The Recipe Box

I recently discovered granola. Turns out it’s really good with fruit and yogurt.

Who knew?

I realize this is not a revolutionary finding. I think others before me have stumbled upon this holy trinity of foods. But what can I say? I’m a late bloomer.

At the holidays some friends brought us homemade granola as a hostess gift. It sat around for a while until I was desperate for food one day. Then, as these things usually go with me, I became obsessed with it. After devouring it all, I needed to lay in new supplies. And I remembered that my mother used to make her own really really good granola.

Over the years I’ve found that taste memories have been a weirdly strong way of reconnecting with my bygone Mama—through her wine biscuits, her chourico and peppers, and especially her Polish golumpki. So I was especially fired up to unearth this long-forgotten recipe.

And, luckily for me, I have her old recipe box.

I grabbed the black Tupperware thing from my cookbook shelf. It’s hardly a charming tin box decorated with little red roosters or the word “recipes” in some cute script. This thing is a dull dark rubber, awkwardly bigger than your typical 3×5 cards, and hard to wedge into a cupboard alongside anything else. It’s unapologetic in its homeliness and obtrusiveness. And, like everything in the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle life of my mom’s, it’s utterly and thoroughly disorganized.

Of the 200-plus index cards, newspaper clippings, and recipes scrawled on random notepaper (“Glens Falls Cement Company” and “State of Rhode Island House of Representatives”), there was no way to distinguish entrees from side dishes from desserts. If I wanted my granola taste flashback, it was going to take some digging.

But as I sifted through the recipes, some hilarious in their typification of the Bruno family’s Americana cuisine—Seven-Layered Salad, Seafood Newburg, Strawberry Molded Salad, Magic Cookie Bars—I came across something totally unexpected. Postcards that my sisters and I, along with some other folks, had sent to Mom.

I had my kids late in life (told you I was a later bloomer). I’ve spent the majority of my existence child-free. But there are times when I feel an especially acute super-saturated dose of mama-ness. And it’s not when one of the girls runs to me for a hug ’cause she bonked her head, or when one of them screams from the bathroom hallway, “I had an accident!” It’s other weird little times that are harder to put my finger on. But I do know that one of them for sure is when I feel the need to hold onto something that my daughters made for me.

This fall, with Kate just a few weeks into kindergarten, Mark and I went to Back to School night. All the parents were given a little envelope of things their kid had made for them. The one from Kate contained a bunch of different drawings, and a strip of maroon paper that had the words “My family is ____.” printed on it. In the space Kate had written in “SPSHL.”

I wanted to weep with how sweet it was, and run around the room waving it in the faces of all the other parents. “Look what my smart Katie did! I didn’t even know she could sound out and write words! Is this not TO DIE FOR?!”

If only there were a locket big enough for me to hang that thing from my neck every day. It’d be like some maternal gang medallion.

If the house ever goes up in flames, I’m running back in to get that scrap of paper.

So anyway, finding these post cards, wedged into my mom’s recipe box with the same lack of order everything else was shoved in there, was like unearthing a trove of her my-family-is-SPSHL papers. Things I can imagine she wanted to look back on one day. You know, some day when she was hot on the trail of her Spicy Swedish Meatballs recipe.

One card from 1996 is from my cousin Nancy, who my mom considered to be her fifth daughter. It’s entitled “Route 1 to San Francsico” and pictures the Pacific Coast’s dramatic cliffs and coastline. “I have sore, tired feet from traipsing all over this beautiful city,” Nancy wrote. “The weather has been pretty weird—but a nice change from R.I. heat and humidity.”

One card from London, date-stamped 1998 is in my sister Marie’s writing. “Yesterday was the queen’s birthday and they had a special ceremony at the changing of the guard.” Turns out they never laid eyes on her Highness, as they were hoping to. On that card my nephew—now a few years out of college—signed his full name in a sweet, loopy school-boy script.

And from Venice, in a card without a date, my other nephew reveals, “Daddy got us lost twice already.”

There’s a card from me praising the wonders of the new-fangled heat-resistent spatula, two of which I’d apparently included with the note. And my friend Amelia sent a save-worthy card, addressed to “Mrs. B” as she called her, thanking mom for the meatballs she’d made her and remarking, “despite my protestations, I haven’t taken off the kakhi J. Crew shorts since you kindly passed them along.”

There was one from my junior semester in Paris, and another from my sister’s visit to Rome. For all I know more cards will fall out of Mom’s battered Betty Crocker cook book the next time I haul it out for something.

Did I feel at all voyeuristic reading mail that was addressed to my mom? Nah.

The fact that they were postcards—generally not the medium one reserves for private or intimate communication—helped me get past any such thoughts. And with her gone, I can’t help but feel like any new discoveries about her world are fair game.  In fact, they’re happy accidents I relish.

Besides, it wasn’t the contents of the cards that was revelatory. It was finding them in this unlikely spot. Getting a glimmer of insight into what it was my mother held dear. Always one to choose home over travel, I imagine my mother cared less for the places we all went, and more for the fact that her people thought about her when they were away.

Kate’s class put on a play a couple weeks back. A fabulous rain-forest-themed musical where the kids sang in English and Spanish, signed all the words in ASL, helped make their costumes, and painted and built out the dizzying colorful set.

It was a tour de force. The students have come light years from their “My family is____.” exercise. And Kate, as Tree Frog #2, was unstoppable.

The day after the play Kate’s backpack was brimming with artwork as usual. As I sifted through the crumpled papers—some penned by Katie, other art-gifts drawn by her friends (“To my frend Kate, Love Emily”) I came across a yellow envelope that said MOM in red, surrounded by black hearts and stars. Inside it was this letter:

Thac you MOM!

For makeg my costom.

It was grat. Avre wun wonid to tac picshrs uv me! Thac you for hlpeg me practist my lins.

Love Kate

I had to sit down on the kitchen floor to read it again.

Thank you, my dear Katie. I’m not sure where I’ll stow this little gem, but you can bet that this letter is a keeper.

As for the rest of you, if you’re ever seeking out a recipe for Ratatouille, Tuna Casserole, Green Tomatoe [sic] Relish, Pecan Sandies, or something simply called Bean Bake, I’m your gal. I’ve also got one for a little crowd-pleaser called Cut Glass Torte, which involves two different colors of Jell-O, whipped cream, and graham cracker crumbs. Take that, Alice Waters!

Happy April Fool’s Day from My Family to Yours

To honor April Fool’s Day I thought I’d break into the joke vault. Kate and Paige’s joke vault, that is.

Please note, these jokes are for immature audiences only.

And if you don’t get the joke, well, that’s probably not an altogether bad thing. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you DO get any of these jokes, you have reason to be concerned.

* * *

Kate: “I have a joke! What about the lollipop that had a hot dog for a stick?”

Paige: “Ahahahaha!”

[If you're waiting for an answer to Kate's question, don't.]

* * *

Paige: “Why did the pasta eat the popsicle? Because it wanted to make teeth!”

Paige: “Ahahahaha!”

* * *

Paige: “Why did the rain eat the trees? Because he wanted to make tree soup!”

Kate: “Good one!”

* * *

Kate: “Knock, knock!”

Me: “Who’s there?”

Kate: “Foo foo.”

Me: “Foo foo who?”

Kate: “Foo foo yogurt!”

Paige: “Ahahahaha!”

* * *

Kate: “Knock, knock!”

Me: “Who’s there?”

Kate: “Chestnut!”

Me: “Chestnut who?”

Kate: “Chestnut tea!”

Paige: “Oh, Kate!” [expressed in an admiring how-DO-you-do-it? tone of voice]

* * *

This morning, the girls climbed into bed with me while Mark was in the bathroom.

“It’s April Fools Day,” I whispered to Kate. “What can we do to trick Daddy?”

“I know!” she called out, clearly stoked by a brilliant idea. “We can tell him his pocket fell off!”

Why yes, I guess we could.

* * *

We welcome you to use any or all of this material. Please just credit The Uproarious McClusky Sisters.

And keep an eye peeled for their world comedy tour, coming soon to a city near you.

Sleep Whisperer: The Outcome

I was trying to be thrifty. Instead I ended up adding years to my life.

Or at least my appearance.

I’d run out of under-eye concealer—a critical mother’s little helper—and found an old tube of it in our bathroom drawer. It was a drugstore brand. But in the harsh light of the recession, and the harsh light of day on my dark under-eye circles, I decided to give it a whirl.

And you know? It wasn’t half bad. A good color match. Good even coverage. And the spongey applicator was kinda fun.

So on a Target run with my mother-in-law I decided to get more. Expensive schmancy make-up be damned!

As I crouched down to find the right product and color I zeroed in on the shape of the tube, then read the label and staggered back in horror. What I’d been spreading on the delicate moisture-craving skin under my eyes for weeks was not some creamy emollient make-up. It was tinted zit cream.

Aaack!

The last time I had a zit I had a Michael Jackson poster hanging in my bedroom. (It was this one, if you must know.)

Anyway, I have sisters who are 10, 11, and 12 years older than me. I learned at a wee tender age the critical importance—the necessity—of a good eye cream. When my sibs were in their twenties, experiencing their first anxieties over sun exposure and laugh lines, I was a smooth-skinned tween. My sister Judith saw me as someone with the potential to capture her youth. So she hooked me up.

I had to be the only 12-year-old on the block religiously using Christian Dior eye cream twice daily (dabbing it on gently with my ring finger so as not to pull at that delicate wrinkle-prone skin).

So this recent mishap with the mistakenly-applied harsh, drying zit cream has undoubtedly set me back dog years. Benzoil peroxide, you have robbed me of my youth.

At least I’ve gained back some beauty rest to balance it all out. Yes, party people, the update on the Sleep Whisperer, the Snooze Czar, the Sand Woman—the person we paid excessive amounts of money to get our three-year-old to finally frickin’ give up the ghost and sleeeeeep—is this….

[Drum roll please.]

On Wednesday PAIGE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT.

And really, not just that. She went to sleep and didn’t call out to us once. We put her to bed, and then—she slept! Until she got up in the morning!

It’s like a miracle.

Of course, last night she got up once. But really—once! That’s just a little bit! It’s a helluva lot less than getting up the many many times we’d miserably gotten used to.

And that’s only four days into our new program. So I’m still willing to allow for a learning curve.

What’s funny is, I was totally skeptical at first. Ms. Very Expensive Sleep Helper Lady came to our house Monday evening for our first meeting. I had a mild hide-the-People-magazines sorta freak-out in the moments before her arrival. But I pushed past that.

When I answered the door I drank in everything about her.

She was a bit older than I’d expected. She sat on the couch, all smiley and friendly. She said she liked how our living room was decorated. She munched on the nuts I’d set out. She was the spitting image of my friend Jill’s mom.

There was every reason to like this woman, but as we launched into our meeting I grew concerned. She didn’t have a clipboard. She didn’t goose-steep through Paige’s room making observations and jotting notes while skeptically muttering “uh-huh” under her breath.

If this woman was going to solve this nasty problem, shouldn’t she be more stern, or clinical, or ruthless?

Instead, she was mellow and friendly. She was NICE.

We chatted for a while, then Mark’s mom and the girls came back from their dinner. Nice Sleep Specialist made cute “what’s your dolly’s name?” type small talk with the girls. And then she and Paige went into Paige’s room for A TALK.

Mark was all hopping around on one foot wanting to eavesdrop. I was at the point where if this stranger was hypnotizing my daughter in order to make her sleep through the night—or threatening or terrorizing her in some way—I mean, as long as it worked, I was game.

They emerged from the room and Sleep Lady announced, “Paige has told me something very interesting. She said that it’s Baba [her lamb lovey] who wakes her up at night. And that is why she then calls out to you.”

What ensued was this: A conversation in which it was explained to Paige that Mom and Dad need their sleep. If they get woken up in the middle of the night, they don’t get their rest and can’t do a good job at work and will be cranky.

At which point Kate (who is heretofore written out of the will), chimed in, “My mother is ALWAYS cranky.”

Grrrrreeeeaaat!

Instead of hiding my People magazines I should have considered hiding Kate.

Anyway, what the Soul Sister of Sleep did was flipped the dynamic a bit. Paige was to say “shhh” to Baba in the night if Baba woke her up. This way Paige was no longer the bad guy. She was the good guy who we were enlisting in the effort to get mom and dad a good night’s sleep.

I was leery.

First off, were none of us going to cop to the fact that Baba wasn’t really the one doing the waking up? Were all the grown-ups going to play along with Paige flagrantly shirking responsibility for it all?

Apparently “at this age” (i.e. three years old) it’s easier for kiddos to test out new behaviors or express themselves via a proxy. Have the teddy bear use the potty. Show me on this doll what happened to you. Yadda yadda yadda.

Weirdly, it WORKED. I mean, it kinda didn’t really take on the first night. But we all kept talking trash about Baba needing to stop pestering Paigey when he woke up. She still bellowed to us a few times from her bed, and Mark went in to remind her to tell Baba, “Shhh.”

The next night we were told to ratchet things up a level. To close the bedroom door if she called out to us. She hates having the door closed, and screams her head off.  But what I liked was we only had to do it for five minutes. Then we’d open it and ask Paige if she and Baba wanted to take another chance at being quiet.

Night three: Bliss! In fact, I was lying awake intermittently wondering if and when she’d wake up. She never did. Our house was oddly quiet.

I did notice in that time that our refrigerator produces one ice cube every twenty minutes. This is apparently the kind of huge insight I’ll be making with my new-found well-restedness.

Well, that and I’m planning to start accusing stuffed animals of my own indiscretions. The next time Kate publicly calls me out for crankiness I’m casting all the blame on Barbie.

Uncle!

“So, Louie next door?” my mom said. (This was some years back). “Turns out he’s a necrophiliac.” She announced this quite matter-of-factly.

Louie, our long-time neighbor at the house I grew up in, certainly qualified as a small-town eccentric. One of those men who never married. Not that that’s so odd, but he always lived with his parents. Eventually—years ago when I was a kid—they died of old age, and he just stayed on in the house.

Louie must be in his seventies now, and I doubt the guy’s ever had a girlfriend. But I also couldn’t imagine him with, well—with a corpse.

“Whaaat?” I bellowed at my mother. She was imparting this freakish tidbit with the emotion she might use to mention we were out of paper towels.

“Well the other day I was in the yard,” she explained, somewhat defensively. “And I went to the side of the house to rake. I looked up and there’s Louie, lying down in the middle of his garden. I thought, ‘Ohhh God, he’s had a heart attack!’ I thought he was dead.”

“Wait, so what—?” I asked, wondering how this was going to tie into his predilection for necrophilia. “Was he spooning with a dead body?”

Mom looked at me confused, and forged on with her story. “So I dropped my rake and ran toward him and the closer I got I started to hear snoring! And it turns out he’d been out weeding and—” she snaps her fingers, “he fell asleep! Just like that! Keeled over on top of his tomato plants. After I shook him awake he told me he just got diagnosed with necrophilia. You know, that disease where all of a sudden you fall asleep.”

“Mom!” I moaned. “Necrophilia is when people are into having sex with dead bodies. What Louie has is called nar-co-lep-sy!”

Ah, what a difference a few syllables make.

When I was just in Little Rhody, I bumped into Louie when I was in the old ‘hood. And as it turns out he didn’t nod off during our brief conversation. But I nearly did.

I wish I could peg my exhaustion to something glamorous like jet lag (“Just in from Paris and mon Dieu! Je suis fatiguee!“) or a night of reckless partying. I’d even accept staying up late writing as an enviable reason for sleepiness. Alas, it was none of those. Just standard mommy fare.

And I don’t want to name any names here, but it’s all Paige’s fault.

Miss Paigey came home from the hospital a star sleeper. She snoozed through 12-hour nights consistently as an older baby. You’d toss her in her crib and she’d fall asleep on her own—no excessive nursing or rocking required. It was brag-worthy stuff.

It wasn’t until age two-and-a-half, newly installed in her Big Girl Bed, that our taken-for-granted nights of sweet slumber were suddenly shot to shit.

Yes, any glimmer of desire I’ve had to ever have a third child has been beaten out of me slowly and painfully by Paige. Because she’s been waking up several times a night since last July—let’s see, that’s NINE LONG EXHAUSTED MONTHS AGO.

Here’s the routine: She’s miserable getting to sleep—coming out of her room or bellowing from her bed multiple times. Then in the deep of night she calls out to us (or rather me: “Mama!”) and Mark or I get up and tell her it’s time to go to sleep. And she does. Until the next time she gets up and yells for us again.

So I’m getting all the sleep deprivation a newborn provides, without the weight loss from breast feeding. Though if this continues much longer I’m considering getting the girl back on the boob. Hey, I mean, she’s three years old, but I’d like to get some benefit from all these REM interruptions.

If each night isn’t grueling enough, we’re all too aware that every new one we pass this way cements this despicable pattern more firmly into place. We know we have to make it stop, but we’ve got NO IDEA what to do.

I’m a huge champion of calling the pediatrician for anything. And I’m always telling other folks to do the same. Someone’s kid is being weird about potty training? Cawl the dawk-tuh, I say. Toddler won’t eat anything but mac and cheese? See if your pediatrician has advice. Don’t know what color to paint your living room? You’d be surprised what that man can help you with.

So, of course, when Paige suddenly started erupting in the night like Old Faithful, I took my own advice and dialed the doc. I had, for all intents and purposes, a monkey jumping on the bed.

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said—? Well, the doctor said, “Say the same thing to her. Don’t make it fun for her to visit with you in the night. Be boring.”

Boring. Right-o!

So, we’ve tried that. Our sentence: “It’s time to go to sleep, Paige” is droned with such emotionless monotone that Mark and I should both be awarded Oscars for how fantastically boring we can act.

Weeks—now months—have gone by. Boring has gotten us nowhere.

We’ve threatened to close her door if she doesn’t stop yelling at night. We’ve made chart after chart to recognize her (rare) full nights of sleep. We’ve warned the neighbors and spent nights trying to ignore her wails. I’ve stayed with her until she’s fallen asleep, and brought her into our bed after her sixth wake-up.

NOTHING works.

I’ve scoured BabyCenter, The Motherboard, and Mamapedia seeking the wisdom of pediatric pundits, sleep specialists, and other mamas. I even posted on some message boards seeking advice—something I’d never done before. I got gratifying misery-loves-company responses: “I have no advice, because I am going through the same thing you are. I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in this! My 3yo does the same thing.”

And I’ve gotten tips—most of which we’ve already tried—or couldn’t. We don’t, for example, have a dog that can bunk in Paige’s room with her. And we’re leery of approaches that involve Mark or I huddled in a sleeping bag on the floor by her bed. Seems some things just substitute another bad habit we’ll eventually have to break.

But one piece of advice drew me in. A mama suggested we get this $23 turtle that’s a hybrid stuffed animal and nightlight. Said her kid loved it. There are buttons on the turtle’s shell so the kiddo can turn it on easily themselves. It projects stars onto the walls and ceiling, and stays on for 45 minutes then turns itself off. Paige gets up in the night? Don’t call for Mom or Dad, just hit the button, see the lights, and go back to sleep!

Brilliant.

I clicked the “Two Day 1-Click” button on Amazon with the smug sense that I’d solved this nasty problem. I showed Paige a picture of our dazzling sleep solution (so simple! a turtle!) and she loved the idea. In fact, she was heartbroken that night when I told her it hadn’t already come in the mail. (She’s got high expectations for Amazon Prime.)

When it did arrive, I gently carried the box in from the porch like it was a fragile priceless relic. Herein laid the solution to our endless stream of shitty nights of sleep. I nearly wept with joyful optimism.

At bedtime that night we turned on the turtle she’d named Tina and Paige screamed, “No! Light off! NO TINA!!!”

Alrighty then. On to Plan G. Or are we on Plan H by now?

Big Sis Kate, who I think of as my Second Lieutenant Mother, even has some skin in the game. Last week she made a totemic construction paper chain and gravely taped it to the headboard of Paige’s bed. “Here’s how it works, Paigey,” she explained in her most patronizing tone. “If you wake up in the night, you just reach up and shake it. Then you’ll fall back asleep.”

Yeah, a nice idea, but that hasn’t worked so much.

Finally, finally, we can’t take it any more. Mark and I are crying out “Uncle!” to anyone who’ll listen, and lying in our bed, limp with fatigue, waving white flags.

Which is to say, we’ve decided to pony up $150 an hour for a sleep specialist.

But here’s how it is with me. On the days of my long-awaited haircuts, my hair looks fabulous. I bring my car in for a rattling noise, and on the drive over it suddenly disappears. If I want to get over the flu, I just make a doctor’s appointment.

I’m not sure what this means. That I procrastinate long enough that whatever was ailing me gives up the fight?

Of course, the thing is, once you see one of these patterns emerging you think you can harness it, right? Like how many couples do you know (or have you heard of) who’ve had fertility issues then decided to file adoption papers—with no real desire to adopt. I mean, everyone knows you get knocked up the second you have your home study, right?

Yawning and bottomed-out, I finally emailed the Sleep Whisperer—a nurse who got several five-star Yelp reviews from formerly irritable parents who have, under her guidance, successfully gotten their kids some shut-eye. All without mention of restraint straps, door locks, or duct-taping mouths—though God knows at this point I’m open to anything.

And the next night, A MIRACLE HAPPENED. Paige slept through the night. We woke up Sunday morning—at like 8AM. Feeling oddly well-rested I turned to Mark and ventured, “How many times did she get up?”

And he said, “SHE DIDN’T.”

I immediately emailed the friends we’d hung out with the night before. I was mildly hysterical. “Paige slept through the night. So we are now coming to your house for dinner every night. We must  replicate everything about last night, including outfits, food—even conversation. Think of it like Groundhog Day. Eventually we’ll come to love the ritual of it all.”

I was certain that the Universe laughed at me the minute I was willing to shoot up a flare for help. But I didn’t care. It was over. Our long national tragedy was coming to an end.

But then the next night she got up roughly a million frickin’ times.

Our meeting with the sleep specialist is Monday. I have no idea what she is going to recommend, but I can assure you we will follow her directives with OCD precision.

If this fails, I’m not sure what we’ll do.

I guess we could spring for a plane ticket to have Louie come visit. Maybe if he and Paige spent some quality time together she’d pick up on his knack for falling asleep.

The Cold Hard Truth

I’m doing my yippy-doodle dance. This is something everyone does, right? I mean, their own versions, of course.

The reason for my outpouring of glee? Well, yesterday my most-excellent frienda Brenda called to tell me there’s a chance—what seems to be a WICKED GOOD chance—that she’s moving to California. And that happens to be where I live. Hooray!

Now I know it’s a big state. It’s not like my homeland, Little Rhodey, where someone asks you if you know a guy from there and half the time it turns out that you do, and that you actually went to prom with him. But where Brenda would move is like—wait, let me check my phone—81.2 miles from here.

So, even though the gal is flush with offers from other places too, she started rambling on, saying if she took the one near us she’d be close enough to come hang out for the weekend. To be a regular at our bourbon-punch Christmas bash. Close enough TO COME TO THE GIRLS’ BIRTHDAY PARTIES.

Now, if she doesn’t move here, her having dangled that in front of me is nothing short of emotional abuse. I’m already far far down the path of picturing Auntie Brenda twisting balloons and doing face painting in our backyard, then staying late to read to the girls before she tucks ‘em into bed. I’m already misty-eyed over how she’ll make my stroller-addicted kids into fierce back-country hikers. I’m laying plans for watching her dog when she travels for work.

My sister- and brother-in-law move every few years, on accounta he’s in the Coast Guard. As the gal who wept when her mother sold her childhood home nearly two decades after having actually lived there—I find the concept of moving often scary. But ya do what you need to do. And my sister-in-law maintains that her best friends are scattered all over the country anyway. So where she lives makes little difference. It’s a varying degree of distance from someone whose area code she’s already used to dialing. If she’s lucky, she gets to stay in the same time zone as her besties.

And even though I always thought of this as her situation, the fact is, some of the people I’d populate on my desert island if I had only 10 others to take with me—some of my nearest and dearest chums in the whole wide universe I’ve come to accept I’ll never live next to. At least until the time comes when I’m ordered to collect them for our move to a desert island.

So anyway, suddenly the thought of frienda-Brenda closeness is at hand. And I really hope I don’t have to do the UN-yippy-doodle dance if she decides to take some other gig. Like, I hope the other far-away company doesn’t have a better 401K plan or something.

That would suck.

Speaking of sucking, the night before we flew to Rhode Island I was reading a bedtime story to Kate. A library book. And I know, I know. I was just talking to a teacher-friend, and I know I should be reading all these kids’ books myself first. But I hadn’t. And the plot took an unexpected twist and some robbers broke into a store.

And as it turned out, the robbers were stymied by the happy accident of a whistling tea kettle going off. That somehow had the burglars thinking a police siren was zooming their way. So they never got away with the goods.

But despite justice prevailing, I closed the book and turned to Kate who had her duvet pulled up to her chin and a terrified look on her face.

“Are there still robbers, Mom?” she asked with a squeak.

Me: “Still? Um, well, uh….

Kate: “Like do robbers just break into stores, or do they go into people’s houses too?”

Me: “Well, I mean generally there’s much more reason to go into a store, right? I mean, stores have cash registers, and robbers certainly do like cash…”

Kate: “But there aren’t robbers in Oakland are there?”

Me: “Here?! In OAKland?! [Fake laughter.] Oh, no, no, nooooo! No robbers here. No reason for you to worry, sweetie. You just get some sleep now because tomorrow we’re going on the airplane to see Grandpa!”

Of course, I have these conversations—I get trapped with some horrible truth I have to share—and it’s inevitably before bed. When I have one foot out the door into the freedom of a child-free evening. And I can just envision what the truth will bring. How I’ll be up all night counseling a sobbing, freaked-out child. The temptation to stop parenting—if only for the two hours before I konk out on the couch myself—is too great. And so I can’t help myself.

I lie!

Inevitably Mark is standing in the kitchen, washing dishes after dinner. And he’ll shake his head and just stare forward out the window into the dark night and mutter to himself, “Nope! No burglars in Oakland…”

Because Mark is a truth-talker. I mean, I know that’s a good thing. And I know what I’m doing isn’t necessarily the right approach. But sometimes I’m at a total loss for what either of us should do.

Like Friday night. We were at dinner at my sister’s in SF. We had two cars with us since Mark met us there after work. And as is often the case, Kate wanted to ride home with Mark, and my barnacle, Paigey, wanted to stay suctioned tightly onto me.

When we got home and tucked the kids in, Mark came into our room where I was changing into my most sexy and alluring flannel granny nightgown. (I am SO on-fire in that thing.)

And Mark says, as if he’s mentioning he had a ham sandwich for lunch, that he happened to tell Kate about 9/11 in the car ride home.

“You WHAT?!” I bellowed, yanking the ruffled yoke of flannel down over my head. “You just kind of casually happened to tell her about 9/11?!”

“Well, it’s not like I brought it up,” he said, all calm. “I mean, we were looking at the skyscrapers downtown, and then she asked me what the tallest building in New York was, and I said, ‘Well, it’s the Empire State building now.’”

“NOW?” I shout-whispered, so as not to wake the children. “You said NOW?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, innocently stepping into his striped PJ bottoms. “I mean, I didn’t stress the word, but I said it. And she totally zoned in on it, and asked me what did I mean by ‘now.’ And then I told her about 9/11.”

And oddly, just minutes after that conversation—which Mark claimed wasn’t rife with gory details—Kate was already drifting off to sleep peacefully in her room. We weren’t dialing some 1-800-SCARED-KID hot line. The terrorists apparently weren’t going to win this one.

“Huh,” I said. “Well… do you want to watch Top Chef?”

I think it’s awesome and brave of Mark to talk to Kate about things like this. I need to test the waters more here and butch up to the fact that she can handle it. I need to exhibit more risk-taking behavior when, at the end of a long day of parenting, there might be something that might trigger me to have to spend more time Mamaing. Like, maybe Kate would’ve just said “oh” if I told her sometimes robbers do break into houses, and sometimes it even happens in our happy little hamlet, Oakland.

Last year, when Kate was a wee preschooler (not the sophisticated, worldly kindergartener she is today), I told her about what happened in Haiti. Which led to her asking the inevitable, “Are there ever earthquakes here, Mama?”

And of course, I said, “Here?! Earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area?! Why… noooooo!”

I mean, even I felt bad about that doozey of a lie. But really, what was I going to say? “Yes! Why, we’re just a mile or so from a fault line! In fact, we have an earthquake kit packed in our garage with a crowbar and food, and water, and diapers and lots of one-dollar bills so we’re ready for what people refer to as The Big One—a quake of devastating proportions that could level our house, incite looting and rioting, and have public utilities down for days! We also have meeting places established in San Francisco and Oakland in case Daddy’s on the other side of the bridge at work and, well, in case the whole bridge breaks and falls into the water! (All the cell phone lines will probably be tied up.) In fact, most of the people who we meet when we’re away from home think we’re stark-raving mad for living here and ask us, ‘Aren’t you afraid of earthquakes?’ ”

Why yes, honey. We may have great sourdough bread and those big purdy Redwood trees, but the reality is, we live in a primo spot for earthquakes. Heck, and for robbers too!

But do me a favor and don’t let your Auntie Brenda know.  Let’s just let this be our little secret.

Mothering Out of Bounds

I’m unstoppable. As a mother, that is. And before you hit Play on that Helen Reddy eight-track tape, let me clarify. I don’t mean this as a good thing.

I’m not sure when exactly it started, but I’ve become the person who pulls a Kleenex from my purse for the guy who sneezes behind me in a store check-out line. I’m the daft Perpetual Baby Smiler—never letting any beings under the age of one pass me by without cocking my head, beaming, and saying, “Awww…” I’m the woman standing idiotically in the family-boarding area, even in the rare instances I’m flying without my kids.

Aside from wondering where the hell the old Me went—the one who thought of herself as an individual, not just part of a family unit—aside from that, well, hell, it’s just that this new Me can be so horribly annoying.

If you don’t believe me, ask Mark. We’re deep into this issue he and I. Totally aware of it and working on it, but like some bad rainy-season ant infestation, it just keeps coming back. You know, you spray-slaughter all the ants around the basement door, and next think you know they’ve forming a line trooping through your dining room, swarming over a fallen lump of last week’s oatmeal. It’s the kind of problem you’re certain you will never ever get a handle on.

What exactly am I talking about? Good question. It’s this: I’m a backseat parent.

Mark will be halfway though answering Kate’s plea for dessert, or helping Paige track down her tap shoes and I’ll jump in—totally interrupting, bombarding unheeded—and I’ll start dispatching orders. “Kate, you need to take three more bites of broccoli before I’ll even consider dessert.” “Paige, your tap shoes are in your ballet box on the top shelf of your closet. Do NOT wear them on the hardwood floors.”

Man, it’s annoying.

We’ve talked about this but I still can’t manage to make myself stop. The best explanation I can muster is that I spend my days responding to an endless stream of kid-borne issues. Things that come flying at me mercilessly like centipedes in a video game. To ward them off, I have to aim a kind of Ghostbusters-esque task-zapping uzi at them—Zap! Zap! Zap!—in order to get us to the next level, which is usually something like out the door, down the steps, and into the car for school, with everybody’s clothing on and hair combed.

I’m so used to single-handedly dealing with what life throws at me during the day, that when Mark’s there and I so much as sense that some kid-issue is incoming, I automatically kick into gear, guns blazing. Even though I know Mark can totally handle it on his own.

I guess I’m kinda trigger happy.

We’ve joked that I need classical conditioning to change. But really, more than the salt-lick reward I think what I need is an electric cattle prod deterrent every time I do it.

And just ’cause I have a maternal reflex to do something, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right thing to do. I may be feeling over-programmed in the Mama arts, but I’m still doing dopey things like consistently forgetting to carry diapers, and leaving a baggy of Alleve in my purse where Paige can get into it. (Kate recently called out to me, “Paige is about to eat some blue pills she found in your purse!” Guess I need to take to heart this Motherboard tip about stowing my bag at higher ground.)

The younger brother of my most-excellent wonderful and good friend, Mike, is moving to Oakland. I’m all hopped up about this because if I drink enough, turn down the lights, and really squint I can kind of make myself believe that Mike’s brother is really him. Although it turns out that in the sober light of unsquinty day I actually like his brother for who he is. Go figure.

Until he’d found a place to live, Mike’s Brother stayed with us. Just for a handful of days.

And you know what? I think I mothered the poor guy to death! I found myself texting him in the afternoons. Would he be home for dinner? When he was out late one night I went to our chilly guest room to turn on the space heater so the room would be cozy when he got back. One morning I made him—no, foisted upon him after an initial refusal—cinnamon toast. And while shopping at Target, I stumbled upon the map section (those old-school paper things). And I grew inextricably concerned that he needed an Oakland-Berkeley map in order to carry out his house-search. So I bought it for him.

I didn’t do his laundry. And if he sneezed, I left him to figure out like a big boy where to find a Kleenex (on the back of the toilet in any of the bathrooms, and on the bedside tables in every bedroom). I didn’t do those things, but I do have a hazy memory of shouting into the bathroom at him that he was welcome to take any of the towels in the linen closet.

Is all this me smother-mothering someone? Sure, it’s my friend’s younger brother, but the dude’s a grown man with a wife and child of his own. Maybe what I was doing was what any hostess worth her weight in fresh hand towels would do. But in my mind—these days I’m feeling so super centrally Mom-like—I can’t help but think I’m just inappropriately taking those who aren’t even my offspring under my wing.

It’s like in those cooking shows when the reality show chefs sautee a piece of meat. As they hold it over the heat they keep spooning the pan juices over the top again and again. It’s like they’re super-imbuing the meat with extra flavor of itself. It sometimes feels like that with me and my Mama self. Do what I will, every act no matter how juvenile, self-serving, or un-nurturing, still becomes a reinforcement of my essential Mamaness. And the more I wish it were otherwise, the more it seems inescapable (See: The coating of pastel sidewalk chalk on my black biker boots).

Last week the girls and I flew east like confused geese veering off course for winter. The rest of humanity–or at least Kate’s classmates—were all bound for warmer tropical venues, or the ski slopes in Tahoe. But we were simply seeking snow. Sea level snow was fine with us. Along with some quality time with Gramp and Grandma Joan.

And despite the incessant string of blizzards all winter there, the East Coast snow had nearly melted altogether. (Unless you count the mud-splattered ice piles in the far reaches of parking lots.) We were granted only one light dusting, from which we made the teensiest most tragic snowman ever—akin to the pitiful wee Stonehenge in Spinal Tap.

Add to that the fact that back in the Bay Area, meteorologists were flipping their Doppler radars over the potential for snow in San Francisco—something that’s hit the history books something like six times. Thankfully, the SF snow was a no-show, so I didn’t have to berate myself for sidestepping exactly what I was trying to get to the heart of.

Anyway, pardon the weather outburst. Where was I? Oh yes, Rhode Island. Where we love nothing more than the little local library. And where I found the DVD E.T. and decided to indoctrinate Kate in some non-princess-based media.

Of course, she wailed and lamented. Why didn’t she get to pick the movie? Couldn’t she watch Angelina Ballerina—or even a cooking show (what she came to simply call “Ina” in the course of the week) instead?

The movie was rated PG for language (one kid calls another “penis-breath”) and something else I don’t remember. I’d intended for Kate to watch it while Paigey napped. But of course Paige refused sleep, and before I knew it we were all piled on the leather couch tuned in.

And can I just say, E.T.’s death scene is unbearably protracted? I mean, the scene in which he’s zipped in a body bag (one that fits oddly-perfectly for such a uniquely-shaped corpse) and left for dead. I kept checking the girls to see if they were experiencing severe emotional trauma, but they seemed to not really register (or care) what was happening. Maybe they thought E.T. was just being kept fresh in a large Ziplock.

Finally Elliot—who thrillingly shares a name with Paige’s erstwhile boyfriend—brings E.T. back to life by invoking the magic words “I love you.” (I wonder if Kate’s teachers tried that with Freezey…) I thought I’d dodged the bullet. But it wasn’t ’til after the hair-raising final bike ride scene, when E.T. was saying his goodbyes before boarding the space ship home, that Paige—who had been otherwise engaged in playing with the dog and flipping through books—suddenly burst into tears. Wailing sobbing miserably inconsolable tears.

“T.C.!” she wailed to the ceiling. “Teeeeee Ceeeeeeeee!!!” she blubbered in a mistakenly-monogrammed moan. This went on for quite some time. And since it was so sudden, I was trying desperately to diagnose the depth of her sorrow. She’d not even been watching the TV when her anguish first erupted.

“What’s wrong, Paigey?” I pleaded. “What are you so sad about?” I asked, hoping she’d say she just ran out of milk in her sippy cup.

No dice. The woe, she reported, was directly related to “T.C. having gone away.” And, as if to spell it out to her moronic mother who clearly wasn’t getting it, she mumbled tragically, “It makes my heart hurt.”

Meanwhile Kate was on my left, watching the movie with the detachment one reserves for ads for professional training institutes.

I was flustered, trying to give Paige some happy thoughts to redirect her emotions. “He’s going home, Paigey!” I offered brightly.

Then Kate added, sighing with the bored air of a teen, “Yeah, Paige. E.T.’s okay. He’s going to see his Mommy.”

Which got me thinking. No one ever really wondered about what E.T.’s poor mother went through the whole time he was having his earthly escapade. Right? I mean, think of the stress one endures losing a child in the mall. Now take that up a few million notches to having them missing on another planet. Sheesh!

I imagine their conversation when he got back on the spaceship went something like:

E.T.’s Mom: “Oh my God, you’re BACK! Come here—I love you so much!”

E.T.: “Hey, Ma. Yeah, I’m fiiiiine.”

E.T.’s Mom: [Holding E.T. at wrinkly brown arms length] “Listen to ME, young alien. Don’t you EVER hop off the spaceship and run away again! I was worried SICK!”

Of course, if I were her I’d also scold him that he didn’t have a sweater on. But that’s just me.

The Princess and the Pea

Kate wore a leotard, tights, and a tutu to ballet class this week. This might seem un-spectacular to you. I mean, she looked just like all the other girls. But to me—or rather, for Kate? Well, suffice it to say, it blew my mind.

It’s not that Kate’s a tom boy. She’s actually (unfortunately) quite smitten with princesses, ballerinas, and all things girly.

And it’s not that by refusing to wear ballet clothes in the past she was trying to stand out, or make some kinda of fashion statement.

It’s not even that she’s a nudist. Though God knows the nudist lifestyle would be sheer bliss for the girl.

The thing with Kate is that she hates clothes. The way some kids hate the monster under their bed, or getting a shot at the doctor’s, or having their nails clipped. Kate’s biggest enemy, fear, and anxiety-provoking thing is clothing.

And I only wish I were kidding. For Kate clothes are tight. They are itchy. They are binding and clingy and uncomfortable. Sometimes they even feel like they’re choking her.

So in that way that you adapt as a parent—when you, say, know that your kid will only drink milk if it’s chocolate milk and even though it’s embarrassing to admit around other parents, you know you need to get milk into your kid so you relent—in that kinda way I’ve flexed to Kate’s clothing issues. Which is to say she owns nothing with a zipper or buttons. Nothing with an iron-on decal or sewn-on applique. And if it once had a tag in it, you can bet it no longer does. (Paige is the heir to Kate’s vast wardrobe, much of it never worn. Unfortunately the size of each garment is an utter mystery.)

If Kate has shown willingness to wear a certain kind of shirt, I go to back to the store and buy five more. When she finds an acceptable pair of shoes she wears them every day, for months. (Despite the fact that her closet teems with other options.) Once I asked my mother-in-law to buy more of a certain kind of socks she’d given Kate, and mail them to us from in Ohio. When we find success with something, we lay in supplies.

But sometimes even those things don’t work. A previously approved t-shirt will go through the laundry and come out shrunken, or wrinkled, or the seams will suddenly expose themselves like Medusa’s snakes, slithering along the sensitive surface of Kate’s skin.

As you might imagine, this makes mornings ’round here especially stressful. I long for the standard-issue manic mornings other families wrangle with. I wish packing a lunch and getting everyone’s teeth brushed were the pressure points Chez McClusky. (This Motherboard story made me jealous of how easy everyone else’s bad mornings would seem to us.)

Inevitably breakfast ends, and as we lower the oatmeal bowls into the sink we utter the emotionally-charged sentence, “Time to get dressed, Kate.” And by “we” I mean Mark.

Because when Outfit #3 is rejected, when the contents of her closet and drawers are on the floor, and we’ve got only five minutes left to get to school and Kate is in a full-bore melter, I don’t perform well. Mark has better luck coaching an acceptable dress onto Kate’s back, and then, miraculously, not one but TWO socks (why were we plagued as bi-peds?), and on top of those, as if for extra credit, shoes.

For a long while Mark insisted Kate’s morning clothing meltdowns were power plays. Attempts to gum up the works when we were so close to getting somewhere on time. Mark tried tough love. We set up sticker charts with long-term toy incentives. And, as shameful as it is to admit, in moments of abject frustration, I even broke down, begging Kate to please please tell me what it was. Why couldn’t she just get dressed like other kids?

Is it crazy to say that you can go on like this for a while? That you can be aware of a problem, be tortured by it, but also just live with it?

But slowly flags started getting raised. I imagined what a house guest of ours was thinking as she observed our ritualistic morning dance around Kate getting dressed. This is so not normal, I thought. And my maternal neuroses were mounting around sending her to school in skimpy sundresses on cold days, rain boots on sunny days, and baggy dresses and bare feet for ballet.

My friend Mary told me, “No one’s looking at your kid as much as you are. I’m sure people don’t even notice.” So true.

But still, I worried about how this childhood issue could solidify in Kate’s psyche. Or grow worse. I envisioned a lifetime of Kate being out of step. I imagined her wearing bunny slippers on her prom night, and a muumuu on her wedding day.

And her love of ballet and gymnastics was already being threatened by her anxiety about the clothing they required. Dozens of times the getting dressed pre-class stress brought about a defeated “I don’t even want to go.” And the couple times I recklessly threatened to take her out of those classes, she’d be so upset she’d just say “Good.”

Then one morning, finally dressed, coat and backpack on, but still weepy standing by the front door, Kate looked at me and said, “You and Daddy just don’t understand.”

Which, as you can imagine, broke my heart into a million billion pieces.

So I called the doctor. Was Mark right? Did Kate need some tough love? Was I right? Was something really wrong with her?

Maybe, he said, we were both kinda right. (Or both wrong, depending on how you look at it.) Kate’s getting-dressed dramas could be 50% power play and 50% Something Else. Or 30/70 or 90/10. But to determine what that Something Else could be, we’d need a specialist. So he referred me to an Occupational Therapist.

I gave her the run-down on Kate’s Great Clothing Freak-Outs over the phone. And for every question she asked me that I answered “no” to, I was thrilled. There’s nothing better than realizing things could be worse. Much worse.

The therapist thought Kate might have a mild case of something called Sensory Defensiveness. (It’s not the bigger, scarier Sensory Integration thing I’ve heard about. Phew.) She described it this way: When people with Sensory Defensiveness are touched by something that doesn’t feel good, instead of saying, “This is itchy, I’ll take it off now,” they go into a sudden full-bore panic. They have an extreme emotional reaction. It’s like they have to claw it off their body.

Why yes. Sounds like Kate.

This defensiveness can extend to other things, like not being able to be touched or hugged or washed. Or freaking out at the feeling of rain on your skin. And it can extend to other senses too. But blessedly, the OT’s long line of questions showed that what Kate’s got is pretty limited in scope.

What ensued was an in-person assessment at this woman’s office. She played little games with Kate. She blindfolded her then poked her with the sharp and dull end of a paperclip, seeing if she could tell the difference. She tested Kate’s core strength, and asked whether she could make out letters that were drawn on her back.

And then she gave us a brush. A little yellow thing that’s actually used to clean the silk off of corn cobs.

She taught me how to brush Kate’s skin a certain way. I also had to do these weird joint compressions. Hold her thigh with one hand and her shin with the other and kinda press them together towards her knees. But do it on her shoulders, arms, and ankles too.

Kate didn’t seem to mind it. I think the brush part actually felt like a little massage. Which was good seeing as we’d have to do this to Kate every two hours. Waking hours, that is. For two weeks.

The OT’s other directive was that firmer touch was better. Firm hugs. Firmly drying Kate off after baths, wrapping her up tight in her towel. No light, gentle ticklish touch.

Walking to the car, I felt optimistic. But I also felt sorry for myself. Selfish, I know. But I was staring down the barrel at our Christmas vacation. Two weeks at home in Oakland. Two weeks brushing Kate every two hours.

It didn’t sound like fun. But I was holding out hope that this little damn corn silk brush could be our—or rather, Kate’s—salvation. And we were willing to try anything.

We brushed. Unsurprisingly there were no immediate results. But even going to the OT, even knowing that other kids had struggles like Kate did, seemed to help us all. Finally Mark and I had something to channel our parenting energy towards, instead of spinning and fuming and disagreeing on how to handle it.

Getting dressed over vacation got easier. Mark was off work too. He drew upon a wellspring of paternal patience and went into Kate’s room with her every morning to help her get dressed. He was so focused on making mornings more successful he was like a yogi doing some kind of heart-rate-slowing breathing. He was Houdini, hell-bent on helping Kate get into her shackles (or rather, her clothes) tear and stress-free.

After two weeks I called the OT. Did the brushing help? I wasn’t sure. She was getting dressed with less drama. But I’d also taken a ton of the clothes that I know set her off out of her room. Was it just that we didn’t need to bust ass during vacation to get out of the house? Or that we all knew this was a problem we were working to solve? Or did the brush really de-sensitize or reprogram her nerve endings somehow? I reported that Mark seemed to think things were better.

But I was too fearful to admit any degree of success.

She said to reduce the brushing and joint compression to three times a day. Which at first I did, but then somehow we fell off the wagon. Today the brush is sitting on Kate’s bureau, essentially forgotten.

And now enough weeks have gone by without morning dramas that I’m finally waking up to our new reality. I’m such a jinxy scaredy-cat parent that I was fearful to even utter the words. But last night sitting on the couch after the kids went to bed I turned to Mark. “Kate, and the clothes thing…” I didn’t even finish the sentence.

“I know!” he said. “I know.”

And then we both reached toward the coffee table to knock wood.

Swimming with Sharks

When Mark and I were first dating I bragged to him that I could play Hot Cross Buns on the recorder.

I know what you’re thinking—that I’m a ruthless sex kitten who really knows how to reel the men in!

But Mark was in a band at the time. He was the lead singer and played guitar. (He also plays piano and probably some other instruments too.) And as we got to know each other, seeing how he had all this musical know-how really underscored my own pathetic lack of it. So I thought I’d be grandiose about the limited proficiency I had. You know, make big of something very very little.

As it turned out, months after my initial allegations that I could rock it on the recorder—or at least play one of the easy-peasy first songs they teach you—we were at a party at someone’s house and they had a recorder. (Weird, right? I mean, who actually owns a recorder?)

“Okay, big guy,” Mark said, handing it to me. “Show me what you got.”

Perhaps you can guess where this is going. And if you can’t, it’s nowhere good. Tragically, I was unable to remember even the few simple notes to Hot Cross Buns.

Despite my great shame, Mark has stayed with me to this day. What a saint.

Anyway, Kate is taking piano lessons now. She’s four weeks in and can already read music, position her hands perfectly, and conjure some lovely sounds from the piano. It’s totally cool. (And no doubt, precedent setting. I now have every intention of forcing Kate and Paige to master everything I never could. Next up? Calculus!)

My excellent brother-in-law (who also happens to know his way around a guitar) was in town recently for work. His kids are Kate and Paigey’s age, and he was telling us that his son, who I’ll call Gordon, recently started piano lessons too.

“So, you got the first two classes free,” he said. You know, to test the waters. “And Gordon really was into it. But before we signed him up for more classes, the teacher gave us this big envelope.”

Guess what was in the envelope? Not just the forms to sign up for more lessons. Nope, there was another little thing in there too. A letter stating that the guy was a registered sex offender.

GAAAAH!

Now here’s where my brother-in-law was extremely cool and reasonable. He said he knows people can get the sex offender label for things like dating a 17-year-old when they’re 20. I mean, that’s sex with a minor, and sometimes even when it’s consentual and all, things happen, families get angry, blah-dee-blah, and next thing you know you’ve got yourself a permanent record.

Very big of my brother-in-law to have taken a moment to consider giving this guy the benefit of the doubt.

But no. As they continued to read the letter they learned that this dude who is sitting next to kids on a piano bench every day was NOT the fairly innocent recipient of the sex offender label. Turns out he was a pedofile.

Now, I don’t know the details of what kinda kids or how old they were or what exactly happened. And I don’t want to know. Any degree of wrongness in this area counts as deeply horrifying.

My Mama-brain was wigging out, like some record skipping saying, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” I wanted to lean over and barf at the thought of my sweet nephew coming so freaking scary close to that… to that predator.

Needless to say, my brother-in-law and sis-in-law immediately cut all ties with him.

What I want to know is, how many parents who get that “information packet” DO sign their kid up for more lessons with this guy? “Oh Jimmy’s having so much fun learning piano, and I’m sure there are NO OTHER PIANO TEACHERS IN THIS LARGE URBAN AREA. What say we roll the dice and have him hang out with this guy who may just be into raping children?”

To say this whole thing blows my mind (and makes me want to move to a deserted part of Montana, homeschool my children, and never interact with another human) is an understatement.

Nothing happened to my nephew. My sister-in-law was there the whole time he was with the guy. She’s a smart, loving, and protective Mama. So even though she didn’t know what they’d come up against during those “two free introductory lessons,” she kept her son safe.

And really, for all I know, the guy may be somehow rehabilitated.

But call me traditional, cynical, or close-minded (or all three), but I really doubt it. Maybe people can change. But c’mon. To be working with kids when that is your history? Gimme a break!

The thought of my innocent nephew and this cretin turns me werewolf-style into a ferocious, protective, mighty Mama bear. I will growl, scratch, claw, and go to any lengths to keep my cubs safe. This is the adrenaline rush of lifting a car off a baby to the hundredth power. Ain’t nothing coming between me and my babies.

When I was dating The Surfer, we unsurprisingly took a lot of beach vacations. In places where the water was warm and his home-town posse was out of sight, he sometimes deigned to show me the ropes of surfing.

And here’s the thing about surfing. For everyone who imagines that the hard part is standing up on the board, that’s totally not it. The hard part is paddling out. Trust me. Picture waves coming at you. And when you reach out your arm to paddle on the right side, the board is all topply and you almost fall off, so you have to take a quick paddle on the left to balance. Just as you think you’re getting the swing of it a huge wave comes and slaps you in the face and pushes you back towards the shore.

Oh, and I did I mention you also get wax caked on your bikini? Not fun.

But anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, we found some little cove where there were good size waves for Beginner Me. And no huge Samoan dudes laying claim to the surf. (There’s an intense home-boy territoriality about waves I’d never known about.) It was the perfect spot for a little lesson.

When we eventually came out of the water The Surfer was loading the boards on our rental car, and some local guy came up to us. “You guys shouldn’t swim here you know,” he said (though it was probably in some more dude-ish surfer vernacular). He went on to tell us that there had been a bunch of shark sightings in that cove. I guess there were some signs posted around the beach that we’d managed to not see.

No WONDER the beach was deserted! D’oh!

After hearing this I got the full-body willies. Like, as if someone dumped a handful of centipedes down my shirt. Sure, I was safe on the shore at that point, but it didn’t take away the thought that a couple sharks mighta been cruising around just feet away, lickin’ their chops at the delicious sight of us.

Hey Gordon, there are a lot of scary things and people out in the world. It’s lucky for us we’ve managed to dodge them.

Even so, what say we make a pinky pact, you and me? No more swimming with sharks.

Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetie. Your auntie loves you more than you’ll ever know.

Egads! Paige is Three

Every summer when we visit my sister in Cape Cod Mark nearly drives off the road laughing when he sees the sign for this one hair salon. It’s called ‘Egads!’

It’s impressive that such a poorly-named business has lasted so long. And it brings us no end of entertainment. No matter how many times we pass that sign it sets off a little husband-and-wife comedy routine. In British accents, no less.

“Egads!” Mark will bellow, peering forward at me then retracting his neck in dismay. “Your hair! What on earth has happened to it?”

Or I might look startled and cry out, “Egads, man! Have you seen what your hair looks like?!”

Or Mark’ll say,”Your hair is so… interesting.” And I’ll fluff my ‘do, smiling coyly and say, “Why thank you. I go to Egads Salon.”

We sometimes natter on as if we’re renowned naming experts who’ve pulled down a huge commission for naming the place. “Ah yes,” one of us’ll say with erudite puffery. “One of the most brilliant brands I take complete credit from building from the ground up is Egads Hair Salon. Yes, yes, the one on the main road in Harwich by the Dunkin Donuts. Brilliant work, if I do say so myself.”

These things delight us immensely. (I’m so damn lucky to have found Mark.)

It’s just such good material. I mean, aside from all the negative connotations that make “egads” a terrible name for a hair salon, who even really uses that word anyway? Other than, like, Sherlock Holmes?

My darling love-dumpling Paigey Wiggle turned three years old last week. Or, as she’d put it, “fwee.” And lately, as if to remind me of her Big Girl status, she’s been providing me with scads of egads-worthy moments. She still can’t shake the angelic light I see her in, but man she seems to be trying.

The other day, while we were walking down the street an older gentleman saw her, bent to her eye-level and kindly said, “What a pretty dress you have on.”

She stared up at him silent and blinking. So I nudged her. “Paige, what do you say when someone compliments your dress?”

She looked at me, then looked at him, and with a big smile shouted, “BOOBIES!”

Not exactly what I had in mind.

“Egads, child!” my inner voice cried out, as I took her by the shoulders and guided her away, offering the man a weak smile. I would have attempted an explanation, but hell if I understood what she was thinking. Better to just move along.

Lately too, even the smallest amount of liquid—even something remotely damp—is a source of abundant fascination for Paige. I know the bathroom will look like a tsunami hit if I send her solo to wash her hands before dinner. But I’m still sometimes too busy to chaperone. So I bellow from the kitchen where I’m cooking.

“You okay, Paige? No playing with water, please.”

“That’s enough now! Turn OFF the faucet!”

“Please don’t get into Daddy’s hair goop! That stuff is expensive.” (And a pain in the ass to clean up.)

But the other morning as I was packing lunches like a madwoman, cleaning up breakfast dishes with an OCD-level of care (in case the queen drops by), and wondering when I’d actually make it in the shower, I wandered by Paige’s room. She had three plastic cups lying on the floor, and another in her hand, dumping water on top of her toy box. The entire top of the wooden box, which is a long bench, was a pool of water. And there was a Niagra Falls gushing over the edge onto the floor.

I admit that I screamed.

It wasn’t at her, per se. More a scream of shock. Like, an “Aaaaagh!”

A more refined Bristish chap might have emitted a proper “Egads!” But my verbal reactions to stress or surprise aren’t quite so controlled.

Paige’s “water table” happens to be a piece of furniture that’s near and dear to me. One of those drag-it-out-of-a-burning-house type items. It was mine when I was a kid, and my dad not only built the thing, but he painted and decorated it too. It’s got my name across the top, the alphabet, and some little tigers and flowers on it. And it’s deliciously orange. Which Kate or Paige will be quick to tell you is Mama’s favorite color.

So, water was pouring down into the hinged crack where lots of toys are stored. It was flowing onto Paige’s big rug. It was likely pooling under the toy box too, leaving a nice big mark on the hardwood floor, but it was too heavy to move to know for sure.

In all the time I was busy being Morning Superhero Mom, Paige had been stealthily filling cups with water in the bathroom and ferrying them to her room. As if she were tasked with single-handedly putting out a fire, six ounces at a time.

I was crazed. Of course, Paige was immensely proud. As I was wind-milling my arms in the linen closet, grabbing towels with maniacal speed as if someone were going into labor, Paige was admiring her work and muttering things like, “All the water, Mama! All the water…”

Ah well, there went the 6 minutes I’d set aside to take a shower. (A more resourceful gal would have dipped her head under the waterfall and washed her hair, a la Brooke Shields in Blue Lagoon.)

Miss Paigey is not only bragging about being “a big girl now.” My formerly easy-peasy dumpling has a new defiant ‘tude. She’s now prone to yelling No, stomping her feet (with her hands on her hips for added sassiness), refusing to take another step on the sidewalk, and even sometimes swatting at me. The other day her refusal to walk into the playground and her incessant whining once I lured her in prompted another mom to ask me how old she was. When I answered three, she didn’t say a word. Just sorta nodded her head.

But I could hear what she was thinking loud and clear: “It’s not the terrible twos, it’s the terrible threes.”

Lordy be.

Even though I could kinda see how she was thinking like she was, I still wanted to run after her, tap on her car window and explain, “You actually have it all wrong. This is Paigey. She’s not like that. She’s an angel!”

In fact, when people ask how Paige is, Mark says, “A handful,” at the same moment I’m saying, “Wonderful!” I always look at him like “Really?” It seems like we should get our stories straight.

But honestly, I think it’s me who’s suffering from temporary delusions and/or denial. I mean, I’m with her more than Mark is, so I should be acutely aware of her less-than-perfect behavior of late. But her sweetie pie angel-puss persona is so deeply ingrained in me. It’s hard to shake. It’s like when a friend chops off their hair or something. You still picture them the old way for a while, and you’re always a little surprised when you meet up with them and they look different from your mental image.

And if her sudden onset of cranky defiant negativity wasn’t offputting enough, it also turns out that Paige is in love. I know. I know what you’re thinking. The gal just turned “fwee.” But after two weekend visits to our friends’ house in Napa, Paige has become desperately infatuated with their 8-year-old son. (Who is, undeniably, handsome and charming.)

She wandered into my room the other morning, mopey and forlorn, climbed into bed and whimpered, “I miss Elliot.” Then she rolled away from me and slumped into the sheets like she couldn’t go on.

If she’s coloring, picking a book out from the library, or putting a barrette in her hair, she’ll invariably assert, “It’s for Elliot.” If I’m trying to coerce her into an outfit, I’ll sometimes tell her, “This used to be Elliot’s sister’s.” (Works like a charm.) And she spends entire mornings refusing to respond to her own name, and insisting that everyone call her Elliot. It’s like she parlays her lovesickness into becoming the object of her desire. Like that comforts her somehow.

It’s so dramatic as to be from another era—Austen-ian even. Which, of course, I love.

Anyway, a stricter version of me would make a stand and put an end to the thing. I mean, he IS five years older than her. But at this point I’m leaning more towards a simple “no boyfriends ’til you’re potty trained” rule.

Silly me, thinking I had a good decade or so before I’d be coaching my fwee- and five-year-old girls through matters of the heart.

A few weeks ago Kate and I went to pick Paigey up from school. Paige’s classroom is in the back of the school and down a set of stairs, where you can’t see or hear the street. As we walked up to her room, two of the teachers called out, “You were RIGHT, Paige!” and told me that about three minutes earlier Paige announced, “My mother is here.”

It happened again last week. “It seems like she KNOWS when you pull up and are parking the car,” the one nice afternoon teacher whose name I can’t remember said. “It’s amazing.”

I grabbed Paige’s lunch box and guided her up the stairs. Amazing? Nah. Paigey and I have always been tuned into each other that way. Like, when she was a teeny baby, I’d wake up in the night and not move or even open my eyes. A few seconds later she’d be flapping around in her bassinet. It happened later too, when she was sleeping down the hall in her own room.

We’ve got a few years and some layers of the world between us now, but that girl and I are still connected. Big three-year-old or not, I’m pleased to announce that Paigey-Lou is still her Mama’s baby.

I Did It… Their Way

We’re in children’s literature hell. I mean, if you could go so far as to call it “literature.”

Kate has become obsessed with a crappy series of chapter books about fairies. They’re formulaic Harlequin Romance-quality drivel. They make those V.C. Andrews books (I admit to having read) look like Shakespeare.

The books have unabashedly identical plot lines: nasty goblins and their evil leader Jack Frost wreak havoc on the lives of teensy airborne fairies who dress like slutty tween mall chicks. There are flocks (herds? armies? murders?) of fairies of certain types. So there’s a group of sports fairies, one of pet fairies, gem fairies, musical instrument fairies, flower fairies, even color fairies. Each fairy posse has a set of corresponding books with cutesie usually-alliterative names like Penny the Puppy Fairy or Susie the Seashell Fairy or Trixie the Tap Dance Fairy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was Glenda the Gouda Fairy or Wanda the Walnut Fairy too.

And there are, of course, dozens—hundreds maybe—of the books. Enough for Kate to whimper and beg to take six or eight new ones home each time we’re at the library. Enough for Mark and I to fear we’ll be reading them for years to come.

Can you tell I don’t like these books? And I don’t even think it’s entirely due to my frustration that I didn’t think up the incredibly profitable franchise myself.

Part of what’s killing me is this: To nurture my daughter’s love of books, I’m told I’m should let her read whatever she wants. She got three chapters in to James and the Giant Peach with Mark, but then the allure of Christie the Crap Fairy became too great. We’ve read her Little House in the Big Woods and the wonderful My Father’s Dragon series, but in her spare time she’s curled up on the couch with Greta the Glitter Fairy.

God help me.

I tried getting her into the historical-fiction American Girl books. They’re in the intriguing big kid “chapter book” part of the library, and there are scads of them. Even though they’re part of a mega doll marketing empire, they seem to have a modicum more literary merit. But halfway through our first one the little girl’s best friend croaks from cholera and is carried off a ship in a wooden box. I saw it coming and made a flimsy excuse before reading that part that the book “was not so interesting after all.” Then I set it aside. Instead of death I’d rather have Kate’s mind embroiled in thoughts of Jenny the Jeans Fairy.

Anyway, it turns out that this ‘what I want versus what the kids want’ thing has become a bit of an emotional tug o’ war for me lately.

Like with Paigey’s recent birthday party. Her teacher gave me a list of the posse she hangs with at school. (I couldn’t fathom inviting the whole class.) I was thrilled to get a whittled-down list of kiddos, but I really like some of the parents of the kids who weren’t on the list. And this stymied me.

“I’ve chatted with Kendra’s mom a few times,” I called into Mark as he was showering. “I like her. But I guess Paige and Kendra don’t hang in the same sandbox circles.”

“And Avery’s parents rock,” I continued as Mark toweled off. “But Avery—not on the list. So do you think it’s okay if I  invite the kids of the parents I like? I mean, Paige will have fun no matter what. Right?”

Unsurprisingly, Mark was The Voice of Reason. “Kristen,” he said (and he only really calls me that when he’s kinda annoyed), “It’s Paige’s party, we should invite Paige’s friends.”

I finally agreed. But I wasn’t happy about it. (Motherboard’s talking about how to help parents see eye-to-eye about when they think their kids are old enough to do certain things. But there’s no mention about coming to terms on the kind of Mom vs. Kids issues I’m wrangling with.)

And then, at Kate’s school they recently started the winter session of after-school classes. I told Kate about all the fun and excellent things she could do—capoeira, chess, circus arts, wood shop. I’m not sure why I was surprised when she—the child personally accountable for the downfall of entire forests due to her prolific drawing, coloring, and art production—wanted to take a lame-o arts and crafts class about animals.

So I stalled. And blessedly, before sign-up forms were due, I found out that the folks teaching the classes were doing little demos at a morning assembly. (Something us parents are invited to.) I was certain Kate would get all fired up and want to take ALL the classes.

And it was inspirational. This swarthy Cuban dude rocked out on some funky instruments then walked on his hands. (I heard later all the gay teachers were swooning over him.) A woman in a bowler performed magic tricks, and an 80′s throwback chick with an asymmetrical haircut, baggy sweatpants, and an armful of rubber bracelets did an amazing freestyle hip hop dance thing.

It was incredible. I clapped like a madwoman after each demo, and was ready to follow the Cyndi Lauper look-alike to her car to see if she held classes for aging housewives.

But Kate was uninspired. She was steadfast in her desire to take the toilet-paper-roll-and-paper-plate crafts class from the substitute librarian. To think she’d bring home even more ungainly cardboard constructions that I’d have to sneak out to the recycling bin in the dark of night. (I’m not heartless about wanting to keep it all, but even Puff Daddy’s crib ain’t big enough to house all of Kate’s masterpieces.)

I asked myself, do I allow her to languish in her comfort zone—or as some softies would call it “let her pursue her own interests”—or do I push her to widen her horizons, see a fresh perspective, and get her groove on?

Well, as it turns out, I let her take the damn crafts class. I caved.

But I couldn’t help but wonder, WWACD? Which is to say, what would Amy Chua do?

Well, actually, I know EXACTLY what Amy Chua would do.

If you’ve been holed up in some underground hide-out Saddam Hussein-style, then you’re lucky to not be hip to the immense media firestorm set off by Amy Chua‘s recent book excerpt in the Wall Street Journal. Although she’s backpedaled like a madwoman ever since, she essentially posited that Chinese immigrant mothers are superior to Western moms. Stricter. More demanding of their kids. More hands-on. And let’s just say you won’t be invited to any of their homes for a playdate or slumber party. They’re too busy playing violin or piano (at gunpoint by their mothers) at all hours of the day and night.

Good times.

So yeah. I’d bet my lazy-American-mom collection of kid’s DVDs that Amy Chua’s daughters aren’t signing up for the Legos after-school class.

As much as I am SO over her excerpt, her book, her rebuttals, and this topic taking over the public radio airwaves more annoyingly than 20 concurrent pledge drives, I hafta admit, I have examined my mothering through it all. I’m not suddenly berating my kids publicly or quizzing them with Latin flash cards. But I am wondering why I don’t have a more clear idea of my expectations for them. Even if I don’t agree with Amy’s agro mothering, I wish I could be as cocksure about my own. I wish I was driven by confidence and determination to know when to push my kids in certain directions—away from fairy books, towards hip hop classes, whatever—and when to let them follow their own fancies.

Until I figure it out, I can rest assured with the knowledge that I’m at least not taking her approach. And maybe, if I keep reading enough of them, one of Kate’s fairy books will reveal the mysteries of mothering that I’m seeking. Somewhere in that series there must be Mable the Mama Fairy, right?