Posts Tagged Under Marianne Lonsdale
Saint Patrick’s Day
In first grade, my son, Nick, claimed St. Patrick’s Day as his holiday to share with his classmates. Other parents came to talk about Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, Chinese New Year, Easter. But Nick was the only one with a claim on St. Patrick’s Day.
For four years, from first to fourth grades, Nick and I made a presentation to his class on March 17th. We followed the same format each year: food, oral presentation and an Irish jig. Nick had developed a new family and school tradition.
The two of us would rise early to bake loaves of Irish soda bread, using Nick’s great-grandmother’s recipe. Each year we’d argue over the modifications Nick wanted to make – no caraway seeds in all four loaves, no raisins in two of the four. At 6 a.m., I just wanted to follow the recipe. I was too lazy to divide the batter into two bowls. But Nick knows what he wants and what the kids would want and he melted my resistance each year like the butter we brushed on top of the loaves.
By adminMemory
My memory is lost.
Between Mom Brain and menopause, I lose chunks of memory for minutes or hours. I’ve gotten used to it. I don’t get flustered if I can’t remember my next-door neighbor’s name – I know that her name will return to my memory at a later date. My son does not like my memory lapses. I rushed to BART from work one afternoon, did a short leap from the platform to the train, and then remembered I’d forgotten my purse at the office.
I hopped out as the train doors were closing. Hustled back to the office, took a later train and called my husband to tell him to pick up Nick. I told my silly story about the forgotten purse while we ate dinner. I was laughing and I looked across the table to my son. Nick was crying.
“It’s not funny, Mommy,” he says. He was pissed. “You need to stop forgetting everything.”
By adminPuppy Love
I’m sure I’m not the first to compare having a puppy to having a new baby. But I’ve never had a puppy before and the similarities are striking. I must say that I found my baby easier to manage. But that baby, my son, Nick, is eleven now. Perhaps my memory has faded.
Kashi, our four-month old Bichon Frisee, needs constant attention. He wants to cuddle, he wants to bite, he wants to pee and poop whenever and wherever he wants. He has me on a strict schedule. We head outside every forty-five minutes and I wait, oh so hopefully, that he’ll do his business on the street and not on my new carpet.
When I walk with him through the nearby shopping district, we spark the same attention I used to get with my baby boy. I was fortunate enough to join a mothers’ club and now it seems I’ve joined a dog lovers’ club. Almost everyone we pass stops to admire my puppy.
By adminSong
My son loves to hear me sing lullabies.
“Sing to me, Mommy,” his sleepy voice pleads as I sit on his bed, stroking his head. I start my trio of songs, almost carrying a tune.
My singing voice is horrible. I can’t hear when I’m off key. I love music so I don’t think I’m tone deaf, but something’s missing in how I hear the notes. What comes out of my mouth does not at all match what I hear in my head. But Nick loves my lullabies.
Nick loves me.
By adminThe Spaghetti Dinner
My family fills four long tables in the gym of Saint Veronica’s. My six brothers, my sister, our spouses and children, my mother and father – we’re all here. Catie, my 15-year-old niece, had a gran mal seizure this morning and is barely conscious. She occupies a wheelchair, her head drooping forward, at the top of our row of tables. Catie and her 6-year-old sister, Annie, are disabled by Battens, a degenerative disease which is terminal by the late teens.
Two women in our home town somehow heard about the horrible disease and organized a spaghetti dinner as a fundraiser for Battens Disease research. Servers bring steaming bowls of spaghetti, two for each table, one with red sauce and one with pesto. Garlic bread, loaded with butter and paprika are already on the table, along with antipasto platters of celery, carrots and olives. The gym is packed. The dinner has sold out.
But the people keep coming. My brother Joe is like The Godfather, with men lining up to see him. All these men that I remember as boys keep streaming in. Boys that are men that love my easy-going brother, who played baseball with him, went to high school with him. Cops who were on the South San Francisco police department with him. They line up in front of Joe, each spending a few minutes saying how sorry they are. Doing that manly teasing thing. Lots of conversations start with, “Remember that time?”
By adminPlace
I walk through the school yard, heading back to my car, ready to roll into work.
Small groups of moms stand around the play area, chatting and drinking coffee from commuter mugs. My insecurities kick in and I wonder what group wants me.
Where do I fit?
There are the moms of older kids, who know everything about the school and how my kid will behave since they’ve been through it already. Sometimes they like to talk to me, to give me advice. I play dumb and grateful.
By adminGroups
I pity the poor kids — and mine is one — who do not relish group activities.
We’ve come to think that happy participation in groups is normal and required behavior. By the time most kids are toddlers, their everyday happiness depends on how they navigate in groups – daycare, Gymboree, music classes.
I remember leaving my howling three-year old son in a gymnastics class. I hovered in the hallway, dialing my husband on my cell phone for advice. Should I leave him? We decided he needed to learn to be on his own. If we didn’t start now, wouldn’t it just be tougher on him later?
My son is now a confident, gregarious and well-liked nine-year old. Teachers have called him a peacemaker in the classroom and on the playground. But he freezes if I try to leave him with a group of more than four kids.
By adminStrange, But True
My first miscarriage seemed to go on forever.
First, the spotting, and then the ultrasound to confirm the loss. Next, the wait for my body to expel whatever was left in me. The cramps, the blood. And finally, a D&C was still needed to finish the job.
I had no idea that miscarriages could drag out over several days.
My therapist recommended that I plant a bush or shrub to mark the end, to add closure. I didn’t feel like I needed any more markers. But in an effort to try to move on, I planted a green shrub in a shady corner of my front lawn. The lack of light did not make this a prime spot for growth. Next to the plant, a scraggly acacia already struggled to produce small blossoms each spring.
By adminGiving Birth to Creativity
I spent most of my life thinking I was not creative. When others would talk about their artistic endeavors, I’d joke, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.”
Creativity was not valued in my youth. Making good grades, completing household chores and babysitting my five younger brothers were important.
Most everything else was deemed frivolous.
By adminIn the Grip
My family and my brother’s family occupy space and time differently than we did before Battens disease gripped us.
We flow from tears to the mundane and back, over and over again. Stephen King could not have imagined a more horrible disease, one that ravages children’s bodies and minds for years before killing them in their teens.
“I’m grieving Catie’s death already,” my sister-in-law, Cathy, said while she took the boiled potatoes out of the pot last Christmas. She sobs. I hug her. She wipes her eyes with her red and green checkered apron.
By admin
