Grandma’s House

I never really had grandparents. My mother’s mother and my father’s father died when my parents were still children. I only met my paternal grandmother once and my maternal grandfather passed when I was toddler.

Luckily, my children have a different life. They have three sets of grandparents: Nonna and Grandpa Elroy; Grammie and Grampie; and Grandma and Grandpa Tampa (because they live in Tampa).

This Christmas we are staying with Grandma and Grandpa Tampa. In fact, my husband’s entire family is here to celebrate the holidays. That’s two grandparents, four grown children, their spouses, and ten grandchildren.
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Nature Restores, Yet the Heart Remains Heavy

This piece has also appeared on KQED’s Perspectives and the Berkeley Times.

“Nothing’s left,” my dad reported to my mom. He’d gone by himself to find their house, because he didn’t want my 74-year-old mom to see the devastation of what came to be called the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm.

Later, my mom asked me to take her. As we approached Hiller Highlands, where they had lived for 11 years, my mom’s face turned ashen as she looked at the hills once covered with homes, including her own. The air was still heavy with smoke. All that remained were chimneys and black matchstick trees.

My parents’ ordeal began about 11:00 am that Sunday when my 78-year-old dad smelled smoke and frantically searched for it. He found nothing, until he opened the front door and got blasted by a gust of wind. Flames covered the hills and appeared headed his way. He grabbed my mom, and they fled in their car down Hiller Drive. They missed by minutes the gridlock that trapped and killed residents fleeing from Charing Cross. Continue… »

Litquake! Make My Knees Shake!

Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival, kicks off tonight — nine days, 850 authors, 150 Bay Area locations. There are readings in bars, bookstores, boats, and one barbershop! Writing Mamas member Janine Kovac gives us the behind-the-scenes peek at the excitement and amazing amount of planning that goes into this “Woodstock” of the writing world.

I think I have stage fright.

I am so nervous.

I’m not reading (all authors—except for those in LitCrawl—who read in the Festival have had books published within the last two years.) But as a member of the executive committee, I’ll speak at a handful of events to say things such as “Welcome to Litquake!”

This is my first year on the committee. Most of the committee members are published authors or editors of literary magazines. Some are publicists, others are booksellers and publishers. Me, I write my mommy blog and watch my kids. Most of the books I read are written in rhyme (“A comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush.”) Most of my public speaking happens at the park playground: “GET DOWN FROM THERE RIGHT NOW!” Continue… »

Monkey See, Monkey Poo

It’s a good thing there are three toilets in our home. At any given time there might be three small bums occupying each one. You see we have twin girls who are three-and-a-half and a son who is four. When one has to go, inevitably they all have to go. I realize this is a huge stage in their development. I did a small dance the first time I went to Costco and didn’t have to buy diapers. I’m just wondering when they’ll be able to do it all on their own…pull down their pants, go, wipe, flush, pull up their pants, wash their hands.

They are pretty good at everything but the wipe part, which I don’t really mind that much. It’s when they are all on the potty at once yelling for me to help them, not understanding that I can only wipe one tush at a time. It’s a bit frazzling. I often wonder how Kate Gosselin handled it. Imagine six having to go at once. I hope her two older daughters weren’t into the monkey see monkey do when their siblings were potty training. Maybe they were even old enough to help. Continue… »

Reflections from Delhi

I remember sitting on a crowded bench in the Delhi train station dripping in 110 degree heat praying for it to cool down. I wondered how it could be so damn hot at 8 p.m. I remember looking at my daughter, Kate, who’d been living in India for two years and noticing how she looked like the other Indians around us who appeared hot, but not drenched like me. I remember feeling relieved that at least my other daughter, Annie, was sweating as much as me even though she was only 25.

I remember thinking age didn’t seem to mediate the heat. I remember wishing I didn’t stick out so much as a foreigner, but the combination of my white skin and wet clothes made that impossible.

I remember endlessly wiping my face with my new orange dupata and worrying I was going to wreck it. I remember Kate telling me not to worry, because the dupatas, Indian scarves, were used to protect against the elements; this included sweat. She told us that the women wore them to shield against sun and wind as well as over their heads for temple visits. Continue… »

Babe…

I awoke with a snort, squinting into the early morning sunshine. It was already hot as hell. My mouth tasted like the bottom of last night’s ashtray. I tasted hard, gritty sand against my teeth. My tongue moved around, looking for moisture. I lay there, too weary and apathetic to move. I closed my eyes. Time passed. The sun got hotter. My scorched skin stretched tight over my face, feeling like it would blister and crack at any moment. I could hear the gentle lapping of waves on the sand nearby. My parched throat closed as I craved a long, cold drink of Tacise. Continue… »

Diamonds in the Rough

One night, after our toddler was asleep, I poured wine for my husband, Michael, and me. I told him that I needed more help with Nicholas. I took his hand and explained that I didn’t want to make it sound like he wasn’t doing his part. I knew I dominated taking care of Nicholas, and I wanted to change. I thought I sounded reasonable.

Michael blew up. He jerked his hand from mine and starting pointing his index finger at me. I was bossy and always correcting him. He wanted to do more but got tired of my interfering. But what really bothered Michael, what really upset him, was he felt he’d lost his wife, his lover and his best friend. For two years, he’d watched me disappear with our son. Continue… »

The Tyranny of an Anniversary

The anniversary ringtone flashed on my screen demanding my attention.

“Remember,” it said. “Today.”

So damn sure of itself.

This isn’t the add-another-notch to the wedding band date, although I’m sure I’ve had a few snarky responses to those as well. This anniversary was a reminder of events that we feel obliged to honor even though honor is not something we like to give death credit for. Why would a mother want to remember her son’s death?

The countdown to his last day dovetails along with the broadcast demands of 9/11’s 10th anniversary the week before. But I’ve been anticipating September 18th since May. His birthday seems like a poor joke in light of our family’s holiday lineup: Mackenzie’s falls on Martin Luther King Day (her initials just happen to be MLK); Tyler’s is Labor Day (you can say that again) and Aaron’s falls on Memorial Day (not funny). Cameron came along three years after Aaron died on – naturally – the first day of spring. Our herald to life renewed. Continue… »

Marriage is Work

A friend of mine celebrates her first wedding anniversary next week and has noticed that the universe has conspired against her. Total strangers tap her on the shoulder to say, “Remember, marriage is work.” Billboards, bus advertisements, email spam from moveon.org—everyone is telling her how hard marriage is. And that the work gets tripled once you add kids to the equation.

“Is it true?” she asked me, since I have been married seven years. Seven years! That’s as long as an Old Testament famine.

Yes, Laurie, it is true. Marriage is work. But here’s the trick: the implication of “marriage is work” (reads like a Marxist manifesto) is that if marriage is work, then the opposite of all this work is sipping mojitos in Tahiti, and reading the latest Oprah book club selection. I would argue that, yes, marriage requires a lot of effort, but there’s also great payoff. To me the polar opposite of being married is being comatose. A coma requires very little effort. I believe there’s also very little reward.

Put another way: a marriage is a garden. We can probably all agree that weeding a garden is hard work. But while one gardener notices how hot it is, how much her knees hurt, how many weeds there are, and what a thankless job it is—gripe, moan, whine—another gardener might notice how nice it is to be in the fresh air. That the feel of dirt in her fists is a sensual experience. That the garden is beautiful after it’s been weeded. Maybe she’s just proud to even have a garden.

You get the point.

(I must admit with all this gardening talk, that I haven’t weeded since 1981, back when I still had cooperative kneecaps. The metaphor is more real to me than the actual act of gardening.) Continue… »