Mama On the Loose

Kate made herself a first-aid kit this week. And ever since she’s been lying in wait, hoping desperately for someone, anyone, to get hurt.

She came up with this idea when I was on the phone. Because there’s no better time to talk to me than when I want to talk to someone else.

“Can I have a plastic bag?” she bellowed into my face at close range. “I’m making a first-aid kit.”

And over my voice saying, “No, Kate. Not now,” my friend Megsy says through the phone line, “I just love it! That girl is too much.” So I instantly soften, feeling guilty about my sometimes knee-jerk ‘no’ response, and hand Kate a plastic sandwich-sized Ziplock. The environment be damned.

I’ve been grinding into a new routine, having just taken on some freelance work with the agency I was at this spring. I shouldn’t balk. With most of the summer off and all September free to help the girls adjust to school, the timing is actually perfect. I’ve considered the thought that more kid-free time at home might eventually result in—gasp!—my feeling bored. And the hope is that I can contain the part-time gig to the kids’ school schedules.

That’s at least the hope.

But the week started with a two-day trip to Seattle for a meeting. Travel the same week that I’m off to New Yawk solo to play with Mike and Lorin. Suddenly so much alone time—or at least time away from the kids—seems an embarrassment of riches.

So much so that an hour-plus trip to Target on Sunday left me suddenly floored by an intense Mama pang of missing the girls. Seeing a mom push her drooling baby through the store side-swiped me with an intense blow of sadness.

Why would I ever choose to be away from my kids? Why wasn’t I with them this very minute? I suddenly craved them madly, and considered abandoning my teeming shopping cart to run to the parking lot and speed home.

All this just the day before boarding a plane for an overnight work trip. I was starting to think I’d have to be forced down the jet-way at gunpoint, weeping and projectile lactating.

But then, I survived. The girls were fine with staying at school all day on Monday, and a call home to them that evening found them happily cooking dinner together.

“We’re fine!” Mark sang out. “The girls are great! They both had good days at school. How you doin’, honey?”

And just like that, with a snap of the finger, my Mama guilt and worry evaporated. I was lightened. Able to, after hanging up, sink into the happy solitude of a not-fabulous-but-fine hotel. Stiff clean sheets, climate-controlled AC, and back-to-back episodes of Law & Order.

And now, days later, I’m alone again. En route to New York to celebrate one of my BFF’s birthdays alone, like a big girl. My treat for the solo parenting I did this summer while Mark took work trips to France and other kid-free, grown-up, fancy-dinners-out-on-the-company kinda places. Places where no one asked him to wipe their bottom after they pooped. (At least as far as I know.)

A few days ago I felt like the New York trip was too much, too soon. Was I sufficiently starved for alone time to substantiate it? I felt like I’d been given a gift card to some fancy store I lust after, but suddenly couldn’t find a single thing I wanted to buy. My timing was tragically off.

And last night, telling a doze-y Paige I’d be away for a couple days, that she and Kate and Dad were flying East to meet me then we’d go to Grandpa’s, she came to a bit and reached out for me. “But I love you, Mama! I love you!” This being her recent response to anything worthy of drama.

Crawling into her bed, I scooped her up in a spoon snuggle and whispered into her neck how very very much I loved her too. And I wondered if I really had the selfish courage to get on that plane in the morning.

But, I did. And here I am in Seat 19D, using the blank space on the ad pages of a People magazine to write. (Some day I’ll find a laptop small enough to carry around.) And I’m totally okay.

In the airport this morning I sipped a perfect chai latte and smiled at all the babies I saw. I am alone. I am content. I love everyone.

And I know Mark and the girls will be perfectly fine without me. If anyone can pack a lunch and remember school forms and calm demonic tantrums, it’s that exceptional husband of mine.

And if things really go well, maybe—for Kate’s sake at least—someone will get hurt.

Speaking with the Fairies

I vowed to never be a pony-renting birthday party mom. No juggling clowns, jumpy houses, or elaborate expensive goody bags. I decided some time ago that simple sweet parties were the key to raising my kids all wholesome and well-balanced.

Plus, I figured hype-free parties would be less stressful.

But then last year, I was overwhelmed—nay, terrified—by the prospect of entertaining a slew of raucous four-year-olds in our small back yard. (Yes, the guest list grossly exceeded my long-ago best laid plans for wee intimate birthdays.). So I rented a jumpy house. A big princessy pink castle jumpy house.

And then this year, well this year a meltdown at California Pizza Kitchen informed it all. I swear we don’t go there very often, but for some reason it’s a blog-worthy spot.

So there we were, in our CPK booth, awaiting our CPK personal pizzas and my half Waldorf, and Kate mentioned how super duper wicked excited she was for her friend Casey’s party. The party wherein a fairy—a real live bee-ooooo-tiful fairy with wings and a flower crown and everything—was going to not only paint faces and make balloon animals, but do a magic show too.

Kate’s anticipation for this party was so intense I imagined her pituitary gland transmitting jolts of unicorn hallucinations throughout her system. For weeks she was bathed in a heroin-high haze of pixie dust, and mind-numbing glee at the thought of a corner slice of cake with a blue frosting rose.

Yeah, so she was excited.

And then Mark laid it on her. Right there in our CPK booth. “Actually, honey, you know how we decided to go visit Aunt Judy? Well, it turns out we’re going to be in Palm Springs for Casey’s party.” And just to be sure his dire message was clear he added, “So you won’t get to go to the party after all.”

At which point Kate clenched both sides of her head in an Edward Monk-ian scream and began what was to be a long, loud, and active grieving period.

Even though Kate’s ensuing hunger strike and black armband seemed like extreme expressions of parental condemnation, I did feel bad. We had told her we were going to the party. I did read her the invitation daily (at her request) until she could recite it from memory. (“Be sure to arrive by 12:30 when the magic will begin!”) And I was a coward, putting off telling her myself so Mark had to share the bad news.

So I did what any mother who is heartbroken about her child’s heartbreak does. I called Casey’s mom to find out how to rent a fairy.

She gave me the straight scoop. “What I liked about these fairies,” she said, “is that they’re not Disney characters.”

“Oh good. That’s good!” I said. I was taking notes like a first-year law student.

“And communicating with them is interesting,” she added. But I was too busy scribbling down the URL she gave me, like some junkie with a line on a dealer, to take much note of anything else she said.

It was a month before Kate’s birthday. “Oh Kate,” I thought, with an aren’t-I-clever Hollywood-grade chuckle. “You WILL get your fairy.”

But seconds later on the website, my scheming laughter turned to perverse fascination. This was no two-bit get-a-fairy-and-a-jumpy-house combination party pack kinda place. This was all fairies. Serious fairies. With serious fairy names, like Miss Violet and Miss Acorn. There were gauzy sun-drenched photos of each one wearing wings, flower-wreath halos, and shimmery flowing dresses. They had long wavy hair cascading around their shoulders like some Vidal Sassoon Shampoo wet dream.  They were seated on mossy rocks at river’s edges and in flower filled meadows. One super hot blond was even nuzzling a real white bunny rabbit.

It was intense. It was compelling. It was kinda pervy.

It was definitely NOT Disney.

Clicking on each fairy’s main photo took me to a bio page with more glossy pics and background info on each gal. Things like “she came to our family in a whirl of sparkle,” (our family?!) “she  likes to sing songs way high up in the tree tops to the squirrels,” and other ‘qualifications’ like being a clown college grad or former nanny.

Anyway, I couldn’t porn out on the whole thing without getting my hubbie in on it. Besides, it had been seven minutes since I’d called Mark at his office.

“Okay so check this site out,” I said giving him the URL. “I feel like I’m hiring a call girl.”

After we hung up I imagined a bunch of guys in Mark’s office crowding behind his desk, obsessing over the site over his shoulder.

As for me, back at the house, I found I was a bit gun-shy about calling them. Who should I say I wanted? Did I go for experience or looks? And could the acorn fairy face-paint anything besides the poorly-rendered Blues Clues dog that appeared in one picture?

Plus, for the trifecta—magic show, face-painting, and “balloon twisting” (I guess that extends beyond just animals)—it was stupidly expensive. Fairies, it turns out, don’t come cheap.

But my thoughts of how excited Kate’d be—and what the hell I’d do with twenty-some sugar-crazed kids on my own—spurned me on. So I dialed.

No answer. The voice on the answering machine was shrill—a woman intentionally making her voice high-pitched and sing-songy, achieving an effect best described as demented. Her outgoing message mentioned something about her “being in a goblin class until two o’clock.” (Now does Goblin 101 meet on Tuesday-Thursdays? Or is it a Monday-Wednesday-Friday class?)

At any rate, I managed to leave a message using my very own voice. I didn’t get reeled into that thing where someone talks with a drawl and you talk back with one even though you were raised in Indiana.

The next day, as I walked in the door from somewhere and unburdened myself of heavy children and whining grocery bags, I hit play on the machine. “Why hello-ooo, Kristen!” the munchkin-woman voice trilled out. ” It’s Trixie! Why I was so verrrrry happy to get your call. Hoo-ray! But I guess I’ve missed you. Tee hee hee!”

I quickly hit Stop before Kate heard. And before I had to hear any more.

Eventually, after a voicemail exchange that included a glass-shatteringly shrill “Tag! Yoooou’re it!” message, Trixie (who I thought of as the madam of the fairies) and I reverted to email. But even there, the messages I received were rife with “[smile]” and “[wink!].”

I guess that’s just how fairies communicate. Constant reminders of their cuteness, wee-ness and girlishness. As if we could ever forget.

Several laps into this surreal communication sworl I finally received some actual helpful information. Yes there was a fairy who could work at our party. Just one fairy was left for hire that day.

Of course, I ran to the website to check her out. I was both crestfallen and unsurprised to see that the fairy who was free, the last puppy of the litter, the last-ditch consolation-prize party nymph, was—okay so it might sound kinda mean—but she was by far the uncute-est of the fairies. Maybe even a bit kinda “homely,” as my mother would say.

I was dismayed. I called Mark. Our child’s fifth-birthday fairy call girl was the bottom of the woodland barrel.

Damn me and my procrastination! Of course all the more organized mothers snatched up all the cute sexy fairies first. Poor Kate and her friends would be doing that thing you do when you see an ugly baby. Wanting nothing more than to say, “She’s beautiful!” but having to drum up alternate compliments. “Your wings, Miss Mushroom! Why, they are so long and lustrous!” “Your eflin shoes! How they curl so at the toes!”

But a day or two into sharing my frumpy fairy misery with a few friends, I started to come around. “Maybe,” I said to an amiga, lounging in the sun at her swim club, “Maybe Miss Mushroom will teach the girls that knowledge of math and science will get them further in life than a dewy complexion and a button nose? Or—you don’t have to be cute to make sound investment choices? And if you fling around enough glitter fairy dust, people won’t be able to really see you anyway!”

I was starting to feel preemptively defensive and protective of Miss Mushroom. By the end of the week I’d transformed my mental picture of her from the fugly fairy to an up-and-coming feminist intellectual. Like some young Simone de Beauvoir or thick-calved Hillary Clinton. I was hatching plans to take her into our home, set her up in the downstairs bedroom. We’d help her pay her way through Berkeley so she could quit the fairy gig once and for all. We’d emancipate her from her evil-voiced madam, Trixie. She’d become a beloved family member, a big sister and role model to the girls.

A couple days before the party I was slopping the kids’ dinner on plastic plates, while swilling a glass of wine. It was that early evening chaotic hell-realm time of day when everyone’s cranky, fried, and hungry. The phone rang.

“Hey, is this Kristen?”

“Yes.”

“Oh hey, it’s Miss Mushroom,” the woman said.

I gasped! After only communicating with her madam, after talking her up for weeks to Kate, it was her. Miss Mushroom. In the telephonic flesh!

But what shocked me as much as her sudden presence on the phone line was her voice. It was kinda gravelly. I mean, not like Marge Simpson’s chain-smokin’ sisters or anything. But definitely no affected lilting fairy voice. Like not even trying a little tiny bit to sound like she could fly, or at least heal wounded wildlife.

“Yeah so I just wanted to run through the details of the party and stuff,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. “Turns out I’m not that far from you, which is cool.”

She was like some urban hipster fairy.

I felt a bit sad, somewhat let down as I ran through the “in our backyard” “eleven o’clock” “magic show first, then face-painting” details. I realized I was missing the magic. The magic I’d hated. The fake fake fairy-voiced magic.

But not long after hanging up I’d managed to shake it off. Despite how she came across on the phone, one look at her gossamer wings and the kids would be smitten. (And they were.) And the whole reason I hired Miss Mushroom was to avoid having to entertain the teeming throng of kids myself.

Besides, next year when I revert to the “small picnic in the park with a few close friends” I won’t have to worry about these things. I mean, you know, I’ll do the small picnic thing, or buckle again and go the pony-ride rental route.

Only time will tell.

Please Review the Chart, Doctor

Yard sales reveal people’s souls.

I mean, aside from seeing someone’s chipped dishes and pilly wool sweaters, you see their cast-off books. And that’s really where it’s all laid bare.

I mean, I laughed about this when I was selling crap in front of my old SF swingles pad years ago. I had a slew of dealing-with-the-loss-of-a-loved-one tomes. None that I actually ever read, mind you. Even my mother’s death couldn’t bring me to read a self-help book.

The story my yard sale items conveyed to folks stopping by my stoop seemed to be, “This girl needs help, but she’s not getting it.” At least not from these books with un-cracked binders.

Of course, noting this with with my friends delighted me. A couple beers into our sale I was making people volume-discount offers. “You want that coffee maker? How about we toss in this Donna Karan tank top, and a copy of Rabbi Grollman’s Living With Loss, Healing With Hope? I’ll make you a deal you can’t resist!”

It’s this kind of thing that I find funny.

Anyway, if you want to get your finger on the pulse of the McClusky family’s current issues, go no further than our refrigerator. That’s where, amidst the birthday party invitations, emergency contact numbers, and magnetic letters, you’ll find our charts.  Specifically, Kate’s ‘Putting On Shoes’ chart.

Because, when Kate is required to wear anything other than flip flops or Crocs, well, let’s just say it’s not pretty. Not at all pretty. But aside from my fears that a lifetime of Croc-wearin’ will cause her feet to splay into ungainly knobby troll feet, there are also (blessedly) school rules about footwear.

But making the switch is brutally painful. Anything remotely binding—shoes or clothing—sets Miss Kate off into fits, as if we, her loving parents, are burying her alive.

We’ve tried pleading, coaxing, and buying expensive sparkly sneakers that were acceptable in stores then rejected later at home. And we’ve tried good old-fashioned might too. “You WILL put those shoes on this instant!”

Turns out, none of those tactics work.

So, we’ve made a chart. Which is to say, we’ve resorted to long-range bribery. If she puts her shoes on in the morning with no screaming, wailing, or other full-head-rotation Exorcist-like behavior, she gets to put a sticker on her chart. Get ten and we’ll buy her a new book. (It’s no Barbie Dream House, but it seems to be sufficient incentive to make the system work.)

And hopefully by the point the end-goal is reached, putting on shoes will have become an easy-breezy part of Kate’s morning ritual.

Although Mark’s mother is coming to visit next week, and I seem to remember Kate having had another shoe-puttin’-on chart when she was here once before… Ah well.

The other chart on the fridge is Paigey’s. Her issue? Popping out of her Big Girl Bed. Calling out to us in endlessly repeating cycles through the night. General night-time hell-raising. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Feel. My. Pain. Please.

Mark labeled Paigey’s chart her Sleep Chart, but when he blearily made it yesterday morning, I know he really wanted to call it ‘Paige’s Stay the Fuck in Bed Chart.’

This is Paige’s first chart and it’s giving Kate one more big-sis opportunity to show little Wigs the ropes. Because, in case you were unaware, Kate is the authority on everything. Absolutely everything.

So our breakfast conversation yesterday went something like, “When you get ten stickers you get something, Paigey.” (This in Kate’s patronizing sing-songy voice.) “Maybe you want a Mickey Mouse toy? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Paige? Well you just need to get ALL the stickers, then we’ll go out and you can pick out ANY Mickey Mouse—”

At which point I jumped in with my oft-spoken “I’M the mother! Thanks, Kate” refrain.

God knows I could use a few charts of my own. But I prefer to keep my self-improvement on the down low.

Besides, I shudder at the thought of Mark emerging from the basement office with a print-out and sitting me down. “Now, Kristen. This is your new chart, and this is how it’s going to work…”

Love Tackles

I don’t know the first thing about football, but in getting to know—and love—Mark’s college friends, I’ve learned a thing or two about tackling.

The night before our wedding, there was a lobster bake in a tent in my dad’s backyard. It was where Mark and I got that first intense wedding-weekend hit of love from so many fine folk coming from far afield to see us get marinated. It was also, it so happens, the same day my father kidnapped our friend Gary. But that’s another story.

So there I was reveling in the love and the people and the chardonnay and the Rhode Island summer heat, chatting with someone or other, when I was suddenly, quite literally, swept off my feet. It was one of those “it happened so fast” kinda moments. I wasn’t sure where it came from or what it was, but I found myself lifted up and then pinned down onto my father’s desk. The perpetrator—whose head was tucked down somewhere in my midsection—was human. But that was all I could tell.

It took longer than my barely-there patience could handle to determine what was happening. But then the perp looked up, and with her huge grin and mop of strawberry blond hair yelled in high-def close range, “We are HERE, girlfriend! Let the games begin!”

It was Becca. Mark’s glorious fabulous college friend, Becca. Whose house I have the great pleasure of being at this very weekend. In what has most-excellently become an annual pilgrimage to Minnesota for lakeside hi-jinx. Because, six years and six children between us later, we are still giddy-tackle happy to see each other. Though blessedly, in recent reunions she has not knocked the wind out of me.

I mean, I really shouldn’t be pointing fingers here. Since another of Mark’s divine college cohorts, the aforementioned kidnapped Gary—or Uncle Gary as he’s now known to the kidlings—is here with us too. And years before Becca ever tackled me on my wedding weekend, I had the social misfortune of tackling him.

I blame it all on the event’s bartender, who clearly over-served me. Or maybe it was the humid Midwestern lakefront air that clouded my judgment. At any rate, we were at another of Mark’s college friend’s matrimonial celebrations. And I’d had a few.

I was walking from some lake-facing veranda back into the room with the band. And there was Gary. Standing on or near the dance floor. Looking so, well, tackle-able. Some so-bad-it’s-good 80s song was playing, and like some figure skater who visualizes a move before taking to the ice, I saw in my mind’s eye what I would do. That I would run up to Gary, jump with my legs outstretched to straddle his waist, and we would swing jauntily about the dance floor. Like some Travolta-Thurman dance scene from Pulp Fiction.

Compelled by alcohol-borne bad judgment and feeling exceedingly exuberant I ran with the chin-down determination of an Olympic pole-vaulter, and threw myself upon the utterly unawares (and might I add slight-of-build) Gary.

And let’s just say what happened looked nothing like what I’d envisioned.

I flattened him to the ground like a fly. He was stunned, dismayed, and likely injured. I imagine the dress of my skirt landed in a position that revealed parts of me best left to the bride’s grandmother’s imagination.

It was mortifying, and yet, Gary’s good nature managed to rise above. In my vodka-soaked haze I seem to remember him lending me a shoulder as we both limped off the dance floor, me slurring loud apologies in his ear.

Good times.

Ever the mini-me, Kate kept the flame alive when Gary met up with us earlier today. Since his arrival she’s been climbing onto his back and hanging off his neck like one of those long-armed monkey dolls. Despite our once-yearly time together, she’s instantly drawn to him. And though she may nearly choke the dear man with affection at times, she hasn’t (thus far) leveled him to the ground.

With Kate on Gary like her own personal climbing wall, in the other room toddlers Paige and Leo are squaring off. Squatting down and looking each other straight in the eyes, they lunge forward like two Sumo wrestlers going in for the kill. Paige has six months on Leo, so their playing ground is fairly even now. But by next year’s trip he’ll clearly dominate their happy head-butting encounters.

And so the tackling continues. Passed on to the next generation.

As for us big kids, in an hour or so when we arrive at the lake house, I expect the most tackling we’ll be doing will involve the cases of beer that Becca’s husband and Gary both brew by profession. But don’t for a minute think that means we love each other any less.

Hotline to Dada

I have a sister named Marie. I’ll wait a minute while you go ahead and make your Italian-American pot shots about her name. 

Done?

Okay then. Well, on Monday she and her family came over to hang out before going out to dinner for my dad’s birthday. 

Marie is 12 years older than me. And she started younger on the baby-making. So, my two- and four-year-olds have cousins who are 19 and 21.

Since we live a country’s-length apart, we rarely get to see them. They are “big boys,” and handsome to boot. So Kate and Paige were in hardcore show-off flirty-girl modes. We were all convened in the living room, where the girls had a captive audience.

There was some dancing, some serving of wooden toy cupcakes, and some modeling of pigtails. And at one point Paige grabbed a cordless phone off the coffee table, dialed what seemed to be a number in Tokyo, and commenced a long smiley please-watch-me-being-so-cute conversation. Everyone seemed to enjoy this part of the show, so I didn’t immediately grab the phone away from her. 

As she coyly babbled, someone asked who she was talking to. 

“Dadda!” she announced. “Hi Dadda! Hi Dadda!”

Eventually, I took the phone from her and hung it up. We had a reservation to make.

The nine of us started in on various coat-fetching and bathroom-visiting activities. During that wave of pre-departure mayhem, Mark called from Whistler. “I’ll call him from the car!” I bellowed to my dad, while yanking boots onto Kate. 

When we finally connected en route to the restaurant, Mark tells me, “So I called your Dad’s house about ten minutes ago. Before the phone even rang I hear Paige saying, ‘Hi Dadda!’ and giggling.”

Mark spent the next few minutes having a one-sided chat with Paigey Wigs, who looked around the living room at us wide-eyed, triumphantly announcing, “Dadda! Dadda!”

When Mark urged her, “Okay, Paige, give the phone to Mama now,” she began on a round of “Mama Dada! Mama Dada!” And of course, kept clutching the phone.

Cracking up, Mark finally gave up and hung up. Attempts to call back resulted in a long stream of busy signals.

And now? Paige is convinced that all the phones at my dad’s house are direct lines to Mark.

And really, why shouldn’t she be?

Over the past couple days if she’s out of my sight for a minute, I’ll likely hear her chanting, “Dada! Dada! Dada!” It’s a sure-fire tip-off that she’s found a phone.

Poor dear. As it is, she’s been climbing into bed with me in the morning and asking ”Oooh Dada?” which I’ve interpreted to mean “Where’s my father who’s usually here with you, and why the hell has he been gone for so long?” Turns out she doesn’t understand about the whole Olympics thing—that they’re far away and they go on for a while. And then, after spending so much play-time “calling” Mark on toy phones, she finally found one that really makes contact. But whenever she gets ahold of it, I wrestle it away from her.

The reality is, if it weren’t for my fear that she’ll dial her way to Denmark, I’d love for her to think she can summon Mark at will. She’s got plenty of time to understand the true logistics of telephonics. In the meantime, I’m doing my best not to dash the illusions of a Daddy’s girl.

The Thrill of Snarkery

Am I the only one who wonders if the figure skating couples are doing it?

I mean, I think in the supers along the bottom of the screen they should indicate their country of origin, their standing in the games, and their relationship status. Like “Married” or “Skating Partners with Bennies” or maybe “Hooked Up One Night in the Rink Locker Room But Otherwise Not Together.”

As a viewer, wouldn’t knowing that—instead of spending the whole time wondering—help you to focus more on their skating? I know it would for me. 

At any rate, my hubby is at the Olympics right now. As a reporter, not an athlete. And while he covers the Winter Games in a professional capacity, I’m embracing a full-bore amateur peanut-gallery approach to tuning in from home.

And by home I mean home, as in Rhode Island, where we’re watching on an arcane Tivo-less TV. It’s crazy old school, but oddly quite liberating knowing we can’t pause to go tinkle, or rewind to get a second look at a failed triple salchow. If we miss something, it’s just gone. So we let what we see just wash over us, easy breezy. 

My father, a self-professed die-hard sports retard (there’s a reason I can’t follow a football game), has been a surprisingly fine viewing partner. 

The thing is, we’re dangerous with a little information. You see, Mark traveled to Chicago a couple months ago for a press thing with some Olympic athletes. One thing he learned there was that the cross-country skiers take around 40 to 45 pairs of skis with them to every race. Their equipment is that fine-tuned to the various snow conditions. 

Like me, Dad really dug this factoid. And in typical fashion, was soon relaying it to someone else with an air of authority—except he said each athlete has 80 to 85 pairs of skis on hand.

Okay, so I think he really said 60-something. But the point is, the guy likes to exaggerate. And I have to confess to a sight propensity for exaggeration myself.

We watched the opening ceremony, which is always just a heckle-fest fashion show. But this year, as the screen flashed the populations of each country, and the number of athletes attending from each, we took it up a level. You know, we had some behind-the-scenes insights that not every Dick and Jane watching fom home was hip to. 

Me: “China population: 1.3 billion. Number of athletes attending: 90. Number of cross country skis?” I look over to the other couch.

Dad: “Two thousand!” 

So we had some fun with that.

The other thing I can’t help but do, is the age-old asking of, “You have that shirt, don’t you, Dad?” when the male figure skaters take to the ice in tri-colored shreds of polyester, with large flesh-tone Vs that give the illusion (to Nancy Kerrigan’s mother, at least) of a bare chest.

But each costume is worse than the last, and eventually even I tired of that one.

This time next week I’ll be rink-side myself, having returned to Cali to drop the kids at home with my mother-in-law (God bless her). My dear collegiate frienda Brenda and I just couldn’t let Mark’s work-sponsored condo go to waste. We have tickets to two events, hopes of getting into more, and plans to drink like we’re 19 again. 

In the meantime, my sweet spouse is knee-deep in work. A crowd-averse guy, he’s told me about densely-packed crowds at Whistler, and jockeying for space in the immense press center. But despite the hordes of humanity, it turns out he knows nearly no one else there.

When we talk I ask if he’s had a chance to get out to a bar, to mix it up a bit in the international crowd—get swept up in the revelry. But thus far, he’s just been dropping into bed at day’s end, as spent as if he’d run the giant slalom several times himself. 

If you’re lucky enough to be in the Whistler/Vancouver area these days, and you see a cute guy with a lap-top back pack and reporter’s notebook—skinny, on the taller side, brown hair, Oakleys—that well may be my Valentine.

Tell him I miss him madly and can’t wait to see him next week. Then please, take him out for a drink for me.

Tell Me that Story Again

Last week I did two things I never do. I turned on the TV when both girls were awake. (I think Paigey’s still too wee to develop a boob tube habit). And I tuned in to—of all things—a telethon. Specifically, the ‘Hope for Haiti Now’ telethon.

Weird, right? But in my defense, replacing Jerry Lewis with George Clooney goes a long way in my book. And it was for a good cause.

Anyway, the second the TV clicked on, Kate ran out of her room like a junkie moving in on a fix. It was both thrilling and confusing to her.

“Wait, the TV?” she asked in a frenzy. “Are YOU watching TV, Mama? Can I watch too? Please? Please?!”

I swear the girl would happily watch Hogan’s Heroes if I let her.

But this was music. People strumming guitars and soulfully singing songs like “Let It Be.” So I figured, what could it hurt? She perched on the arm of the couch and immediately went into a glassy-eyed zombie stare, letting the TV’s narcotic hit wash over her.

Then Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood started talking about some courageous man, and it seemed likely they were about to get into the details of how the dude had died. So I hit Mute, and when Kate protested I made up some excuse .

Eventually I decided to venture into the what-happened-in-Haiti waters. Age-appropriately, I hoped. “Blah blah blah earthquake… Blah blah people got hurt… Blah blah houses fell down, everyone very poor. People there need help. And money.”

More music, volume back up, and me in the kitchen to check the roasting veggies.

Kate, calling out from her couch perch. “Mama?! Tell me that story again. What’s the shaky ground thing called again?”

“An earthquake.” I walked into the living room.

“Oh,” she said, turning the idea over in her mind. “Do they have those,” I braced for her question “–in Rhode Island?”

“Oh, in Rhode ISLAND?” I said, exhaling. “Nope! No earthquakes there!”

“Oh.”

Two second pause.

“Do they have ‘em here?”

Crap. “Well, uh… Well, uhhh, nnnnnooooo. Well, not like that. I mean, it’s just not something you have to worry about.” I handled this nearly as poorly as I did when Kate asked me in front of a neighbor how babies come out of their mommies. (Don’t even ask.)

At dinner, it was like I could feel Kate’s brain processing what I’d told her. While tuned into the telethon she’d seen a doctor holding a baby with a tube in its nose and its head all bandaged up. A couple times she said, “Tell me that story again, Mama.” And a couple times I tried to get though on the phone lines, hoping I’d get a chance to chat up George Clooney or Julia Roberts as I made a paltry donation.

The phone lines were busy, which was great for the telethon, but dashed my hopes of hobnobbing with the real-live pages of People magazine. Or of doing anything to pitch in.

Kate was clearly worried about the Haitians, and getting ready for her bath asked questions like, “When those people got hurt when the ground shaked, did they have blood?” For my part, busy signals aside, I was feeling frustrated that we’re not in a position these days to make the level of donation I’d really like to.

And then, like a good Italian girl it hit me. Kate and I could cook. We roll up our sleeves together, do what we do best–bake!—then host a bake sale, right out in front of our house. We’d donate everything we made to help the relief effort.

She LOVED the idea. Her concerned line of questions turned instantly to excitement. “We’ll make Rice Krispie Treats! With little M&Ms! We’ll make chocolate chip cookies, Mama!”

On Sunday we had our sale. We timed it to get foot traffic from our nearby farmer’s market. And we made $189. People were amazingly generous, handing cash over to Kate without even taking a treat, or giving us a twenty for one item and telling us to keep–or rather, give away–the change.

I love our neighborhood.

The next day, we visited Mark’s office to sell the left-overs, and tacked another $71 onto our earnings. And since we were feeling unstoppable at that point, I called Kate’s school and arranged to spearhead a bake sale there too.

Kate said she thinks all the kids in Haiti are going to get Hello Kitty band-aids for their boo-boos, on account of our two bake sales. And damn it, I hope to hell she’s right.

The other night, in our bleary-eyed first adult words to each other after the kids were in bed, Mark told me he was proud of us. But quickly added something like, “Why is it you and Kate decided to save the world after we handed in her school applications?”

Ha.

Well, this morning Kate has the first of her private school assessments. (Two more to go after that one.) We’ll bring her to the school for a 90-minute visit where she’ll play with other kids, probably do some writing and drawing, and be asked some questions.

I’m hoping that Kate won’t have tired of her “Tell me that shaky-ground story again, Mama” question. And that she’ll ask me in front of the school’s Admissions Director. That’ll give me a chance to gently recount once more what happened to the people of Haiti.

Then I can set her up by asking, “And what did we do about it, Kate?”

From the Hands of Babes

A friend came over for dinner recently and brought a bottle of wine and a copy of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Getting Your Groove Back: Loving Your Family Without Losing Your Mind. It was written by that chick Vicki Iovine—the skinny-ass former Playboy centerfold turned domestic advice-giver who’s married to a gazillionaire music exec. Or maybe they’re divorced at this point.

Whatever the case, it’s crazy how much she and I have in common.

Anyway, I haven’t cracked the book, nor do I intend to. I’m a firm believer that reading about how overwhelmed you are is neither entertaining nor productive. Whereas reading about absolutely anything else—say, hot teen vampire sex—has a much better chance at alleviating standard-grade housewife malaise. (Note: I have not yet succumbed to the smut-lit allure of those books. But I do have the first one in a pile by my nightstand.)

And I wasn’t offended by my friend’s offering. I didn’t think it was some sort of hand-patting, “Honey, really, read the book” kinda intervention. Especially since it wasn’t even intended for me. (Or so she said.) Her daughter had allegedly been rooting around in their house, and dragged it into the living room. And seeing as my friend’s groove is apparently intact, she dropped the book in her bag in case I, or the other friend we were seeing that night, were in need of some groove restoration.

But the truth is, I had been lamenting that ever since the calendar flipped to 2010 I’ve been in a bad mood. My groove in this new decade–or lack thereof—has been informed by my wretchedly out-of-whack back, my agita over getting Kate into a good school next year, and the dreary fact that my book proposal has gotten nowhere closer to being completed than it was in, say, early November. Add to that the extra pounds I packed on over the holidays, for a nice veneer of flagging self-esteem.

Even though it’s just been sitting here, my friend’s kid having unearthed the groove-regetting manual maybe did have some impact on my psyche. Perhaps by its mere presence in my house, the tides of ill-humor have started to change.

First-off, we’ve made progress on Kate’s school applications. Two of them are already handed in (despite an 11th-hour explosion of loose powder blush that came close to rendering the hand-written one, well, “Warmth” pink.) All the nail-chewing over writing the damn things has suddenly changed into an optimistic excitement about how amazing it’ll be for Kate (and us) to be part of one of these cool schools. I’m already planning to volunteer in the classroom constantly. (They’ll have a maternal restraining order out for me by late fall…)

My back still sucks. As in, hurts nearly constantly. But Paigey got into a fabulous preschool for next year. And my book proposal’s still dead in the water, but I’m resolved to get childcare in the coming weeks to make some headway on it.

And I’ve got two great trips to look forward to. A hopefully snow-covered jaunt to Rhode Island and a most-certainly white-capped visit to Vancouver. Thanks in no part to my athletic prowess, I am going to the Olympics!

Also, in a totally not-me move, I decided to Just Say No to my book group book. Just not read it! How liberating is that? Usually I stressfully speed-read in the final days before we meet, as if I’m prepping for the LSATs or something. But after reading the first five of the book’s 400-plus pages, I simply decided I just wasn’t 400-plus-pages-worth of interested. To some this may seem a minor act of rebellion, but for a rule-follower and perfect-attendance gal like myself, this felt as bad-girl liberating as the Queen must feel peeing in the shower.

I also recently picked up a wee freelance gig at TV.com. My first piece, a recap of the show Brothers & Sisters, wasn’t half-bad. (At least according to my father.) Mark’s also got a 14-pound brisket slooooow-cookin’ in the smoker I got him for Christmas. And really who can feel gloomy at the prospect of the lifetime of smoked meats that now extends before me? (His enthusiasm for this new toy is such that we may also be eating smoked breakfast cereal Chez McClusky soon.)

Even my dream life is showing signs that I’m relaxing a bit. Like last night, I had a kinda sex dream about one of the schools Kate’s applying to. And I call it a sex dream, but when I described it to Mark he pointed out that there really was no sex in it whatsoever. But you don’t always need sex for sex, right? I mean, didn’t we learn that lesson years ago from Bill Clinton?

So in the dream I’m at this school (our top pick for Kate, in fact) and I’m taking a tour. And on the tour all the perspective parents get shunted into the school’s wood shop, where there’s this strapping, black hottie of a wood shop teacher. (This, by the way, is nothing like their real wood shop teacher. It’s a dream, people.) And then in that weird dream-way that you just skip over some of the boring how-things-unfolded parts, next thing you know he and I are in my car! But no no no, not groping each other or anything, just driving around. You know, with our thighs all close together and almost touching in the way they are when you are in a close-quartered dream-car next to the hot wood shop teacher. Like you do.

So he tells me he’s been working at the school for 30 years, but he says, “thirty years of radiation” which in that weird dream-way I don’t find to be an odd turn of a phrase and simply take to mean he’s been getting cancer treatments all that time. But it’s not like that’s a sad thing. In fact, this virile wood shop teacher who for some reason I’ve kidnapped mid-school-tour looks altogether healthy. And I just say to him, “Yeah I don’t want to go there.” And, dreamily, he’s not offended at all, and we just keep driving and I think, “I really should get back to the school tour.”

And then I woke up.

Chaste. And still even Dreamland-loyal to my husband.

Several weeks ago we were at a birthday party. We were at the friend’s house who brought me the Groove book. Paige was still somewhat new to walking. One of her favorite places to toddle off to and explore is bed-side tables. They have fun little drawers it’s easy for little hands to open.

So as we’re in the kitchen chatting with some other parents, Paige staggers from the back of their house out into their living room and heads towards me with a violet-colored tube in her hand. Turns out it was our hosts’ Astroglide. Ahem.

Of course, those of us in the kitchen who saw what Paigey had poached found it uproarious. Funny enough to not sweep it under the so-called carpet, but to send Paige back across the guest-filled living room with instructions to hand the item over to its rightful owners.

Paige obliged. Much giggling and blushing and good-natured heckling ensued. Good times.

Thinking about that now, I can’t help but wonder if Paige was on to something. Was it really a random offering? Or was she trying to communicate in some childlike intuitive way, “This is what you people need. This is the answer!”

Now I’m not implying that Paige thinks I should have a romp with the dream-based wood shop teacher. There’s a time and place for people from The Land of Make Believe. I think she was maybe just making her own down-home suggestion about how us Mommies and Daddies could get our groove back.

Isn’t She Lovely?

“Dorothy, will you look at that dress,” a woman at the coffee shop clucked to her friend, nodding towards Paige who was staggering around their table, mashing a cranberry scone into her mouth and leaving a trail of crumbs behind her. “It’s just too precious.”

“She had a school interview today,” I said, corralling her toward me. “And she’s not even two years old!”

“Whaaaaaat?” they balked simultaneously.

It was just the response I’d been hoping for, though I surprised even myself with the apparent bitterness the recent experience had brought out in me. Funny how it’s not until you encounter some kindly old women who are sipping cocoas after their weekly walking club jaunt that you come to terms with how you really feel about something.

It hadn’t only been Paige who had gotten decked out for an interview that morning. Kate had paid a visit to the school too. It was part of the application process. And to be fair, the girls weren’t really interviewed at all. The applicants are asked to come in to spend some time in the classroom. It’s a chance, they say, for those of us jockeying for entry to kick the tires on the school—as much as it’s the school’s chance to size us up. You know, make sure “everyone feels comfortable.” But that always seems like code to me.

So I was dressed up and geared up to charm, but I was also mildly leery. Call me an egomaniac, but any club that won’t warmly welcome me without ever having met me I’m somewhat suspicious of. I’m just that way.

I started in the two-year-old room with Paige. (For the young’uns they ask the parent to tag along.) For most of our time there Paigey wandered around, taking an inventory of their toys and occasionally, briefly, interacting with another kid. She acted pleasantly enough. No dramatic behavior, no fearful clutching at me, no shouting racial epithets.

She squealed with delight a few times while playing with a dollhouse—something I looked around to see if anyone’d noticed, as it seemed, given the situation, a sweet, appropriate thing for her to be doing. You know, the kind of thing someone “who would fit in well with our community” would do. But as far as I could tell, neither she nor I were being observed or really noticed much by any of the school staff.

Of course it wasn’t until we were up in a small aerie-like nook off the main room—a hide-away decorated with bright floor pillows, wooden cradles, and a disarray of dress-up clothes—that one of the teachers came to peek in on Paigey. It was when she was at the toy cash register. She was swiping what appeared to be a little credit card through a slit in the machine over and over again. I mean, at that point any self-respecting cashier would’ve just typed in the card’s data. But Paige apparently inherited my optimistic streak.

Between credit card swipes she’d hold a black calculator she’d found on the floor up to her ear like a cell phone and say, “Dada? Dada?”

The teacher, one of those preschool gems who’s been with the school for something like 20 years, turns to me and asks, “So are you home with her?” And it was all I could do to not blurt out, “Well, yes, but really I do more than shop and use my cell phone! I mean, I’m really not sure WHERE she learned these behaviors.” [Insert nervous laughter.]

Later, while Kate was whisked off to the Big Kid Room to hopefully perform acts of staggering cuteness and genius, Mark and I met with the head of the school. Our conversation started out with the lethal, “Well, I’m sure you both have plenty of questions.” [Long pause.] And really, with the amount of time we’d spent at the school’s open house, reading about the place, and interrogating our friends whose kids went there, we kinda didn’t have any questions. Which therefore left us with an expanse of time in which we were required to say insightful or endearing things to win our kids two coveted spots at their finger painting table.

Instead I seemed to just say lovely. “We thought it would be lovely to have the girls at the same school.” “Our neighbor’s kids go here and they’re such lovely children.” “During the Open House I just found something so lovely about the two-year-old room.”

This is no doubt, collectively, more times than I have ever used that word. But something about being there, knowing whatever we did or said or wore, or how Paige reacted to not being able to open her Tupperware of raspberries herself, or all of those things in combination, knowing it was being observed, somehow the pressure of all that just made me want to say lovely a lot.

Mark, the dear, of course called me on it. “What up with all the lovely?” he asked as we we flopped on the couch post-kiddie-bedtime that night.

“I know, I know,” I said cringing.

Senior year of college we were required to take comprehensive exams, or ‘comps.’ As an English major you could choose to write a huge paper or take a test covering everything a good Kenyon grad should know literarily before emerging into the world. Well, everything that someone who’d read all the books they should have should know.

Nearly everyone opted for the paper.

In the giddy post-due-date afterglow of handing our papers in, I was hanging out with a group of friends. We were debriefing on what we thought the quality of our work was. My friend Leah, an outrageously funny Chicago-born gal, was holding court amongst us, sharing her secret to success.

“My title was The Distinction Between the Poetry of the Late 18th and Late 19th Centuries,” she said. (Of course, I’m making this topic up because at this point I can barely remember what I even wrote about.) “I made sure to point out the distinctions between the styles of poetry. The distinctions between the various poets. And, no doubt the distinction between the brilliance of my paper, and, say, your-all’s.”

‘Distinction’ was the term the school applied to comps that merited honors.

“After those gin-soaked profs read my comps,” she said with a flourish, “They’ll have no recourse other than to award it distinction.”

The group of us, hanging out at a cafeteria table long after the lunch crowd had left, howled at this, pounding the table and wiping our eyes. Of COURSE, Leah did that. And if she really hadn’t, it was sheer brilliance for her to even suggest that she did.

In that spirit I can only hope that, when that school’s Executive Director sits down a few weeks from now to make her pronouncements about who’s in and who’s out, she’ll pick up the folder for Kate and Paige and turn to her assistant. “The McCluskys…” she’ll say slowly, flipping through her notes. “Oh yes, them. A lovely family, weren’t they? I think we most certainly have a spot for them.”

I Love You, I Love You Not…

There’s been a cold snap here. Gray skies, biting winds. The children of the Bay Area have insufficiently-warm outerwear, and their parents are all thin-blooded wimps. During the day when we might normally be at the park, or on the front porch, or cruising around the neighborhood on bikes, or strollers, or the red wagon, we’ve been stuck inside, hiding from the cold.

I’ve loved it.

The girls and I have spent such sweet happy afternoons snugged up indoors. We’ve cooked elaborate feasts with wooden toy food, conducted tea parties with real cinnamon-laden victuals, and read countless books about Christmas. It’s been so freeing knowing that getting out of the house just isn’t an option. Usually once Paige wakes from her nap I’m on a madwoman’s mission to get everyone’s shoes on and diapers changed and bike helmets secured. Channeling my mother I bellow the rallying cry, “It’s a beautiful sunny day! Let’s get out of this house!” I’m a self-professed fresh air fetishist.

But lately we’ve been padding around in slippers. Assembling puzzles. Doing projects with Popsicle sticks. Digging to the back of the closet and finding long-neglected toys that the girls delight in reacquainting themselves with. And a couple times this sugar-stingy Mama has even thrown caution to the wind and whipped up a pot of hot chocolate.

All that plus streaming Pandora Christmas carols. Now this is living!

During one of these happy floor-dwelling moments, when Dr. Kate and I were injecting Paige with some pretend inoculation or other, I thought about our warm weather life. I dug up the following post, which I’d written last year (for pay!) for a wine company blog. The blog—which several woman across the country were hired to contribute to—sadly never emerged beyond the marketing firm’s conference rooms.

Aside from the contrast it shows to our current indoor existences at Camp McClusky, the post brought to life how mercurial my love for this city is. One minute I can’t imagine living anywhere else, and the next I’m calling Mark at his office to announce we are packing up and moving to a small town. Somewhere. Anywhere. Just not HERE.

I’m like a dramatic child lying in the grass plucking daisy petals. “I love you. I love you not….” The only difference being I’m not talking about a youthful crush, something it’s okay to be fickle about. In this case it’s where my husband, daughters and I live. My “I love you not” episodes have the ability to rock other people’s worlds much more intensely.

But today? This morning I’m still reveling in a lovely neighborhood party from last night. This afternoon the Mama Posse is taking our older kids to San Fran to see The Velveteen Rabbit, and there are cookies to bake before then.  I’m filled to the gills with the holiday spirit.

I’ve got love for all people, all places. Even Oakland.

So, despite the fact that our front porch has just been functioning as a pass-through these days, this old never-posted post still captures my current emotional reading on our little corner of the world.

The View from the Front Porch

This is the story about a woman in a strange city, with a new baby, and how a bottle of wine saved her. Or as it were, saved me.

But before we get to the wine, let me back up a bit.

At the time I was managing a complex jumble of major life changes. Like some guy in a lumberjack contest running to keep his balance on a log so he won’t fall in the water.

I was so busy wrangling with it all that I didn’t fully realize how much of it there was, until a few different friends commented on my excess of Major Life Stressors. Most people, they all said, could only handle two of those doozies at once. But there I was exceeding that quota. As if I had any choice.

And while I’m at it, what up with that whole “two big life stressors” urban-legend-like theory? It seems like one of those Ann Landers quizzes that circulated in high school. (You know, the one where your final score revealed if you were a slut or not?) In this case I picture it as being an actual list of Life’s Hugest Stress Triggers with checkboxes next to them. And the smart mortals only check two at a time.

Aaaaanyway, where was I? Exceeding my stress quota. Okay, so what I had going on was having just moved to a new city—just over the bridge from where I’d lived for 12 years, but still. Devoid of local friends and the ever-presence of my lived-just-five-blocks-away sister. It felt like worlds away. I feared I’d be offering monetary incentives to get our city friends to ever visit.

Other stressors: I’d taken an indefinite hiatus from my maniacal love-hate time-sucking career. I was mourning my mother’s recent death. And I just had my first baby.

Oh, and did I mention I’m not really one for change?

I handled it all swimmingly. Which is to say I nearly refused to conduct commerce in Oakland, driving to San Francisco with my dry cleaning and sometimes even to grocery shop. I seethed every time my sister asked about traffic before deciding to come by. And I rejected the social value of neighbors as friends since, well, they lived in Oakland. They were Oakland people and I, well, I was from San Francisco. And likely just passing through.

But thank God for sidewalks. Where our new neighbors imposed their friendliness upon us despite my cynicism and Urban Girl guard being up. A friendly wave from the lady across the street when I grabbed the morning paper drove me back in the house ranting, “What’s up with her? Does she stand there all day waiting to pounce on people with her chirpy hellos?”

I was resistant. But even I can be worn down.

Because when you are tired, and smattered in spit-up, and have already called your husband’s office seven times by noon desperate for adult conversation, even the freaky old neighbor ladies and their little yapping rat dogs start seeming kinda nice.

Oddly, the women my age—especially the mothers—I held further at bay. With their older children, I considered them to be professionals at the mom thing, where I felt like a newbie, a maternal imposter.

It wasn’t until one evening when a random sidewalk chat stretched out, and seemed silly to continue just standing there, that I invited one of those moms to take a seat on my front porch. And like some bad movie montage, where the calendar pages flip to show time passage, eventually we’d see each other, sit longer, chat more, pass off outgrown kid clothes, and watch as the hip-held babies interacted. It wasn’t until one evening—both bushed from grueling kid-tending and diving deeper into some conversation or other, that I offered up a glass of wine.

“Well,” she said, performing an etiquette dance that’d do her mother proud, “I don’t want to put you to any trouble… Do you have anything that’s open?”

“Yes!” I yelped, over-eagerly, thrilled by the prospect of an impromptu happy hour, a new friend to talk to while the babies lolled contentedly on a blanket by our feet. “I have something we opened last night,” I said, trying to tone down the mania in my voice. “No problem at all.”

At which point I went into the house, grabbed a bottle of chard from the fridge, opened it, dumped a bit in the sink, grabbed two glasses, and waltzed back out to the porch.

Sometimes you don’t know which cork it is that you should hold onto—which bottle of wine will mark something worthy of a saved-cork tribute. In retrospect I wish I had that one now.

It’s three years and another baby later. I can’t count the number of front porch hangouts I’ve hosted on the fly—or with much-anticipated planning—since that first one.

Nor can I count the number of times that after calling Mark to lament that maybe this wasn’t working (this me staying home with the kids thing), maybe I needed to go back to work, get the girls a nanny—that he’d come home a few hours later, to find me commandeering the front lawn sprinkler for a gaggle of sopping screaming kids. And Jennifer, and maybe Bob from down the block who works from home, or really any number of other stopped-by-on-their-way-past neighbors would be on the lawn or perched by the porch table, which was loaded with a hodge-podge of kid and adult-friendly snacks, sippy cups, and a bottle of unapologetically opened-just-for-the-occasion wine.

And here Mark walks into the scene, expecting to find me pouting inside, resentfully changing a diaper or playing my fourth game of Chutes and Ladders, but instead I’m half-soaked and laughing, on a totally different plane from the frustration and self-pity of just hours before. But, sweetheart that he is, he never calls me on it. He just greets the gang, goes in the house, drops his lap top bag and grabs a wine glass for himself.

Thank you thank you Universe for getting me past that hard lonely sad first chunk of time here. Thank you neighbors for not giving up on me. Thank you dear daughters for coming along on the ride where I figured out that being a mother doesn’t mean leaving all of person I used to be behind—that I can be responsible and grown-up and still have some fun.

To my beautiful family, my great city, and my groovy little street of friends—I raise my glass to you.

I think I finally feel like I’m from Oakland.