March 8th, 2010
Over my first cup of coffee on Saturday morning, my seven-year-old son Ethan informed me that he is starting his own business. Normally he asks me for waffles, so I was curious.
Ethan plans to call it The Comic Company, and they will create custom comic books for kids at school. On the handwritten order form he created, ten kids signed up for comic books and indicated themes from Pokemon to Star Wars. Ethan said he already has too much work so he is recruiting friends to work as graphic artists at The Comic Company. Overnight, my son became a combination of Stan Lee and Donald Trump. I needed another cup of coffee for this. Continue… »
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March 2nd, 2010
My friend Ellen and I went to see An Education in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. It felt odd being back on Shattuck Avenue after being students together at the university twenty-five years ago.
An Education is about a high school girl in 1960s England who has an affair with an older man. They have a wonderful rendezvous in Paris. The girl ends up dropping out of high school because she thinks the man will marry her. Ellen and I connected with the girl’s parents more than the girl. How come they let her go out with him? What would we do if our daughters wanted to do the same thing?
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February 25th, 2010
It’s every parent’s wet dream – if mothers had such nocturnal moments – to know that your child is smarter than the average pooh bear. When Alex was two months old, he spoke his first word, “Okay.” That morning I had placed him on the bed, back when he was an agreeable pillbug who hadn’t learned to roll over.
“Mom’s going to be back right away, okay?”
And he chirped right back, “Okay.”
Not just once that day, but two more times. There, I had scientific proof, 100% positive results with no chance of error, that my kid had spoken English back to me. My son was a genius. And being an agreeable little guy, he wasn’t saying “no” like those ornery toddlers. My boy was answering in the affirmative, a “yes” man in the best sense of the word.
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February 21st, 2010
What exactly is the right answer when one of your children asks: “Who do you love most?” Is there ever a right answer? I love to tell each of my children that of course they are by far my favorite one. That may be the only chance I have that one of them will take care of me in my old age.
But the truth is, I love Daddy best.
There are so many reasons I love my husband more than my children. First of all, I picked my husband. Of course we had to ultimately pick each other but he was the one I wanted. My kids: not so much. With kids you take what you get and hope for the best. While I love my children immensely, I do not always like them. I think of them more as an acquired taste, like anchovies.
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