Camels and Cranberry Sauce

My friend Maria is shopping for a new religion.

She’s a nice Italian-American gal. She’s married with two young kids, and wants to do something religion-wise with her fam. But she’s just not feelin’ it from the Catholic Church any more.

I think she’s looking for something a bit more New School, if you know what I mean.

So Maria did what anyone does these days who’s looking for a good dry cleaner, or a restaurant tip for Date Night. She posted something on Facebook.

“Religion shopping,” she stated simply. “Any advice?”

I loved it.

The thing is, about half her Facebook posse seemed to think she was kidding. They left comments like, “WHAT??????,” and “‘Religion shopping. Hmmm. I don’t get it.” One person even asked, “Religious items or actual religion??”

Maybe they think The Internets aren’t the appropriate medium for finding one’s Higher Power. But as someone who’s wrangled with what-do-I-serve-my-family-for-religion-tonight questions of my own, I wholeheartedly condoned her approach.

In fact, I was hoping I might be able to coast on her tailwind. You know, pick up some useful insights for myself. (Mental note: Must follow up with her on this over a bottle of wine this summer.)

So a month or so ago, my SoCal sister Judy came to the Bay Area for Spring Break. She’s no college co-ed, but she was entertaining two students. And she was hell-bent on introducing them to Yosemite, Wine Country, San Francisco, Berkeley, and every roadside attraction, restaurant, and fabulous friend she had along the way.

When my sister does something, she goes big. Trust me.

In the midst of this break-neck Spring Break, I invited her and her friends over for dinner. My girls love their auntie—and we don’t get to see her nearly enough. Plus I was curious about the students she was spending so much time with.

“No pork,” she said, when I asked about their food preferences. “And you can’t go wrong with rice.”

As a hardcore hater of certain foods (mostly mushrooms, really), I always ask guests what things they don’t like to eat. I appreciate when folks do the same for me. But I also wanted to be cool from a cultural perspective, since my sister’s friends are from Egypt. They’re Fulbright scholars doing a year-long program at the university in her town.

While I knew there was little chance of making these guys feel truly “at home” in my Craftsman cottage in the middle of Oakland, I at least wanted to be sure they’d enjoy their dinner.

So while I focused my attention that afternoon on what we’d be eating—roast chicken, cranberry sauce, broccoli, and plenty of rice—I was utterly unprepared for what we’d do. Or rather, what they’d do. Which was, to be specific, pray.

Because after they’d swept in, and I set out cheese and other nibbly things, and after I offered wine (which was declined), and they allowed my unabashedly un-shy girls to literally crawl all over them, my sister turned to her friends and said, “There are two bathrooms if you’d like to wash.”

Which struck me as a bit odd.

I mean, I know that I unintentionally mother people, by sheer force of habit. I’ve been know to ask adults if they “need to go potty before we get in the car,” and to hand Kleenex to sneezers “in case they need to blow.”

But my sister’s got dogs, not kids. If anything I’d expect her to hold the back door open, make a smooching sound, and ask liltingly, “Have to go out?” Or maybe inquire in an excited tone if they want to go to the park.

Yet her friends didn’t find her directive to wash at all odd. In fact, they looked out the window at the near-setting sun, detangled themselves from Kate and Paige, and headed to the back of the house.

“They wash before they pray,” Judy whispered.

And sure enough, ten minutes later, after having flipped the roasting broccoli and needing to use the bathroom myself, it was apparent that some washing certainly had taken place in there. And from the state of things, it might have happened with water shot from an elephant’s trunk. Or a fire hose, perhaps.

The whole room was soaked.

Back in the living room my sister was catching up with the girls. Her guests were nowhere in sight.

“—and we went to the zoo. Paige tooted really loud. It was soooo funny! And Dad got a flat tire on his bike… ” Kate was breathlessly babbling, deep in one of her non-sequitor-laced talk-a-thons.

“Oh and I got a purple pony in a goodie bag from Zoe’s party!” Kate continued. “Lemme show you. It’s in Paigey’s room.”

My sister held her arm out. “No. Don’t go in there right now, honey.”

Kate stopped in her tracks. “Why not?”

Judy: “My friends are in there.”

Kate: [scrunching her face] “What are they doing?”

Judy: “Praying.”

Kate: [pauses] “Why are they doing that?”

Judy: It’s their religion.”

Kate: [thinks] “What’s religion?!”

Ha! Exactly.

[Cue a large plot of my deceased Catholic relatives turning over in their graves.]

When Kate left a small opening in the conversation into which I could wedge a few words, I got the download I’d been desperate for.

“Yeah, so what’s up with the washing and everything? Explain, please.”

In a fast-paced whisper, Judy gave me the low-down on how her friends were Muslim. They pray five times a day, and one of those times is at dusk. And before they pray they do what she called “ritual washing,” where they splash water on their face, hands, arms—ears and feet even–in a special way, and a certain number of times. (Which explained the soggy state of my bathrooms.)

I felt bad that my humble home didn’t better accommodate their needs. I envisioned them facing Mecca on Paige’s hot pink polka-dot carpet, alongside the stinky diaper pail. All that washing and preparation, and they were probably kneeling on a lost Lego piece, and growing faint from poo fumes.

During dinner our new friends fawned over and joked with the girls. They tried cranberry sauce—something Kate and Paige would fight to the death over—and didn’t care for it. It blew Kate’s mind that one of her favorite foods was something some grown-ups hadn’t ever tried.

And in the relative calm of the dinner table, Mark and I had a chance to ask them about the changes that’d taken place in Egypt since they’d been away. “Was it weird to not be there for that? What were the reports from their families like? How did they feel about going back now?”

We asked about what their houses were like. How much English they’d known before coming here. (Not much.) And how they planned to apply their studies here to their careers at home.

Every question I asked seemed to spawn three more in my mind. It took all my restraint to not pull out a video camera and dive into a deep documentary-like interrogation.

It was fascinating, and heartwarming, and an incredibly unexpected way to spend a Wednesday night at home.

Kate asked to be excused to fetch the globe from her room, then had the guys show her where they were from. Then she asked, “Do you have camels?” which we all had a good laugh over. Mark and I had no idea where she’d come up with that. (Apparently some cigarette companies are doing an excellent job of marketing their products to kindergartners. Thank goodness. See how much she’s learned!)

My sister posted on Facebook a few days ago, “It is hard to prepare yourself emotionally that you may never see someone again.” And I knew she was referring to her Egyptian friends, who are heading home today.

She met them though a professor friend, who works at the college they attended. The woman thought they needed someone to practice their English with, so Judy invited them to her house for Thanksgiving. And many months later, they’d gotten into a groove where they all walked her dogs daily, cooked together and taught each other recipes—even planted a garden at my sister’s house.

I feel her pain. When our long-time nanny went home to Israel last fall, I felt the same way. In my sadness I asked Mark if he thought we’d ever see her again, and he gently responded, “Probably not.”

Why is it everyone’s always talking about how small the world is, instead of how damn huge it is?

After our dessert the night of our dinner, I tucked Paige into bed then closed her bedroom door behind me. Judy and Mark were quietly standing in the middle of the kitchen. I felt like I’d clearly walked in on something.

“What?” I said, looking around for clues.

And without a word they both opened their eyes wide, and jerked their heads towards the living room. I craned my neck to peek in, and saw that our guests were praying again. This time, wisely, not by the diaper pail.

I tiptoed over by the refrigerator to give our new friends some privacy.

That afternoon Katie hadn’t even known what religion was. But by the end of the evening we’d all gotten a chance to see it in action—twice. From people who, I imagine, never questioned the faith they grew up with, or felt the need to shop for a new one. People who went to amazing, bathroom-drenching lengths to practice their religion several times a day.

I’m so happy we got to spend an evening with those guys. What an education for all of us.

I send them both a wish for happy trails and safe travel. And I hope that they find peace and contentment in all they are going home to.

All Hail to Principal Kate

Mark and I are so going to rock the nursing home scene.

I know it may be a bit premature to get fired up about this now. But if our Bingo skillz are anywhere near as on-fire as our knack for winning raffles, we’re going to DOMINATE those oldsters.

Here’s the thing: Last year at Kate’s preschool auction we were ready to dart out the door early. The school was providing childcare and we had one hour of babysitting left. This compelled us (and some friends) to want to bee-line to a bar to guzzle as much booze as possible in that remaining window of freedom. (What is it about being a parent that makes you want to drink like a frat boy sometimes?)

So we’ve got one foot out the door. Quite literally. And we hear the auctioneer bellow, “Now wait a minute folks! We still have the raffle drawing for the instant wine cellar!”

With a dramatic flourish he sunk his hand into a glass bowl. He withdrew a stub, looked at it, and scrunching up his face he muttered into the mic, “I’m so bad at pronouncing these names.”

And Mark and I looked at each other. Because we knew.

Yes, thank all that is holy and bad for my liver—we won! (And the guy actually did a commendable job of pronouncing McClusky.) Yup, we took home more than four cases of vino that night. All different kinds, and all pretty good stuff—each family from the school having contributed a bottle.

I’ve found that many things labeled “instant” are not as good as their slower alternatives. Instant coffee, instant rice, instant mashed potatoes. But an instant wine cellar? Now that’s a good thing. Trust me.

Hic!

A couple months ago, I dragged Mark by his ear to Kate’s elementary school auction. He’s not a fan of those sorts of big, canned social events. Here we were on a Saturday night having spent $40 a ticket to come to the school’s auditorium—a place we schlep through every weekday in far less fancy attire. But we bought the tickets and gussied up because private school is kinda like going to a chiropractor. Your back is never totally better. And private schools never have enough of your money.

So anyway, they had a silent auction, a live auction, and, I noticed as I stumbled across the dimly lit prom-like room towards the bar, a raffle.

I diverted my wine mission, and sashayed over to the raffle table, heady with optimism and the cheap pinot I’d been drinking. I requested two $25 tickets, and proclaimed to the mom-volunteers workin’ the table, “I’m gonna win.”

Oh it’s so BORING being this lucky. Yes, yes, we won AGAIN. (Yawn.) I mean, it’s nearly at the point where it’s just unfair to the other naive, hopeful raffle ticket buyers who we go up against.

But get this: This time there was no physical prize. Mark wasn’t making several trips back and forth to the car heaving heavy boxes of wine into the trunk, or worse, cramming in some over-sized blindingly-colorful classroom art project. This time we won something intangible, something experiential, something that would make our daughter get a taste of power she may never cleanse from her mind’s palette.

We won that Kate, our little kindergartener, was going to be principal of the school for a day.

Brilliant! We were beaming. You would’ve thought they’d awarded us Neiman Marcus matching his and hers hot air balloons.

The real principal emailed me a couple weeks later to set it up. “Would April 28th work for Kate?” she asked. I wondered what she thought Kate might have planned for that day, other than circle time, chasing the boys around the playground, and singing rainforest-themed songs.

Let me see… No meetings with heads of state planned. No bereaved families to visit. No fundraiser luncheons.

April 28th? Why… yes! She’s available!

At  drop-off one morning I bumped into the principal. She suggested that Mark and I brainstorm with Kate about what she might like to do for her day at the helm. “Let me know what she comes up with,” she said. “Then I can pick out some of things that’re realistic for us to put in place.”

We hadn’t yet mentioned this whole thing to Kate. Why, her teacher suggested, get her all hopped up about it when it was still a ways off? (That poor woman is painfully aware of Kate’s relentless tenacity when she wants something to happen NOW.)

Our brainstorm with Kate at dinner that night was an off-the-cuff chance to bounce around ideas. But minutes after introducing the concept to Kate, it seemed like she’d been planning for it for a lifetime.

She started spewing out ideas at a staccato pace. And what was dazzling was how damned realistic and implementable all her plans were.

“I want ten extra minutes of recess. For both recesses.”

“Pajama Day for the whole school.”

“Extra long reading time.”

“I’d like for everyone to be able to make postcards. Oh! And to send them to people they love.” (No surprise, this coming from Ms. Hallmark herself.)

If she’d hooked a laptop up to a projector and started reading from a PowerPoint presentation I wouldn’t have been surprised. The gal was apparently made for this job.

She was ready.

And as she rambled on, and I started envisioning her in a smart, trim, gray flannel suit, I found myself getting annoyed with all her efficiency and pragmatism. She was getting a shot at doing whatever she wanted to for a day, yet everything she dreamed up was so drearily restrained. So maddeningly practical.

Like, get this. At one point she threw out: “I want the snack in the after-school program to be fruit salad.”

Fruit salad?

Have we really been withholding sugar from her so comprehensively that her idea of unbridled food glee is FRUIT SALAD? What about candy bars? Chocolate cake? What about a frickin’ make-your-own hot fudge sundae bar for God’s sake?

I emailed the erstwhile principal the list of Kate’s annoyingly-reasonable demands. Then, a few days before her rise to power, a school-wide email went out announcing Kate would be the temporary Head of School.

That’s when everything changed.

Yes, what came next was the adrenaline-amped dizzying swirl that comes with anyone’s sudden rise to fame. And as her mom—playing a minor role in Principal Kate’s posse—I was sucked right into it alongside her.

At the playground after school the next day swarms of children gathered ’round me, jumping up, waving their arms, and vying for my attention. “Kate’s gonna be principal tomorrow! We get extra long recess! Kate made it pajama daaaay!”

I pushed past the throng wishing I had a security detail, and entered the relative sanctuary of the building. A couple older kids were slumped against the hallway wall, backpacks slung over their shoulders. They looked up at me from their conversation and said casually, “Hi Principal’s mom.”

It was almost creepy.

In the arts and crafts room I finally spotted Madame Principal herself. She stood there like some hot molten core, the focus of all the energy in the room. She was surrounded by a pulsating ring of pumped up, over-tired, I’m-friends-with-the-boss kids. Some were Kate’s real homies. Others were clearly making a play to get on her good side.

And then one child called out in a scrawny voice, “All hail to Kate!” And I kid you not, they all joined in the chant. “All hail to Kate! All hail to Kate!”

Over the din the guy who runs the after-care program mouthed to me, “It’s like she’s a celebrity.”

Walking to the car later, my little principal reached to hold my hand and asked, “What does ‘all hail’ mean?”

I swear, this is the kinda stuff Michael Jackson must have gone through as a kid.

Anyway, in the same way that it’s cool for a bartender to know your drink order—how it’s nice when someone shows how they know you—it’s also validating and happy-making as a parent when other people show how they really know your kid. Which was how I felt when I told various friends that Kate was getting a crack at running her school for the day.

My dad let loose his famous, booming expression of affirmation: “Oh ho ho!” (No, my father’s not Santa. But he does talk like him.) Others imagined how perfectly poised Kate would be in the role. And more than one amiga said something like, “When she becomes president some day, she’ll say she got her first taste of power in kindergarten when she was principal for the day.”

I adored every implication that Kate has confidence, smarts, and leadership qualities. I mean, folks were probably just thinking about how she’s bossy as hell. But in a silly proud way I indulged in the jokes about Principal Kate being the gateway to President Kate. I imagined myself feeling how Kate Middleton’s mom must have on her daughter’s wedding day—watching in amazement at all that her little girl had grown up to be.

I can see it all now. She’ll no doubt appoint Paige to be her secretary.

I wish I could outline the activities of Kate’s actual day in power. I wish, like a fly on the wall, I saw exactly what went down that fateful day. But this is one of those stories that gets you to the part you’ve been waiting for and then it turns out there’s no there there. If you were at the movies you’d probably walk out feeling ripped off, left to form your own unsatisfying conclusions about what really happened.

Put it this way, if you’re able to get a reliable detailed account of your child’s days at kindergarten, you’re a better mother than me.

All I can say for sure is that I dropped her off at school that morning to more playground fanfare. She was clutching a clipboard with a sign on it saying ‘Principal Kate.’ And she and the rest of the kids pouring in for the day were in their PJs (which, I’ll note, dramatically reduced the professional effect we were going for with the clipboard).

I snapped a few pictures of her sitting at the principal’s desk, and left as she and the temporarily-overturned Head of School were discussing the merits of lunching in the staff room.

I can’t help but think that one day, the incoming White House staffers will be elated to have finally made it to the big league. After all their over-achieving, the glory and glamor will finally be theirs. But then, for President Kate’s inaugural dinner, she’ll insist that fruit salad is served for dessert.

[Insert that "waah waah" sound effect to indicate disappointment.]

Ah well, at least they’ll get to wear their PJs to work.

Make New Friends but Keep the Old

I know I’ve mentioned I have a new job. But I’ve failed to report even bigger news: I have a new husband!

A work husband that is.

And he’s dazzling—smart, funny, handsome. And 100% dyed-in-the-wool-Prada-pants GAY.

I know, I know, I’m gushing. But I’m telling you, no more than three minutes into meeting each other—an introduction where sparks of sass and sarcasm blazed off us like an electrical fire—we were in luv.

The next morning he sashayed past my desk to announce that he’d confessed his feelings for me to his partner. “I told him,” he said conspiratorially, “that I have a new BFF.”

“Oooooh!” I squealed, clapping my hands and beaming. “I told Mark about you too!”

On my second day of work he analyzed our astrological charts at lunch (we’re compatible), and we discovered our birthdays are two weeks apart. We were even born the same year!

We’ve continued this way for days now: “You love neutral tones with a dash of orange as an accent color?!” I bellowed in disbelief. “Me TOO!”

We’ve discussed our yoga preferences (His: “Original Recipe” Hatha, Mine: Power Vinyasa ) and our current efforts to get bikini-ready for summer. And he’s managed to assess nearly every piece of clothing I’ve worn, rubbing the fabric between his fingers, raising an eyebrow then muttering his approval.

By next week we should be belting out duets and performing elaborately choreographed dance moves through the office. We’ll outshine Travolta and Olivia Newton John. I just know it.

I’m planning to consummate our union at his fabulous beach house. It’s off some island or other near Seattle. I picture myself poised on 900-thread-count sheets—blissfully alone, of course. I’ll do snow angels in the bed, soaking up the unbridled thrill of a weekend away from the kids, while he and his lawyer-cum-yoga-instructor partner slavishly cook for me and deliver mimosas and Vanity Fair magazines to what I can only imagine is a lavish guest suite. (The guest house is still under construction.)

It’s like a dream. A fabulous, exhilarating dream in which we spend lunches at the cafe at his gym ogling the hot guys working out.

The other day, while outlining the guest list for his birthday par-tay—old friends from high school, former co-workers, his San Francisco set—he pointed out matter-of-factly, “I collect people.”

And when Mark got an email last week, inviting him to a dinner in the city, I couldn’t help but think of just that.

One of the bennies of Mark’s job is that he gets to meet some pretty cool, accomplished folks. Well, I mean, I see that as a benefit since I like people. But Mark? Well, not so much. He’s kinda like those dogs people apologize for at parks ’cause they don’t like other dogs.

Now, I don’t want to imply my hubbie’s some social nitwit. He’s just discerning about who he’ll make an effort for. His attitude: He’s already got five friends. Why’d he ever need more? And while Mark’s not taking resumes for new friends, I go through life chatting up baristas while they steam my milk, and wanting to invite Jehovah’s Witnesses in for lunch.

But sometimes, someone Mark meets penetrates his Cone of Social Reluctance. And recently, this happened.

The New Friend is someone Mark’s interviewed and hung out with for work. The dude’s a crazy-accomplished genius. He seems to have the Midas touch with everything he does. And he’s done just about everything.

And whatever, so they’ve kinda become friends. It’s not like they go bowling every Wednesday, or have slumber parties and braid each others’ hair. But they’ve hung out a few times now for no work-related purpose.

It’s not so terribly strange, even considering Mark’s inclination to keep his friend count low. The thing that’s gets me about this new alliance is—well, it’s kinda embarrassing to admit—I mean, what’s weird about it is that the guy is rich. But not like rich by any mortal standards. Like, stratospherically mind-bogglingly loaded.

So, when this chap came to town recently (he lives up north) his assistant contacted Mark. Would he like to get together for dinner? New Friend was traveling for work and his wife wasn’t with him. So he and Mark and a another of the guy’s pals from San Fran grabbed some grub.

You know, 15 or so courses.

Then last week Mark gets another call. The assistant asks again about dinner. And this time I’m welcomed along. It turns out we’re going out with a couple other folks, and one of them who’s a chef picked some divey Korean joint as our venue. Because, hey, what’s more fun than slumming with a gazillionaire?

Aside from his immense genius, and a guess that he probably wouldn’t have holes in his shoes, I wasn’t sure what to expect. And I don’t mean to get all Us Magazine “Just Like Us” about it. (Look! He wears sunglasses outdoors! Wow! He covers his mouth when he coughs!) But to be honest, for the first fifteen minutes or so, I was TOTALLY like that.

The thing is, the guy is totally normal.

It was like any other night you’d spend in a dumpy Richmond café eating gut-cleansing kimchi with friends in your own tax bracket.

And sure, there were things that came up—the  mention of a dinner with Jane Fonda and Ted Turner—that weren’t the typical conversational grist my homies and I bandy about at the taqueria. (“Oh that JANE…” I chortled, slapping my thigh. “She IS that way after a couple Pisco Sours, isn’t she?”) There was a mention of Stephen Hawking liking really spicy Indian food. And an anecdote about a dinner he’d had at an inn in Montana or somewhere. The place was so remote (How remote was it?) that he still had to drive for an hour after the plane landed. Pause. “And I have my own plane!”

Weirdly, none of this came off as snooty or name-droppy. Just the opposite, in fact. The guy was totally comfortable with who he was (even if I wasn’t at first). He was tellin’ it like it was from his side of the tracks.

I mean, why pretend to fly Continental?

At one point, we got on the topic of Mark’s exploits in bread baking. I mentioned that one recipe he’d been struggling with produced loaves like pancakes. (Though I think I actually said “limp breast implants.”) This fast became a opportunity for the group to razz Mark on his inability to “get a rise” out of his dough. And quickly deteriorated to jokes about him “getting it up.”

Yeah, so not so much pretense at our table.

In fact, my favorite thing was how super-brilliant New Friend is, yet how often he says “fuck.” It turns out he says “fuck” a lot. (I’m going to remember how cool I thought this was when I make my gazillions. “What a fuckin’ nightmare,” I’ll confide to my chauffeur. “My new jet is totally fucked!”)

After dinner he asked us about how he could get a taxi. Most San Franciscans would agree that the best way to get a cab is to go to New York. So instead of making the guy wait, we offered to drop him at his hotel. This required us to remove a car seat from the back of our beater Subaru. And to wipe away some Cheerios. And to toss a pile of Captain Underpants books and a mermaid-shaped Barbie in the trunk. While smiling sheepishly over our shoulders.

“Ah, you’ve got kids!” I said a bit too loudly, scraping a withered fruit roll-up into the gutter. When what I was really conveying was, “Remember? This is what most family cars are like.” (I did resist bursting into the chorus of “What Do the Simple Folk Do.”)

We wove our way through the drizzly, dark city to The Ritz Carlton. And saying our goodbyes, he bid Mark a last word of luck getting his dough up, then grabbed the door handle once, then twice, finally leaning into the door with his shoulder. Fail.

“Ah yeah,” I said realizing what was happening. “That’d be the child lock.” And I hopped out to come around and release him.

D’oh!

As Mark turned the car out of the hotel lot and headed us home to Oakland, he put his hand on my leg and asked his typical end-of-the-evening question, “You have fun?”

And, trying vaguely to remember what I’d thought the night would be like, I said, “Yeah. I did.”

Then I smiled. Man, this’ll make a nice little story for my work hubbie.

And speaking of him—Happy happy birthday, darlin’! I cannot WAIT to hear about every last detail of your weekend over a quinoa salad at the gym. xoxoxo!

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.

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.

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.

Seeing is Believing

I don’t believe in heaven or the afterlife or reincarnation, but I do believe in old blue Volvos.

My mom used to drive one. One of those boxy four-door sedans circa 1980-something. The ancient green one she had before that—that I learned to drive on—only had an AM radio. Talk about a character building experience for a teenager. Name any Carpenters, Elton John, or Neil Sedaka song and I can likely recite each line flawlessly. I was a girl before my time, I tell you.

Or at least, out of step with the times.

Anyway, when I first moved to San Francisco, I was surprised to see so many old cars on the road. Vintage Dodge Darts and ancient Volkswagon Beetles with original paint perfectly intact aren’t uncommon in these parts. Cars that would’ve been devoured by the Midwestern or East Coast road salt decades ago just keep chuggin’ along here.

So it’s not unusual for me to come across old blue Volvos. Ones exactly like the one my mom usedta drive.

I’ll be pushing the double-stroller frantically down the street, late for Kate’s ballet class, and I’ll turn a corner and there’s Mom’s car. Parked outside some house like she’s inside having a cup of tea and a game of Scrabble. Or I’ll come upon a yard sale, pull over, and I’ll see I’ve double-parked right behind her. When I open the door for the girls to pile out, I half expect to see Mom’s gray-haired noggin bent over a stack of used books, or rummaging through a box of table linens.

Just this Sunday, Mark and I were coercing the kids to trudge two more blocks to our car. They were fried from a visit to the farmer’s market. Too much sun and dancing in front of the band. It was like some impossible against-all-odds trek over the Alps to make it 50 more yards to the parking lot. I’d nearly given up, was about to sit down on the sidewalk and tell Mark, “Go on ahead without me.” And then I saw Mom’s car parked up ahead.

And I kinda smirked. Although Mark had no idea what I was doing, I actually ran up a half-block and took a picture of it with my cell phone. Then I circled back to herd us forward, having tapped into some energy reserves I wasn’t aware I had.

Have I gone mad? Or, from beyond the grave, is my mother strategically parking her car in places I’ll pass by? Is this her sly eccentric way of showing me she’s still somehow around? Still keeping tabs on me?

Because if so, I am TOTALLY picking up on it. Message received, Mom!

This realization is, of course, thrilling and relieving. What I didn’t mention about the fact that I don’t think my mom is an angel hanging out on a cloud with her dead sisters and all our past dogs, is that it’d be so much nicer if I actually DID believe that. I would LOVE to feel confident that she’s somehow seen my children. That she admired the apple pie I made on Christmas day (her recipe). That she’s cheering me on when the daily doldrums of mothering set in.

I’d be frankly kinda psyched if my belief—that the end of life is really the cold dark end—isn’t really altogether true.

Now, lest you think I’m alone at all this, I have a friend—a terrifically intelligent and thoughtful woman—who believes her dead Mama comes to her in the form of a raven. You know, she’ll see a few birds on her front lawn or gathered on a telephone wire and sometimes get this inkling, this sense, of her mother’s presence.

Which I think is awesome. (In fact, whenever I see a raven now I think it’s her mom too.) What can I say? One gal’s old blue Volvo is another gal’s big black bird.

What’s funny is I read this Motherboard story about how to let go of your kids as they grow up—how not to be a smother mother. I love the concept of giving your kids “roots and wings.” Roots so they know where their home is, and wings to set them free in the world. I really hope I can get that balance right with Kate and Paige.

But at the same time here I am—fully grown with kids of my own—and thinking that even though my mom’s not even alive, she’s still somehow mothering me in some cosmic car parking way. Maybe I could use a little smothering of my own.

I’ve already confessed my fandom of the sappy-excellent show Parenthood. So in a recent episode the parents of a five-year-old have to tell their daughter that a hurt bird they’ve been taking care of died. The Mom and Dad strategize about how to break the news, how to gently introduce the hard reality of death to their sweet innocent. When they finally talk to the twerp, the mom caves when she sees her daughter getting sad, and blurts out that the bird “is in heaven now—with Grandma!” Which had not been the plan for their little talk.

I super don’t like that mom character on the show. But on this one topic, man, I can feel her pain.

Because, I’m truly saddened to report, sweet little Freezey, Room 2′s pet frog who stayed with us during Winter Break, died last week. (Side note: I’d like to clearly state that this happened when he was back in the classroom. Not on our watch.)

Kate was pretty sad about it, but I was crushed. She laid the news on me on our way to pick up Paige from school. She was all casual—no warning, no “Are you sitting down?” (even though I obviously was, because I was driving).

I was heartbroken. We loved that little damn frog!

I wanted to tell Kate that Freezey was swimming around in a divine froggy pond in the sky. That he was re-united with his former tank-mate Cutie Pie. And that they were happy and free and could eat all the stinky food pellets they wanted. Hell, I wanted to tell MYSELF that. But instead I handed Kate a couple pretzels and made her promise not to tell Paigey.

On Monday, while shopping for stuff for Paige’s b-day party invites, I wandered over a couple blocks to the pet store. I mean, the mother of all snake, frog, and other crawly-creature types store. It’s where the Room 2 teachers got Freezey. And even though they were clear—no more classroom pets this year—I’d gotten to thinking. Wondering about the viability of a new McClusky family friend.

So this place. It’s like everyone who works there has face piercings and huge tattoos and is scary knowledgeable about the animals. Like the geeky ultra-smart weirdos that work in the labs on those TV crime shows.

I browsed frogs. Admired cute spotted newts. Got full-body shudders from a sunny-yellow boa that apparently had a big dinner the night before. And finally I screwed up the courage to ask one of the goth-girl employees about what a tank would cost, how much maintenance was needed, yadda, yadda, yadda.

And as I got in the car and drove off I questioned my motives. Buying a pet doesn’t bring Freezey back. Would the girls groove on having an amphibian sibling? Or would its novelty eventually fade, like some expensive toy that gets shoved to the back of the closet—an expensive toy whose tank water you have to change, and who you have to feed live worms…

At a stop sign, I dug around in my purse for my cell phone, and looked down to hit Mark’s work number. A blast from a car horn made me look up. In my rear view mirror a bearded man waved his arms in a “you gonna go, or aren’t you?” gesture.

He wasn’t in a blue Volvo, which was a shame, since I was looking for a sign.

Am I gonna go? Well, sir, that remains to be seen.

It’s Rocket Science

Kate was all hopped up at dinner. “Evan’s mom?” she said, in her sing-songy California-girl lilt. “So she came to school today? And she talked about her work? And she makes ROBOTS. And then? She sends them into OUTER-SPACE.”

“Oh. Really?” I said casually, ladling cooked carrots onto her plate, as if I’d sent a couple robots to outer-space myself that afternoon.

“And this one robot? Called Spirit?,” she continued breathlessly. “Well, it got STUCK on a planet. Up on THE MOON.”

“Actually it was Mars,” Mark corrected. (Smart aleck.)

“Oh yeah, Mars,” Kate went on. “So it got stuck there. Stuck!” Pause for dramatic effect, arms straight, palms down on the table.

“And so then?” she forged on, “Evan’s mom? She showed us pictures of all these robots she’s worked on. And then? We got to draw pictures of them and MAKE CARDS FOR SPIRIT.”

Now, drawing is Kate’s default no-fail super happy activity. And creating greeting cards is her knee-jerk response to nearly any emotional experience or moderately-noteworthy event.

A friend’s pet hamster dies? “I’m going to make a really special card,” she’ll say somberly. Paige’s preschool teacher sprains his ankle. “Please get my markers,” she’ll ask, like a doctor requesting a scalpel. “I have a card to make.” They’re out of the paper towels I like at the grocery store. “Maybe I should make the store owner a card, Mom? Do you think so?”

Aside from the things life tosses our way, there are the standard calendar holidays—St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Flag Day, Canadian Thanksgiving, Administrative Assistant’s Day. There are opportunities year-round that Kate seizes on to send her hand-drawn greetings out the world. It’s hard work, but she’s game for the challenge.

She’ll be the Intergalactic President and Creative Grand Poobah of Hallmark some day. Mark my words.

So anyway, Evan’s mom. As if the whole robot thing, and the space thing wasn’t mind-explodingly cool enough, the fact that there was also a heart-wrenching story to go with it all—Spirit’s tragic demise, inextricably stuck in martian soil—that was the ultimate piece de resistance for Kate.

She had never recounted a story from school with such gusto, detail, and emotion. And at the end of it, to think that the teacher uttered the words, “Let’s make cards.” It’s a wonder Kate didn’t implode with glee.

Now, not to be a sourpuss, but I couldn’t help but hear this story without thinking, how the hell does any other parent go into the classroom and follow that lead?

I can just picture Kate announcing proudly to her classmates, “My mom is coming in today to talk about being… a housewife!”

Imagine the shockwaves of excitement that would blast through the classroom. The kids will lunge at Kate, peppering her with a million frenetic questions. “Do you think she’ll tell us about doing laundry? Clipping coupons? Mopping up spills?”

At the end of my presentation, for the emotional finale, I can have the kids draw pictures of Paigey’s yellow pants. The ones that, despite my valiant efforts, I couldn’t get the grape juice stains out of.

We had to throw away those beloved pants. We shall miss them.

A friend is going through the all-consuming gut-wrenching private school application process we went through last year. We were chatting about the assessment part. For incoming kindergarteners it’s not so much an ‘interview’ as it is an ‘observed playdate’ with other kids.

Or, at least, that’s how they spin it. Because they certainly do lob questions at the kids while they’re playing. But since the parents are corralled off in another room, you don’t know exactly what they’re asking, or how your twerp is responding. Unless, of course, you interrogate them like a mad-woman once you get home. Like I did.

It turned out that almost every school asked the kids what their parents do.

“So what did you SAY?” I beseeched Kate. “What DOES Daddy do?”

“He’s an editor at Wired.  Um, Wired magazine.” she said, picking at a string on her sweater.

“YES!” Mark and I high-fived over her head.

“They asked what you do too, Mama,” Kate said looking up.

I stopped my mini she-got-an-answer-right dance and asked, “They did? And what did you say?”

“Writes a book,” she said quietly.

“NICE!” I bellowed, stabbing the air with my fist. (At the time, I had a now-neglected book proposal in the works.)

So, the gods were with me. Not only did Kate come up with the right answers (without coaching, no less!), she also dodged the whole host of unsavory housewifely duties she could have reported as my primary life’s undertaking. She could easily have said I “empty the dishwasher,” “cook hot dogs,” or “yell at us to hurry up.”

The truth is, what Kate thinks about what I do—or what I know about—has been the subject of past neurotic freak-outs. Mild freak-outs, mind you. But freak-outs nonetheless.

But I shouldn’t pin it all on Kate. Because it’s really ME who struggles with answering the simple question, “What do you do?”

It’s not that I don’t know the answer. I do, but it’s kind of a messy hodge-podge.

I’m a mom. A stay-at-home mom—sometimes. Because I sometimes manage projects for a web-design agency. Oh, and I blog. Though I hate the term mommy blogger. And do a little bit of freelance writing too. (Or, as Mark put it the other day, I’m a ‘write-tress.’ Which sounds a little too close to ‘waitress’ for my liking, but I still love the hilarious girlification of ‘writer.’ Girlification of any term is always good.)

So I know the answer. But aside from it being annoyingly discursive, I never like hearing what it is I’m saying. Or maybe I don’t like what I think it says about me. What it elicits in the minds of the people I’m talking to.

Instead, I want to tell people I’m a robotics engineer at NASA.

Is that so wrong?

Mark and I took the subway into SF for a holiday party at “the agency where I sometimes freelance.” We were both playing with our iPhones waiting for the train, and I asked him what his upcoming work travel looked like. To which he responded, “I’m in New York next week taping The Today Show, in Vegas for the first week of January, and then in March I’m back to Switzerland.”

Now, I don’t begrudge my husband his excellent career. He is so wicked super good at what he does, and he’s worked hard to do the cool things he gets to do. But hearing about all his upcoming fabulousless sent me into a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life spiral. By the time we got off the train I was dragging my knuckles on the ground in a woe-is-me funk.

Waaaaah! I might be taking the brilliant Motherboard story How To Act Like A Baby a little to much to heart. But—I want to stay in the new Wynn hotel! I want a fresh stamp in my passport! I want to schmooze with Matt Lauer in the green room!

What’s weird is, a few weeks earlier I heard from a old co-worker. Nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. Told me about an executive job opening at a super hot design agency. Hooked me up with his friend, who was all interested in getting me in for an interview.

Cool, right?

But then I stalled. I was supposed to send my resume, but days went by and I couldn’t muster the effort. It was such a fabulous role in such a uber-hip place—something I’d have clawed at like a rabid racoon a few years ago—but I just didn’t have it in me. So I ended up emailing the guy and saying the timing just wasn’t right.

I want the thrill and sexiness and intellectual stimulation of work. I want the cocktail party cool-job bragging rights. I want the paycheck. Hell, I want the wardrobe.

But I don’t want the endless droning conference calls, or the late nights assembling PowerPoint presentations. And I certainly don’t want the 50 hours a week away from my family. Because, despite the self-esteem flogging my current life sometimes serves up, I want to be with my kids as much as I can.

Call it old-school, but it’s just what feels right to me now.

Every time an old woman in the grocery store looks at the girls then says to me, “It goes by fast!” I practically tear up and hug her and say, “I know! I know! Paigey is already almost three years old! And she’s my baby!”

Anyway, I decided to email Space Robot Mom. I mean, I barely know the woman, but that never stops me. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m a poor role model for the “don’t talk to strangers” rule.

I told her how thrilled Kate was with her presentation. How interesting and super cool her work sounds. And how she’s definitely set the bar high for the mere-mortal parents of the other kids in Room 2. I told her I had a good laugh with some SAHM friends about the presentations we could do about our “jobs.”

I hit Send. Then I decided I was insane.

What the hell was I thinking? I’d have to withstand years of seeing this woman at school events with her giving me a WTF raised-eyebrow look. “Ah yes,” she’d think looking at me pityingly, “It’s that sad-sack housewife who was so bitter about my high-power career. WhatEV.”

But you know what? Here’s the crazy thing. She emailed me back almost right away. And she was SO COOL. I guess this woman is just so comprehensively cool that even my rantish mad-woman emails can’t make her flinch.

She was thrilled that Kate was inspired by her talk. She loves getting girls fired up about science and math. She apparently LOLed at my self-deprecation about my life as a domestic galley slave. She even said she was envious of MY life, on accounta I get to spend lots of time with the kidlings and she still struggles with the work-family balance.

A rocket scientist, jealous of me!

Then get this. She said, “Maybe after the holidays we can have a playdate or get coffee some time.”

How cool is that? I send her a deranged email putting my gigantic inferiority complex on display, and she wants to hang out! I think I’m going to like this chick.

I can’t wait to tell all the moms at the playground that I hang with the NASA set.

Hit the Road, Angel of Death

When I left Paigey’s preschool one morning a couple weeks ago, I noticed a klatch of women—other Mamas from the school—standing on the lawn. They were dabbing at the corners of their eyes with Kleenex.

It was clear something happened to someone at the school. And somehow I knew it was about a pregnancy.

In the crosswalk I caught up with a woman I knew. A mother of one of Paigey’s classmates. Tugging at her elbow, I implored without greeting her, “Okay, so what happened?”

And damn damn damn my intuition. I was right. A mom from the school whose due date was that very day, had a kicking healthy baby just the day before. But when she went to the hospital that morning, she found out that her baby had died.

So sickeningly sad. Someone said later it was strangled by its own umbilical chord. What brutal live-giveth-and-taketh-away irony.

“Oh God, oh God,” I said, wrapping my arms around my stomach on the sidewalk. “Do you know her name?” Because, as it turned out, I know a pregnant woman—someone I’ve worked with and like a great deal—whose son goes to the preschool. From her Facebook posts, I was pretty sure her due date was that day.

It turned out it was NOT my friend. That in that tiny school there were actually two women with the same due date. And although it didn’t diminish the tragedy of the whole thing, I still felt like I’d dodged a kind of bullet. If only by association.

Do you ever go through phases where your computer monitor fizzles and goes black, your car’s transmission gives out, and you drop your cell phone in the toilet? All in the same week? It’s as if there’s some mechanical technological curse on you. If you touch it, it will cease to function—invariably days after its warranty expired.

I feel like I’m currently in that mode, but with people.

Not long ago my sweet Uncle Adolph (no relation to the Nazi) passed away. It was his time. I mean, he was very old, and had been wrangling with Alzheimer’s. But those things make it no easier to grapple with the fact that someone who you knew is suddenly just not here any more.

Uncle Adolph was married to one of my mom’s favorite sisters, Scottie. I think her real name was Sophie, but I never once heard her called that. The two of them were known as “Scottie and Ade.” How much does that rock?

They lived in a small house on a big piece of land on the outskirts of mom’s home town. And what I remember of him is this: Uncle Adolph had a huge garden. In his day job, he was something else. A custodian of some sort, I think. But in his heart, he was a gardener.

We’d pick things from his garden in the evenings, right before dinnertime. He called cucumbers ‘cukes’ which was weird and cool to me. He didn’t talk much, but he’d wipe dirt off a big yellow squash or an eggplant or a strawberry and say, “Now THAT’S a good one,” then hand it to me.

We lived two hours away, so I didn’t see him often or know him very well. But it always felt special being welcomed as an insider into his garden world.

In fact, whenever I conjure a vegetable garden in my mind’s eye I see Uncle Adolph’s garden. I think of him most of the time I’m chopping up cukes too.

Early last week I got a sister-wide email. The four of us mass communicate this way sometimes. But the contents of this one were a bummer. Dad’s long-time neighbor and best friend Eddie had died. A man in his mid-80s, who you’d have sworn wasn’t a day over 65.

Dad and Eddie did projects. Built birdhouses, step-stools for grandchildren, and did all the standard house maintenance stuff. Eddie had a few years on my father, but was vivacious as all get out, and handy as hell. Dad would ask Eddie to help him do something like bring the AC units from the garage to the upstairs bedrooms. And I can’t say this for sure, but I picture Dad acting in more of a ‘supervisory’ role, while Eddie did the actual (and proverbial) heavy lifting. It wouldn’t be weird to see Eddie dangling from a tree in dad’s yard, sawing off a rotting branch.

Regardless of who did what, or whose tools they used, there was no score-keeping between those two. They were a good team.

Eddie’s wife passed away a couple months ago. He was understandably sad, but hanging in. Back to his projects and puttering, and eating occasional dinners at Dad’s. But then, per my sister’s email, the lights were on in the house when they shouldn’t have been, or something like that, which made Dad concerned. Especially when Eddie didn’t answer the phone.

So Dad let himself in with his key, and found his dear friend sitting slumped over the dinner table. Quietly, suddenly, gone.

Eddie will be sorely missed.

I spent a long time hiding death from Kate. Even if I was doing something like throwing away brown neglected house plants, if she asked me why I was doing it I’d avoid saying they “died.” Silly, I know, but I feared the domino effect of her busy mind. If a plant could die, then couldn’t a person? And if a person could die, then didn’t that mean me or her Dad—or other people she loves—could? Or even her?

I felt utterly unequipped to navigate those conversations. I hate thinking about all that stuff myself. So why not extend her innocence for as long as possible?

Around that time I came across an old book of mine that Kate nearly-instantly love love loved. Oh, and me too. It’s called Koko’s Kitten, and it’s about that gorilla, Koko, who learned to communicate using sign language. And if that wasn’t cute enough, she also became friends with a kitten.

Big tough gorilla. Wee wittle kitten. Lots of pictures of them snuggling. Name one thing better.

I read the book dozens of times to Kate, always avoiding the part where the kitty cat, All Ball, gets killed. Yes, this amazing story of cross-species friendship takes a sudden tragic turn when All Ball gets offed by a car. A brutal plot twist even for us grown-ups. Thankfully, with a pre-literate toddler it’s fairly easy to bluff your way through the sad parts.

I guess one of the reasons I hid death from Kate for so long has to do with my own childhood experience of coming to understand death. I remember it so clearly. I was in the car with my mom, driving by Almacs grocery store, and I suddenly pieced together the fact that “old people die” and my grandmother (Mom’s mom) was old.

I was sobbing. Struck with panic over the unfairness of it. Heartbroken by the thought of Bopchi being gone.

My mother, ever the realist, responded to my fearful questions by saying something like, “Well, yes, she probably will die soon.”

Note: This did not make me feel better.

This is why, after the devastation in Haiti, when Kate nervously asked if we have earthquakes in San Francisco, I paused for a beat then said, “Noooooooo. Earthquakes HERE? Never happen.”

But Kate’s a world-weary kindergartener now. Today’s five-year-olds seem like the third-graders of my youth. Which is to say, she’s hip to death. Our friends’ pets have died. Kate knows my mom died before she was born. And, thanks to my NPR habit, she’s heard on the car radio about soldiers, bomb victims, and others dying. (Try as I do, turning down the volume after something unsavory is broadcast never seems to work.)

Sometimes weighty news like the death of her great grandpa barely registers with Kate. I’ve actually wanted her to feel sadder. (Guess I’ve come a long from the days of throwing out house plants that “weren’t happy anymore.”) Then Kate surprises me by sobbing on her bed and drawing ‘I Miss You’ cards for a neighborhood cat we barely knew.

It must be her way of regulating only what she can manage to process. I should have trusted Nature to have built into her something that helps her do that.

As for me, the day of the sad drop-off at Paige’s school I saw my still-prego friend Margot at afternoon pick-up. I was so thrilled, so very relieved to see her in her healthy baby-filled state, I nearly took a running leap to straddle her belly in a full-body hug.

But I was even happier to hear that nearly two weeks after she was scheduled to make her appearance, her cute-as-the-dickens long-lashed baby girl was born. Hooray! Mother and baby are all aglow and love-drenched and healthy (if not a bit frustrated by all the waiting).

Take that, Angel of Death.

Thankful It’s Not Yesterday

If only days were like Scrabble tiles. I’d like to trade a few in for new ones.

If Scrabble rules applied to life I’d definitely toss yesterday back in the bag. And probably the day before that too.

Because on Monday I found out an old friend came back to see me. My ulcer. For realz.

I know it seems like ulcers are something aging down-on-their-luck alcoholic cigar-smoking men get. And though I aspire to such a profile, I currently don’t quite fit it.

Yet, I’ve had an ulcer before. In college, oddly. I was living in Paris at the time, and I remember having episodes of stomach pain that were so intense I’d be walking down the street and have to lean against a building to stay upright.

I was a not-really-starving student. The program I was studying with was fairly rigorous academically. So there was some stress there. And when I wasn’t studying I was acting like an American college co-ed in Par-ee. Which meant going out with my trash-talkin’ American compadres to decidedly un-French bars (our fave was called The Front Page) and drinking decidedly un-French booze (namely, tequila).

Let’s just say, conversing with a gastroenterologist in French will really take your language skills to the next level. Of course, I’ve forgotten them all now, but I added a nice group of vocab words like ‘stomach lining,’ ‘gastric acid,’ and ‘cyclooxygenase’ to my repertoire.

Okay, so I really can’t even say that last one in English. But it’d rock if I could.

When I got back to the States, my parents sent me to what they considered “a real doctor” (i.e. an American). The guy asked me some questions, ordered some tests, and handed my mother a business card for a psychiatrist. The thinking being that my stomach was out of whack because I had my head screwed on wrong.

But really, I was my same sassy happy-go-lucky self back then. I’d come clean if there was reason to, but I think it was the un-holy trinity of school stress, tequila (which was a cheap way to tie one on), and an occasional cigarette (which was a cheap way to look cool) that were the real culprits.

In fact, the second doc my mother ushered me to—insulted by the first’s implications about my mental health—described my malady in simple terms. “What you’ve got,” he said to me, laying it on the line “is a weak gut.”

My mother relayed this line to my sisters, who found it uproarious. Judy still sometimes points her finger my way and asks, “You know what you’ve got? A weak gut!” then howls with laughter.

The thing is, these days, I can’t for the life of me figure out what brought this hell-belly back. I ain’t stressed out, I swear. And I only really smoke cigars on Tuesday nights, when I pour myself a tall glass of rye and settle down in front of The Housewives of Atlanta.

Jes’ kidding.

Yesterday started with a sunrise trip to a lab for blood work. I’d spent the day before home with a soupy-coughed Paigey, so yesterday I REALLY needed to make progress at my freelance gig. So I arrived at the lab just after it opened at 7:30. And waited. And then found out that one of the tests I needed to do they didn’t have at that lab. So I needed to go somewhere else.

But first I consented to having my blood taken. Because it seemed that it would legitimize my wait. And because the phlebotomist didn’t have a large tattoo across his forehead reading INCOMPETENT.

Which he really really should have.

He stabbed me with a needle, then muttered, “Well there WAS blood comin’ at first, but why’d it just stop?” To which I replied weakly, “Uh, I’m a fainter. I really can’t deal with the play-by-play.”

I’m truly too queasy to even recount the ensuing trauma, other than to say that he jabbed that needle around in my vein like he was trying to pick up a carnival toy with a metal claw. When I peeled off the gauze-and-tape bandage hours later, my elbow pit was streaked with purple and red bruises the likes of which’d make a heroine junkie gag.

Ah-ha! That’s why I’d been feeling like my forearm was going to detach and fall to the ground all day!

Post blood-taking hell, I zipped back home. Picked up Kate to bring her to kindergarten. Brought Paige to her school in a torrential downpour. Asked P’s teacher kindly, “Could she please not play outdoors today? She’s just getting over being sick.”

To which I was informed “ALL the children play outside no matter WHAT the weather is.”

So I looked down at Paigey, rain dripping from the visor of her yellow raincoat. She looked so small. I thought about us boarding a cross-country plane the next day, and just then she let out a loogy-ish cough.

I sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll take her with me then.”

Okay, so Paige in tow, I’m off to Lab #2. I get there, park, schlep bedraggled Paige through the rain-swept parking lot where she strides through every puddle. Elevetor to 3^rd floor, find the suite number, wait for snide receptionist to look at me, and discover they don’t have the test I need either.

Hooray!

Repeat parking lot adventure at Lab #3. But they HAVE the test! In the waiting room Paige is actually adorable. She “reads” from a Beatrix Potter book for all the other test-needing waiters, and moves the book in an arc around her after every page so they can see the pictures.

I have a haircut in SF in 35 minutes. The nurse calls my name. I may actually not be late! But then I blow air into a bag, drink some Crystal-light-like stuff, and am told I have to wait 15 minutes to blow in another bag again.

Did I mention that I was also fasting for this test? By the time I careened out of Lab #3’s parking lot hell-bent for San Fran, it was nearly 11:00AM and Mama was HUN-gree.

I called Mark and told him, “Surprise! You get Paige!” After my haircut (priorities straight) I REALLY did need to go to the office and get some work done. So, like a hot potato, I foisted Paigey Waigey at Mark in his office parking lot and zipped off like roadrunner (my legs a circular blur) to the hair salon.

Settling in for my cut and color I thought, NOW. Now is when my day gets good.

Despite my lateness, I’d stopped at a café for a croissant because the alien that now lives in my stomach gets VERY cranky without food. (I can now imagine the sweet relief Sigourney felt when that thing finally busted out of her.) Finally, with the fasting behind me, I could take the first of my Weak Gut pills and let the healin’ begin.

Sad, isn’t it, when my idea of a good time is shoving ulcer meds in my mouth while waiting for someone to cover up my gray roots. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. Just for a sec.

Then I felt hands on my shoulders. I looked up to see Susan, my ever-faithful long-time hair guru, looking at me through the reflection in the mirror. I smiled.

“So,” she said with a big exhale. “This will be the last time I do your hair. I’m moving to LA!”

I closed my eyes again. Maybe I should just wait until tomorrow for my day to get better.