Tribulations, triumphs, celebration, communion.
The Art of Doing Nothing
I have really been wrestling with this stage of parenthood, the age when they insist they don’t need or want my help and can do it all themselves (the fraught 9-12 preteen years!). I often feel frustrated and bereft and superfluous. I used to hold them close and share their adventures step for step, and now I’m lucky if they let me come to the door when I drop them at a friend’s house. I’ve been having trouble figuring out exactly what to be to them during this part of their growth. But the answer is making itself clear: do…
Thank You, ChaCha
Our menagerie is growing. On Thursday, we got four active, healthy-looking chicks by mail. On Friday there were three. It is the girls’ first year of 4-H, and their leader had prepared them to expect that not all would arrive alive, and, of those who did, that not all would stay that way. Nevertheless. The chicks had names within five minutes of arrival: my eldest’s Black Cochins were dubbed ChaCha and Angel. My youngest’s Delawares Dot and Fluff. They settled into their new brooder in the basement quickly, scuttling about, sucking down water, and nibbling at food. When we woke…
This is my face
I was 40 before I had the courage, finally, to show my face. All of it, as it is. It’s something I had to learn from my daughters, and it started with the simplest question: “mommy, why do you do that?” Why re-color my skin with foundation and my lids with eyeshadow, why draw circles around my eyes and clot my lashes with black goop? Why couldn’t I leave the house until my face was no longer my own? I will never be beautiful. The tragedy is that I spent 15 minutes a day, 365 days a year for the…
Want
I may be starting a theme here, but apparently I have a fraught relationship with holidays in general! In our lean years, when Matt and I were in grad school and the kids were in those early years, just beginning to appreciate Christmas magic, I relished Christmas as the opportunity to finally say “yes” to something I’d had to say “no” to all year, often something gaudy and plastic. Moreover, as they got older, I dangled the promise of the list as a way of deferring my “no”: not, “you can’t have that,” but, “put it on your Christmas list.”…
Well-come
The speedbump on the road to the year’s greatest commercial bonanza, Thanksgiving is a weird holiday. Gratitude simply isn’t sexy enough to sell. That leaves feasting and family. The stores put out their piles of the same annual foodstuffs, and we gas up the tank and hit the roads (or, this year, the broadband). For a long time, I have struggled to figure out what to do with the day besides stress over turkeys that took too long and came out too dry and green beans gone cold in the meantime. (Full disclosure, I am not a foodie, and the…
On Piecework: Lucy
I wasn’t there for the carnage. I waited a minute to gauge the nature of the wailing, whether it was a perceived affront or a bloodletting. It didn’t stop, so I trekked upstairs. Both children were intact, but the china doll gifted by their great aunt wasn’t. She lay face down on the floor in the dust and slivers of her own legs, a midden of porcelain flakes and crumbs. I apologized and declared her unfixable. My husband waltzed in belatedly and declared that a little glue would fix her right up. The girls’ spirits lifted. But he wasn’t volunteering.…
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Life in the Multiverse 