Boy Parts

On her last day of preschool, Kate brought home a portfolio of all her artwork. It was made of colored poster board that the teachers stapled together and each kid got to decorate.

Kate had written her name on hers. She also covered the thing with drawings of flowers, rainbows, and penises.

Dismayed, I reached inside the portfolio. The top five papers I yanked out featured more of the same. KATE KATE KATE scrawled on each page. Rainbows, flowers, stick figures with pigtails, and penises. Lots and lots of free-floating larger-than-life penises.

Picasso had a Blue Period and a Rose Period. Could Kate be going through some kind of Penis Period? And if so, for the love of God, why hadn’t the teachers informed us of this? For all I know, these hippie California preschools, they probably just encouraged her to draw an equal number of vaginas.

Now, due to nothing that Mark or I have done knowingly, Kate appears to have a healthy self-esteem. (For now, at least.) At summer camp in Rhode Island, she didn’t fret for a minute about not knowing any of the other kids. She’s game for adventures. Loves new people. Never shies away from reporting that her “story,” “painting,” or “dance performance” was the best in her class.

But her Achilles heel—the thing she often beats herself up over—is her inability to draw hearts. This came up when we were at my dad’s this summer. Out of the blue, a sudden outburst of dramatic blubbering about, “I can NOT draw hearts! Kaylee can do hearts! I will never ever NEVER know how to draw a heart.” Waaaah! Waaaah! WAAAAAAH!

Then she threw herself across the couch, clutching a pencil tragically to her breast.

My lazy mother instinct kicked in. I looked up from my People magazine and turned to my father—who is actually quite a handy artist—and foisted this nagging issue his way.

“Grandpa is great at drawing!” I said brightly. “I bet he’d LOVE to teach you how to draw a heart.”

I’m not sure exactly what happened next, as the article about former-Heff-girlfriend Kendra Wilcox’s new baby was thoroughly engrossing. But I think I remember there being a directive about making a kinda curvy “m” for the top part. Then closing off the bottom with a “v.”

Voila! A heart!

There seemed to be all kind of high-fiving and “that’s the most beautiful heart I’ve ever seen” grandparently reinforcement. I believe Kate ran over to proudly thrust her drawing on top of of my article on the recent Jonas Brothers marriage. “Oooh great,” I said automatically, casually sliding my magazine free.

I realize now that I should have taken more care that day to focus in on the “hearts” Kate was so delightedly producing. The hearts that Teacher Grandpa was administering praise-filled wallops to her little back for. Because—and I don’t want to say that any form of art is “wrong” or “bad”—but the fact is, after scrutinizing Kate’s preschool drawings the other day, I suddenly realized that the things that I thought were boy parts, were blessedly not those at all. They were, at least in the eyes of the artist, hearts.

Alas, when we go back to Grandpa’s in October, I think it’s time for he and Kate to go back to the drawing board.

Digging Out

One night last week my sister walked into her kitchen to find her nine-year-old son in a laundry bag. A bag that he’d voluntarily put himself in. Because I guess that’s what you do when you’re a nine-year-old boy.

It was mesh, so it wasn’t like he was struggling for air or anything. And he wasn’t alone. He was hanging out with his best friend. His friend who, for nearly A HALF-HOUR, had been trying unsuccessfully to un-knot the top of the bag.

And here’s the thing. My sister was upstairs THE WHOLE TIME. Had the boys thought to get her for help? Apparently not. She even asked if they didn’t find her because they thought she might be mad or something. They said no. Word was, they just hadn’t thought to get her.

I can’t help but think this is a boy thing. Like the young male version of not asking for directions.

As my sister was working to free him he tells her, “I’m starting to feel kinda weird in here.”

Uh, YEAH.

I’d have lasted four seconds in there before screaming and thrashing around like a Tazmanian Devil. Not only would someone upstairs know I needed help, the whole block would.

But the fact is, sometimes you get yourself into a tight spot and it’s kinda hard to know how dig yourself out. I was like that for a short while when I get back from Little Rhody. Not in a super bad place, but just glum. The craptastic Bay Area weather plus a large dose of nothing-much-going-on had me in a vague fog. And seeing as I generally operate like a chihuahua on caffeine (at least, in the words of my dear friend Kevin), this nebulous floating about was distasteful.

So I did what any sane woman would do. I started washing down pillows.

You know, took on an extremely low priority project and threw myself into it as if I was single-handedly redoing the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Oh, did I wash pillows. Then I tossed them in the dryer with tennis balls to dry and fluff ‘em all up nice. Once one set was done I’d nearly yank a pillow from beneath Mark’s sleeping head to start in on more.

It was a strange yet effective form of therapy. I was making just enough progress on an utterly unnecessary project that my morose mood was replaced by a mild sense of satisfaction. And since I have an addictive personality, I took my usual more-is-more approach. (Note: If anyone in my neighborhood would like their pillows laundered, please leave them on my front porch. I probably won’t hear the doorbell ring since the tennis balls in the dryer are fairly loud.)

Today, having come near the end of what turns out to be our thrillingly-large pillow inventory, I stumbled across a twin duvet I forgot we had. Perfect for Paige’s new Big Girl Bed! And an excellent item to, well, wash.

Pillow mites are watching their nightly newscasts and shielding their children’s eyes from pictures of me. I’m like the Saddam Hussein of the pillow mite community.

I’m considering opening a bed and breakfast for severe allergy sufferers. Why hoard all this pristine hypo-allergenic bedding for my family’s sole use?

Anyway, speaking of Paigey’s Big Girl Bed—and believe me, she and I seem to spend half our days discussing its merits—the other thing I’ve been doing to occupy myself is re-arranging the furniture in her room. This, it turns out, is also good therapy—albeit somewhat disorienting to the poor girl. She leaves her room for a five-minute snack, and on her way back in slams into a dresser I’ve impulsively moved catty-corner in her doorway.

I just can’t help myself. I’ve explored varying degrees of good and bad feng shui (a bed facing towards the door = a no-no). I’ve exhausted nearly every configuration of the contents of the room. And finally on this “project” I’m also slapping my hands together with a smug sense of accomplishment. I’ve settled on one layout I’ve been willing to keep in place for three days now. This, it seems, is progress.

Other things have helped my disposition get sunnier, despite the thick Bay Area fog. We’re off to Palm Springs at the end of the week—a trip I hastily planned in a desperate heat-seeking mission. And one day after our return from there, we set out for our Minnesotan lake vaycay.

And back on the homefront I signed up for a boot camp. You know, I’m paying some petite drill sargeant to yell at and disparage me as I do wind sprints by Lake Merrit, then fall to the sidewalk for endless rounds of push-ups. At 6:30 in the morning. This started today in fact, and aside from the regular Advil-overdosing I anticipate I’ll be doing, I think this ass-kickin’ is just what my lazy ass needed.

Though waking up at 5:45 was especially brutal. Miss Paige, ever the ringer for sleep, has been discombobulated of late. For years babysitters have gloated about “how easily she goes down.” But in the past few weeks her Sleep Super Power has been out of whack. At bedtime she’ll appear to have fallen asleep, but 45 minutes later will call out, “I want MY MAMA!” in her most desperate and dramatic wail. We’re popping up two to three times a night to settle her down, like she’s a newborn again. You’d think the steady thrum of the tennis balls in the dryer would soothe her back to sleep. But no dice. Much more of this and I’ll be asking for my money back.

Then in the morning, the poor thing calls out to us as if she’s shackled to the mattress. This happens to be my favorite non-intelligent behavior in my children: the fact that once they moved into twin beds they didn’t figure out that they were FREE TO GET OUT on their own.

But really, like I said, sometimes you’re just feeling stuck—be it in a laundry bag, a funk, or a bed that you forgot isn’t your crib any more.

So what’s been happening most mornings is we send Kate into Paige’s room to tell her she can get out of bed. Then she pops right out like a trained Cocker Spaniel and shows up in the kitchen, beaming and wild-haired, announcing proudly, “I got up, Mama!”

Hopefully by the time she goes away to college we’ll get her self-prompting to get out of bed. In the meantime, she’s one member of the family I’m happy to keep in the fog.

Depends on How You Look at It

When I was pregnant with Paige—and with Kate too—my right eye went on temporary hiatus. I have a strange neurological wiring problem that flares up now and then. My own rare medical malady. Like the fact that I’ve never seen Star Wars, it’s one of the few things that set me apart from most of humanity.

And desperate as I was to land impossible-to-get appointments with specialists, once I got in to see them they all just patted my hand and told me to wait it out. There ain’t much you can do about this thing. ‘Specially when you’re pregnant.

But sitting around waiting for something to happen is my personal brand of hell. So I took up with a well-respected mad genius-type Chinese acupuncturist. Or rather, put myself in his care.

The Bay Area’s alternate-health gurus all claimed this guy was The Best. Despite his ramshackle office, located deep in San Francisco’s foggy Avenues. almost out out by the beach, I was supposedly in the care of a world-class healer. Plus, tacked to the wall in the waiting room was a picture of Robin Williams mugging with the good doctor. To a long-time People subscriber, there’s no better testament to a doctor’s competence than his having a celebrity patient.

During my visits, Dr. Q would look at my tongue, take my pulse, and inform me that my gall bladder was grumpy. Other times he’d say my liver was woody, or my blood sluggish. At least those were the kinds of things I remember him saying.

In fact, I understood nearly nothing about his assessments, and that had little to do with his limited English. His form of healing was just damn different from anything I’d known before. Despite that, I gave myself over to his needle wielding wholeheartedly and in good faith. I was desperate, helpless, and more than anything, bored. There’s not much one can do with one eye. Reading is tiring. TV is depressing. And computer work is out of the question.

One can eat. And one can worry. So my visits to his office were in large part a hopefully-helpful distraction. One that my insurance didn’t cover.

Aside from my bizarre eye issue—which, granted, most people would trade for several months of gut-churning nausea—my pregnancies were marked by almost no other symptoms. I never barfed, had swollen feet, or ran from rooms at the smell of broccoli. Much of the time I forgot I was even knocked up.

But a little thing started interrupting my sleep at night. (And sleep, as you may know, is my super power.) It was minor, but just pesky enough to torment me. The inside of my right elbow was—well it seems silly now to even mention—but it felt kinda tickly. Like someone was ever so lightly touching it, brushing a feather across it. And of course, there was nothing there.

To make things worse, it was only on the right side. The first rule of hypochondria is if it’s asymmetrical, it’s probably cancer.

Okay, so I didn’t really think it was that. But still, it was maddening.

I’d wake Mark up over it. “Honey? I can’t sleep. My elbow pit. It’s Driving. Me. Crazy.”

It was, I decided, the perfect symptom to relay to my acupuncturist. If the leg bone’s connected to the kidney, and the gall bladder’s connected to the pinky toe—or if not quite that, at least I’d come to trust that there was some interconnectedness between what I’d previously thought of as unrelated parts—if that was the case, then this tickly inner elbow thang may be the key to unlocking my eye problem.

And wasn’t I so clever, so in tune with my body, to make note of it? (I had a lot of time on my hands to be self-congratulatory too.)

At my next appointment, as the doctor was readying my needles, I laid the news of my latest symptom on him. I awaited his chin-rubbing contemplation. The “aha!” moment in which he connected my ocular issue with my tickly elbow pit.

Instead, he looked up and said, “Oh… Okaaaay.” The way you might talk to someone who you think is a touch crazy. Someone you may even feel a little bit afraid of. But then, so as not to appear rude, he quickly added, “Sorry if that bother you.”

Then he started sticking needles in me. And I never brought it up again.

The other day I drew a hopscotch in front of our house for Kate. Years back, this was the kind of thing I enjoyed harassing our realtor about. I was waddling around to tour houses 8 months pregnant and once-again one-eyed, but whenever I’d see some cute crap chalked onto the sidewalk I knew not to fall for it. Not to buy into the, “Oh honey, look! What a nice family neighborhood this must be!”

No, instead I’d turn to Charlie, the Bay Area’s most patient realtor, and ask, “So what time did you have to get here this morning to draw this?”

So here I was last week, playing outside with Kate and realizing that my hopscotch skillz have lost some of their bououncy since my youth. Though it might have had to do with the clogs I was wearing.

Anyway, when Paige got up from her nap, she was all fired up about joining the game. I adore that kid-sister fearlessness. That her default setting is to get in on whatever big-kid action is underway. I mean, Kate could have some pals over for a few friendly rounds of mumblety peg, and Paige would be all, “Cool. I’m in. Where’s the knife?”

But as it turns out, with hopscotch Paige lacks some fundamental know-how. She still hasn’t mastered the simple act of jumping. But she doesn’t let on about it. It’s like the best-kept out-in-the-open secret ever.

Here’s Paige: She sizes up the hopscotch squares, bends her knees, thrusts both arms into the air, and calls out, “DUMP!” (This being her closest approximation to the word “jump.”) Then she takes a step forward.

This delights her, and she appears to have no reservations about her ability to play being any different than anyone else’s. If it weren’t so obvious that she wasn’t really jumping, you’d swear that she was.

Recently when we pulled up to the house after getting Kate from school, Paige ran out of the car to the corner where the hopscotch squares had been. Days of rain had washed the chalk away, but that was no deterrent.

Bend knees. Arms up. “DUMP!” And a step forward.

There was no hopscotch court there. But hey, Paige also wasn’t really jumping.

But from her perspective? Miss Paigey Wigs was radiating the fierce confidence of an Olympic long jumper. She sold those not-really jumps. And it was so damn endearing I bought up every last one of them. I mean, sure, I AM her Mama. But it got me thinking that sometimes what ain’t really there, can sometimes kinda of spring to life, if you pretend hard enough.

And sometimes, what IS there–what’s taking up every last drop of your mental energy—turns out to be of little consequence at all. You don’t need two workin’ eyeballs to see that some things are just what they are, and nothing more.

And on that note, I think I’ll turn on the TV.

Revisionist History

I was late picking up Kate from school yesterday. Again.

When I walked into her classroom she was helping the teacher pin some of their work up on the wall. It was a project about the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration. The kids had painted cool life-sized skeletons and had talked about people and animals they’d known who’d died.

Kate’s quote—the longest one by far—was hanging front and center.

“My cousin’s fish died. My grandpa’s dog died. I helped feed her breakfast. I had a cat named Edwin who used to sleep on my bed. Recently, Edwin died.”

It’s true that Cousin Gavin did have a fish—a few I think by now—that went the way of the toilet bowl. In fact, the first one expired on a weekend when Mark’s mom was babysitting, requiring Grandma to deliver the first Sometimes Things We Love Die lecture. I like how that life lesson extended across the country to Kate.

And yes, my father’s beloved wire-haired Dachshund, Katie, passed away recently. Somehow Mark and I decided to name our daughter Kate when there already was a Katie in the family—albeit a four-legged one. So trips home to Rhode Island inevitably resulted in all of us having to clarify child from beast.

“I’m taking Katie for a walk!” I’d call through the house. “Katie the Girl, not Katie the Dog.”

And then there’s the cat Kate mentioned in her school’s, uh, ‘death unit.’ The thing is, we ain’t never had a cat. Now, I certainly don’t like the thought of Kate telling tall tales. Especially those that are writ large in the middle of her classroom. But when I read her comment yesterday, I was actually kinda proud of her lie.

I mean, many kids would say their fake cat’s name was Snowball, or Boots, or Fluffy. I just love that Kate’s cat-we-never-had is called Edwin. Maybe it’s her crafty way of ensuring that any babies that might come into our family someday won’t be given the same name.

Expectation Setting 101

Last week I tried on a Vera Wang wedding gown.

No, no, I’m not getting married, or remarried, or even renewing my vows. I’m happily hitched, thanks. And, I haven’t actually tried on any dresses recently. The Vera Wang wedding gown is my favorite metaphor to describe venturing into territory you can’t afford.

Back when I actually was on the market for a nuptial frock, I acted prudently. One of the benefits of holding out to meet your second husband (and skipping over the first), is that nearly all your friends have gotten married before you. So you learn from their mistakes.

I don’t even remember now who it was who told me, “Don’t—I repeat DO NOT—try on a Vera Wang gown. You will look stunning. You will fall in love with it. And it will be impossible to go back to the dresses that are in your price range.”

What you have there is good advice.

Shopping for real estate gives one another good opportunity to learn this lesson. Pop into the open house for a multimillion dollar fabulously-renovated Victorian (with garage!) and you will be ruined—RUINED, I say!—when your agent shows you the $750,000 ranch-style fixer that’s in your budget.

Alas, time goes on, and without vigilance we slip up. For me, it was at an EBISA event. No, not a sushi restaurant, EBISA the East Bay Independent School Association. They host a fair where all the local private schools have booths and gleaming 4-color info packets and engaging teachers and smiling students. All the ingredients to reel you, if you happen to be me, in.

I’d spent the night before sitting up in bed scouring some materials Mark brought back from a similar event at Kate’s preschool.

“This one doesn’t even talk about the teachers,” I bellowed from the bed to the bathroom, where he was brushing his teeth.

“I have no idea where this school even IS,” I mutter, flipping through the pages as Mark pulls off his t-shirt to climb in bed. “You’d think they’d at least include the school’s address here somewhere.”

But one place totally drew me in. Quotes from alumni discussing how the school shaped them to become thoughtful, caring adults. An interview with a long-time teacher who was retiring, and her words about the school being like family. There were the requisite pics of happy diverse students in creative classroom settings. And an unexpected section about their commitment to service-based learning. An academic backbone and a heart.

“Oh my God, this one!” I say to Mark, slapping his back as he attempted to sleep. “I LOVE this school. And… Oh God.  It’s TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS a year for kindergarten.”

At the school fair the next night, I bee-lined for their table. I saw the head of the school, whom I recognized from their flyer, and two fresh-faced teachers who radiated enthusiasm.

“Okay, so I feel in love with this school last night, reading your folder in bed,” I proclaimed, surprising myself with my dramatic opening statement. But I got the attention of the head of the school. She laughed and put her hand on my arm. “Great!”

“It reminds me of the school I went to in Providence called Wheeler,” I said. And oddly, I suddenly felt the smallest bit choked up.

“Oh, Wheeler!” She said. “I know it! A wonderful school. In fact, for years I sat on the board there.”

That was it. It was like the cupid of expensive private schools came and shot me with his bow, a direct hit to my nostalgic heart. It was like it was meant to be.

I mean, I’m not one to look past those obvious signs in life. And this one was huge. Neon. Indisputable.

On the drive home I was giddy. Because of her late September birthday, Kate wouldn’t qualify for entry until fall of 2011. But I was so fired up, so ready to become part of their community, their family, the thought of having to wait seemed like torture.

But by the next morning, the real torture was the crushing reality of the school’s price tag. How could we ever swing $20k a year? And for 13 years in a row? And that’s not even taking into account Paige’s eventual tuition.

“I guess we could just pick which one of them goes there,” I told a friend later on the phone. “You know, like, ‘Sorry Paige. You need to stay back on the farm and work. Kate? Well, she had more potential for book-learnin’.'”

Later in the day I drummed up the idea that I could get a job there to get discounted or free tuition. I’m no teacher, but there must be other things I’m qualified for. Janitor? Crossing guard? Lunch lady?

I called My Frienda Brenda, a college chum who is currently kid-less. “So,” I tell her. “It’s totally depressing that in two years we may be spending $20,000 a year on school for Kate.” But really, once I sober up to the fact that we’ll likely never afford it, what’s more depressing is that we may not be.

Chalk One Up for Me

People are constantly going on about how Paige is a mini-Mark. And some folks say Kate looks like me.

Frankly, I don’t see it at all. I mean, Paige looks like Paige. A small delicious dumpling with loopy blond curls, a button nose, and pudged-out cheeks. She’s still got those inverted knuckle dimples on her hands. You know the ones? I meant to take note of when Kate went from having those to getting normal convex knuckles, but I missed it. It must’ve happened overnight.

Anyway, Mark. If you ask me, he looks nothing like Paige. He’s a grown man for God’s sake. Lean—in case you haven’t met him—and all chiseled and angular. Not many pudgy parts to him.

I guess when I look at those two I just see Paige and Mark.

As for Kate, it’s even harder—or maybe just weirder—to see myself in her looks.

Which isn’t to say that Mark and I aren’t constantly labeling the things that the girls do as being either him-like or me-like.

Kate screaming a conversation from one room of the house to another? My genes. Her morning rat’s nest hair snarl? That’d be me. Kate’s love of sour cream, non-stop banter from the moment she wakes, and occasional “No one’s paying attention to me!” whining fits? Well, uh, that’d be me too. I’ll also lay claim to both girls’ ability to pack away the pasta, and Paige’s Herculean ability to sleeeeeeeeep.

As for Kate’s skinny butt, obsession with books, and tendency to hang back in new places? Mark, Mark, and Mark. Also Mark: Paige’s love of bikes and music.

At our nephew’s eighth birthday party this summer, Mark discovered something he never knew about me. It was at a pool party, at some fancy suburban community center. There were three pools, and they had one of those bright blue three-story water slides. The kind that have an enclosed tube that loops around like a big spiral staircase and spits you out at a high velocity at the bottom.

When Mark first laid eyes on it, he practically shoved the kids, bags, and towels in my hands and ran towards it, arms flailing overhead. He was giddy, grinning, and asking permission if I could watch the kids so he could do it, as if I was his mother. It was sweet.

Later, back at the kiddie pool, still all smiles from his water slide high, he asked if I’d gone on it yet. I looked over at the thing and said softly, “No.”

“Oh my God, GO!” he commanded. “You HAVE to go on it RIGHT NOW.”

So I went. Spurned by his excited insistence. Buoyed by a desire to be the mother of two who might not wear a bikini any more, but is still game for a good time. But really, scared shitless.

As I got closer, my spontaneous bravado faltered. I still wanted to go down the thing, to surprise myself with how much fun it’d end up being, but I needed back-up. So I enlisted the birthday boy who was waiting in line for some other treacherous thrill ride. I tried coming off like I was rallying him to join me for some big fun. Really I just thought it’d be nice to have some family around at the time of my demise.

En route we saw my niece. I got her to come along with us too.

At the slide, the teen monitoring the line indicated I’d have to go up the staircase alone. “One at a time,” she droned, staring blankly ahead. Here I was taking my life in my hands, and she’s just wishing she was texting her boyfriend.

I had a tight feeling in my gut, but dropping out of line at this point would be embarrassing. So I butched up and trudged onward alone.

At the top, another compassionless teen instructed me to “just lie down with my arms crossed over my chest.” How fitting, I thought. They make you assume a corpse pose.

Motivated only by my wish to get it over, plus pressure from the long line of young sadists behind me, I assumed the position and pushed off. My niece, who’d picked up on my anxiety (smart gal), cried out behind me, “When you see the light Aunt Kristen, hold your breath!”

It was every bit as horrifying as I’d feared. Claustrophobic, jarring, and with a slamming plunge into cold water to cap it off.

For 15 minutes afterward, I shook. I fretted. My stomach flip-flopped. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t trusted my instincts, and vowed over and over in my head, “NEVER AGAIN.”

Gathered round the picnic table, shivering and soothing myself with pizza, Mark was astounded. He had no idea I’d been so afraid, that I hate those fucking things, and that even after it was over the experience could continue to seize me with terror.

Rather than suffer the spectacle of my supreme wimpishness alone, I felt compelled to drag my sister (the birthday boy’s mom) down with me. “Well, SHE’D never do it either!” I said to her friends, pointing to the woman who bushwhacked her way through remotest Mexico, outwitted spies sent out to trail her, and shot films solo (and on the sly) in Asia’s Golden Triangle heroin hub. That gal’s sweet-talked her way out of tight spots and international dramas that’d leave James Bond stymied and whimpering.

They didn’t believe me. So I called over to her.

“Ellen?” I said, nodding my head in the direction of the slide.

“SHIT, no!” she said, knitted her brows together in horror. “You crazy?”

I turned back to her friends smugly, and reached for another slice of pizza.

A couple weeks later, I returned to the scene of my trauma. Or tried to. I wasn’t with a PTSD therapist, just a friend and our kids. But I screwed up the times, and it was closed. As a consolation prize to our disappointed wee ones, we went to some other suburban dream park, replete with a mushroom-shaped water sprinkler, paved wading creek, and a playground the size of Delaware. (I’m telling you, that playground was bigger than Rhode Island.)

The kids stripped down to their suits the second we arrived, and ran off willy-nilly, not sure where to head first.

Basking in the serene sense of suburban safety, my friend and I got to chatting and weren’t hawkishly watching the older kids. And mid-way through some “We have GOT to get sitters and all go there” kinda conversation, Kate runs up to us tear-drenched and screaming. I could barely understand her.

“It’s not like the one at school! It’s not like the one at school!” she shrieked, shaking and snotting and wailing loudly as I snugged her up in a towel.

A minute later Owen cruised up, smiling his sweet charmer’s smile. My friend turned to her son. “What happened to Kate, Owie?” Ready to accuse him of wrongdoing, as we often do with our own kids.

“Uh, she went down the slide,” he said, then took off to get in line for the swings.

The slide. Ah yes. Well that explains it.

That right there would be my genes.

Mama Bunny in the Hizouse

Should I be concerned that inanimate objects appear to be speaking to me?

I mean, you’d think I should be, but the thing is, everything they’re telling me is so damn encouraging—so just-what-I’m-wantin’-to-hear—how could I turn a deaf ear to it? Why, they’re all but tapping me on the shoulder bellowing, “YO! Bruno!”

So here’s the thing. We got this bunny book for Kate at a yard sale. And I know what you’re thinking. That I’ve got to stop imagining the universe is communicating with me through my yard sale loot.

But we’re reading this book the other day. And it’s wrapped in cellophane, clearly some library rip-off that some folks had the audacity to sell to me for 25 cents. And I had the poor taste to buy.

So this book, which I only feel half-bad about owning since I’m bound to mistakenly return it to the library one day anyway—it’s a real cute old-timey book. Great illustrations of bunnies all dressed up in Victorian-era clothes.

But I admit that when I first cracked it, despite the lovely pictures, I was hesitant to read it to Kate. Based on there being a lot of words. This tends to not be an issue with my own books, but with the read-aloud kids ones, I mean—honestly? I’m usually just trying to meet my two-books-before-bedtime quota in the fastest way possible.

Admit it. If you’ve got a kid, you’ve done this yourself. Maybe even skipped a sentence or page or two, before the twerp got wise enough to call you on it.

But this day, knowing Kate wasn’t going to nap anyway, it seemed like I’d get the most horizontal time and snuggles myself by reading a long book. And, as it turned out, some of the pages were text text text, but others had really big space-taking-up pictures.

So the book explains that there isn’t just one Easter Bunny. What single cotton-tailed beast could deliver the world’s Easter baskets in one night? There are, it turns out, five. And when one of them gets too long in the tooth (couldn’t resist that), they call a meeting of all the world’s bunnies and pick a replacement.

So this one country bunny, our protagonist, as a kid she used to say she’d be an Easter Bunny one day. And, being rag-tag country stock, folks mocked her.

Then, like many a hapless country lass—especially one of her well, breed—she took up with some fellow and “much to her surprise” had, get this, twenty-one baby bunnies.

Next page: Her dream of Easter Bunny careerdom is shot to shit. I mean, she has TWENTY-ONE babies to tend. Twenty might be doable. But twenty-one?!

And if the fact that she “stopped thinking about hopping over the world with lovely eggs for little boys and girls” while she changed what one can only imagine were GAZILLIONS of diapers—if burying her dream wasn’t heart-wrenching enough, then some male bunnies come onto the scene and say, “Leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us.”

At this point, I’m clutching the book white-knuckled and wild-eyed. “DOWN WITH THE WHITE MALE OPPRESSOR BUNNIES!” I’m screaming, causing Kate to recoil from me, fearful and confused.

“Let’s here it for working Mama bunnies!” I bellow. “We CAN have it all, sisters!!!!”

So then, I’m pawing my way through the now tear-stained pages, heart racing, while Kate likely stares at me in abject terror. Though by this point I’ve frankly all but forgotten she’s in the room. That I’m ostensibly reading to her.

What happens, you ask? Does the Mama bunny rise up?

Well, blessedly, thankfully, she just waits a while until her bunnies mature some. Then she comes before the Grand Bunny Dude who picks the replacement Easter Bunnies. And where at first he doesn’t even consider her (misogynist), she manages to eventually get his attention and he comes to see that Mama has Got. It. Going. On.

And, yes. She gets the job.

Honestly, at this point I was quite wrung out. I mean, I was thrilled, relieved, and well, really a whole host of emotions. But what lingered with me longest, what I was thinking about as I closed Kate’s door and set Paigey down in her crib, was a calm and certain feeling of readiness.

I sat down at my desk and sent out a few emails, asking around about nannies. It seems this Mama bunny is finally ready to get back into the game.

Brown is the New Green

My brown thumb is on display right now. Out in the open for all to see.

You see, I’ve got these tomato plants. And, I mean, I think the Presidential Victory Garden is charming and all. And I do my best to feign interest when my fervid gardener friends ramble on with glassy-eyed glee about their purple beans and pygmy harlequin kale. Good for them for getting into it. (And good for me when they share their spoils.)

But me personally? I’m not swept up in the whole ‘grow your own’ movement.

But my tomato plants came to me special—raised from seeds from my friend Jack, whose wife packed me off with them after a visit their house. It seemed silly to pass up the offer. Coming up with a reason to not take the plants would take energy. And I’ve always maintained a healthy level of apathy with all things garden-related.

I want to be clear and say right now they aren’t dead yet. But damn they are thirsty!

I mean, I put them on the wall along our front steps—right out there in plain view—with the express intention of seeing them as I pass by several times a day, and prompting my mind to ignite the thought I SHOULD WATER THEM.

So far though, it’s not worked.

In fact, like kindly folks who feed waifish wild cats, our gaybors occasionally water them for me. Sweet men just can’t bear to watch the things die.

But knowing others have had to pick up my slack hasn’t even helped. In fact, I’ve come to learn (and accept) that I contain a finite amount of nurturing. Some people might have a bottomless-coffee-cup supply of caregiving. But mine, well, it eventually just runs dry.

I’m keeping two human children alive, people! So sorry that I can’t also tend the tomaties.

Like the front-stoop plants, I’ve positioned Kate and Paige conspicuously inside the house so when I wake up I’m bound to notice them. After padding around scratching and stretching for a while, and making myself a big mug of tea, I eventually look down at them, see the word MILK I’ve written across their foreheads in black Sharpie and think, “Wait a minute here… They might want something to drink too!”

Getting them milk makes me think they may also want food, and before you know it I’ve even thought to dress them and point to where the toys are.

So far this system’s worked for me.

But really, I’m prouder of those two girls than I ever would be about growing even four tomatoes. They dazzle me daily, in an amount equal to if not more than they exhaust me. If I’m ever in some family-packed setting where another parent asks me “which ones are mine” I’m only too happy to pull out my laser pointer to proudly identify them. I spend whole days marveling in disbelief that they’re mine.

But on the flight back from New York, and the other day at our library, people’ve seen Paigey scooting on her bottom—still not walking, and doing her asymmetric upright hopalong-like crawling thing—and have looked up at me and asked, “How old is she?”

And it crushes me.

I’ve found I ALWAYS WANT TO LIE. I’m not proud of that, but I’d almost prefer they think of her as an overgrown 7-month-old with timely developmental milestones, than an 18-month toddler who, when they learn her age, I’m certain will look at her with pity. Will think, “That poor cute curly-haired girl has something wrong with her.”

It may be egocentric or petty or neurotic (or “D, all of the above”) for me to assume these random strangers are spending any time thinking about or judging my kid. But I fear that they are, and that they do.

It doesn’t seem realistic for me to ask these people to come home for dinner with us so they can bask in the amazing loving dumpling radiancy that is Paigey Waigey Wiggle Pop. For even just a half hour. Just 15 minutes! Her bionic loveableness has nearly brought folks to tears in a five-minute grocery store line. If those people experienced a drop of her charm, they’d be binding their own kids’ legs to get ‘em to scoot just like her. It’d be the Parenting cover story!

If they just knew her they’d see that all that sweet loving juju she’s sending out is just short-circuiting her walking skills temporarily. She’ll be up and about soon enough. Then she’ll be wielding her pure love power on the move. And look out people, because IT WILL BE BIG.

I’ve no doubt there’s a remote mountaintop of hopped up Tibetans looking at a photo of Paige this very minute and Google-mapping their way to Rockridge to dub her the next child lama. She’s just that amazing.

Which is why it confuses and saddens me oh so very very much when someone looks at her, raises a mental eyebrow, and assumes something’s wrong.

Something most certainly is wrong with my tomato plants. I’ve made no attempts to hide that from peering neighbors and passersby. But see and think what you will, I’m 100% confident and here to tell you that my Miss Paige is perfect.

Putting the Braces Back On

I used to be the Patron Saint of Interns. It was, of course, a self-appointed role. But one I took quite seriously.

The thing is, at one point in my career, or rather, the making of my career, I held quite a number of internships. Positions in TV newsrooms, hippie liberal radio stations, and various magazines where I’d earn a meager stipend, or sometimes just an appreciative thump on the back.

The hope being that the inverse ratio of earnings to hard labor would have some karmic redemptive upside.

I’ve lost count now of how many of those posts I’ve held. But suffice it to say, years into real grown-up paying work, my friend Mike and I were catching up on the phone and he asked how my internship was going. Sadly, I fear he wasn’t kidding. But that did become an evergreen joke for us when, over the following years, I’d worked my way through positions of mounting managerial responsibility and in our long coast-to-coast calls he’d ask the same question.

Good times, those.

Alas, aside from dignity-robbing name tags, epic Xeroxing tasks, and occasional demeaning-to-my-education lunch runs (I won’t even get into the pervy remarks from crusty old newsmen)—aside from all that, the biggest challenge with my Intern Era life was my short supply of cash.

Well, actually, I don’t know how much it really bothered me then. I mean, I think I attached a certain nobleness (not to be confused with the richy-sounding term “nobility”) to bushwhacking my way through a poorly-paying, romantic, writerly career path. But looking back, I can’t imagine how I did it.

I mean, I always managed to eat (and drink), God knows. And much as I worked towards self-sustainability, this Daddy’s Girl has thankfully never lacked anything of true importance. That is, even when my father’s definition of importance and mine differed. For some reason, he was maniacal about never allowing a child of his to sleep on a futon, of all things. Guess it seemed all Gypsy-like and what’d-the-neighbors-say to him.

Anyway, back then apartment-establishing jaunts to Target required first off, that I borrow a car. And once there, accumulating crap was a practice in restraint. Necessities like mops and cleaners and such went head to head against fripperies like ceramic Italian-esque pasta bowls and bright striped shower curtains. Sometimes home decor, to the extent it could be humbly called that, won out over specialty toilet bowl bleaches.

Thankfully, I never contracted any illnesses from my less-than-sterile but kinda cute living conditions.

These days Target is still the soup kitchen to my soul. But I shop with heedless abandon. Bolstered by their don’t-need-the-receipt-just-your-credit-card return policy, I toss whatever shiny thing I see into the cart.

Clothing? Well, I prefer not to buy it there (for reasons of snobbery alone), but sometimes a little cotton short catches my eye. And who knows if it’s the Small or the Medium that’ll work best. Buy both. Return one later. Candles, brooms, weird flower-shaped sprinkler attachments for kids to run through on hot summer days. A hectare of Size 4 diapers. I never leave the place without mindlessly spending, well, a lot.

The thing is, somewhere between the Intern Era came, well, the hoped-for karmic career redemption patch. Widely known as the American Dream. Or more precisely, the Internet Boom. Right here in Northern California, USA. And instead of having to desperately take an ‘Intro to the Internets’ class at The Learning Annex, I’d somehow managed to retool my media career into an internet business-type kinda job before all the hoopla kicked in.

Looked up from my laptop one day to discover I’d become a cherished ladder-climbing leader at a company where 27-year-olds made Vice President, bought homes based on the momentary health of their unvested stock, and earned bonuses their hard-working parents no doubt found obscene. I traveled non-stop, managed teams in multiple cities, and spent my days telling people twice my age how to run their companies. All that, plus shrimp cocktail and top-shelf booze at Friday afternoon office Happy Hours.

Like many folks at that time, I felt pretty damn invincible.

Unsurprisingly, my spending habits changed. I could buy one of those loft condos with Corian counter tops if I wanted! Buy last-minute tickets home to RI. Go to swank dinners with friends, order beyond the dinner salad, and not dread someone’s inevitable suggestion to “split the bill evenly between us.”

But more than the stuff I could get, what struck me most—initially, at least—was the lack of worry that my new financial sitch afforded me. More than the thrill of ownership any of the crap I bought, knowing I had what I needed to comfortably take care of myself gave me a supreme sense of contentment. A deep, proud-of-myself-for-making-it-so self-sufficiency and security.

And I realized yesterday that my memory of those days, that feeling in particular, is starting to fade in my mind, alongside the Intern Era. With the Global Economic Recession lurking in the pit of everyone’s gut, and me intentionally unemployed and Living La Vida Housewife, it’s hard to remember spending freely on a credit card that someone else (someone I’m not married to, that is) pays.

Prudence seems to dictate a throttling back on spending. It’s not that a crap run to Target will have us living on the street—blessedly. It’s just that, well, used to be we had two jobs and no kids. Now we’ve got one for the four of us. I’m no math expert, but that nets out to less all around.

So I get it right? I’m able to intellectually understand all this. It’s just I’m not certain how to get there. Regroup with that little voice in my head that used to say, “You can’t afford this.”

I mean, it seems obvious, right? Just spend less. But I’m deadline driven, motivated by fear, and perform best under pressure. I know that I should ratchet back, but I’m not feeling a sting to do so.

And Mark, poor dear. His concerns in this arena should be all I need to react. But I’m not getting spurned on. I’m not kicking into thrift mode with any of the novel glee or romantic challenge of it all.

And I can’t help but think that the monumental passage of the Intern Era’s to blame.

It’s like people who wore braces as teenagers, or however old you are when you do that. Elastic bands with colors or cutesie names, nightmares about corn on the cob, fears that getting inextricably locked with a co-braces-wearer during a make-out sesh might not just be urban legend.

I, thankfully, never had them. But I have to believe that once you get your braces taken off, you put all that gnarly, miserable, clingy-food-bits trauma behind you. Close that door and MOVE ON. You just get out there and enjoy your new straight teeth life, and revel in the knowledge that you’ll never be able to fry an ant with the glare off your teeth again.

That is, until as an adult you discover that your teeth have somehow moved. Shifted when you weren’t paying them any attention. And now you need to get braces AGAIN.

Which, is kinda where I feel like I am today. Perfectly straight teeth, thankyouverymuch. But having, despite myself, to go back to that uncomfortable place of restrained spending, at Tar-jay and beyond.

Well, that, or get a job. A job, or maybe a high-class internship.

Solid Ground

“What about earthquakes?”

It’s the refrain I often hear when I tell East Coasters and Midwesterners I live in San Francisco. And though I always want to ask them if there are buses where they live, and if they ever cross streets, sometimes I actually bite my tongue.

The fact is, well, aside from a summer a couple years back when we had a hearty smattering of earthquakes, all with epicenters just miles from our house—aside from that unsettling patch, I really don’t worry about quakes. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

But apparently it’s taken me being here on the East Coast to plumb the depths of my subconscious fears. Because before nodding off to sleep, at both my Dad’s house and my sister’s schmancy Cape Cod digs, I remember having the smallest mental twinge, realizing that I had nothing to worry about.

I’m not sure whether I was unthinkingly planning an emergency exit strategy—how I’d sweep through one room to grab one kid, then dispatch Mark to grab the other—or if I was unwittingly wondering whether the glass on the art hanging over the bed would shatter into a million razor-like shards when it fell on us, or maybe I was wondering how long it’d take to walk to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts, a perfect alternate Red Cross Center where we could ride out the mayhem until the utilities were back up and running.

I mean, I’m not AWARE that I was thinking any of those things, but in both houses, just moments before nodding off, I remember a little uptick in my wakefulness, then a settling back down with the reassuring thought that those walls weren’t going anywhere. I was on solid ground.

Our two-week vacation is nearly complete, and it wasn’t until today that I took the girls for a quiet morning stroll along the harbor’s boardwalk. Kate, a stroller addict who I’ll no doubt be pushing to prom in a broke-down MacLaren, skipped along the whole way, pointing to fishing boats, peering terrifyingly close off the edge of the pier, and marveling at the white face of a floating dead fish.

Our stroll ended at a lovely open park, which we wandered though to arrive at The Beehive Cafe, Bristol’s newest and most charming caffeine hole.

Why, I wondered, had I waited until today to do this? Sunshine or not, it would have been the ideal start to every day we’ve been here.

But it’s a late-arriving realization (along with my unsuspected earthquake fears), leaving me with no recourse other than to plan longer visits in upcoming summers. Maybe rent a house. And when she’s old enough, enroll Kate in Bristol Yacht Club sailing lessons, in the hopes that my genes have failed to pass along my reckless nautical habits, and that years from now crushes on Junior Instructors will still carry one through a full season feeling giddy, while remaining utterly sexually innocent.

I mean, I lay out these summer plans in my mind, then flip-flop to think I could convince Mark to just move here. You know, put up with the winter too.

See? Told you you could set your watch to this feeling emerging from me about now. Emerging, that is, like some alien from Sigourney Weaver’s midsection. Impossible, as it were, to repress.

Tuesday or so I called John and made a dinner date with him and Jim. We dined at a sweet small place when I was in town last, and had a memorable, hilarious, and slightly boozey dinner. An evening where I felt I started to get to know (and love) Jim—a somewhat intimidating task when you consider how well and long I’ve known (and loved) his partner, John.

So, that dinner had been so lovely, I was fearful we had little hope of replicating it. But, I’m an optimist.

Plus, I had a babysitter.  So really, how bad could it be?

When I climbed into the shower that evening, having slung the kids in bed promptly so Mama could go out (yay for grannies!), I realized my travel-sized worth-its-weight-in-platinum shampoo was out. A wet walk through the bathroom revealed nyet in the shampoo category, and Joan was across the big house—my sleeping babies freshly a-doze between us.

I’ve never done Outward Bound, but back in the shower I figured I could do something crafty, and reached for the Cetaphil face wash. I mean, we used it on the girls’ hair when they were wee, right?

Let’s just say that that night at dinner I looked like a greasy droopy-haired mope, AWOL from the asylum. Early in the evening, I confessed to John and Jim about my hygiene challenge, apologizing that when my hair dried it’d likely be less than adorable. But an hour or so later, it became clear that it wouldn’t even get so far as to appear “dry.”

When the madras-pants-clad owner hustled the check to our table at night’s end—it being clearly later than the employees were keen on still being there—I reached for it. “Oh!” he trilled, in a voice less gay than the term ‘trill’ might imply. And looking over at John and Jim, “I wish a beautiful woman would buy dinner for me!”

Jim glanced at my limp asylum dreads, then up at the restaurant owner and said, “Me too.”

Well one thing I can look forward to back in Cali (the potential for trembling earth aside), is my own ugly green shower, overflowing with embarrassingly costly shampoo. Clean hair, here I come!