Jan
09
Aside from wanting to be involved in my daughter, N’s, life (because she’s 11 and I know my opportunities will soon evaporate), I also find being around the groups of young girls in her extracurricular activities absolutely fascinating. They’re such strange creatures and the ever-shifting group dynamics are a better study in human behavior than any of the sociology courses I ever took in college.
So the other day, we were walking a long distance back to our cars after an overnight Girl Scout camping trip.
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Dec
27
I knew this day would come eventually but I never dreamed it would be so heart-wrenching.
You see, my daughter has been dropping hints about her wavering belief in Santa Claus for a several months now. Her questions about the existence of Santa, however, always came when my six year old was nearby so I tended to hedge a lot.
“Let’s talk about this later”
“Can we have this chat another time?”
I didn’t want to lie to her any more than I already have with the whole Santa myth but I also didn’t want to spoil it for my son, who is already fully indoctrinated into the Santa Claus Believers Club.
I figured if she asked me when we were alone, I could be honest with her. But she never did.
And I would assume she’d forgotten about it and exhale, thinking I’d dodged that particular bullet one more time.
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Dec
08
OMG…last night these people came to look at a car we’re selling and they TOOK MY KEYS with them. I realized it this morning when I couldn’t find them so I call the guy and I’m like “Hi, you came to look at our car last night. Do you have my keys?” and he’s like “Yes, I have them”
Um…OKAY. So when exactly did you notice that you had the keys to everything I own in your possession? We’re you planning on LETTING ME KNOW? Did it not occur to you that I might NEED THEM???? That I might be tearing my house apart looking for them so I could take my kids to school?
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Oct
28
For a few years, I documented all sorts of things from my day to day life here…but the most important things I documented were about my children. Everything was new and exciting and there were so many firsts. Like a soda bottle that had been jostled a bit too much, I was always bubbling over with emotions and feelings that I just had to get out.
There are still firsts now, as there always are until we shed these mortal coils, but I no longer feel the urge to share them. Or rather, I can’t seem to collect everything I’m feeling into any kind of order anymore and thus, I rarely even try.
Why is it all so hard now?
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Jul
11
A few months back, my daughter and I were going to a tea house with her best friend and her best friend’s mom. We were early so we sat in the parking lot listening to a This American Life podcast while we waited.
I didn’t catch the whole story but it seemed to be about a dying mother who, thanks to annual letters she had written in advance to her daughter before she died, managed, for better or worse, to shape and impact her daughter’s life from beyond the grave.
Listening to this story made me sad. My own mom had died unexpectedly in an accident when I was 13. In all the years since her death, I’d only ever thought about all the things I’d never gotten to say to her. It NEVER ONCE occurred to me that maybe there were things she would have liked to have said to me before she died.
How is it possible that I’d never considered this?
And it got me thinking of all the things I’d want my daughter and son to know if I was going to die tomorrow. For days afterward things popped into my mind faster than I could even remember them. I needed a BRAIN TIVO…
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May
13
You know…sometimes you just want to write about stupid shit and you really wish you could because you don’t want to think about your friend Josh, who just spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital after the men in the white coats came and took him away because he lost his mind doing bath salts.
You really want to talk to him but he hasn’t come over since he was released, probably because the last time you saw him he was all paranoid and delusional and you had to have your husband tell him not to come over anymore. You have kids to consider and even though they love Josh, they can’t be around someone who is constantly searching your house for imaginary intruders and begging you to tell him what the secret number is and slipping you notes containing warnings about your family’s impending assassination.
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May
09
Every year on Mother’s Day, I struggle a little bit. I’m not sad or depressed but I have mixed feelings about this day.
After giving it some thought, I concluded that those feelings haven’t changed at all since I wrote about Mother’s Day 5 years ago so instead of trying to re-invent the proverbial wheel, I’ve pasted it in below. Get the whole story »
