardboard box.

Dragons, and Tuna, and Fleas

2008-08-25T04:00:00.002-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

Sparky and I got married quite young- I was twenty-one, a senior in college, and he was twenty-three. Our first apartment was a sectioned off part of a house. It had a delightful floor-plan: when you opened our front (and only) door, you stepped across the threshold and found yourself in the bedroom. The kitchen was hardly big enough for the two of us, and the cabinets were painted a garish bright orange. The bathroom was tiny and dim, but there was enough light to see that a previous occupant had hand-painted a dragon on the toilet seat.

We named him Dudley.

When the Marine Corps took us to North Carolina, we rented a wood-grain paneled, flea-infested single-wide in the middle of a National Forest. We knew we had conquered the fleas when our cat deigned to walk on the floor. The kitchen countertops were so crooked that if you left an apple or potato unsupervised, it would immediately roll off and bounce across the room.

(Those children of the Depression got nothing on me. I can poor-mouth with the best of them.)

I mention these things because as our situation improved, I found a real sense of satisfaction in looking back at those poor but happy times and seeing how far we had come. When you start out with crooked counters and a dragon on the toilet, there’s no place to go but up.

But I didn’t mean to spoil my children. That part was an accident.

I’m not talking about having raised the kind of kids who have a matching sports car for every outfit- I’m talking about the kind of kids who offhandedly say things like- “I would rather eat ramen noodles every day for a month than wipe my butt with cheap toilet paper,” when they really don’t like ramen noodles, and “I could hardly sleep in that bed at the Marriott, the sheets felt like sandpaper,” or “They didn’t use new baby sweet peas in the pasta salad, did they? The texture of these isn’t nearly as good.”

I confess. Food, bedding, and toilet paper are a few of the primary areas in which I have failed to prepare my kids for the harsh realities of the big, bad world.

It happened so innocently that we never saw it coming: The oil-packed tuna we ate in my childhood long ago bowed out in favor of water-packed. Then it was chunk white, and then solid albacore and now there’s yellowfin in the stores. You know how it goes- when they were little you could fix the kids a burger and they were happy as a couple of pigs in mud- but then one day they wanted to try a bite of steak… The next thing you knew, it was Saltimbocca Alla Romana all around.

When I went off to college a generation ago, I packed the sheets from my childhood twin bed and a quilt my grandma made. Over the course of the last few years, my son’s down pillow led to a down throw, which led to a down comforter, to a feather bed, to 300-400-500 thread count sheets- which eventually led to a mom who needed a forklift to get her kid out of bed, and fears he may never get himself out in time to get to work or class on his own. (It’s no wonder I had to rename that boy Snooze.)

And for that matter, mea culpa on the TP too. I still have flashbacks to the couple of years when my dad decided to save money by ordering toilet paper for the house from the janitorial supply company the church used. I swear- it was two cases of 120 jumbo rolls of economy-grade burlap. Yee-ouch.

My maternal regret today is that I seems to have inadvertently stolen the pride of accomplishment I felt in overcoming all the easy, surmountable obstacles (like oil-packed tuna and corn cobs on-a-roll) from my children, and left them only the hard ones. When we go up to visit Snooze in his brand-new enter-through-the-living-room apartment, I will have to do my part to remedy that error when I help stock his personal, privately-keyed pantry.

No yellowfin for you, kid. Earn it yourself.

Half-Empty Nest by Barb McKone

2008-08-22T07:00:00.001-05:00

Half-Empty Nest by Barb McKone

My daughter is gone.

After a whirlwind of activity, excitement and confusion, we pulled away from Truman State University last Sunday one child down, my first baby left behind to a suite full of giggling, texting eighteen-year-old girls. My 15-year old son sat in the back seat, only slightly traumatized by the experience. My husband and I were worse off. I felt numb. Blind sided. I really didn't know what to think, or what to do. Drive home, I guessed, but I kept feeling like we'd forgotten something. What the heck was missing? Finally I figured it out. Gracie was missing. It all happened so fast.

She didn't wave goodbye. Didn't walk us to the curb. We had stayed until the bitter end; she had places to go. Freshman barbecues to attend. My daughter was gone.

Let me tell you what else is gone.

The mess.

I know I should be broken up about our sweet daughter having moved on to the next phase of her life, and I am. Really. I miss her every minute. I expect to see her smile every time I drive up to the house. If I dig deep enough, I can muster up enough tears to fill that joke of a sink in their suite bathroom. The day after dropping off Gracie was the first day of school in our little town. The sight of the happy kids with shiny new backpacks waiting for the school bus, hand in hand with their moms, nearly knocked me flat. Wasn't that us, no more than weeks ago? After a couple of hours of kleenexes, I snapped out of it. I snapped out of it because, from my vantage point under the covers in her bedroom, I noticed the large, multicolored glob of dried birthday cake frosting on her bedroom wall. I hadn't been aware of the frosting fight in the bedroom. I pulled back the covers, grabbed a kitchen knife and damp paper towel, and started chipping.

Since finishing off the first pack of Mr. Clean Wipes, it's been easier to not fall too far into sentimentality. I've found two phone cords and a favorite sweatshirt I "lost" last fall. I've found duplicate sweatshirts of at least three she took to school, meaning three of her friends are missing theirs. Which friends, we may never know. I've found sales slips for clothes never returned after last Christmas and birthday, and a shelf of American Girl dolls I'd completely forgotten about. The missing Lacrosse letter, graduation cap and 8x10 senior photo were found behind a bookcase, and there really was a piece missing from the "broken" Dustbuster. It's called a CHARGER, and it was under the bed. It took three days, but her room is now the cleanest in the house. It's HUGE. I had forgotten how much larger rooms look when the floor is showing. I've organized her drawers, what's left in them, and her closet is color-coded and spacious. I'm thinking about moving in.

I've heard story after story about the moms who move their kids into their dorm rooms, organizing their drawers and labeling their desk supplies and hooking up their printers for them. Tsk, tsk. The kids should be independent. Do it for themselves. They're going off to college, aren't they? Why coddle them? What kind of mom would do that to their child?

Me, that's who.

I love it. I helped her pack, organizing t-shirts into tank, sports, sentimental, and fashion. Underwear was carefully laundered (by me) and sorted in much the same way. In the dorm room, we chose a bed close to a closet with the desk underneath for more floor space and started unpacking. She was gone in a flash, off to breathlessly meet new friends and make plans to meet up at the orientation events. Small-world stories popped up every few minutes: I think I know you from camp. Aren't you Robert's friend? You're in my dorm? On my floor? OH. MY. GOODDD! Four hours later, computer almost figured out and a tally of everything we'd forgotten in my purse, we shoved off. It was time. I was satisfied. I'd organized her for one last time. From now on, she's on her own.

Famous last words, right?

Truth be told, I know that I did it more for me than for her. I'm a little scared of my daughter being at college, so it makes me feel good to at least try to believe it that my last-ditch effort at organization might help her somehow. She'll start out her first semester of college with her jeans separated from her sweats, and she may be able to study better knowing she has an extra set of clean towels on the shelf above the closet door and a hook for necklaces. Why it makes a difference to me, I don't know. But somehow, I sleep better knowing I folded her pajamas.

She called three times in the first three hours after we left. She called to thank me for the plastic talking parrot from the Cracker Barrel gift shop (somewhere in Ohio- great green beans and cheesy potatoes) I left on her bed. Hours of amusement. She called to ask where her headbands were. Bottom drawer of the three-drawer stack on the left side of her closet. She called to let us know the barbecue had been short and she and her her new "best" friends were getting ready for their first evening on campus. She told us how much she loved her roommate "Cat"- she wasn't at all stand-offish as she'd first worried, just a little shy. And, she called to thank me for helping in her room, unpacking and organizing her drawers, and making her dorm bed with her new comfy sheets, a thick new comforter, and matching pillows.

Okay, now I'm getting a little misty.

She noticed. I could hear a sweet genuine smile in her voice, and she noticed. Maybe there's some hope after all. Perhaps my need to separate push pins from paper clips will make a little bit of difference in her life. Maybe the next eighteen years will be slightly more organized, and include a Dustbuster that's actually charged up from time to time.

I can't give up hope.

In the meantime, I woke up in the middle of the night last night wondering if I'd ever taught her how to make my special laundry paste out of Clorox 2, Oxy-Clean and water. Find an old toothbrush, dunk, and scrub scrub scrub. Bra straps: good as new. It'll also take the paint off your car.

Maybe next summer we'll perfect the laundry paste. For now, I've done what I can, and my nest is half-empty.

I need to go have a little alone time now. I suddenly have the perfect spot for just that.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

2008-08-21T03:00:00.001-05:00

by Jenny Gardiner

Thirty one years ago this summer, I had my heart broken for the first time. I was in high school, and my boyfriend, my first love, departed for college, leaving me behind to wallow in tears as he launched into a new life in a new town, with new friends, worse yet, new girlfriends, and no me.

I remember with clarity the pain and the tears and the fact that there was no way to get out of it: I had to forge through the hurt and become a new version of me, a little tougher, a little more mature, having been fortunate to have had such a wonderful relationship and trying not to be bitter about being left in the dust.

My boyfriend at the time did the right thing in breaking up with me---it wouldn't have been fair for him to have embarked on this new life with baggage left behind. It didn't make it any easier knowing that, though.

I'm feeling the heartache once again. Only this time it's vicariously through my own teenaged daughter, whose unexpected vacation friendship with an adorable young man blossomed into so much more. And because of the late nature of the relationship, from its inception it's been a countdown of sorts until he departed for his college, far away from here.

They've made a different choice---they are going to try to maintain the relationship, a tact made easier with text messaging, IM'ing, and webcams. I wrestle with whether this is a good idea for either of them, but I respect them for whatever decision they make, and hope it is for the best and holds neither of them back.

I try to latch onto hopeful stories about relationships that somehow last through lengthy separations, knowing the odds are against them remaining together. I was heartened recently to hear that a friend's son, who dated the same girl in high school and part of college, then broke up, reunited with her a few years out of college, promptly got engaged, and will be married soon. My husband's best friend's mother was widowed unexpectedly a decade ago, and is now betrothed to her high school sweetheart. These things can happen, I tell my daughter, hoping not to dash her hopes.

More than likely they'll end up like me and my old boyfriend. Once I graduated from college we went out on a date. But that magic just wasn't there for me any more. I'd grown and changed and wasn't interested in reviving what had been.

Ironically, after all of these years, he and I have become friends again. I guess being an author and having a name somewhat in the spotlight enables long-lost friends to find one easier, and through a series of funny circumstances he got in touch with me a few months ago.

I'd like to tell my daughter that maybe some day, if she and her boyfriend don't make it through this transition, perhaps they can become friends again. Maybe even more. I actually find it comforting to have re-befriended someone with whom I was so linked in my past. We exchange stories about our kids, our lives, our careers. We'll never be what we were, but a friendship mellowed with age is often a much nicer outcome than it otherwise could have been.

I know my girl has got a lot of heartache to come. This is compounded with the fact that she's a junior, and we're not so inclined to send her off to visit him at college at that age. But in the meantime, I'll hold onto the romanticism of their long-distance young love. And if nothing else, hope for them both a friendship that will withstand the test of time.

Getting Organized

2008-08-20T06:00:00.002-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Some of my nearest and dearest will be laughing themselves silly with the title of this post. I tend to be cluttered. I have good intentions, but I've always been able to ignore mess if I have a good book to read or the NYT crossword to solve. I straighten up the coffee table in the family room, but within a short time it's crowded with my stuff. I'm often asked if I outline my novels and I laugh and respond that only if post-it notes stuck on my laptop and various legal pads counts as outlining (and, as an English teacher for 15 years I know it doesn't).

I do try. I have a file for all my 2007 tax receipts. I just can't always find the file. (Oh, and yes, I know I should put it in my file cabinet. I'm not stupid.)

And, I'm not a slob. I just keep things. And I have yet to find the perfect organizing system.

In some areas, though, I have systems in place. In my classroom, each class was color-coded. Red handout? Fourth hour. Grading sheets? Green. But I frequently lost my keys under the mounds of papers and files on my desk. My recipes are neatly divided in my recipe box. But, sometimes I use a recipe for a bookmark in a cookbook.

All that said, I love having a structure, a rhythm to my day. I get the coffee ready the night before and I make sure that there are four cans of Diet Mountain Dew (ick. yuck. gross.) in the fridge for my husband who, while not a coffee drinker is a caffeine needer. I not only make a list before I go to the grocery store, I plan out the dinner menus for the week. I do crosswords in ink.

So, that's why I love this time of year--we're about to get back to school. Structure. Set schedules. Every June, along with the kids, I celebrate the arrival of summer vacation--no nagging about homework, no late night runs to Target for posterboard. No pleading with the school custodian to please, please, please let us in to the part of the building where a certain locker is with a certain chemistry book inside of it.

But . . . by the end of July (and maybe a tad earlier) my husband and I start whispering to each other, "When does school start?" Because the kids, as kids do, view every night as Friday night. Their alarms aren't going off at 7 a.m. But ours are. And we still ask our kids to wake us up when they get home. And that ranges from midnight to 3 a.m. And teenagers are nocturnal nightfeeders. And we're tired. I'm ready for the house to be empty for 6 or 7 hours every day.

So, right now, I'm rejoicing as much as the kids are grousing. The schedules have arrived. The summer reading is 50% done. The college books are ordered. One has already headed back to school; another is in week 3 of his job two time zones away. And on Monday, I will have a quiet house by 8 a.m. and will be able to gather all the post-its and other scribbles and get down to the business of finishing the final (or so I think) revisions of my novel so I can send it off. But right now laundry calls. Hope the buzzer on the dryer doesn't wake any of the sleeping kids.

How to Trap a Wild Teenager

2008-08-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

Yesterday I walked into younger son’s bedroom. Well, “walked into” is kind of a euphemism, as he has recently rearranged his furniture in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

As soon as you open his door you’re confronted with a giant bookcase blocking further progress; only the most determined can figure out how to squeeze past it and then you risk stepping on all sorts of pointy items on the floor (like pencils and a couple of old Rubik’s cubes) or sliding on discarded clothing, flailing your arms around like a windmill. Once you’ve mastered this, though, the only thing you have to do is turn a sharp right at the guinea pig cage (in front of which is lots of straw and tiny little guinea pig food pellets, again — not so easy to walk on), then step over a giant mound of socks, and then you’re in. You’ve reached Command Central: the corner of the room that holds his computer desk and TV. If you’ve managed to reach this safely, then you might be able to actually talk to the lad, or even — gasp — touch him.

I don’t know. Is it just me, or do you think he's trying to tell me something?

Anyway, yesterday I ventured into his lair a couple of times. Mainly because I had started to forget what he looks like. And the last time I did so — just to pop my head around the corner and say, “Hey, buddy — how’s it going?” — he tugged on his hair (which he does when he’s frustrated) and said, “This is the 7th time in two days you’ve come in here.”

Now, at first I was impressed that he was keeping a running tally. That shows a certain amount of dedication, when you think of it. And obviously, I was making an impression.

But then I was a little PO’d. Excuse me for wanting to pop in and say hello now and then. Excuse me for wanting to make sure he wasn’t growing a beard, or sniffing glue back there, or ordering lots of stuff on Amazon (because he has my password, which allows someone to order stuff with “One Click,” which theoretically means he could be purchasing mass quantities of DVD’s or…or…underwear, and I’d never know it).

So I got a little huffy. I pointed out that if he voluntarily left his lair for a couple of times a day, I wouldn’t have to “pop in” like this.

He pointed out that he didn’t want to see me. So why would he voluntarily leave?

I pointed out that I was the one who was in charge of giving him his allowance.

He pointed out that I couldn’t withhold it because he did do the two or three tasks, weekly, that earned him his ten bucks. Plus he'd just started a part time job.

I pointed out that it was tough beans, I still didn’t have to pay him and job or no job, I knew he needed those ten bucks in order to fund his VitaminWater addiction. (Those things are about $4 a bottle!)

He pointed out that that would amount to child abuse, and he would have no qualms about calling Family and Child Services and reporting me.

I pointed out that he could go ahead and do that — but then I stopped myself, looked around at his room — which does resemble one of those horrible cages that you sometimes read about, where bad parents lock up their children and keep them hidden from the world. And I figured he'd have no problem telling Family and Child Services that I kept him locked in there when, in fact, he was absolutely dying to run free outside.

So I left. I went downstairs, letting him think he had won. I waited a couple of hours. Then I got busy in the kitchen. About half an hour later, the house was filled with the aroma of fresh baked cookies. I heard a door open. A step in the upstairs hall. Another step. Then a tumble down the stairs.

“Cookies?” He asked hopefully, poking his head around the corner of the kitchen.

“Maybe,” I said coyly. Standing there with a plate of cookies in one hand, a glass of milk in another.

“I love you, Mom!” he said, sitting down at the table — not minding that I sat across from him.

He was too busy eating to notice my look of triumph. He actually lingered down there for a full five minutes, and we talked about the Olympics (he thinks Michael Phelps is a god, but thinks that men's gymnastics is the most ridiculous sport in the world, since men can't even point their toes right, like the girls can) and the Cubs (he agrees with me that Geovany Soto is our favorite player this year). Then he put his plate in the sink and went back upstairs — after first giving me a fond pat on the back.

And I smiled, knowing that I had stumbled across the key to raising teenaged boys: Set a trap. (And keep lots of cold milk on hand). I’m going to have to be careful about this, though. I can’t tip my hand; I can’t suddenly start roasting whole pigs in the kitchen every time he shuts himself off from me.

But an occasional batch of cookies or bowl of hot buttered popcorn — yeah, I think I can get away with that.

Don’t you?

Take Your Daughter to Work Year

2008-08-18T04:00:00.000-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

There are many facets of my persona that are unusual, but the top of them all has to be my choice of occupation.

I teach.

Okay- that doesn’t seem weird. Lots of people teach. But I teach middle school.

It is the rare adult who voluntarily signs up to spend seven hours a day in a room with a group of twenty-eight hormonal adolescents. When you multiply that by six classes and a homeroom, you might think you have a sure-fire recipe for insanity. Maybe you do. Some days I would swear to it. But for some reason or other, I keep going back. I love it.

So call me crazy.

For the past three years I have taught the accelerated level of eighth grade language arts, which means that every summer the registrar scrapes off the top layer of test scores and sends them to me. This year that top-floating layer includes my daughter, Shriek.

When people learn that my daughter is my student, I get mixed response. Some think it’s fine, but more often they think there might be a conflict of interest or some sort of subtle favoritism. These are obviously the people who don’t know me very well. When Shriek comes into my classroom, she does what every other kid does. She acts like every other kid, and I think the odds are pretty good that there are a fair percentage of students in her class that don‘t know we are related at all. If it’s awkward for her when I give a well-deserved lecture (her only comment about it so far is that it’s “a mixed blessing”) it doesn’t show. I don’t call on her any more than the others or any less. If anything, she’s at a slight disadvantage, because I won’t look over her language arts homework before she turns it in.

But I have to admit, I like seeing her in my classroom.

I was, after all. her first teacher. We’ve read together for thirteen years- it’s just that now she gets graded for it. Six years ago, her brother, Snooze, was in my class-- and it was probably the best thing that ever happened to us.

You see- the classroom puts me in a different light. I play a different role. At home, it’s just Mom saying “put the dishes away” or “pick up the dog poo in the back yard,” and you know if you put it off for another hour nothing terrible will happen. But at school, everybody does what Mom says the second she says it- they take out their journals and follow the prompt. They write copious notes on capitalization. They read stories and do vocabulary flashcards- and if you’re lucky, she’ll get out the slates and let you show that you know your definitions by drawing pictures. They love to listen to her read- something you’ve been doing so long you take it for granted- and they laugh when she says something funny. Which she actually does quite a bit.

At school- you figure out that although Mom is kind of weird-- it’s the cool kind of weird. She knows what she’s talking about up there. And wow. The kids like her.

Lovin' Those Underdogs! by Barb McKone

2008-08-15T07:00:00.001-05:00

Lovin' Those Underdogs! by Barb McKone

Ahh, the Olympics! Every two years it's the same. I tell myself I'll just watch just a few evenings, or throw in an afternoon from time to time. Never happens. The minute those opening ceremonies commence, I'm hooked. I love the human stories, I love the falls from the high bars- I'm stuck in front of the screen until the last torch is snuffed. With the exception of boxing, that is. Everyone needs a popcorn break. This year, the big events begin so late in the night I can barely keep my eyes open- I'm staying up way past those nine-year-old gymnasts' bedtimes. Somehow, I've managed. I've watched every beach volleyball match. I'm tired, but I'm doing it for my team. I'm watching for the underdogs.

So far, this year's games are pretty much a scuffle between China and the United States. I've watched a lot of gymnastics. From time to time there's a flag of Germany or Japan waved, but for the most part, it's been about the Big Two. Swimming is the exception. Michael Phelps is the big name, of course, but some other cream is bound to surface. There are a couple thousand races, after all. Several interlopers from stray countries have snuck into, and even won, some races. I thought I was just about to watch one such race. Surprise- Rebecca Soni from the Team U.S. just beat the Spandex off of a great swimmer from Australia who was supposed to win by a mile. Super Exciting!!! Soni was so adorably happy and genuinely surprised at her own success that she could hardly stand still when interviewed. She told her story just as she will tell it again and again to her friends and family, trembling and giggling. It was a moment that, clearly, will shape her life. No one expected this of her, and SHE WON. Hooray for her!!! You gotta love those underdogs.

We've all had our underdog moments. Not the break-loose-during-the-Thanksgiving-Day-parade moments, but the how-the-heck-did-I-get-here-at-the-front-of-the-pack moments. My underdog moment happened when I was about twelve. I was on the summer swim team for the sixth summer, and frankly, no one expected much of me. I was a pretty good little swimmer, but not compared to Betsy Harris and Lisa Stifler. They were the stars. They were always placed in the two center lanes, and they were the start off and anchors of every relay in our age group. Laura Murrin and I were the others in the relay. The solid fill, so to speak. We were fine. We just weren't Betsy Harris or Lisa Stifler.

Every summer started with a week of hard early morning practices in a frigid pool, followed by the inevitable Friday morning time trial. Time trials, if you've never been involved in one, are sheer torture. For the purpose of swim meet placement, the racer waits to dive into a timed swim, watching and hearing the times of all of their potential opponents. Club records are neared. The coach paces, stopwatch in hand and whistle around his neck, taking notes and nodding. Excitement builds. And, finally, it's time.

In our case, two swimmers at a time were tested. It was the 50-yard Freestyle. Betsy Harris and Lisa Stifler had already been timed, and our coach looked pleased with their results. It was going to be a good season for the Danville Dolphins. Laura Murrin and I dragged up to our starting blocks. I can still remember the sandpapery feeling of the block under my feet, and the sun baking onto my goofy white cap. I remember the starting whistle, and diving in. I remember cutting through the water, feeling strong and losing track of Laura Murrin. She was usually either right beside me or ahead of me. I slammed my hand into the wall and climbed out of the pool, and then realized Laura Murrin was just finishing. Drying off, I noticed the quiet. No times had been shouted out to be recorded. I turned to look at the coach, still checking his stopwatch, and saw the confusion, then surprise, then amusement on his face.

"She beat them all," he said, shaking his head in the truest disbelief I think I've ever seen. "Barb beat them all."

Did you see the face-off of Team USA and France in the 200 Free Relay? The French relay anchor, a giant of a swimmer named Bernard, had said prior to the race that his team was at the Olympics to "smash the Americans." They were supposed to. The French were highly favored to win, as I understand it. Why anyone on earth would ever issue a challenge (especially with a French accent) to a relay team that includes Michael Phelps, I can't imagine. It fired up the American underdogs, and none more than 31-year old relay anchor Jason Lezak. He evidently had a reputation for being an outstanding swimmer who did not always perform to his potential. I still don't know why he was swimming last, but he swam his leg against the challenger Bernard. It was amazing. Behind by a body length, Lezak swam the fastest free relay split in (I hope I've got this right) Olympic history. It was, other than a few perfect 10s through the years in gymnastics, my favorite Olympic moment ever. Lezak looked absolutely stunned, gazing up to see the crowd in the Bubble Palace erupt. Shocked. But not nearly as shocked as the French team.

A win by an underdog often trumpets the arrival of a new leader. A new super-kid in town. In some cases, it signals the triumphant perfect time to retire. In Bernard's case, it's a lesson in keeping one's lip zipped. In my case, it was really just a fluke. The perfect combo of too much protein and sleep, perhaps, but that moment, over thirty years ago, seems like yesterday. It was a life changing moment. I learned how great it felt to win, and Betsy Harris and Lisa Stifler learned that they should swim faster. I never beat them again.

It's okay. Because of Betsy and Lisa, I know how the little Russian gymnast who just unexpectedly stuck her landing off the balance beam feels. She can't hold back her smile.

Go, underdog, go!

High Maintenance Road Trippin' by Jenny Gardiner

2008-08-14T03:00:00.001-05:00

I've been on the road a lot lately. Totally tuckered out from work-related road-tripping. Facing mounds of laundry and dry cleaning and a house that appears to have been vandalized by my teens while I was away.

On the first leg of my travels, I attended a writing conference attended by a few thousand women. This is the third year I've attended this conference, which is professional in every way, shape and form. I always return home with reams of information, great ideas, and insight into the publishing industry.

But I arrived at the meeting with a level of perplexity about women and conferences. Now I come from a guy-centric background. Grew up with three brothers. The semaphore of my childhood was a series of grunts and groans. Even now, though I've got two girls, I notice with intent what my husband and son are like. Boiled down to their essence, men are simple, they're basic. Women are complex. Now I'm not here to determine which is preferable (although I'd be a traitor to my sex if I said anything other than us!), but rather put out an interesting observation in relation to my conference.

You see, many weeks before the conference---no, really months before the conference---female attendees started chattering on various online writing venues. Discussing the finer details of the destination, scouting out restaurants, shopping, transportation options, and such.

As the conference drew closer, the level of obsession grew to disturbing details. No longer satisfied with spread sheets of local merchants and what pharmacies were nearby, women started dispensing sage coping advice.

"Drink plenty of orange juice in the weeks leading up to the conference so that you're in good health," one would say. To this another would counter with advice on what cold-prevention methods are most effective. And then another would suggest the cheapest place at which to purchase it. In bulk. Echinacea, Airborne, Cold Eeze, you name it, someone knew which preventive measures were sure to beef up your auto-immune system to combat the dreaded Conference Physical Drain.

Soon we were being cautioned against even more fearsome doom. One author offered up helpfully, "I've pasted some exercises you can do to prevent the blood clots (Deep Vein Thrombosis or DVT) that can occur in some people from sitting long periods of time."

I just thought I was going off for a few days of fun and education! I didn't know I could well keel over from a blood clot unless I downloaded her exercises to my MP3 player!

There was the great jacket debate, in which a good handful of women argued over the degree of warmth they'd need for their travels from their jacket of choice. Someone actually demanded: "Define jacket" when another woman suggested she pack a jacket. Um, back in my day, a jacket was a jacket! We need to clarify this?

Some more "who'd have thunk it?" tidbits from well-meaning yet perhaps a bit anal retentive attendees:

°DON'T drink from the glasses in the bathroom. Find yourself a
plastic cup

°To cut down on trash that doesn't get recycled, a better idea might be to take a tiny container of your own dish detergent. I've been doing that for years, & it comes in handy for other stuff that needs washed or if you want to use a glass for one thing, then need it to be clean again later for something else

Maybe it’s the three brothers in me, I don’t know. But I couldn't help but cringe each time those women mapped out yet another bizarre high maintenance upkeep plan for the conference (don't forget your sweaters for chilly air conditioning! What’s the weather going to be like? Why does it matter? You'll be indoors for 99% of the time! How will I deal with my computer? The same as the other several hundred people milling about the hotel with theirs does. It'll be easy! Will there be WiFi? I don't think a hotel exists in a large city that doesn't have it at least in the lobby!).

Find me a man--any man--who honestly would think twice about anything more than what time the meeting is scheduled for and is he prepared for it. I don’t know if a guy really gives more than a split second’s thought to whether he’s packed enough underwear. Meh, you can get more when you get there if you don’t have it.

But thanks to my ever-vigilant fellow authors, I would have been able to find everything I could possibly need in a city of 3/4 of a million people, where, no doubt, the concierge would have provided the same information to me in a moment’s time, were I to need it.

It’s as if they need to be handheld through this world of professionalism. Now this is a group of very talented women, many hugely successful writers, many having come from previous careers as doctors and lawyers and the like. But what is it about a group of women that prompts this crazy-obsessive need to freak out on just about ever aspect imaginable?

I guess I should just chalk it up to the complexities of being female. After all, I'm the first one to complain when my son doesn't change his boxers the entire week we're on vacation. But maybe there's a happy medium in there?

My Olympic Events or, Damn, I'm Old

2008-08-13T06:00:00.004-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

I remember when I realized that most of the athletes at the Olympics were younger than me. It seemed to happen suddenly. I went from wanting my hair to look like Dorothy Hamill's (1976) when I was 16, to realizing one of the athletes in the 1992 Olympics was a kid I used to babysit for. But, thanks to some of the events, like marathons and shooting and stuff (not sexy events, I know), there were usually some athletes who were older than me.

For instance, this year, if I were 7 years younger, Dara Torres would fit that spot.

But this time around, what has caused me to gasp is not the record-breaking swimming events nor the stunning agility of the gymnasts, but the realization that there are parents of athletes who are younger than me. Yes, that's right, I'm almost closer in age to some of the grandparents of the athletes than I am to the athletes themselves.

And quite honestly, that irritates me. I'm not ready to be sent to a rocking chair with my food mushed up for me to gum.

So, I think we need to rethink some events. I mean, heck, they discarded that whole amateur athlete position. And they now stagger the games so the winter and summer games aren't in the same year. They tossed out the scoring for gymnastics so there's no such thing as a perfect 10 anymore. What we need are events that hinge on having some life experience. (Isn't that nicer than saying events that are aided by cellulite, bifocals and creaky knees? Thought so.)

Without further ado, here are events I'd be likely to medal in:

~wine opening. Oh yeah, I can swivel that cork out without even blinking. In one motion and with no cork residue left behind. And, to show even more versatility, I'm not a wine snob--grocery store sale wine is fine by me.

~lie detection. C'mon, if you're a parent of teens worth your salt, you're right here with me. When said teen gets a bit vague, a little shifty-eyed, you know the lie is coming. And, then I just smile, nod, act as though I bought it, but watch out, kiddo, because I will trap you in it like nobody's business. You won't know what hit you. Yup, I'm that good. (15 years of teaching high school really hones this skill, too.)

~sock sorting. I may own the world record on this one. And all those socks with no mate? They're in the top drawer in the laundry room and, oh baby, when the mate turns up it's a special day around here. And every 9 months or so I dump the drawer and we start all over.

~rolling-eye stare-down master (vs. teen-age girl category). I will not be moved. Not a whit. Roll your eyes, sigh with disgust, doesn't matter. And, I also up the degree of difficulty by being able to do this at the mall. In Abercrombie and Hollister. Oh yeah. High five, right here.

~spaghetti sauce maker extraordinaire. Over the years, the recipe evolved into perfection. I love it. My kids love it. My husband loves it. Friends ask for the recipe. And just the other day, my older son called me from Seattle to ask for the recipe now that he's out on his own. I dare say this category might need to be retired.

~and, as long as we're in the kitchen, let's include gravy made from scratch. With turkey drippings (but no giblets. Those are just slimy.) and broth and a bit of cornstarch mixed with cold water. Bring to a boil. Simmer.

~I'm pretty damn good at camouflage dressing (and perhaps the two previous events help explain this one). No, not as in war-torn fashion. I'm talking about understanding the "what not to wear" mantra. Understanding what makes me look slimmer. I might not quite be at medalist level here, but I'm willing to push myself and hope one of these years to be on the medal stand.

~Finally, I'm a font of unwanted advice on any topic you can imagine. And, I manage to slip it in without even being asked for it (telepathic, I guess).

So, what events would you like to see? What would you medal in? We can do this and, I promise, no goofy team outfits or chapeaus.

The Lesser of Two L-Words

2008-08-12T06:00:00.002-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

Here’s a pop quiz for you. Say you were downloading all the old pictures on your camera, and you stumbled upon a photo of - yourself. Say that that photo was one of the better ones you’ve seen lately (i.e., your triple chins weren’t in evidence, your eyes were open, and you didn’t look like you’d just swallowed a small animal). Say that you even liked it enough to put it in its own special folder on your laptop, one titled "Surprisingly not awful picture of me, to be used whenever I'm interviewed by the local paper or People magazine or some other highly unlikely event." (Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?)

Say that, in a fit of girlish frivolity, you emailed your husband this photo, too.

Now, there are several ways your husband could respond. You may even anticipate some of them — “Huh, nice picture.” Or “Is your hair really that color?” Or maybe even total silence, which you know by now not to take as a comment, but rather recognize it for what it is — that he never opened the file because he got distracted by the next item in his inbox. So he never saw it.

But no. Your husband does not respond in any of these totally acceptable ways. Instead, when you coyly ask him what he thought of said photo, he responds thusly:

“You know, I thought you looked a little butch, to be honest. Like a lesbian.”

Now, how would you respond to this? Here are your choices:

A) Hit him over the head with the closest blunt object (which might be — now this is purely hypothetical, mind you, so I’m not saying it was — the pooper scooper used for cleaning the cat’s litter box), then run crying to your bedroom.

B) Hit him over the head with the above-mentioned blunt object, then put your hands on your hips and lecture him about being a typically pathetic male with a school boy’s fantasy involving girl-on-girl sex.

C) Hit him over the head with the above-mentioned blunt object, then coolly grab the closest credit card and inform him that obviously, you have a ton of shopping to do, being that your entire wardrobe needs an immediate feminine upgrade. And that he needn’t expect you back in time for dinner.

But wait! Before you can choose any of these options, suppose he gets a clue. He looks at your face (all three chins trembling) and starts to backpedal. He stutters and stammers and comes up with what, in his mind, is a brilliant save:

“Well, actually, now that I’m looking at this picture again, I’d have to say I was wrong about the lesbian thing. Really, what you look like is a rancher. Like someone who raises llamas.”

What do you do? What do you do with a man like this, who thinks that telling you that you look like someone who raises llamas is a big improvement over telling you that you look like a lesbian? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) What? WHAT, I ask you??????

Please, if you come up with a solution, let me know. Better still —

Write it down and send it to:

“Melanie's Husband”

c/o PO Box He’s Never Having Sex Again

Dog House City, USA.

Mama's Lament

2008-08-11T04:00:00.003-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

It’s certainly not for lack of material that I struggle putting together this post.

I have plenty to say.

The problem, I’m afraid, is that it’s just too soon to say it. It’s too fresh.

I’ve heard it talked about; heard the keening of other mothers- but I guess I didn’t know how primal those cries were. I think you can’t know until it happens to you.

My baby boy left home today. He hugged me hard, told me he loved me and would miss me, kissed me three- maybe four times on the way out the door-- and he was gone. And now he will never be in my home every day the way he has been his whole life until today- ever again.

Everything has changed.

I know that my job- from the moment he was placed into my arms in the recovery room nineteen years ago- has been to take that baby home and make a grown up out of him. Physically, there is no question of my success. I also know that I have stretched my time with him already by his doing his first year of college locally.

Don’t get me wrong. I am excited for him, out on his own, stretching his wings, seeing what he can do. I remember that feeling myself. I am also more than a little jealous that he will be in Flagstaff where the air smells of pine and the shade is deep and green.

But I’m scared for him too.

And there is an ache inside me I’m afraid will be there forever.

And that’s all I can say about it right now.

Vacation? What Vacation? by Barb McKone

2008-08-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

Vacation? What Vacation? by Barb McKone

My family has a split personality. I realized it a week ago, the moment we pulled into our driveway and tumbled, tanned and happy, out of the car and back into our Real World. Vacation was over, and, within moments, so was Vacation Personality.

Vacation Personality is the reason we must, absolutely MUST, for as long as we're living together, go on a family vacation every summer. No question, no exceptions.

No one ever has time for vacation. My entire family, as I make the calls and plans and reservations and buy tickets, looks as if they might die. Really. I'm the worst person in the world, expecting them to leave their friends and lives for a week or two. But, lo and behold, after we've made the back seat cozy with pillows and a favorite blanket and we get into the car and turn to the first page of the AAA map, Vacation Personality sets in.

Vacation Personality is:

Relaxed. No phones, unless we want to risk them getting wet or sandy. Believe me, I'm not saying my daughter isn't texting away in the back seat en route, but, on vacation the kids don't seem to be adhered to their phones as if they are pacifiers. It's amazing how fast those fingers can click! On vacation there are no schedules except for the ones we set for ourselves. If we want to lie around on the beach until the dolphins show up at dusk, we can do that. A few more rounds of beach paddle ball before the sun goes down? No problem. We've got no place to we have to be. How wonderful is having no place to be?!

Adventurous. Sea kayaking, anyone? Sure! How about a little crabbing off the dock in the moonlight? Sounds good! Stop off at the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame? Why not? No "I'm supposed to meet Mary at the mall," or, "I have band practice all afternoon." It's all "sure!" or "let's go." Really, what else can they say? We're a thousand miles from home, we've got the time blocked off, and we have the keys. For all intents and purposes, the kids are being held hostage in the back seat, and they don't even seem to mind.

Adaptable. Our vacations schedule is as follows: Three days here. Half-day of transit, two days there. Moving on. Overnight somewhere else, three days in a new place. And on. This is what comes of having a husband with seven siblings who all live half a country away. Visit one, you'd better visit them all, or at least see them. It's fun. It's important. It's tiring, and since we're the only ones in the Midwest, the road only seems to go one way. To their credit, probably because they know the routine so well by now, our kids have learned how to to travel light and gather belongings fast. I didn't realize until this summer that our nomadic vacation wanderings have taught a life skill that will serve them well in their college years of couch-surfing. Well done, us!

Unified. My kids like each other. Sometimes, they even like their parents. I know I'm blessed in this. I've known families for which vacations are tenuous at best. There is almost nothing that satisfies me more than turning around in the car and seeing my children laughing together. Yes, half the time they're laughing AT my husband or myself, and the other half of the time they're laughing at a movie they're watching, but they're together, and they're laughing. For at least one week per year, our children WILL pay more attention to each other than to their friends. Some day they'll thank us.

So, after nine days of the Vacation Personality we ALL (and I mean it- I think the kids like the Vacation Personality even more than we do) so enjoy, it is always surprising to me how very fleeting it is.

Home Personality hits at the front door. Dogs barking and leaping at our knees, we enter the world of How We Left It. No matter how we left our lives, they always seems to need days of restoration when we return from a trip. Appointments that need to be made. Laundry piles I guess I missed. Weeds that seem to have grown much more than a weed should in under two weeks and are now sharing their seed with the rest of the neighborhood.

Home Personality, especially upon return, is rarely relaxed. Scheduled to the gills. Home Personality is super social, just not necessarily with family. It's still unified, but more in passing than in hugging and laughing. Home Personality has an agenda. Commitments to be met. It gets things done.

Home Personality's motto: Get busy or get out of the way.

This all reminds me a little of church day care on Sunday mornings, back when the kids were little. We all volunteered to help in the Nursery from time to time, and it was fascinating to see the family dynamics displayed on these occasions. Many of the children, upon drop off, were crying. Screaming. Literally peeled from their dad's pressed pant legs and deposited on the ABC rug on the floor. But, after some Teddy Grahams and a story or two, they wanted to play. Blocks. Dolls. Soon they'd start to cruise the room for games they didn't have at home. By the time their parents came to pick them up, they would barely look up. When they notice their parents, of course, they're immediately clingy again. Teary again. Back to normal.

How great it would be for our Normal to be Vacation Normal!

It's not that our Vacation Personalities are gone. They are always there. I like knowing that they're simmering underneath our daily routines, deep down and dormant. Thankfully, sometimes they pop up and give us a hint of what the next summer will hold-- fun, delightful, adventurous spirits, just waiting! It's nice to know that all that they need to wake up is a road atlas and a full tank of gas.

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda by Jenny Gardiner

2008-08-07T02:00:00.002-05:00

I know I've talked already about my son heading off to college, and I fear I will be accused of redundancy, but I can't help myself. With less than two weeks before my firstborn flies the coop, I am steeping myself in a tea of sentimentality, and it seems that every thing anyone says or does reminds me of something, some small nugget of parenting past. My emotions are hovering atop the Golden Gate Bridge, teetering over the edge, about to plunge southward, and I just know that the sporadic tears I've shed behind the cover of sunglasses over the past few weeks threaten to engulf my demeanor soon, soon, soon, proving to all how my heart is aching and how powerless I am to do anything about it.

This parenting thing, it's so crazy. As if each of us is inventing it all over again. Hell, how long have humans been raising children? Why does it feel as if I'm the only one to feel like that red-nosed two-dimensional cardboard man on the Operation game board, with everyone using those ham-handed tweezers to pluck my heart out, zapping me again and again and again with the pain of having this heart-ectomy?

I'm certain that during those hormone-saturated early days of motherhood, I sat with my newborn son 18 years ago and projected out nearly two decades, to this day I'm about to face, and I know without a doubt I sobbed like a lunatic. And I don't doubt that my husband laughed at my silliness, what with it being practically 20 years away and all. I simply cannot imagine where the time has gone, how I went from holding this small infant with which I hadn't the slightest idea what to do, to now, of my own volition, even, pushing him out the door, sending him on to the next phase in his life, knowing it's the right thing for him, and really even the right thing for us, but agonizing about it every step of the way.

I haven't known what to do with myself. I don't want to betray my emotions to everyone else. And I don't want to make it harder for him. I want to buck up and be brave. But I want to revisit all of those moments past, and try to savor them one last time, even though I know we can't do that. There's no turning back. The savoring is done at the moment the act is committed, no more.

I threatened all summer, every summer, really, to make the kids sit down with me and read through our favorite children's books. Every summer we never quite got around to it. So yesterday, I forced all of the kids to join me while we read through book after book, my voice choked with emotion, my heart a piece of chewing gum that you stick on your finger and then pull it out and then whirl it around and around till it's all tangled and gummed up and thoroughly useless.

I hate this, I really do. Never could I have projected out 19 years ago when I first found out I was pregnant that some day I would agonize over the loss of the subsequent two decades in this way. I guess I didn't prepare myself for it then. And I certainly am not ready for it now.

And so perhaps it is fitting for this writer to seek the sanctuary of books, books that hold within them tiny little moments of our lives together, memories I can knit together again and again as I mourn the loss of what was, and look ahead to what will be.

Kissing Politicians

2008-08-06T06:00:00.006-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

I know we're still a few months away from Election Day--by which time I'll be able to repeat all the commercials by heart and will also know that when the caller ID says "Unknown Number; Unknown Caller" it's not really Al Gore/Sheryl Crow/Paul Newman (unfortunately!) asking me to vote for their candidate, it'll be some recorded message yapping at me.

But yesterday was the primary here and there's nothing like a primary to make politics really local. Anybody and their Aunt Martha can, and often do, run. And they'll show up on my front porch to say howdy and ask if I'd like a yard sign. This happens every election. But this time around, I came face to face with a candidate I'd kissed. Not one of those politician air kisses with hundreds of other folks around. No. This had been a date kiss.

And I was stumped. I knew who he was. (I mean his name was on the pamphlets. Duh.) But, I doubted he knew or remembered who I was. Should I remind him? But what about his wife standing there on my front porch with him? (Our kiss was 15 years ago. Way before either of our spouses were on the scene.) It was tricky. Plus, I was probably going to support his opponent in the primary (a man, I'd like to point out, I have never kissed). I hesitated.

We chatted, I shook his hand, and he turned to leave.

It's funny, I mean you don't really think about the things you do or the people you meet when you're 18 or 24 or, in my case back then, 34, you don't think about those people popping up in your life years down the road. And it wasn't anything slimy; I'd simply bought a date with him . . . .

Okay, perhaps that requires some explanation. It was for a good cause. It was one of those bachelor auctions which was a fundraiser for some important cause. I don't remember which one, but it was legitimate. (As a quick aside, can you imagine the outrage if they had a "bachelorette auction"?).

Anyway, I'd been divorced for a year and a woman I taught with invited me to join her and her friends for A Good Cause. I grabbed one of my friends and we went. I had no intention of bidding. But I'd never been to any sort of live auction before. It's fun. And I got a bit caught up in the action. Perhaps there'd been some wine involved. Anyway, when this particular bachelor came up, I recognized him as one of the nice guys I'd chatted with during the cocktail portion of the evening. And, well, before I knew what was happening my arm shot up and I hollered out an amount (much to the surprise of my table mates) and two bids later he was "Sold! To the woman in blue at table 9." We went out a time or two. It was fun, but we had little in common.

And then, 15 years later he's on my front porch, looking paunchy and with a receding hairline (I would not have recognized him if I hadn't known his name), asking me to consider voting for him in the primary. I smiled, took the literature and went back inside.

I know they say "All politics is local" but this is a tad too local for my comfort.

* * * * *

Results just in: As I write this, the race is still too close to call. I'll keep you posted.

Naturally Speaking

2008-08-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

By Melanie Lynne Hauser

Well, I am happy to report that no tears were shed in the moving of my son into his very first apartment, prior to the start of his sophomore year in college.

And I have no idea if it's because it was so hot and humid on moving day that I had no moisture left inside my body, or if it's because I'm more mature than I was last year.

Actually, I do have an idea. I'm not sure if I've ever said this about myself before, but I think it's because I'm more mature. I know, I know - what a shock!

Now that I've had a weekend - and yes, a Cosmo or two! - to recuperate and reflect, I'm ready to share all my Deep Thoughts about life, liberty, and the empty nest with y'all. Ready? Too bad.
Here goes:

The first cut is really the deepest. (With apologies to Sheryl Crow.) Anyway. Last year, when my firstborn went to college as a freshman, I was a mess. My husband was a mess. We were a collective mess. We cried and grieved and just generally carried on like two little sissy girls and truly, it felt like a death.

And now I know, it was. It was the end of our family as we had known it for 18 years - the end of four of us under one roof, my husband and myself responsible for our sons' welfare and happiness and always, always teaching them - to be responsible, to work hard, be happy, close the top of the cereal box so the next person doesn't have stale Cheerios for breakfast, etc., etc. The end of our time as the parents of children. Now, we had to learn how to be the parents of adults, and we didn't know what that was like. We couldn't imagine it, and so we grieved for what we had known.

Well, now we don't have to imagine. We know that Older Son did, in fact, come home during the last year. Many times. We know that when he did, we always picked up right where we left off. We also marveled at how much he was learning, how eagerly he embraced his new experiences, how much he looked forward to more. All things he couldn't have accomplished still under our roof - and that's the most important Deep Thought I want to share:

This summer, this extended time when Older Son was home again, even though we knew it was just temporary - it was wonderful. Full of great family time, lazy days just spent hanging around and watching all three seasons, on DVD, of "Arrested Development." And of course, I rejoiced in having my family all together under one roof again. Yet...

I would look at him, hanging around on the couch, sleeping until noon, living by our rules, our schedule, our choices - just marking time - and I would say to myself, "This is not how a 19-year-old should live all the time." It was fine for the summer. Just long enough for all of us. But I knew that HE was bored sometimes; he started to chafe a bit toward the end, and suprisingly enough, so did we. Not because we were all together; that was, and will always be, a blessed time. But because this interlude felt exactly that; a holding pattern, all of us just treading water until "real life" started up again. And for my son, that couldn't happen while camping out in our family room.

At 19, 20, a person really needs to start living his own life, or learning to, anyway - and you can't do that when your mom is constantly asking you if you want her to make you a sandwich for lunch. No matter how many times you tell her not to worry about you, she'll still ask. Trust me. She just can't help it.

All this is kind of a long-winded way to say -

I didn't cry this time. Partly because I wasn't afraid I'd lose him forever - I'd learned, last year, that I wouldn't. Partly because I knew what to expect when we came back home without him - and the three of us (my husband, me, and Younger Son) have eased right back into the routine we established last year, where Younger Son clearly relishes his elevated status to One and Only.

But mainly, I didn't cry because I recognize, clearly, that we all need to move on - both Older Son, and his so-called elders. He needs to make his own decisions, establish his own traditions and routines. I need to get back to work - my writing has been non-existent this summer - and continue to look for new things, new ideas to take up the time and energy that I used to spend raising children.

He'll be back - we'll always be back together. For short times, and longer times, but never again the way it used to be, and that's OK. That's more than OK, actually - it's the natural progression of life, and when you step back, remove yourself from the equation and just look at your children and all that's ahead of them, you know that. Finally, you know that.

So there. No tears, some fears (we saw so many rat control signs in the alley where we parked the moving van!), but mainly -

Just joy. And some chuckles, as we watch our eldest grapple with life on his own (he had to wait three hours for the cable guy to show up - welcome to adulthood!). Happiness, to see him so excited about the little things we've long taken for granted. (When was the last time you announced to the world that you "couldn't wait" to put together bookshelves from Ikea??)

Thus endeth the Deep Thoughts on my son's second year in college. And I'm no fool. I completely understand that next year, when we move Younger Son into his dorm for Freshman year, there will be floods of tears again. (And more Deep Thoughts - lucky you!) Because that will be another end, as well as a beginning. And for a while, all I'll think about is the end, which is natural.

But sooner or later, I'll figure out how to be happy about the beginning...

Which is natural, too.

First Day of School

2008-08-04T04:00:00.004-05:00

By Margy McCarthy

And so it begins.

Again.

Her outfit for the day was laid out carefully last night on the chair in the corner of the room. The matching accessories she selected are on the dresser.

Her new shoes are on the floor.

She didn’t sleep well- a combination of eager anticipation, adrenaline, and pure dread kept her from the rest she needed to face the coming day, and she’s up with the birds this morning. Up before the alarm clock had a chance to do its job.

Up before anyone else in the house.

There is plenty of time, and yet she’s racing the clock; doing battle with hair that refuses to cooperate; trying to control the trembling of her hands as she manipulates the hot iron, trying to quell the rising tide of questions that race hither-thither through her mind. Her two best friends moved away to other places and she feels left behind. What if no one wants to sit with me at lunch? Who will I talk to? What if the new kids don’t like me? She applies her makeup carefully, despite the sweat popping out along her hairline and the barometer’s promise to remove all traces of her application the second she walks out the door. What if I forget my schedule? What if the lockers don’t work? What if I say something stupid? What if they all laugh at me?

Well, she thinks, it could be worse. At least I don’t have to ride the bus.

She spritzes her hair with a final mist of spray and fumbles with the clasp of her carefully chosen necklace. She assesses her reflection in the mirror.

Everything looks all wrong. Who does she think she’s kidding?

She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. Steady. Steady. She knows what her mother would tell her: “Just be yourself, honey. Just do what you’re there to do, and do it the very best you can. Don’t worry about what other people think.”

Well, sure. Easy for her to say. She’s old. She gets to stay home whenever she wants to. She isn’t going to have a zillion pairs of eyeballs staring at her today. She doesn’t have to worry about looking like a moron or a dweeb.

She can hear her family moving around in the kitchen now. Everybody’s up. She looks at the clock one last time and sighs.

She’d better go down and supervise breakfast.

Maybe she can look over her lesson plans one more time before she leaves too.

Life's a Beach

2008-08-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

Life's A Beach by Barb McKone

This week, spent mostly on the beach, has brought back memories of the small paperback that rested on the radiator in our hall bathroom through my middle school years. I never read it; I'm not sure I even picked it up again after reading the back. "I'm Okay, You're Okay." When it comes to life on the beach, truer words have never been spoken. Or written.

As I lie here, covered in #50 and still frying, I make the hundredth beachy observation of the afternoon. A group of three sisters are romping in the surf. While I've noticed that my fifteen-year-old son has attracted several groups of tween girls in tiny bikinis, lipgloss and eyeliner to our chosen beach spot, ("prostitots," as my daughter calls them) this group of women could not be further from that category. They are mid-fifties to mid-sixties, hair all the same length, large bodies in brighly colored tank suits perched on skinny legs, laughing and visiting as they bare their bodies to the world. They are having a wonderful time, splashing and diving like teenagers. I love them. I secretly wish to be the fourth sister, listening in and adding to whatever subject is so cracking them up. I know, however, that I just wouldn't fit in. My beach blanket might as well be a world away. I'm just not yet worthy.

I am a pool person who wants to be a beach person. I have worn a cover-up to the beach. Flip-flops that match the cover-up. I have not self-tanned, and I'm a little self-conscious about my thighs. These ladies are fearless! While we do also observe the occasional perfect beach body, they are few and far between. I am the norm. The sisters are the norm. After just one afternoon of beach viewing, I know that it's time to cast the cover-up aside.

The beach frees its visitors in a way that midwestern chlorine just can't match. Perhaps it's the long walk from the locker room to the lawn chairs in full view of all the still-tight new moms at the kiddie pool and teenagers at the snack bar we're forced to endure; something makes the pool a more body-conscious place. Perhaps it's the given beach draw of the ocean itself; no one's looking anywhere else. I allow my mind to wander through this thought while watching a grandfather dipping his granddaughter's toes into the incoming tide, leaning over to show at least two inches of rear end I just don't need to see. "Crack Kills," my daughter mutters under her breath. We both chuckle a bit, but I have to give the guy credit. Aware of the low-riders or not, I'm sure he wouldn't care. No one at the beach seems to care.

At this point, a seagull swoops down and yanks my already sandy sandwich from my hand. He gets the top half, and the groups around our blanket area witness this and laugh at my shock. Apparently, one holds their sandwiches closer to the chest at the beach than I have. I had the gall to be leaning forward, elbows on knees, absentmindedly watching my husband and son playing paddle-ball as I ate. I don't really care. The seagull looks satisfied, and honest to God, it was like I'd mixed the mayo with sand. Let the sneaky creature take the whole thing. I don't need that much... what would it be? Fiber?

My kids are laughing too. Playing games, enjoying the day without any i-Pods or telephones, and laughing. Pink noses and backs peeling a little, we stay, day after day, from morning until the sun goes down. How did this family togetherness in a summer of chaos happen? It's the magic of the beach! No more cover-ups for me. By day three, I walk fearlessly from the car to "our spot." I am relaxed. I am officially, for at least until next season, a "beach person."

I look around for the sisters. They've probably finished their week and headed home. Either way, I will carry their lesson home and into next summer. At the beach, we're all okay.

Oops

2008-08-01T06:47:00.001-05:00

Please tune in tomorrow when Barb has computer access.

The Waning Days of Summer by Jenny Gardiner

2008-07-31T05:00:00.000-05:00

What happened to summer? Just a few short weeks ago I was lamenting the laundry list of all tasks that my at-home-for-the-summer brood are incapable of performing (and that would include laundry). That was when summer still held the promise of all the exciting things it held in store for us. When the leaves on the trees had just transitioned from that newborn yellow-green to the get-down-to-business green meant to provide comfortable shade and respite from the heat.

Respite we’ve had. My lounge lizard of a youngest child has spent much of the summer supine on the couch, peaceably indulging in book after book, unwilling to venture into the blistering heat that defines summer in the South. My oldest, too, has enjoyed lazy sleep-ins and leisurely breakfasts that last into lunchtime. My middle? Well, she defies the standard and has worked industriously all summer in various odd-jobs, in addition to swimming often 3 hours a day for swim team practice.

Because of grinding schedules of two of them, and the frequently not-at-home third, it seems as if a fog of lethargy settled down upon us, meaning nothing got done except making sure that things were undone.

And so, in no particular order, here’s what didn’t happen this summer:

•replacing empty toilet paper rolls (or tossing cardboard rolls out when empty)
•flushing toilets on a regular basis
•rinsing dishes
•carrying dishes to sink
•washing dishes
•squeezing excess water from kitchen sponge
•putting rank-odored, mildewed, sopping wet kitchen sponge into laundry hamper
•wiping counters
•putting shoes away
•moving shoes from where they were taken off (not kicking those left in middle of the floor as if they are soccer balls)
•turning off lights
•feeding the pets
•filling the car’s tank with gas
•picking up wet towels from floor
•answering the phones
•hanging up phone, which is left to wedge beneath the sofa cushions, lost, sound muffled so as to be un-findable
•responding to requests for duties to be done
•finding food for selves in fridge (if not in front of face it doesn't exist, much like a newborn)
•finding food for selves in food pantry (see above)

As much as these transgressions plucked my last nerve one month ago, now I can do nothing but wring my hands in anticipation of what will be in less than three weeks: none of this. Instead we will have an oldest child who is off to college, no longer around very often to make the messes he doesn’t clean up. A middle who will not only mourn the loss of her cherished older brother, but also her summer love, also heading off to college. And a youngest who reluctantly ventures into the brave new world of high school, leaving her friends behind at another school, to her deep chagrin.

In a few weeks we will face great transition in our household. There will be much disequilibrium. It will be quieter. It will be cleaner, more organized. It will be heartbreaking.

What a Short, Wonderful Trip It's Been*

2008-07-30T06:00:00.004-05:00

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Twenty-two years and four months ago today, I delivered my first child, a beautiful, tiny, baby boy born in the wee hours (minutes, really) of Easter Sunday morning. He arrived a month early. (I don't think he's been early for anything since.)

One week ago today, I delivered that same baby, now a beautiful young man to his new life in Seattle where he has an apartment overlooking Puget Sound, a job he's been dreaming about since he started college 4 years ago, and, at least as far as I can see it, the world by a string.

And it all passed in the blink of an eye.

How did it all happen, I found myself wondering on our 2200 mile drive west. Where did the time go? In his grin and in his sweetness, I can still see the little boy who fell out of his chair just about every day in 1st grade. And I also saw his intelligence and determination as he figured out, several times, how to back up the 17-foot truck with a car being towed behind it. Often when I'd pulled it a smidge too close to the gas pump or the curb or the building wall in the alley. I'd first seen those qualities when he'd finish a puzzle without wanting any help or follow the painstaking directions putting a Lego project together.

I remember back to those precious quiet moments you only get with your first baby, those hours of rocking and nursing and staring at this person who relied on me for everything (that's true terror!), wondering who he might grow up to be. I hoped he'd find a career he'd love, a career that would fill him in all good ways. I wanted a life for him filled with passion and joy and challenge and satisfaction. And he's making it happen. He picked his dream city and he sent out letters and resumes and he now gets to claim his life. I'm thrilled and humbled.

We had lots of time to talk on our drive, and it was a luxury I haven't had with him in I don't know how long. At home, we chat, but it seems always in passing. When he's been away at school, there's the occasional relaxing phone call, but more often it's a quick "How are you? Love you. Bye." But the road stretched out before us, mountains and plains and rivers, and we talked. About politics and the environment and music. But a good deal of the time was spent reminiscing. As parents, I think we often wonder what they'll take away from their childhoods. What will they remember and hold fast to? I wasn't always patient or creative. I remember being tired much of the time. Should I have done more of this or less of that? We wonder and worry and try our hardest and hope for the best. But even then we don't always know.

But then, somewhere in South Dakota (after the keys had been locked in the truck but before we'd discovered the brakes were a tad touchy), he told me what a great childhood he'd had, how he loved those summers of adding on to his fort in the backyard and exploring in the woods near the park, how our neighborhood had been just right, filled with kids of all ages to play with and learn from, and how he was glad he'd had such unprogrammed summers filled with inventions and activities the kids dreamed up, and I felt myself relax. I'd done good. And so had he.

So, after the drive and the unloading and the short few hours of sleep before my flight home, when I hugged him goodbye at the airport and kissed his neck, I knew we were both ready for this next part of our lives together. People have asked if I'm sad he's so far away or if I cried when I said goodbye. And I'm not and I didn't. There's nothing to be sad or weepy about--22 very short years ago, I set out on a promise to give him roots and wings. And looking at him now, I think I accomplished both.

* With apologies to Jerry and the rest of the band for the paraphrase

(Cross-posted at Not Afraid of the "F" Word)

p.s. Be sure to tune in next week when I put my funny-writer-hat back on and write about kissing politicians. Seriously.