August 1st, 2010
When my nine-year-old daughter and I walked into the pediatrics waiting room, we noticed most of the patients wore yellow surgical masks. When they coughed, I did not need to ask why they needed medical attention.
One might think that my daughter and I were in Africa, Mexico, or a very impoverished part of Los Angeles. Afterall, children in the United States have been vaccinated for whooping cough (also known as pertussis) for decades.
But we were at Kaiser Terra Linda, which is located in wealthy, educated Marin County. One of the county’s biggest outbreaks of whooping cough is occurring at my children’s schools located in Fairfax and San Anselmo. In 2009, 7.1 percent of Marin County’s parents exempted their children from kindergarten immunizations. Vaccine programs rely on herd immunity, and when a sizeable proportion of the population does not protect themselves, everyone is at risk. 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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August 8th, 2009
We decided to drive our Prius to Yellowstone. Our Honda Accord is bigger and has a luggage box on top, but there is something wrong with the starter. Every once in a while the key gets stuck in the ignition. I pictured us in a remote rest stop in Idaho, not being able to start the car, while a bear, or perhaps a group of irate locals incensed by our liberal bumper stickers, pounded on our back window. I decided I’d rather be crowded into our 2007 Prius. I pointed out to my spouse that we could go out for dinner at least twice while camping thanks to all the money we’d save on gas.
The kids moaned as we loaded sleeping bags where their legs could have stretched. I lost my legroom to the emergency snack bag, my backpack, and CD bag. The only person who had any legroom was my husband. Normally, he gets tired and wants me to take the wheel while he naps, but when he saw me sitting Indian style in the passenger seat, he decided to keep driving. Continue… »
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May 30th, 2009
“You loved me more when I was a baby,” said my seven-year-old son Walker as we looked at our family album.
I nuzzled his hair, and said, “I adore you more every day. I loved how cozy you were then, but now you’re able to talk. You can read to me, and I don’t have to change your diapers.”
Walker seemed satisfied with my incomplete answer. I turned off his bedroom light and went back to the photos. There he was, newborn, in a penguin pantsuit with matching cap. His skin looked red and blotchy, and his eyes were shut. At six months, he was still bald, but smiling, like a wise Buddha. At two, he had long wisps of yellow hair and clutched a Thomas the Train.
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May 16th, 2009
“Today Phoebe asked me why I wear dresses all the time,” said my eight-year old daughter, Lena, one day after school.
In denial that girlie peer pressure, which I remembered from middle school, was starting in the third grade, I gave Lena’s classmate the benefit of the doubt.
“You know, Lena, sometimes kids have trouble making conversation. Perhaps Phoebe just wants to talk with you, and discussing clothes is a way to start. May be she likes dresses, too. ”
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March 21st, 2009
Yesterday, I saw an orange “Baby on Board” diamond dangling in a minivan. I remembered seeing lots of those signs in the eighties, but I thought “Baby on Board” had disappeared, like torn Flashdance clothing, excess black eyeliner and fluffy hair.
As a twenty-something, I thought the signs insinuated that I had some control as to whether I collided into the parents’ car. “Oh no, they have a baby on board,” I would tell my college friends as we drove to the I-Beam nightclub. “We’ll have to rear-end someone else!”
Now, I can see the point of a baby on board sign. It is not a warning FOR others drivers, it is a warning TO other drivers. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve held the wheel with my left hand as I reached back with my right hand to locate and then stuff a pacifier into my screaming infant son’s mouth while driving sixty miles an hour.
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February 21st, 2009
On Friday, my husband and I toured the middle school our fifth-grade son will be attending next year. I recognized parents I hadn’t seen in years, since our kids attended different elementary schools. We had chatted at the playground as we pushed our babies in swings, or may be we had crossed paths at Mommy and Me Music Class. All had larger waistlines and more wrinkled foreheads than I remembered.
We listened politely to the middle-school principal. She didn’t have the soft, sweet voice of an elementary school principal. She told us how important it was to check our kids’ agenda every day, since our kids might lie to us as to whether they had homework or not.
I stopped listening.
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January 20th, 2009
I watched yet another children’s movie this weekend in which the main character’s mother dies, The Tale of Despereaux.
Princess Pea’s mom is so frightened by a rat splashing in her soup that she dies face down in her broth, all in the first fifteen minutes of the film.
It wasn’t as hard to watch as the early scene of Finding Nemo, when Nemo’s mom and all the eggs that would become his brothers’ and sisters’ eggs are eaten by a barracuda. In some stories, like The Little Mermaid, and Snow White, mom is gone before the story even starts.
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November 27th, 2008
Last night, my throat hurt enough that I called in sick for work.
My alarm went off as usual at six a.m., but I immediately turned it off, went to the bathroom, took two more Advil, and drifted back to sleep. Around seven a.m., I continued to lie in bed reading while my husband and kids went through their frantic morning rituals.
Walker could not find his current event report. Reese chastised Elena for opening a new box of cereal while there were still three open boxes. Reese came in and asked if I wanted to eat breakfast, which was really code word for getting up and helping him. I declined, saying I wanted to rest.
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October 25th, 2008
Last Wednesday, I had the day off from work, but my own grade school children had class.
My day was wide open from eight-thirty to three.
Sure, I could have graded a pile of papers, organized my son’s drawers, or stained the deck; but when I awoke to that fogless, windless, October morning, I knew what I had to do.
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