Just Add Family and “Blend”

I have been living in a “blended family” for just over two years and it’s been quite a challenging experience. A blended family is when two people fall in love, decide to marry and then all the children from previous relationships, who never knew each other before and don’t particularly want to now, have to live together as one family with new parents, new rules and often in a new home. And some of us had to move to a new country!

Other definitions of blended:

• To combine or mix so that the constituent parts are indistinguishable from one another.
• To create a harmonious effect or result.
• To become merged into one; unite.

They all sound wonderful. But none of these are actually what living in a blended family is really like! Whoever coined that lofty phrase should be shot! Different personalities, different parenting styles and different nationalities are just three of the challenges we have had to deal with in our particular ‘blended family.’ Continue… »

Teenaged lust: From Fawcett to Fox

Farrah Fawcett’s lustrous locks greeted me each morning when I was a teenager. As did Raquel Welch, clad in a torn and clingy-wet blouse, her bright eyes shining right at me.

Both sex goddesses and best-selling pin-up babes adorned my ceiling on two posters I bought at Treasure City, a local department store in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Fawcett and Welch were the Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth of my pulsating teen years. My parents still joke that I’ve always had a fondness for the opposite sex―so slapping up the posters made logical and biological sense.

My 13-year-old son, Miguel, on the other hand, has not shown much interest in girls at all. I’ve teased him a few times about potential love interests, even going so far as to choose my future daughters-in-law, but Miguel has basically and not so politely asked me to “Shut up.” Continue… »

Texting God

“Text God,” Maya blurted out the other day. “What would you say?” I asked.

“Text God,” she answered with an impish grin. “But what message would you say to God?”

“1,2,3,4,” she replied. “What message?” I asked again. I was really curious.

“1,1,1,1,” she said. “That’s God’s numbers.” She obviously has a firm understanding of the nature of monotheism, God’s oneness.

“But you can use words to talk to God,” I suggested.

“Give me a present,” she said. “Isn’t that what Santa does?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What does Santa do?” I wondered. “I don’t know,” Maya said.

“I don’t either,” I agreed.

Maya had the final word on this topic: “God brings out the stars.” Continue… »

Middle School is Going to Be VERY Different

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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Mother Murders Her Annoying Cat

Binkley was a mean cat, the kind who lives forever out of spite.

When my husband mentioned in passing, “Binkley’s limping a little,” I did not expect a cat that dragged her leg bone behind her like a scavenged drumstick.

When the vet’s x-rays revealed a shattered leg in the hardest place to fix, I learned about feline osteoporosis. Binkley’s usual hop down from the bathroom counter would cost at least two thousands dollars, with no guarantees, not counting follow-up visits and medication.

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When There is a Big Gap in Your Children’s Ages

The gap between my children has never seemed as large as it does now. I intended to have them three years apart, but infertility interrupted my plans and my son, George, came along nine years after his sister, Venny. 

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Bed Check!

We don’t have a strict curfew for our seventeen-year-old daughter, but we do have one rule: she must wake us up whenever she comes home.

I demand more than the rumble of the garage door opening, more than a breezy, “Hi, I’m back!” from the hallway. I need skin-to-skin contact, to have her shake me awake, to hear how the dance was or what kind of sushi they ate.

“But you’re asleep. I’ll just turn the hall light out instead,” she protests. “What difference does it make?”

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A Mother’s Point of View: Choose Life

I was not always in favor of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. Here’s what changed my mind.

Three years ago a colleague shared that his friend’s fourteen-year-old son, traveling between school in San Francisco and home in Marin County, got off the bus one day after school and walked to the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some things were troubling him, and he put his leg up over the railing, preparing to jump. Then he took his leg down, caught the bus home, and told his mother, who sought help immediately.

He’s fine now.

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Shallow

“Did you make the appointment yet?” asks my 16-year-old daughter.

She’s not talking about a trip to Planned Parenthood, so I have deliberately ignored her request for awhile. But since this is the third time in a month she’s inquired, I guess it’s not a passing fancy. She really, really wants her mole removed.

Some people regard their moles as beauty spots. My daughter does not. Particularly the big, raised one that sprawls out from under her spaghetti straps.

“I’m so self-conscious,” she moans.

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