My Articles:
The Four Musketeers
Courtesy flickr.com
The girls met the first day of kindergarten, peering out from behind our legs as we tried to pry them loose with reassurances and fake smiles. We clutched our daughters with one hand, Kleenex with the other. The teacher, soft and ample as a grandmother, coaxed the girls onto the rug for circle time, while the Parent Club coaxed us away with coffee and pastries.
Before long, we couldn’t pry the girls away from each other. Felicia, Rose, Shannon, and my Emma were inseparable, like a litter of exuberant puppies. Everybody called them the Four Musketeers. Continue… »
Guilt of the Well-to-Do
“No comprendo.” That’s what I want to say as Lupe pauses from cleaning the kitchen to tell me about her weekend. But between my fractured Spanish and her broken English, I understand all too well.
Besides, the meaning of a finger slicing across a throat is universal.
Fighting tears, Lupe tells me that her relatives fell victim to an attempted carjacking on Saturday. Her sister-in-law screamed when their assailants tried to snatch her baby, and Lupe’s husband and father-in-law were knifed and badly beaten.
What Came First, The Grandmother Or The Egg?
I just became a grandmother. Pepita, as we affectionately call her, sleeps a lot, nestled in her bunny-bedecked bed. She is tiny, her head a perfect oval, as bald as an egg.
Maybe that’s because Pepita is an egg. My 13-year-old daughter just brought her home as part of Family Life’s attempt to prevent teenage parenthood. All eighth graders are charged with 24/7 responsibility for their hard-boiled infants. No overnight sojourns in the refrigerator next to the leftovers, no cracks or substitutions, no transformations into egg salad allowed. During P.E. or nights out on the town, a reputable eggsitter must be found. My daughter even has to read 20 minutes a day to Pepita. Unlike with real babies, no pages can be skipped, and the egg’s grandparents must vouch for this exemplary parental behavior in writing. Also unlike with real babies, the experiment with teen parenting lasts only five days, and no college tuition must be salted away.
Phone Home (But Maybe Not So Often)
Phone home. ET instinctively knew how to relieve stress. Now research confirms that if you reach out and touch someone, preferably Mom, you’ll feel better.
According to a recent study, girls aged 7-12 who spoke on the phone with their mothers when upset showed decreases in cortisol, the stress hormone, and increases in oxytocin, the chemical that promotes well-being. A phonecall is as good as a hug—just ask Ma Bell. Researchers speculate that the benefits also apply to older daughters, notwithstanding readers’ comments that hotly dispute the findings with countless variants of “HA! You’ve obviously never spoken to MY mother!”
Helicopter Mama
In our ongoing domestic drama, the cast of secondary characters has changed, but the script remains the same. Our kids, off in college, have been replaced by my in-laws, who have just moved into a nearby retirement home. My husband and I are still the protagonists, and we know our roles well: I become overinvolved, he detaches.
Just as I was the one who volunteered in the kids’ classrooms, I am the one who drops in at the Redwoods to see how my in-laws are faring.
Not so well, it turns out. Their assigned buddies stood them up for a dinner date. When they ask in the dining hall if this seat is taken, other residents say “Yes,” and decline to make room for them. More often than not, the seat in question remains empty.
Transplant
Photo by pawightm, flickr.com
A pot of flowers doesn’t seem like much. It can’t begin to compensate for the loss of rose beds, lemon trees, and azaleas just coming into their glory. But at least it’s something to greet my in-laws the day they’ll cram what they can of more than 60 years of marriage into two tiny rooms in their new retirement home.
My in-laws have never cared about material things; flowers are the one indulgence they allow themselves. A pale yellow Cecil Bruner rose foams over the entry of the Craftsman bungalow they are about to leave behind. Blue bells, daisies, holly—every season’s bounty—always grace the coffee table in the living room. My father-in-law, who disapproves of brooding as a foolish waste of time, has banished all misgivings about their imminent uprooting. Still, he confessed to me a few days earlier that he felt a pang as his prized roses were starting to leaf out. He will want a bit of dirt to fuss over.
At the nursery, I select lemon-yellow ranunculus, blue pansies, white impatiens, and a single periwinkle to spill over the edge of a big ceramic planter. I carefully ease the flowers out of their plastic cubes and transplant them into the readied planter, adding a little extra soil to fill in the empty spaces. Bits of dirt smudging the pansies’ upturned faces wash away as I give the pot a good, gentle soaking. It looks perfect. Continue… »
The Harm Reduction Omnivore
Long before Michael Pollan changed the way we think about food, we were influenced by our own resident activist. Our daughter, Emma, then age seven, returned one summer from Marin Humane Society camp proselytizing against animal cruelty and dolphin-safe tuna.
We endured her preaching for a few days, until her hunger for Chicken-of-the-Sea got the better of her. I resumed packing lunch boxes with a sigh of relief, but also with a pang of regret. Deep down, I knew Emma was right. Continue… »
Procrastination Freezes Time
My house is a mess, piled high with Twin Extra-long bedding, half-filled boxes, and a year’s supply of toothpaste and shampoo. My youngest daughter is going off to college.
When my first child left, rediscovering surfaces was the silver lining that eased my grief. I ought to be looking forward to a tidy house again. But I’m not. This time, cleanliness is next to emptiness. There are no more children who can leave a trail of dirty dishes and cast-off sneakers.
We hit the road after piling the boxes and bedding into the soon-to-be-obsolete minivan.