Please Welcome Cici

My friend Shan has good news. It will make you feel good.

It will make you want to see the world.

It will make you love my new neighbor, CiCi.

Growing Up Boy in a House Full of Estrogen

Let's take a look at the GFYO (who is actually the Giant Seven Year Old now, but frankly GSYO doesn't have the same emo-rock band name feel that I intended. Oh, I kid.).

Anyhoo, the GFYO has taken a few hits this summer, and I'm not just talking about the awesome wound to his knee that will undoubtedly result in a killer scar someday. Granted, he enjoyed his two weeks at the local YMCA camp and he has his own sports and schedules, but for the most part, his life this summer was lived as he usually lives it: dragged around in the cyclone of his sisters' lives and plans and increasingly wacky moods.

Poor, poor GFYO.

I feel his pain, because I get tossed and turned in that same storm, to a different degree and for different reasons, but still: I feel for that kid.

The GFYO, though, he does alright. He knows when to hunker down in the Legoland of his own making. It's a small room that we call the "playroom" and which I think he trashes on purpose -- mini army camps on missions all over the rug, leftover Gogurt wrappers smeared here and there -- just so no one will enter. At seven, he knows what ManTown is and he's building it.

He spends time on the trampoline engaged in the same epic battles he's been fighting since he was four. He plays both parts: villian/hero, goal scorer/goal tender, dark side/light. He's practicing something purely boy out there, something I peek at from the window upstairs because if he's spotted, he stops. He needs to carve out his boyness away from our prying, girly eyes.

He knows the words to most of the songs they love. He understands that girls get older and boys text them and though he's never seen it, he knows what "Pretty Little Liars" is and that Justin Bieber made a perfume. He's witnessed hissy fits and freak outs that must seem entirely absurd to him and he knows that it is never, ever okay to comment on the size of a girl's thighs. He has let them try to put his hair into a ponytail. He knows they worry about his "flow." He knows girls can fight -- as in WWF fight -- and though he takes his swings too, he gets there is a difference between him and them.

It's no wonder he's deeply in love with his dad right now and no surprise that he counts the minutes until The Kid comes home to toss the ball with him (better than me, I guess) or just be a dude with him (which I can't be). Poor GFYO is outnumbered so much of the time. Poor GFYO is constantly kissed and hugged by a mom who thinks he is quite possibly the cutest little dude that ever was. "Ahhh, mom," he says. "Is that enough, mom?" he says.

I can't answer that, because I doubt it ever will be, but I do know this: some of the best men were raised in houses of women. The GFYO might suffer for the next few years, but someday, when he stands to toast a sister, he'll get his upper hand: the GFYO will know ALL their secrets.

Atta boy, GFYO, atta boy.

Swim Boys Swim

A few years ago when I was young and beautiful visiting my dad in South Carolina with my family and my sisters' families, I did something I am ashamed of and if truth be told, I would probably do all over again. That's the thing about regret: it usually comes tinged with second guesses, as in -- well, that wasn't so bad, or, that was kinda fun actually, or it's not like I had much of a choice... Regret is weird.

Anyhoo, I was swimming about thirty feet from shore, past where the waves were pummeling me in very unflattering ways. My two nephews, about 10 or 11 at the time, were with me. We were chit chatting about the things you chit chat about while treading water and doing somersaults and flipping your hair back like cool dudes when one of them said, just as I was emerging from my own somersault, "giant fin."

From over my left shoulder, not six feet from my delicious yummymusthavesogood sun-burnt flesh, I saw it.

A giant fin.

It was but a split second later that I channeled my Michael Phelps/4th grade swim team training and free-styled my ass to shore faster than it takes to say, "We're gonna need a bigger boat." I left those two boys -- boys I adored, boys I expected to be my son's role models and big brothers and mentors... I left those two boys to fend for themselves.

Well, sorta.

"Swim, boys! Swim!" I hollered.

It's not like I did nothing.

By the time I sputtered to shore, seaweed in my hair, odd stares coming from every direction and my sisters tumbling off their chairs in laughter, the boys (and everyone else) were already well aware that the scary man-eater was but a playful dolphin. A flippin' dolphin.

A few days ago I was home alone in the middle of an afternoon thunder storm. I was gathering dirty laundry and folding clean laundry and barely noticing the booms and cracks outside. All three of my kids were at a birthday party and frankly, I wasn't interested in letting anything disturb my solo-time. I was at the top of the stairwell, surrounded by windows, when the sky changed.

My entire house was suddenly engulfed in raw branches and leaves. There was crashing and cracking and then... our laundry all over the floor and me racing two flights to the basement with the phone (which I managed to grab) and my hyperventilation and only one flip flop. And no dog.

"Come, Sam the Dog," I yelled. "Come!"

That dog has never done what I've said anytime, anywhere. And I knew that.

"Come?" I said from the spiderwebbed haven of my subterranean bog, which I was not leaving. "Good dog?"

I hunkered down while limbs broke and split and the lightening shouted out my heart beat so I can't tell for sure, but I think Sam was doing yoga on the couch upstairs. I think I even heard him yawn. "Namaste," I think he said.

The older I get the more I come to know myself. I am a scaredy cat. I am no one's hero. But despite my vices and my less than saintly ways, I survive...just as the boys did, just like Sam the Dog. And you know what?

Despite how I get teased and let me tell you, I'll never live down the dolphin thing, if you find yourself in a burning building with me, jump on my back. We're getting out.

Things You Can Count On: 40th Bday Party

Beginning:

1) You will arrive late and not on purpose.

2) You will tug at your dress -- on a beach! -- too many times.

3) You will remind yourself that your "dress" is a cover-up from Target.

4) From three years ago.

5) You will decide that if your bra shows: fuck it.

Middle:

1) You might wander at the edges.

2) It might be because the bonfire smoke is blowing your way.

3) It might be because...

4) You will wonder where your husband is.

End:

1) You will be delighted that love comes back you.

2) You will feel suddenly OK.

3) Turns out turning 40 is awesome. You are 41 and know...

4) You care less about bullshit and more about... what is not bullshit.

SO, you can count on this:

1) You know that Birthday parties make you thinky.

2) You know you think too much.

3) After everything and all of it, for you this is but one thing:

that makes a girl feel good.

4) You will send your good will to the wind and wish it to rush back to you.

5) You will miss being funny.

6) You will love your girlfriend and all of her birthdays and you will sigh... that you couldn't say enough...

Happiest to you M.

Magic, Not Magic

This is magic:

Pots of tinted goo applied by paintbrush.

Seeing an old and beloved friend in the hair-do chair right there.

Being told to interrupt. "You're gonna have to," she said.

Counting down seconds so fast, you barely notice that you're "on."

Seeing your wrapped up sister and her uber-cool daughter dance through the studio door like Christmas morning.

This is NOT magic:

Do you remember Carolyn Online's Bubba?

Bubba fixed a temporary problem with a permanent one. Bubba is dead.

I read all that Carolyn wrote about him. Her words were funny and sort of snarky for sure, but every little word she wrote was tinged with a bit of curious awe. It was obvious to me, even from the start, from a distance, that there was a part of Carolyn that adored him: his brashness, his willingness to show up with a dead deer at Thanksgiving in Buckhead, his devotion to his passion, his sport, his Bubba-ness, and his love for his son.

He loved his son.

Carolyn always admired him most for that.

The Today Show thing came out of the blue, as did Carolyn's horrible news -- and pretty much at the same time. We have typically been on the same path, but I figured our next "coincidence" would be buying tickets to see "The Help." It did not happen this way this time.

This is the thing about magic: it is tricky and fickle.

It does not cotton nor cooperate. It does as it will -- like luck, like God maybe -- and the best we can do is salute it when it swings by. Magic appears in our unusual days, like the one I had today (stars! makeup! cameras! crazy!), but sometimes it appears when we least expect it, when we're washing the dishes, or folding the laundry, or planning the car pool, or when we see a flash of camouflage say, or read a recipe for venison.

Magic will come to Carolyn and her family: I know it.

If not magic now, some sweet breath of peace until then.

LOVE YOU CAROLYN and scott and tempel and parker and s and J. Punch.

Watch Me!

This first appeared here. And lately it's been over here, thanks to the lovely Heather of the Everyday Ordinary and my girl, Whiskey in her Sippy Cup, and all the other amazing people at Story Bleed Magazine.

Tomorrow, I'll be drinking sitting down with Kathie Lee and Hoda to talk about my silly life with kids and also the book, Torn. Pretty crazy and also cool.

Anyhoo, this post seemed amazingly apropos:

Kids at a pool: it's the epitome of fantastic wretchedness.

They swim and dunk and dive and flop unattended and fully entertained and working up to an excellent exhaustion. The sunscreen melts off the minute it's applied, but their bodies are submerged, so: only shoulders get burnt, maybe noses. They paddle and flop and hunt quarters at depths taller than they are. They coordinate games named "Baby Dolphins." They get drenched and pickled and giddy all at once.

But the goggles are too tight or too loose or worse than her brother's. The towel is too soggy but worthy of a battle, a whippingatyou, smackingatyou battle. The sister's belly flop is half-assed and "mine will be better and hurt more than hers" and WATCH ME WATCH ME WATCH ME will echo across the chlorine, over the deck chairs, past my magazine, and straight into my face. Straight into my face over and over and over: WATCH MEEEEEEE!

I explain that I have but two eyes and even if one goes one way and the other another, I still cannot see Three Short Drunk People do Amazing Short Drunk People Tricks in the pool. So I say -- "you first" and "your turn now" and "hold on! hold up! do it again: I am watching."

Watching what? Nothing really. A kid holding her breath for as long as little lungs can, a wobbly hand-stand where points are counted for pointed toes, a boy and his butt-crack attempting a cannon ball. Watch me! they shout.

What they mean to say is: See me! SEE. ME.

I struggle to get through a page of the New York Post, which is pathetically impossible. I am commanded to WATCH ME every four to seven seconds but I realize something as I do as told, as I bear witness to nothing and everything: little changes with age. That impulse to be seen? It clings to the body like salt water or chemicals. It holds on past childhood.

New jeans, fresh paint, shiny car, a sleek tattoo: we dive in, we jack-knife, we swim the fastest, we make waves, we sink to the bottom, we do a dead mans float, we make up games and break the rules, we hunt for money at some depth deeper than we should, we float and drift to the stairs.

See Me! we say. We say it sometimes without speaking. We say it to people we love and to strangers and to passers-by. We are all sometimes just kids at a pool, fantastically wretched and soaked and half-naked.

Watch me.

Embarrassment of Bitches

Joyce Maynard wrote an article for the New York Times "Modern Love" column (which is one of my favorites) a long while back (2009!) in which she talked in detail about her grown daughter. Her daughter responded in turn and the whole thing is played out here.

Didn't click that? Let me share the highlights -- from the comment section:

Dear Oversharing Blogging Parents:

You may want to pay close attention. This is your future.

And

Does it seem to any one else that most memoir writer types are raging narcissists as a rule? And golly don't those types just make the BEST parents...(snort).

I'm betting that pissed you off if you write (or read) a blog that might include your short drunk people from time to time or if you write a blog about your life and all the non-kid people in it because um, scandal someone else wrote about her kid and her life and oh shit? Lots of people don't like that.

At all.

Oh, PUHLeeze.

This cheerful discourse happened before the Tiger Mom got her teeth pulled and right about the same time Ayelet Waldman declared herself a "Bad Mother." And it happened before Lisa Belkin's Motherlode Book Club unleashed the beasts with Torn:

All of this happened a long time AFTER (my personal hero) Anna Quindlen was publishing her "Public and Private" column in the New York Times, which was one of the best written collections about the experience of being a modern woman, mother, worker, and wife. Erma Bombeck probably got there first, and I am sure I am missing others.

The fact is: women write ugly dirty nasty stuff because women feel ugly dirty nasty stuff -- about kids, relationships, work, parents, life, friends, politics, people, dishwashers. Women also write with the wing of an angel for a quill about all these same things... I've witnessed it.

I can tell you from experience, the devil and the goddess swaps her presence in me basically from hour to hour. What I will write, how I am thinking -- it often depends on the moment or the day, or the minute of the day for me. And after some forty years on the planet, I can honestly tell you this is exactly why I love being a woman and gratefully, why I love being a woman who loves to write.

What I don't love? The chronic bitch-slapping that makes so many of us go red in the face simply because we are doing or (snort!) writing ideas and thoughts and experiences that happened in that minute or day or fucking month. What went down at Belkin's Motherlode over the book Torn? It's not the symptom of our disease: it's the virus.

We have the choices we do because a bunch of women put aside their silly parenting differences, or sexuality differences, or any of the differences they might have had, and made a pact and plan to move the ENTIRE group forward.

They did this with what? Some leaky ink? A pony delivering letters? A train that took weeks?

Surely, we can and are obliged to do better. The frickin' interwebs weren't made for us to split into pieces with our anonymous throw-downs. What a goddamn shame if we can't use our culture's finest communication tool as a source of cooperative discourse and ultimately, progressive change for ALL women...

I write about my Small Town bullshit, my friends, sometimes my marriage, and wait?? What the? Oh yeah. I have kids who are funny and sad and I write about my kids too. You know why I do this? Because I can. Because I am moved to. Because for twenty sometimes sixty narcissistic minutes in my day, I tap tap tap on the keyboard what happened or didn't happen in my life and hit "publish."

Those commenters (years ago) on Jezebel are wrong: there is good in this (measured) telling. I am a stay at home mom and I am never sure if I am doing anything right for them -- or for me. As my children grow, there are things I will keep aside, but I can assure you that there are photo-filled baby books that can't touch what I have already written about my kids...

And there are lessons I have taught myself just by telling.

So, I tap tap tap because I believe that someday, this writing here? It will help us.

All of us.

ALL of us.

And who knows? That might mean you.