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… »

Cycle of Crap

It must be summer, because I got the out-of-nowhere urge to cull my 5-year old’s closet for the high-waters and faux three-quarter sleeve shirts that have even the DADs commenting, “She’s kinda outgrowing her clothes, isn’t she?”

Our neighbor’s daughter is the lucky recipient for our 10-year old Gap and Gymboree classics whose paper-thin knees I hoped would survive at least two more wash cycles. When I finally clear them out, I take another look around her room and realize the work has just begun.

There’s more Bisphenol A (or is it B?) plastics in red and blue and yellow than there is floor space; a rainbow of colors and shapes stuffed into rectangular toy chests as a pretense to organization that is really the fallout of Goodwill’s ‘no more toys’ policy. Continue… »

Subsequents: When a Mother Loses Her Child

Subsequents was a term I learned from my online searches the week after Aaron died. I guess it was an easier way of saying “having another child after losing a child.”

But there was something about this clinical-sounding label that lent a controversial tone to the chat rooms in the various bereaved parent sites.

I never weighed in on any of these conversations. I’m not the online chatting kind of person, frankly, which makes this site a bit ironic for me.

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Working Mothers Are More Respected

I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but I know I had something to do with it. 

I started working again at my old company.  Doing the same things I’d done before the call to write my book practically blew me out of the office park.  Maybe I needed proof my masters’ degrees hadn’t gone to waste.  Maybe I was sick and tired of the startled reactions I got when I answered the ‘what do you do?” question with “I’m a writer” and nothing hardcover to back it up.  

Most likely it’s because I was tired of not making any money.  I wasn’t pulling my weight financially; just the three kids, laundry, groceries, dinners, lunches, bills, dog (yes we have one now) social calendar, team snacks, and carpools. 

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