Grown Up Now

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Take the Ride?

Let me begin by saying that this was a roller coaster kind of a day -- well, if a roller coaster only went downhill. For miles. For endless screaming miles. Into wet rain and then lava. And mud. Today was like a roller coaster into mud, very muddy, grumpy, bitchy, horrible muddy mud.

It started out with me finally scoring the new Iphone because I must tell that girl Siri to do my bidding. I'm not yet sure what kind of bidding I will have her do because Apple has yet to invent an actual assistant/housekeeper/cook/driver but if I can get her to say "I love you Picket" at least once a day, I'll be happy. I held it in my hand, all the possibility of me and she, and I was at the top of the tracks, butterfly-tummied happy with  the horizon unbroken (and well organized) in front of me.

Within 20 minutes, I got the second speeding ticket of my entire life. A big fat speeding ticket -- $240. In one of those sneaky bullshit traps where the speed limit drops 20mph JUST BECAUSE OF A TUNNEL. Me and my fellow felons waited there while they ran our numbers. I rolled up the window because well I WAS SITTING IN A TUNNEL and I then I rolled it down because I thought that might look suspicious. I can't explain this, but even though I haven't come close to committing a crime (in about 20 years), I kept thinking he would find a warrant out for me or something. It's sort of the same way I feel when I walk into a church: I'm just waiting for the bolt.

I make it home but not in time to see my daughter's classroom play because I am crawling at a speedy 15 miles per hour which pisses me off to no end because I believe my bladder is shrinking at the same rate that my ass is expanding. And I am pretty sure that cop is following me. But beside my need to pee, I am supposed to be at the "play" to take pictures for a friend who already knew she couldn't make it. So I'm bummed. And bursting.

Once home, I start the rushed process of syncing the phone and getting Siri to make something for me for lunch and before I can exhale, R comes through the door and I realize my minutes of brilliant thinking are numbered. She has another school project. The GFYO and his playdate are soon MIA so phone calls happen and I speed off to find them and sure enough, there they are examining rocks or poop or something not 20 yards from our house. Waste of gas.

Playdate? Oh crap. It dawns on me that B has a game today about FOREVER away and that means we need to get in the car in about 45 minutes. I write a desperate email for a ride, but B is a now a no show too. Something buzzes. Buzzes again. Buzzes. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? I think, checking the oven, the car, the smoke detector until I realize it's the new phone with it's new tone.

She's at school, working at Homework Club and I remind her of the game and that she should come home and that I am trying to score her a ride because her brother has a friend over and --

"Did you get the phone?" she texts.

"Yeah. And a speeding ticket."

She instantly forgets about the "come home" part and the "game part" and is probably blabbing all over Homework Club about her criminal mom, and sure enough, before I hang up the back pack I just tripped over, I am hustling to her school to race her home so the other soccer mom can give her a lift. I am livid and lecture her about time management and obligations and not being the only person in this family and I hit the brake because I am pretty sure I am gunning it and god knows, can you imagine? B is apologetic. She changes in the car, only needs her uniform shirt. She is very fast, I think, when she wants to be.

We wait. We wait. We wait.

Phone rings and naturally that terrifies me because it is a new ringtone and I lurch like I've been tasered and bash my knee on the coffee table, the funny bone part of my knee. "Answer it," I half moan to B, half wail.

"Uh huh," she says, "OK. OK. Yeah, no, no problem. Yeah, here she is."

Doctors appointments, homework club, a new winter soccer schedule and me and that other lovely mom decide that FOREVER is too far away today and after all and what not and good grief and after ten more seconds of commiseration, we decide everything is alright after all: it's just one game. We'll do better next time.

It is not alright for B. She races up the stairs the way twelve year old girls do, punctuating each step with a syllable meant to scar me for life -- "soc - cer - is - the - thing - I - love - the - most - mom - m - m - m" and then she slams her door which I have decided is a language girls are born fluent in. I understand it, that's for sure, and frankly, I kind of regret the lack of doors in my open downstairs.

Thankfully, the GFYO, the playdate and R have run away to the playground and are surely finding dead birds or something gross or whacking each other in the heads with hockey sticks. It's all good. I sit down on the couch with the phone I have suddenly come to resent and I try to change the ringtones to cheer me up.

"Mom?!!" whimpers a voice from upstairs. "Mom?"

Sure enough, B has locked herself in her room with that excellent slam. I debate whether to get there right away or let her sweat it out and I half-smile for the first time since I signed my money away at the Apple store.

I let her out. We talk about the play I missed. She acts out the funniest parts for me and just as the day begins to dip into the black of our new clock, the playdate and R come in. "You need to look at Kipp," says R. "Like now," she says.

He's slugging through the dusk and the backyard, his hand to his forehead, a bloody-less zombie. Giant egg on his forehead. Blue, black, green and I hand him an ice pack, relieved the thing is lurching out and not inward, check his eyeballs, and he says, "Can Playdate stay for dinner?"

R asks if she can go the mall to get her teeth whitened.

B asks Siri, "Who's your mama, Siri?"

I pull the giant, padded bar over my lap. I slam it in. I pull my hair back into a pony tail, because away we go. I bought the ticket. I'm gonna take this goddamn ride, but don't judge me if I am not whipping my arms up in joy all the time. I mean. C'mon. Sometimes this ride blows.

You wanna go again? I do. I will.

Overheard on Halloween

I have an axe in my candy bowl and play spooky music out the window.
I wear a mask and hide in wait. With beer.
(Beer's for me, duh.) (Or anyone brave enough to ask.) ( Holla Beth!)

Anyhoo, here's a snippet of Halloween in Small Town, which is perhaps one of the few in MA that enjoyed it without snow:

"I am a grown-up dressed up to look like a kid because I am a grown up who wants candy but actually I am a kid. Do you like my mustache?"
(Yes. No. Yes? No, omigod! Kid, you're confusing me.)

"MOMMA! Dis yady as an axe!"
It's okay, say his parents. (I take the mask off -- I'm just a mom, I say.)
"I don cahr!"
It's okay, really! say his parents.
"I dohn wan dat yady's cahndy!" (I give some to his sister.)
"I'll take his."

"Are you B's mom?" (Yeah. Look at you! What are you?)
"Pretty Little Liars" (Five minute conversation ensues about whodunnit.)

"Love the music." (Do you rock? I say)
"Wuddayouthink?"  (Take two, kid.)

"It's just me!" (No it isn't.)
"No it is, it's me!" (No. It is not you.)
"IT'S ME  -- YOU KNOW ME!" (No I don't -- you're too scary.)
Rips mask off.
"It's me!" (Oooo, now I know you.)
"You're funny, I think."  (You think?)
"Can I have some candy?" (No.)  


It's been a long time since I laughed so much.You should laugh too...

(PS: the kid got the candy.)

An Open Letter To Toilet Paper

Dear Toilet Paper,

It is obvious you despise me.

You are never around when I need you! But when my kids do, or my husband?

Good god, man, I coming running with you.

We race off together and shove you through the crack in the door.

I always felt like we were a team.

Lately, not so much.

I think you are saving your succulent tissue for other bathrooms, because hell bells! You are never in mine.

I call to my kids, to my husband, to the random dog walker on the street: "BRING ME SOME TOILET PAPER!"

I thought you would do some kind of inanimate magic like stuff and roll yourself to the lazy Short Drunk People or The Kid, or even me. But no.

But no...

You're too busy sopping up the mess that the GFYO left from a spilt cranberry on the rug because goddammit, I forgot to get paper towel.

Alright, okay. I can wait until someone misses me enough.

I'll try to do a better job of making sure you are where you need to be. Just like the paper towels.

In the meantime, can you quit it with those gross cartoon bears?

No one needs to think about tissue stuck to ass.

And those women who keep talking about being "clean in the bathroom?"

Gross.

Just tell me that you're on sale, alright?

Meanwhile, I'll be drip drying in the loo.

Which is also disgusting.

Enough.

Love,

Picket

I'm Missing It

When my kids were little, I was never alone.

Despite the obvious fact that they were with me all the time, there was also this "thing" that happened: all the other grown-up people who were with their kids wanted to hang out. With me.

I miss those days.

Our baby group days.

My kid, she was kinda aggressive. She was the giant toddler who would roll over the mini toddler to get to the blocks. I think she tried to wrestle one kid to the ground once; I remember pulling her off, apologizing. I think I brought beer once. They never kicked me out.

"She is just bigger than the rest," they said.

"Holy fucking hell," I said.

"My other kid is really sweet and nice and oh shit I have to go pick her up..."

Then I was pregnant. Again.

Baby groups die when you get pregnant. No one likes an unknown.

Plus -- you have another baby, and it's a miracle if anyone gets fed other than him.

Baby groups?

Yeah, right: forget it.

I miss 'em though, the baby groups. It seems like lately my life is just the Three Short Drunks and no others. I manage more paperwork for them than I ever did as publicist. I drive carpools, but I wave to the parents/my friends from the car. The kids sit in the back mostly and I play DJ.

"Does your mom know this song?" I say.

Is she happy, I think. Does she wish I came to the door rather than my kid? Does she want to talk, or is she as tired as I am? Does she want to make a play date -- with me?

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss the days when I was knee knee deep in poopy diapers and strollers I couldn't fold and worries about crawling and sitting up and reading and "socialization." It was easier than to talk about parenting. It was easier than to group up in the morning before naps.

I miss the days when we would get together to figure it all out.

Sometimes

-- I think that the man in the blue car with the OCD wants me to bash his window in

-- I think the Big Gut guy might die when I'm around

-- I want to save somebody!

-- I am pretty sure my bed is the best place to be

-- (I can't leave it.)

-- I should call.

-- I should call or email or send a fucking smoke signal.

-- I have nothing to say.

-- I say too much.

-- I wonder if I was meant to be a mother.

-- my kids wish I wasn't theirs.

-- my husband wishes he married for mommy.

-- I look at the Small Town through the bright light of an October day from the barrel of my car's front window and I see the buildings like my old buildings, like my facade of childhood, and I think I can reach through the window and just touch it

-- when I drive down these streets in October, I see our station wagons and my soccer uniform

-- I can see my mother

-- I wonder if deja vu can be a constant kind of thing

-- I write

-- I write for no purpose other than writing

-- You will decide which is which

Be Still My (mother of a) Tweener Heart

Seventh grade. Seventh grade. Seventh goddamn grade.

I say it over and over and over again, like some kind of multi syllabic mantra, like if I say it enough times it will become more real or maybe disappear or both. I say it because B is in it and this makes me equal parts queasy and proud and scared.

This school year has already brought the great ice breaker of adolescence conventially known as the Bar Mitzvah (and the Bat Mitzvah, to be fair). Sock-clad dance floor dancing is the closest most girls have gotten to most boys and mazel tov! It works. Every kid grows up just a little bit more after one of those awesome bashes.

Today, however, on (ironically?) the Rosh Hashanah school holiday, B was invited to another kind of party, though if she knew I called it that, she would roll her eyes with such dramatic effect, you might think she was having a seizure. It was "just a bunch of kids hanging out" for fuck's sake -- I'm adding the fuck's sake part because it was quite obvious she was thinking it; she is my daughter afterall. Anyhoo...

Naturally, I called the mom my sister to see if I should call the mom of the Boy who was hosting the par.. whatever, the thing.

Email her, she said. Play it cool.

I did. I felt like such a nerd, such a newbie.

She didn't email me back.

I decided to let B go anyway, because I was driving she and her friend to this Boy's house and I figured I would scope it out, and also because I knew almost all the other kids going and their moms and had consulted with one. But in the car ride there, I started to worry that I might be making the Number One mistake of parenting a barely just twelve year old girl or any girl really or any kid and oh my god I have no business being a parent and I should just turn this car right around and go force her to play with American Girl dolls or Polly Pockets or some such shit and, "mom?" she said.

"Uhhuh," I panted.

"Olivia thinks its awesome that you like that LMFAO song."

"I do," giggled Olivia.

Seventh grade, seventh grade, I kept saying, chanting it, barely breathing...

When I was in seventh grade I was a new girl in a new school. A new, very tiny school: there were less than 50 kids in my entire class. Within a month, I was finding random gifts in my locker: a watch, a twenty dollar bill, a brass locket. Within two months, I learned all the bad words I had yet to learn while riding the 40 minute bus ride home. Within three months, I was "going out" with a boy whose name was so preppy you would not believe it if I used it as the name for a preppy boy in a novel I may or may not be writing. Within six months, we broke up. We broke up after having never held hands or going anywhere together ever, but we talked on the phone and that counted for something. By the end of the year, I had my eye on a Cute Boy from a rival school.

The driveway was loaded with the detritus of New England childhood -- a basketball hoop, some old boogie boards and a stash of bikes and lacrosse sticks. And kids. There were some on scooters, one on a skateboard, a few tossing a football. B and her BFF jumped out -- thanks mom! thank you! -- and there they were.

There they were. Seventh graders, all gangly, all kinds of shapes and sizes, all unnervingly eyeing each other, adjusting baseball hats, pulling t-shirts into place. Doing what they do, what, in fact, they need to do.

"I'll text you mom," she said. "Thanks mom."

In the months that followed 9/11, I developed this intense anxiety about overhead planes. Nearly asleep, maybe even soundly, if I heard one, I would compulsively leap from bed and check the window: was it crashing? Was it crashing on us? Sitting on the couch, cooking dinner, driving the car: I checked every time. I've peered out more windows more times than most creepy old dudes do. It ended when I met a flight attendant who told me that "by the time you hear the sound of the engine, the plane is miles past you, miles and miles beyond. You wouldn't hear the plane that hit you."

It was the science and the utter lack of cosmic control -- together! -- that cured me.

I keep thinking about that now: is this what parenting is also gonna be like for me from now on? Leaping to the window, screeching on the brakes to double check -- check her, myself, her friends? Will I spend the next few years wondering if I should hold tighter to the arm of the couch, or lurch from my seat to hold her back? Do I worry about the sound of the engine or the lack of it's sound?

She texts me tonight from her BF's house where she is having a very "spontaneous" sleepover that I'm sure they'd been planning all day but where I need to go to drop off some clothes. She gives me her list and signs of with this message:

"Thanks Mommy. Can you bring my blue blankie?"

For now, I'm just listening to that and to her and the mantra, of course.

Seventh grade, seventh grade, fuckinga seventh grade.

Why I Still Blog

Ms. Whiskey is coming to my town.

She, if you don't know, is one of the first (and finest) writers I stumbled upon. She also --- ironically -- stumbled into me at Chicago /BlogHer.

I mean that literally: she kinda backed into me...

We smoked together. We made us real for the other.

We wrote at Polite Fictions together.

That's when I held her hand:

And she mine.

Now?

Me and Two Busy are gonna get her drunk be elegant hosts and welcome her to our small bit of goat debauchery New England and...

(stay tuned)

Listen: A Poem

Listen.

Such a fine word.

Such an easy and hard word.

Such the bitch of my world word.

Listen.

Speak.

Tell your story.

So easy if you think about it.

And this crutch you use to doubt it?

Every word you say, every syllable you use:

It's just a lousy way to truth.

A way to lousy truth.

It shows. Your

truth.

Speak.

What I Learned: Panelist Version

I spent the last 18 hours in New York as a celebrity panelist. Not just New York, but the epicenter of the world's economy. Won't name names, but there I was: tragedy-hawkers hawking 9/11 wares, mesh gates guarding the great reveal, newbies like me confused about a grid that no longer exists down there. I tried not too look up because I remember, at 19, my father telling me that I would seem like a tourist if I did.

It's been thirteen years since I was in that part of the city.

(I entertained a rock band and several employees on the company credit card at Windows on the World. It seemed pretty badass/anti-punk at the time. I danced with some man I didn't know. I laughed my ass off and shivered at the edge, looking over.)

I returned to that hallowed ground, that neighborhood I'd walked when I was a different woman, that my father walked decades before, to speak about my experiences of motherhood, about all the choices I'd made since that day and every day after. The irony? Was it irony?

I was there to tell my truth about the work/life balance for a slew of powerful women in powerful places. I was there because I told a couple stories in Torn. I was there with a gaggle of mom-writers -- a doctor, a TV pro, a "teen" mom done good, better, best. In our midst, as well, was a mom with stats and figures and (OMG) shocking information from the Center of Work Life Policy.

I was the... Damn, I was the at-home mom. Even ten years later, I struggle to say it.

I was a squid in a world of sharks.

Sharks with no teeth, it turned out. Gummy women just like me.

Turned out, despite my less than clout, I had stories to tell, and turned out, like always, we all do.

Beside the obvious -- wait for the pedestrian light to turn green before you hobble across the street in red patent high heels; you can NOT run in those muthafuckas -- I learned so, so, SO much. I'm stewing it all -- and promise to share... But for now, for now, I can tell you this that I learned:

1) Anytime you say the word "alcohol" people will laugh.

2) Also: "bail"

3) No one can see your shoes anyway.

4) Or your dress really.

5) When you use a phrase like "big ups," direct it toward the men.

This will make you feel okay about saying something so douche-y.

6) When you get emotional shivers, say that you have shivers.

7) Try not to touch your face/twirl your ankle/fiddle.

8) Tell your stories like you're sitting at a bar.

9) It's amazing what might happen after you do.

10) And after you do, go to a bar.

Seventeen Years

1994: I love you.

1995: We should move.

1996: We should get better jobs.

1997: I think we should move/but we just got promoted!/we should have a baby.

1998: Why can't we have a baby?

1999: HELLO B!

2000: No Y2K, but lots of booze on New Years.

2001: Hey Big Red! Now we have two!

2002: can'tmakewordswork. Sell business.

2003: Meetings. Big Ideas. Commercial shoots -- in LA.

HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

2004: OH! GFYO! A boy?! Lawsuit.

2005: Meds.

2006: PTO. He travels. Three strollers. School.

2007: Writing. Writing. Writing. BLOG? he says.

2008: Pre-school. Soccer. He travels. Met Carolyn.

2009: Kid becomes unemployed. THE BOOK happens...

2010: Kid is on his path to a new career. Moms go happy turning 40 on golf carts in North Captiva.. A new book?

2011:NPR. Today Show. Can't write the book Carolyn has.

2011: We fight on the fucking soccer field about nonsense and end up dressed up, laughing together over fine food and a split of really good champagne. It's seventeen years, yo.

I wouldn't change one bit.

I love you Kid because you did this:

Which is a lot like I did

which made me so happy...

I needed to hold my funny bits in.

Good news!

We ended up OK, together.

Kid, I love you.

Always have.

Best. 17. Ever.

Love you the most.

Know Better

Can't do.

This song changed my life, though.

(The Kid knows it too....) (The song... at least; can't tell you if it changed his life.)

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.

PICKET RETURNS

Where should I begin?

The psychoanalysis of kids with their candy?
The book I was just in? And that people pissed on at this place.

(Was here on the radio, PS)

Should I begin with the fact that I have seen unlimited angst in the "world" we made online?

Or that the street of Ms Picket is similarly troubled?
Or that sometimes you need to run away?
Or how pissed I am that the Tooth Fairy does not issue a "code of behavior"?

Santa, too. Mad at them both.

Or should I spend time writing about how I've spent too much time being angry -- about.... you name it.

Whatever.

I started this experiment to write.

I realize that my need to experiment hasn't changed.

Don't tell me where I should begin.

Just tell me I should.

While I Go Gas Up The Truck...

I've written this post about a thousand times. Well, maybe ten.

In my head, this Dear John letter is pure poetry, but every time I try to put it to paper, it never sounds the way I want it to sound. It never says all the things I think it should. Plus, when it comes to quitting: I'm sort of notorious for changing my mind.

(It might be useful to play the video below... Go ahead: press play. I'll wait.)

My mind is made up now...

When this idea started, kicked off by the Kid, turned to reality by me, I never imagined anyone beyond he and maybe two friends would read it. In all honesty, I doubted even he would. Which he didn't, at least regularly: but that's okay.

Turns out, I loved the anonymity of type-type-typing into what I thought was an abyss. Turns out that abyss was ironically crammed with people like me. All of us, alone, waiting for the echo of our words and being surprised by the voices that bounced back -- voices which were not our own, but something different, someone different, someone...

This blog saved me in measurements only a small few will understand.

That small few might be large now, but for me... It meant a small circle of random women and men who collided at one time in one perfect space. Their stories, my stories: they became a mix that made for a perfect concoction in that one long, awesome moment. Their words, these people got me to go deeper inside my head and in equal parts, let me get outside of my head...

I am so grateful!

Me and Carolyn made our book.

In May, I'll be featured in another one, Torn. (I hope you'll read it.)

My kids are becoming old enough to have experiences that aren't mine. I can't write about them in good faith anymore -- it seems uncouth and uncool. That being said, I am grateful for every inappropriate word I wrote here about them, and us, and our lives: I think I might like those words more than any of the pictures I took.

Right now, I want to write fiction and maybe, at last, the book I swore to the Kid and everyone else I would write. This does not mean that I'll stop telling my truth. I just want to start telling it differently.

I hope you keep telling your stories. I hope you keep speaking your truth...

Thank you for hearing mine. Thank you so, so much.

I've loved every bit of this.

Goodbye from PostPicketFence and the Three Short Drunk People and the Kid too....

"Pack the old love letters up...

We will read them when we forgot why we left here."

Bad Cop Confessions

There is no singular story behind feeling badly, because when you become a mother, you sign up (unknowingly) for a lifetime of feeling like shit. Birth a kid or get one another way: your guilt ramps up no matter how you conceive, and also, the minute you do.

Currently, my three Drunk Kids want nothing to do with me.

Sometimes, I even think they hate me.

I am definitely the bad cop.

I have no idea how, or desire, to change that.

The Kid is the good cop.

We can talk circles and squares around it, but the truth is that I'm better at the bad cop. I have more patience to be mean. He's more willing to go Chuck E Cheese: he wants to give them what they want.

I do too -- just not all.the.time.

We weigh our ways and wishes and balance them between our kids. It works.

Mostly.

Sometimes I get tired of my badcop-ness. Sometimes I want to let someone else be the heavy. I want to be the "fun" parent and not the mean one who is around to make homework happen or chores checked off.

On the weekends, for example, I'd like to be the one who monitors bowling or soccer or playground fun. I'd like to come home to a house ready for the week ahead -- laundry done and delivered, dust sent and gone, toilets scrubbed, beds made, dinner on the table.

I'd like to be the good cop.

Freewheelin: Honoring Suze Rotolo

This image pretty much sums up my romantic teenage years. I think I tried to recreate this album cover many times. I should have put myself in Bob's place, but the truth is, I always wanted to be Suze...

Suze Rotolo (the woman on the album cover) died this week. I have no idea what became of her life after her "life" with Dylan. She was always frozen for me there: in love, loved, wanted, happy.

He wrote songs about her and spoke about her influence in those early years: she was his muse for a while: "Don't Think Twice.."and "Boots of Spanish Leather." She introduced him to the politics he would later write but never care much about. She welcomed him into her world, which inspired the beginning of his best work.

They broke up.

She moved on.

She never spoke of him to the press and that made me love her even more.

Suze Rotolo will always be my example of feminine inspiration: she was beautiful and smart and way more than a clinging girl on an album cover. I adored her, but more importantly, without her, there wouldn't be as much amazing music in the world.

Thanks Suze. You mattered.

Here's the song you made happen.

I know somewhere Bob is humming it too.

Sleep tight.

You wasted nothing.

Letter to Carolyn

I am back in the land of an internet connection that does not run on pig grease or whatever shit they use out there where my mom lives. I brought all the Drunkards back with me, though the plan had been to leave two (Ro getting braces tomorrow; SamtheDog going to the Vet) and The Kid would swing out Friday for the weekend and more skiing.

But guess who got paged to the Ski Patrol yesterday afternoon while all three of her kids were in afternoon ski camp?

Imagine me running (running!!) in ski boots with a mushroom shaped blue helmet on her head toward the “ski patrol” which, as luck would have it, looks just like every other run down shed on that mountain, so naturally most of my running was in crazy, wobbly circles. By the time I reached the shack, I was in a full on dripping-sweat and in dire need of oxygen. Bridget on the other hand was splinted and slinged and weepy. Haven’t gotten x-rays yet but I'm thinking it's more likely a sprain. Yay snowboarding!

Also, I had a dream where I had a miniature baby that I carried around in a zip loc bag. You (CarolynOnline) kissed the baby’s teeny head and told me to zip it up in the inside pocket of my bag so we could get into some swinging club where some hot dude (who was maybe on the run -- FROM JAIL) was waiting for us. I think we were on a Nancy Drew-type mission. When we got inside, we had to weave past all these long flowing curtains (I think I saw this on a CSI Miami episode) and when we came out on the other side, it looked like the lobby at Blogher.

I said, Hell no, and you said, follow me.

We pushed our way through people and came out on the other side right in front of this giant, giant purple pool, all lit up, really beautiful and elegant, and with all our clothes on, and with my bag with the mini baby inside, we took a running leap and jumped in. We were laughing our asses off, like pee in the pants kind of laughing. (Somehow I knew that the baby was fine. No worries about the baby.)

Then the hot dude who was from Pennsylvania (I memorized his address) told us we needed to scram because the cops were coming.

I woke up.

This is the first page I googled with the address from my dream.

Turns out? Even the internets love a good story.

PS: Me and the Kid rocked DC, including the Avett Brothers at Constitution Hall. They played this song, which is my favorite.