Dream: My last day of 35

For the first time in my life I am dreading my birthday.

I don't know if this is the result or the cause of the way I've been feeling lately: both overwhelmed by the suffocating minutiae of grown up life, the laundry to fold and play doh to scrape from the carpet, the groceries to buy and children to scold, and underwhelmed by the payoff, more laundry, play doh, groceries and stern talkings-to. 

In an effort to avoid one of these gray moods, I decided not to think about the birthday coming tomorrow. Instead, I've been thinking about the birthday I had twenty years ago when I turned 16 and realized for the first time that I wouldn't be a kid forever. . .a notion which, back then, filled me with hopeful optimism.

I got two things on my sixteenth birthday: my learner's permit and a black leather motorcycle jacket. It didn't matter that in the six months that I drove on the permit I burnt through the clutches on both of my parents' cars, nor that I killed any potential coolness of the jacket by wearing it with french-cuffed Z. Cavariccis and shoe boots; the gifts I got for my sixteenth birthday were the tender shoots of the grown up life I was sure was just waiting to blossom for me. The permit promised freedom and the jacket, easily the edgiest piece of clothing I'd ever owned, hinted at adventure and excitement.

Twenty years later, I have no idea where my learner's permit or the bright shining freedom it represented ended up. The jacket, though, is still with me. Through several moves and countless closet purges I've kept it regardless of how poorly it would fit me or how foolish I would look in it should I try to wear it. I keep it because I loved it back then and because I still love the unknown possibilities it symbolized, even though grown up life has yet to present me with an occasion that demands black leather with wrist zippers.

I'm still not thrilled about what's coming tomorrow, but I'm trying to reframe it. I'll look at it as the twentieth anniversary of my sixteenth birthday, and hopefully I can motivate myself to put aside my mood and make this a year that lives up to the promise of the jacket.

Dream: The growing season

I had really high expectations for this summer.  I wanted it to be just like the exultant summer of 2010: the days all sand and salt water and the nights starry skies and ice cream. This summer we went to the beach a lot, we went out for ice cream regularly, and still it wasn't the same.

I blamed myself for this. Who complains about having over two solid months off to lie on the beach and gorge on ice cream? Apparently I do, and so clearly I deserve a large chunk of the blame.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I also blamed my kids at times, because whereas they skipped hand in hand through last summer, they have spent much of this summer at odds with each other. Just the other day Big E came to me exasperated and reported that Little E was "breathing down her neck". As I tried to patiently explain to her how much her little sister looks up to her and loves to spend time with her despite how intrusive it might feel at times, Little E came in and began to actually pant heavily and noisily on Big E's neck, which is apparently what she had been doing all along. If not the kids themselves, their newly minted sibling rivalry deserves a bit of the blame.

I blamed last year's part-time schedule, too. The school year that preceded 2010's summer included some of the actual worst days of my life. In contrast to that, the summer felt more than fun and relaxing; it felt triumphant. This past school year, I spent my mornings teaching students who were usually interesting and almost always entertaining, and I spent my afternoons focusing on my family in a way that satisfied me and smoothed over a lot of the guilt I've felt since I first put Big E in daycare seven years ago. I didn't need the time off half as much this summer as I did last summer, and thus I didn't enjoy it as much. So, I blame part-time, though not so much that I'm not happy to do it again this year.

The biggest culprit, though, didn't reveal itself to me fully until a week ago in the lunchbox aisle at Target. It was there that I had to gently talk Big E out of choosing the same doggy-shaped lunch bag as Little E. I told her that I was afraid she might grow out of it and change her mind about it once it was too late to get another. What I really meant was that much as I would love it if she could carry a dog-shaped lunch bag for the rest of her school days, much as I swear to one day fulfill the request she made a few years ago that I live in her dorm room when it's time for her to go away to college, I cannot stand the thought of the other second-graders laughing at her too young lunch bag. She ended up settling on a pink splash-painted number that she seems happy with, but I'm still hating myself for pushing her, even in a small way, to grow up any faster than she wants to.

I realized that it is all the growing up I saw this summer that has really kept it from measuring up to last summer. This summer I reluctantly packed up Little E's toddler bed, I nervously sent Big E on a five-day trip to Michigan with my parents, and I bravely fought back tears and the urge to vomit when I brought both girls in for their very first haircuts and watched the "stylist" at the overpriced kiddy haircutting place lop off three inches of sun-bleached baby curls that I'd been twirling through my fingers since Big E was a nursing infant.

They have to grow up, I know that. I need to accept it, if only to avoid spoiling any more perfectly good vacation time. Still, next week when school starts up again that lunchbag is going to get me. And the hair. I may be mourning the hair until next summer.

To those of you planning a wedding (and those who aren't)

Day 1

To those of you planning a wedding, I know how it goes.  It was just over 11 years ago that I was in your crazed, seating chart-strategizing, favor ribbon-tying place and having just celebrated another anniversary, I've been thinking about it all.

If you're anything like me, you'll spend the year before the big day agonizing over important choices like buffet or sit-down.  You'll search high and low to find the florist who can provide you with the exact color of blue hydrangea that you envision for your bouquet.  You'll try on dresses in white, cream and ivory, ball gowns, sheaths and A-lines, searching for the one that makes you feel beautiful without bankrupting you.  You'll work hard to convince your future mother-in-law that not all justices of the peace are Elvis-impersonators and a DJ can be just as classy as a band but at half the price.

And then the day will actually come.  If yours goes anything like mine, the florist who promised those blue hydrangeas will show up with white and you'll fight back tears until your mother tells her that she'll just have to go back and fix it. Then just before you walk down the aisle, you will fluff the reasonably priced but still flattering dress you settled on, your father will beam proudly at you and then step squarely on the back of it, leaving a muddy size 11 footprint on the ivory train. And it will rain, angry sheets of water deluging the outdoor courtyard that was to be the site of your cocktail hour. A distant cousin will take issue with his table assignment and drunkenly confront your groom, and some middle-aged lady on the groom's side will waste many frames of the disposable camera on her table taking pictures of herself giving the finger. As the evening winds down, the DJ, who promised to keep it classy, will berate guests for not dancing and will sign off by thanking them for their presence and warning them that they better not drive if "shitfaced," and you will feel mortified for all of the little old ladies in the room.

But none of that will actually matter, because you will be celebrating a life-changing event with all of the people who are most important to you (except for your cousin and that lady, who were invited strictly out of obligation). Guests will rave about the beautiful ceremony and pretend not to have noticed that the DJ made efficient use of the open bar. You will wake up the next morning and you will be married (MARRIED!) and the sun will be shining and you'll go home to pack for a honeymoon so exotic that at least three people wondered if you would need to get a lot of shots (and you, always accounting for the thick New England accent where you live, will have told them that actually you were packing long skirts because in some cultures it's considered disrespectful for a woman to show her knees and then you will have wondered why they looked at you so strangely).

You will drive down the highway with your streamers and balloons and "Just Married" sign and people will honk and wave and give you the thumbs up, and you will feel special and happy and excited about everything to come.  And that's a really good thing because, as some of those well-wishers will know, it won't be like this everyday.

There will be more rain, sometimes so much that it pours in through the roof.

There will be things even messier than a footprint on a dress.  There will be clogged toilets and leaking pipes.  There will be the miraculous, bodily fluid-drenched mayhem of childbirth, and there will be diapers and potty seats. And there will be vomit: dog vomit, baby vomit, stomach virus vomit, morning sickness vomit, so much vomit.

There will be things more worthy of tears than the wrong-colored flowers. Sometimes you will watch your children struggle more than you can bear and sometimes they will hurt in a way you can't fix. There will be mortgage applications and job losses, trips to the emergency vet and the emergency room, and there will be funerals and biopsies and nights of wakeful worry followed by days when you don't want to pick your head up off the pillow.

And if you are anything like me, 11 years to the day later you will find yourself at dollar night at the children's museum, because promises were made without regard to the date, because you'd have felt guilty getting a sitter anyway after sending the kids away the weekend before, and because, really, it's just a day no different than the rest. You will be wearing a dress that looked cute on the clearance rack at Marshall's, but which now makes you feel like you've been shopping in your mother-in-law's closet (though your husband will deny this and seem a little disgusted by the suggestion). You will have spent the past week breaking up fights between your kids and trying to manage their suddenly excruciatingly frequent fits and tantrums and you will wish that instead of driving to the children's museum, that echo chamber of whines and screams, you could get into your car drive anywhere else. Alone.  When some sort of kerfuffle breaks out between the children as they are loaded into the car, you may even share this wish as you stand in the driveway, pouting, arms crossed.

But you'll make remarkably good time as you march the children through the museum, and they won't even complain when you skip the gift shop. Only one will demand to be carried on your evening stroll through the city, and the breeze will feel soft on your skin. As the kids watch the harbor seals flopped in their tank outside the aquarium, you'll look up at an orange full moon hovering just above the masts of the boats moored in the harbor you'll know that even though the DJ was a bust and the buffet line got a little backed up, you got the most important choice right.

After 11 years, it mostly matters that you chose the person who will run for the buckets when it starts to rain, help you mop up the vomit when it comes, get your head off the pillow when it wants to stay, and patiently wait out your pout until you calm down and get in the car. And --maybe especially-- the person who thinks you look nothing like his mother and likes it that way.

Day 4,015

Have I told you my superhuman birth story?

Have I told you about the time that I gave birth to a nine-pound baby without any pain medication whatsoever? I probably have.  Well, since we're on the subject, I labored for 24 unmedicated hours, and a few years later I did it again.  But that time it was only a few hours of labor and eight and a half pounds of baby, which is nothing really.

I know that boasting about natural birth experiences is frowned upon and not just because of the mental images it evokes.  Check out any pregnancy and baby websites and you'll see that the debate between the epidural-users and the pain relief-shunners rages just as viciously as the wars between the cloth-diaperers and pampers-lovers, the formula-feeders and the breast-is-besters, and the stay-at-home moms and working mothers.  But I don't brag about my natural birthing exploits to portray myself as a superior mother or to degrade anyone else's life choices. I do it purely out of necessity. I need to prove to the world that I am not an enormous wimp. . . despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The first time I pulled out the natural birthing defense was when Big E was a baby.  Having spent the five months since her birth fretting over all the ways in which I could tragically screw up the enormous job of being her mother, calling her doctor at odd hours to inquire about imaginary symptoms (including, once, a lopsided head), and chewing my fingernails to nubs, I developed a raging infection on my left index finger.  Because it was Memorial Day weekend and because my doctor was also my daughter's and he'd likely heard enough from me, I was referred to the ER where they told me that they'd have to rip open the abscess with a needle.  As I begged the doctor to numb my hand before he lanced it, I told him about the heroic 24-hour labor that I'd endured mere months earlier as if this had earned me some pain relief.  He smiled politely and told me that even young children manage this procedure without numbing.  I didn't bother to point out that those kids likely hadn't pushed out a 9-pounder.

A few months after Little E's birth, I was conducting the elaborate flossing routine that I'd adopted in place of actually going to the dentist, which I'd been too afraid to do for the previous six years, when I dislodged a giant chunk of filling. I tried to convince myself that I could probably live with the gaping chasm in my molar, but that plan quickly proved ridiculous and I was forced to search out a new dental practice.  I found a lovely new dentist whose office was in walking distance of my house and decorated as if it were where the people who live in the Pottery Barn catalog get their teeth drilled. Her exam room radio was tuned to the same station I listen to in my car and her tiny little hands fit comfortably in my mouth without triggering my very active gag reflex. Naturally, I wanted to impress her and so as I sat shaking in the chair, trying to explain that I was pretty sure the Novocaine wasn't working, I said "I just had a baby a few months ago and I didn't have an epidural or anything, so, you know, it's not that I can't handle some pain." She smiled politely and handed me a copy of Real Simple to read while I waited to feel sufficiently numb.

Last month that same tooth flared up and required a root canal, four years after that original appointment. When my students scoffed at my pleas for kindness in the face of my toothache, I managed to stop myself from baring my badge of birthing honor before I put an unspeakable image in the minds of a roomful of 16-year-old boys. I did, however, mention it a few times to my husband in trying impress upon him the immensity of the pain. To his credit, he just nodded reverently.

A couple weeks ago as I was walking into Target with the girls, Little E stopped short in front of me and I stubbed my flip flop clad little toe against the foam rubber block of her Croc, wrenching my toe at an excruciating angle.  I limped heavily and short-temperedly through the store but managed not to tell any of the horrified onlookers about my previous pain-management feats.  When I got home, though, I spent days speculating to my husband about whether I'd broken my toe, showing off the deep purple bruise that spanned my foot, describing the exact sensation of trying to jog on it (every step as painful as jolt of slamming your finger with a hammer), and, of course, brandishing my birthing badge of honor as proof that I was not being a wimp.

My husband's own pain tolerance resume includes checking back into a soccer game minutes after tearing ligaments in his ankle and staying on the field in another game when he took a hit hard enough to chip the bone in the other ankle, and so I have a grudging respect for him.  When he told me that it could take a few months before it felt all the way better, I asked how he knew this.  When he told me that he was pretty sure he'd broken his toe playing indoor soccer this past winter, an injury that he apparently didn't feel merited mention, I felt a little wimpy about the minute-by-minute updates I'd provided about my own toe pain. I tried to remind myself of my superhuman tolerance for pain, but I was unconvinced.  What is the statute of limitations on the valor of natural childbirth, anyway? I wondered.  At four-and-a-half years, I fear I may be running out of mileage.

Not that the thought crossed my mind, but I decided that disproving my obvious wimpiness is a selfish reason to bring a child into the world, and besides our house is pretty full as it is. Also, there's no guarantee I'd be able to pull off another drug-free labor. I am, after all, kind of a wimp.

Dream: Everything will be okay. I promise. . .

Last Wednesday evening I called my parents as I do most nights, but I wasn't able to reach them.  I didn't think much of it until I caught the tail end of a news report about possible tornadoes in their area.  I started to worry.  I called again.  I called their cell phones.  I lost my temper with the children.  I called some more. I turned off the television.

Just before I slipped into hardcore panic, I remembered something: this was my parents, they have been making everything okay for me for 35 years and so they would be just fine. 

When I was pregnant with Big E, my obstetrician sent me for a thyroid ultrasound.  As I lay on a table looking not at happy, gray-black pictures of my growing baby but at ominous heat-sensitive images of large nodules in my neck, the technician pondered aloud, "I wonder how they treat cancer when you're pregnant?" 

Over and over, my husband tried to comfort me, to tell me that the ultrasound tech was wrong and that everything would be alright. Then and now, I loved him in a way my words cannot do justice and I cherished his support and efforts to cheer and console me; yet, I knew that he was human and so I argued that he, like me, had no way of knowing how things would turn out. He had never banished the monsters from my closet, so I wasn't able to stop shopping for my casket until my parents came and took us out for pancakes and told me that they just knew everything would be fine. As always, they were right.

The tornado, it turns out, bypassed my parents' town but devastated the entire area around them.  They called later that night after driving through the wreckage until they could find cellular service.  They came up the next day to babysit and enjoy our electricity and running water, as the storm had spared their property but left them in the dark ages.  While here, they pored over news reports and exclaimed over YouTube videos of buildings demolished along the route my father had driven home under black skies and pounding hail just minutes before the twister hit.  Everything was okay as always, but it almost wasn't.

The next night Big E asked me a lot of questions about tornadoes and how it was possible that they could happen in Massachusetts, and I tried to be matter of fact, pointing out the unlikelihood of another big tornado when the last major tornado in the state had been over 50 years ago. She kept asking and I knew she wanted to hear without equivocation that it would be okay, but I know I am human and so instead I hugged her and told her I loved her and pointed out that we have both a basement and the weather channel.

When she was still awake and teary at 10:00 p.m., I got into bed with her, kissed her forehead, stroked her hair and watched her drift into sleep as I whispered over and over, "Everything will be okay.  I promise."

Today when I went to pick her up at Daisy Scouts the woman next to me turned and asked whether this was the last meeting of the year.  When I told her yes, she laughed and loudly sighed, "Thank God!" Because I felt the exact same way but worried too much about Daisy-decorum to admit it so publicly, I liked her right away.  I noticed that she looked maybe a year or two older than me, that she had pretty skin, a cute haircut and an enviably white t-shirt.  Then I noticed that she had a bandage on her wrist covering two catheters that appeared to pierce her veins.

I tried to think of an innocuous explanation but came up short, and then another mother scurried over and asked her how she was in a way that told me the answer was not good.  The woman told her about her first week of chemo and its side effects and the arrangements she'd made to be sure her daughter was cared for during the treatments.  It all sounded very new and very scary and like one of my worst nightmares. 

I wondered if just before her diagnosis anyone had told her that everything would be alright, and I wondered if before she started her treatment she had promised her Daisy Scout it would all turn out just fine.  And I really, really hoped for both of them that everything really would be okay.

Dream: At the end of days, I shall eat Fritos

I was browsing CVS on Friday night when I overheard the cashiers talking about the eminent Rapture. I looked down at the deodorant in my hand and wondered whether I should be wasting time on my underarms when the world was about to end. I'm not religious, but from my limited knowledge of the Rapture I guessed that I'd be in for a whole lot of hellfire, so I got the deodorant. 

Though I fret at least weekly that I'll meet some tragic end that will leave my daughters motherless and my husband and family bereft, I was a little apathetic about the impending end times.  If everyone in the world goes at the same time, no one misses out on anything, right? Still, I wondered if I should spend my Saturday any differently, just in case.

Of course, I couldn't actually deviate from the general routine because that would arouse the suspicions of children, whom I would hope to keep in the dark about the whole situation at least until fire began to rain from the sky (and even then I'd probably try to explain it away until the earth actually opened up and swallowed us). So, I spent my Saturday as I always do, with swim lessons and soccer, but kept a mental list of the subtle alterations I'd have made had I actually believed that I was spending my last day on Earth.  Here's what I came up with:

Unleash my inner crazy mom.  In my years of teaching, I've dealt with the occasional hysterical parent and heard tell of scores more.  I have always sworn that I would not be one of these crazy over-reacters, and I have mostly managed to avoid it. (Well, except for this one incident in the lobby of Little E's daycare after she'd been bitten one too many times.)  If I were confident that the world would end within 24 hours, I would love to share my unvarnished critique of the teenage swim instructor of the group next to Little E's.  Since she's not actually my child's teacher I've held back, but on the day that the world ends it would feel great to point out to that while it's annoying that she shows up late each week, causing my child's instructor to take on extra students, it's plain disgusting that last night's mascara is streaming down her face into the pool where my child is currently forced to blow bubbles.  I'd also point at that a hickey so large and, um, fresh-looking is kind of horrifying, especially in juxtaposition with the innocent preschoolers forced to rest their heads against her defiled neck as they attempt a back float.

Because I was pretty sure we'd live to see another lesson, I watched in fascination as she turned green and struggled not to vomit into the pool where my child was dog paddling but kept my mouth shut.

Eat Fritos.  Just as it was the highlight to my own childhood YMCA trips, a visit to the snack machine is always the grand finale to my kids' morning at the Y.  They love the Fritos and Cheese Puffs that come out of that machine so much more than anything I could ever make them, more than the same snacks, even, if they came from a source that didn't involve scrounging change and punching in codes.  Each week they make their selections and I abstain. . .until we get into the car and, I demand they share.  When I was in high school, I couldn't bring myself to eat in front of boys.  It was as if I thought they might believe that I survived on Diet Coke, oyster crackers and  coolness alone.  Perhaps this is the message I hope to send the YMCA desk clerk.  I don't know.  But I do know that if the world was at its end, I'd buy my own bag of Fritos and savor every salty, crunch bite.

Because I was dubious about the supposed Rapture, I waited until I got home and then gorged absently on handfuls of  reduced-fat wheat thins as I ranted to my husband about the hungover swim teacher.

Stop off for Botox. I have a face that people tend to misconstrue.  I hear a lot of Cheer up. It can't be that bad! and Oh dear, is everything okay?.  In response, I've learned to say, "No, that's just how my face looks," which generally shuts down the conversation.  It's true, though; I am usually reasonably cheerful and without problems that require concern from acquaintances and co-workers, but I don't always look that way.  My brow tends to furrow without my prompting and this has caused a crease between my eyebrows that apparently makes me look angry or upset.  I try to be conscious about relaxing my facial muscles and thinking serene thoughts, but who wants to worry about this in the face of Armageddon?  In this scenario, my concerns over  the long term side effects of injecting toxins and the cost of repeated treatments would be nullified and I could face my end with a brow as serenely unlined as a Real Housewife's.  It would be the silver lining to an otherwise crappy day.

Because I knew I'd likely wake up on Sunday, I concentrated on lifting and spreading my eyebrows so as to smooth my crease naturally.

Have word with the soccer parents.  Every Saturday my husband gamely tries to teach a squad of first and second graders how to juggle a soccer ball, patiently explains the proper part of the foot to use for a short pass (the inside) and for a long kick (the laces), and gently shows them, over and over, the appropriate form for a throw-in.  Week after week he kindly reminds them of the importance of fun and sportsmanship and not celebrating every goal as if you've just won the World Cup.  Each week he brings a stopwatch to ensure that every child gets exactly the same amount of playing time.  Every Saturday I sit and watch all of this, and I listen to those children's parents on the sideline as they scrutinize the equality of the playing time, act falsely modest about the abundance of talent they see in their children, and, on a recent Saturday, deliberate over which island nation's shopkeepers were more "disrespectful" of them --Jamaica or the Dominican Republic (ultimately, a draw).  The one thing I never hear, in keeping with their Upstairs, Downstairs world view, is a "thank you" when they all walk away with their lawn chairs as my husband runs around gathering orange cones and soccer balls.  Even at the end of the world, I probably wouldn't tell them exactly what I think about this (too embarrassing for Big E), but I would happily prompt them with a little What do you say?.

Naturally, as soon as I added this to my list one of the fathers piped up and thanked my husband.  In fact, he said it twice to make sure he was heard.

I'm pretty sure he was just tying up loose ends in the face of the Apocalypse.

Dream: What a difference a year makes

The Thursday before Mother's Day 2010, I learned that I was to be cut from my department at the end of the year.  A younger, childless co-worker had approached me the next day, sympathetic and incredulous.  "It's just because you're a mom," she'd whispered to me, wide-eyed.  I was pretty sure she was right, and the echo of her words served as the soundtrack to my Mother's Day weekend.

I woke up that Sunday achy and feverish.  Refusing to believe that I could be both fired and sick on Mother's Day, I insisted on going to my husband's soccer game where it was overcast and blustery, my husband's play was uninspiring and the girls' behavior alternated between whining, fighting, and crying.  "But it's Mother's Day," I protested weakly and to no avail.

My husband tried to salvage the day by stuffing me with prescription Motrin and packing us all up for the 45-minute ride to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, which, we found when we arrived, was closed due to a plumbing emergency.  The only place we could find with less than an hour's wait had talking mooseheads on the wall and maybe one menu item that wasn't a slab of beef. 

Also, I was fired and angry and really, really sad.  I knew that if this was my darkest moment, I was lucky; but I knew it in the same way I knew the earth was round.  I understood that it was so, but it was hard to actually feel it and so it wasn't as comforting as it should have been.

A month later, my principal changed his mind and just like that everything was back to how it had been.  Sort of.

This Mother's Day, I again started my morning at a cold, windy soccer game, except that my husband scored a goal (and also got a red card, mortifying me at what appeared to be a terrible misreading of my appreciation of aggressive play, but it turned out to be some sort of misunderstanding and the ref rescinded it in the end). I kept warm by chasing a squealingly happy Little E the length of the field, and I had a mimosa on the sideline after the game. I went for a jog in the new running pants that I got for Mother's Day, and for dinner my husband found a spot that claimed New England's best lobster roll, which I enjoyed at an indoor picnic table and followed with coffee kahlua brownie ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. 

What with not being fired, sick or forced to dine in the company of talking mooseheads, it was all much better than last year.  The very best part, though, was how over the past year --after abruptly losing and improbably regaining my job-- everything never really went back to exactly how it had been.

Hearing Little E's happy shrieks as I bounce her down the field on my back, swapping bites of ice cream with Big E, jogging through the woods, and, yes, even sitting through the Sunday morning soccer game: without a doubt these things feel more important than anything else in my life. 

They are a comfort in the face of any hurt, and, like the troubles of last Mother's Day, they are because I am a mom.

Dream: Re-Entry

When you spend five days in the happiest place on earth, it can be tough to return to any of the other places on earth. 

During past visits to Disney World we rented a car and stayed off the property, allowing my cynical nature some breathing room amidst all of the unrelenting good cheer.  This time around, my mother-in-law organized the trip and went the total immersion route: we stayed at a Disney hotel where at least half of the television channels were Disney-affiliated, took Disney transportation to Disney parks everyday, and ate all of our meals at Disney restaurants. 

The full Disneyfication of our vacation caused me some pre-trip anxiety.  I packed for a four-night stay as if I were preparing for a month long exile on a desert island, wedging wet wipes, chewing gum, peanut butter crackers and clean underwear into every spare inch of suitcase.  I wasn't entirely wrong to worry about surviving my Disney internment. Among other hazards, I faced incredibly long lines, an infestation love bugs --black flying bugs attached in coital, and a whole lot of togetherness with the in-laws.

But now that I'm back, I find myself struggling a bit more than anticipated with the re-entry.

Back at Disney we basked in days of uninterrupted sun and moved against a landscape of towering palms and lush mouse-themed topiaries.  Here in reality the blooming forsythia bushes do little to brighten the cold gray sky and salt-scarred lawn.

Back at Disney it seemed perfectly reasonable to make a meal of ice cream, while reality requires vegetables, and thus a whole lot more shopping, peeling, chopping, cajoling, insisting and sulking than a dish of soft serve.

In Disney World the vast range of body shapes and sizes --many on display in lycra spandex-- had me feeling pretty good about myself.  Here in reality, we have a scale.  And quantitative evidence to suggest that ice cream is not such a reasonable meal choice.

Back at Disney there were cheerful white-uniformed groundspeople to sweep up trash just as quickly as it could touch the ground and everyone smiled and called me princess.  Here in reality, Big E's friend hops into my back seat on the way to yesterday's Daisy Scouts meeting, looks around, cocks her head and announces, "My mom and dad like to vacuum their cars."

At Disney, I felt confident that there would be in our immediate vicinity at all times both one child and one adult behaving worse than all of the children and parents in our group.  And if the occasion were to arise that we had the worst behaved children in the immediate vicinity we could simply plunk them in our massive plastic rental stroller, part wheel barrow, part battering ram, and seek the solace of screeching children elsewhere.

Here in reality, when Little E flies into a clamorous rage while at the library to pick Big E up from her Daisy meeting, there is no possibility of retreat.  And when I smile apologetically at the sneering parents around me and offer, "We just got back from Disney World, so. . .", it sounds even more ridiculous out loud than it did in my head.

Back at Disney, they are building a new Fantasyland.  Here in reality, that sounds like exactly what I need.

Dream: All in a sigh

When I'm missing something, it always seems to turn up in the last place I look.

A couple of weeks ago, I brought Big E to the two-hour dress rehearsal for her skating show. I sat bundled in a parka on the grimy bleachers and pulled out a thick folder of essay drafts.  Amidst a swirl of giddy little girls, blaring show music and chatty moms, I tried hard to scour for comma splices and pronoun-antecedent agreement.

The mother of a boy in Big E's class settled in front of me. We'd both been spending our Thursday evenings in those bleachers since fall and we'd talked a few times.  I smiled and said hi but quickly turned back to my essays, fluffing the pile with dramatic flourish and hoping that this would discourage further conversation. 


My standoffishness wasn't just about my workload.  There was, first, the fact that I'm just not a chatter.  I hate making small talk; friendly chit-chat eludes me and I find myself awkwardly smiling and nodding, desperately searching for a polite exit. 

Also, if I'm really being honest, there was my not-so-generous assessment of her (which, I realize, reflects less flatteringly on me than on her). She spent a lot of time volunteering at the school and was, in my opinion, a little boastful about it.  She complained in a braggy way about all of her kids' activities, and though I would politely smile and nod, I would be inwardly rolling my eyes at her pride in overscheduling.  Then there was the way she'd suddenly get all shrill on her kids in a way that, while probably not permanently damaging, made me uncomfortable.  Oh, and there was her son's fauxhawk.  I mean, why do people try so hard to make their kids cool in the first grade?  Also, she had definitely said li-berry more than once.  So, I was a tad judgey...

I wielded my essays like a conversational shield, not biting when she asked if I was doing work, shrugging good-naturedly but without elaboration when she asked if I could really get anything done with all the racket.  But soon I found myself smiling and nodding through a detailed description of her daughter's costume for her dance recital, stealing glances down at my papers as I made polite noises during a recap of her son's hockey season.

Then we got to talking about pre-schools.  She told me that her son had spent two years in a private nursery school but that her daughter had attended the public pre-school at the elementary school, and I said something profound, like "Oh, really?"  She looked away and said very quickly, "Well, she has an IEP. So..."

And then I put down my pile of essays, because I knew that second of hesitation.  I had felt it myself earlier that week when we ran into a neighbor as I was signing out of the elementary school office after Little E's occupational therapy session.  Just as he cheerfully inquired whether we'd been helping out in Big E's classroom I'd faltered, feeling both protective of Little E and just too tired to explain.  When the secretary interrupted him with a question, I was relieved to let the moment pass.

I had spent the months since we'd had our concerns about Little E's underdeveloped motor skills confirmed agonizing over it from all angles, and no one, however well-meaning, had been able to say a thing that made me feel better.  People, trying to lessen my concerns, talked about Down Syndrome and disease, which made me feel petty and unappreciative.  Some advised second opinions, suggesting skepticism of our plan and making me feel an incompetent advocate.  Others tried to sympathize with stories that meant to parallel my experiences with Little E, but which only made me feel less understood for their dissimilarities.

I leaned forward then, and I told this mother in the bleachers that Little E had just been put on an IEP.  I hoped to hear from her that thing that I'd been looking for, whatever that was. 

Instead, she launched into a dizzying list of her daughter's struggles, an inventory that dwarfed my worries.  She inquired about our interventions and then ticked off all that she would be doing in our shoes --coins in Silly Putty, sticker mosaics, bead stringing --and I nodded feigning new interest at suggestions that I'd heard over and over in the past months. I tuned out as she started chronicling the expert opinions she'd sought on her daughter's behalf.  She was clearly not going to say whatever words I'd been looking for.

By the time she began to wind down, her daughter's group was on the ice.  She looked down to the far end of the rink, and concluded, "But, so...yeah."  Then she dropped her shoulders and sighed softly, never taking her eyes off her little girl, who was working in earnest to keep in line with the other skaters in her group.

For one crazy second I had to fight myself back from reaching out and grabbing hold of her hand.

That sigh was quiet but unequivocal validation of the mess of emotion I'd wallowed in for the past months: the uncertainty, the melancholy, the hope, the guilt, the worry, the loss, the frustration, the overwhelming love.  I felt it all there, whether she'd meant it or not.

I'd been looking for months, searching over and over in a sea of words.  And there it was, all in a sigh. 

Dream: Road Trip! (?)

People complain about air travel. Sure there are the airlines' endless fees and loose regard for scheduled arrival times, but I can live with that.  There's something magical about folding yourself into your couple of hundred square inches of space on one side of the country and emerging mere hours later --though a little sweatier and more disheveled-- on the other side.

I wish I were one of those people who could value the journey just as much as the destination, but I'm much happier to spend a few hours balancing a little cup of warm Diet Coke on my knee and trying to ignore a full bladder while watching repeats of Real Housewives on the seat back screen if it gets me to where I want to be in a hurry.

Car travel holds no magic for me.  I am not a road trip girl.

My first extra-long road trip came the summer before my senior year in high school, when my parents combined a college tour of the eastern seaboard with a family driving vacation to Florida.  On that trip I discovered the miracle of Dramamine for passing long hours in a blur, and was dragged on more than one campus tour drool-slicked and bleary-eyed. 

Almost ten years later, my husband and I decided that driving to Miami would be a good idea, despite the fact that we were in the middle of buying our first home and had no cell phones with which to stay in touch with the mortgage broker, lawyer and realtor, who all seemed to require constant contact. It is a wonder that we didn't both end up with trench mouth given the questionable sanitation of the side of the road pay phones we used to make our calls.  After explaining to the exasperated realtor that she'd have to repeat some complicated title issue to me one more time because a semi-truck was passing by the first time, I told my husband that we would never take another driving trip again.

But, of course, we did.  When Little E was about seven months old and Big E three and a half, we drove as far as Richmond, Virginia, where my husband and I went to college.  On the return trip, trapped in gridlock traffic outside of DC with Little E inconsolable about an unfortunate diaper incident and Big E herself making weepy, desperate demands for a bathroom, I bellowed, "We will never take another driving trip again!"

So, naturally, I find myself  planning another major driving trip for this summer.  I need a big change of scene at least once or twice a year, but my part-time salary calls for austerity measures so we won't be buying plane tickets like we have the past few summers.  Instead, we'll be driving to Florida with some stops on the way and staying gratis in my grandmother's Florida condo.

I am trying to banish images of the endless gray pavement of I-95 and fly-infested roadside toilets.  I'm trying to pretend that portable DVD players will fully entertain the girls for the endless hours of driving, that there will be no tears or shouting --from them or from me.  I'm trying to conjure, instead, visions of walking the girls along the lakeside path that my husband and I strolled together as college freshman and of the girls sifting through the sand on the Gulf Coast beach where my brother and I searched for shark teeth on our family vacation.

I'm also trying to become someone who can appreciate the journey as much as the destination. But I'll probably pack some Dramamine just in case.

Dream: Oh, Facebook, it's not you, it's me...

I should have known that my relationship with Facebook was doomed from the start.

I'd resisted its charms for years, but a co-worker that I was friendly with (notice we weren't friends) insisted that I had to get on Facebook.  She said it so many times that I believed her.

I nervously set up a profile, and, because asking someone to be my friend churns up all kinds of buried playground trauma, I started with a small group of people I felt confident would deign to be my friend. Naturally, I was wrong. 

That co-worker?  The one who insisted I had to be on Facebook, the one whom I'd just given a lead on some freelance work, the one whose daughter I forced my own girls to play with in the interest of collegiality?  Yup.  She ignored my friend request.

Stung by that rejection I never sent another friend request, so though I dutifully accept every request I receive, I have a pitifully low number.  Paradoxically, it is a number so low that I can't bring myself to make any further requests lest people who previously thought I was perfectly normal wonder why it is I am so terribly unpopular.

But even if we could work through that --because, let's face it, that problem is on my end, Facebook and I are just not compatible.  I am not Facebook's type.

Imagine I am sitting in a room with people that I know, sort of know and used to know (and all of the people that they know, sort of know and used to know). If a former co-worker stood up and announced, "Eating a muffin.  Mmmm," I would not rise to say, "Yummers!".  Nor would I make a frowny face and shout "So jealous!"  I wouldn't even think to offer a supportive thumbs up.

If I had a bad day at work, I might spend time brooding about the direction of my life, I might unleash my frustration on those around me, but I'd never walk into that crowded room, stand on a chair and yell, "Is it Friday yet?", and then wink and grin.  I don't even know how to wink.

Much as I'd love to be the girl with the witty rejoinder when the guy I sat next to in junior year history jumps up and shouts "Charlie Sheen!", that's just not me.  While all around me shouted out "Winning!", laughed out loud and even laughed their asses off, I'd likely be nodding awkwardly and waiting for the moment to pass.

When the lady who lives across the street kept demanding that everyone give her a thumbs up for taking brave stands like hating cancer and loving her kids, well, I might hold my thumbs just to be contrary.  And when a girl I haven't seen since junior high went on and on about imaginary crops on her non-existent farm, I'd start to wonder why I was hanging out in this room at all.

But when a cousin I barely knew held up photographic evidence of the bunny that her mother's dog had mauled that morning?  I'd head for the door. (And, sadly, no, that one wasn't a hypothetical).

And yet I can't bring myself to walk out on Facebook.  Maybe I'm waiting for someone to share a Starbucks cup quote or laughing baby video that will change my life.  Maybe I'm just afraid everyone will start talking about me when I leave.  I pack my bags, but I just can't make myself go.

Oh, Facebook, it's not you, it's me. We were never meant to be, and I've got to cut you loose.

But it might be one of those long, tortured breakups.

Dream: On taking up space

As I touched the blue auto parts supply sign, our finish line, I was surprised not to see Big E waiting for me, as usual. I turned expecting her to come charging at me momentarily.  My heart sank when I spotted her half a rink away, cautiously skating along at the edge of the ice, her arms out for balance and her mouth twisted into anxious concentration.

This was all my fault.

Skating with Big E is one of my greatest pleasures. As much as I enjoy gliding around the rink myself, I love watching her do it even more.  Her confidence on the ice thrills me; the only time my responsible, rule-following girl does anything daredevilish is when she's on skates.

She's been taking lessons for a couple of years now and can not only twirl and do a few little hops, but stop and start and change direction on a dime.  This is what she was doing that morning as we raced around the rink.  Every other lap she gave me a head start but, as usual, darted past me before the finish line, ducking nimbly through the crowds of amateurs leaning on red training bars, waiting for me at the finish line with a grin.

I know the fun of circling the rink with your hair whipping behind you, your body warm from exertion, your face blasted with cold breeze, and that enjoyment is inarguably increased when everyone around you is teetering precariously on bent ankles.  This day, because it was during the vacation week, was particularly crowded and that crowd was especially wobbly. 

After I watched one particularly unsteady lady in gray sweatpants cast a long sour look at the whoosh of Big E as she glided by expertly on one foot, I began to fret.  What if Big E got in someone's way? What if her speedy darting caused sweatpants lady or someone like her to panic and stop short?  Surely sweatpants lady would fall, and certainly she would be angry, and she really did look exactly like the kind of woman who feels it her right and duty to scold strangers' kids in public.  Wouldn't this, ultimately, be all my fault?

So I pulled Little E aside at our finish line and I told her to relax a little, to make sure she stayed out of the way of all the sweatpants ladies and their red bar-clinging kids.  She cast down her eyes and agreed to be more careful. 

She was.  And I wished I'd never mentioned it.

I tend to apologize my way through life.  In the grocery store I smile sheepishly and offer sorry and excuse me to nearly everyone I pass.  Please excuse me for stopping my cart to pick up a box of Cheerios, if only I could have grabbed them on the fly so as to avoid delaying you for even a second.  So sorry for taking up space as I wait at the deli counter, for allowing my toe to stray into the path of your cart, for existing in such a way as to potentially inconvenience you, random stranger in the dairy aisle. 

I have noticed similar tendencies in my girls.  A few days before that morning at the rink we went to the science museum, also packed with school vacation crowds.  I watched as both girls suffered the quiet frustration of having more aggressive kids push in front and box them out at exhibit after exhibit.  As much as I encouraged them to do the same, I understood that their desire to step confidently to the front was foiled by their inability to defy the rules and manners they'd been drilled in at school and home. I had done this.

After Big E made a few more miserably polite passes around the rink, she told me she was done.  By then I'd come to a realization that I wish I could have had back when I was her age: the lady in the gray sweatpants did not likely regret her sub-par skating taking up space on the rink that could have been put to better use by my infinitely more proficient seven-year-old, so why should I have worried about Big E inconveniencing her?

Afterwards, I tried to undo my mistake.  Before we left the parking lot, I turned to the back seat and told her how much I loved to watch her skate, how proud I was of all the hard work she'd put into to honing her skills, and how wrong I'd been to tell her that she should worry about everyone else more than herself. 

She gave me a smile just devilish enough to give me hope that I hadn't done permanent damage.

I've possibly set back my attempts to raise considerate, well-mannered girls and have surely ensured more sour looks to come my way.  That's okay, though, because there's a lesson needs more attention: you are entitled to take up space in this world --without apology.

Dream: My Valentine

"Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean   

into a strength. Two fallings become firm.   

Two joined abeyances become a term   

naming the fact that teaches fact to mean."

from "Most Like an Arch This Marriage" by John Ciardi

When I met my husband, just about sixteen years ago this day, my interest was piqued by three things: he buttoned his barn jacket all the way to the top (because at the time this seemed rather daring), he had a nearly endless collection of J. Crew flannels (because I was pretty shallow --even for a college freshman), and he was purported to be a bit of a jerk (because who doesn't like a challenge?).

These days, the barn jacket and flannels are long gone and the jerkiness only occasional (though far less alluring than it once was), and yet I still keep him on.  Some of my reasons for this are shallow: watching him score a goal in a Sunday morning soccer game makes me want to wear his letter jacket.  Others are practical:  I am not an ironer and he refuses to let me leave the house wrinkled. 

Most important, though, is that he is the solid other half of my arch, though I probably do more than my fair share of leaning.  Just last week when I thought that I'd lost my keys at the grocery store, he not only left work immediately to drive 30 minutes and bring me a spare, but when he found the missing keys in my pocket book (the one I'd been carrying with me the entire time I was frantically searching the parking lot snowbanks), he refrained from eye-rolling and even held me there in the parking lot and asked if I was okay.

I love you, Valentine.  There's no one I'd rather lean on than you.

(photo of University of Richmond arch borrowed from bookwyrmm on Flickr)

Dream: The fury of, um, fury...

 Under your bed
sat the wolf
and he made a shadow
when cars passed by
at night.
They made you give up
your nightlight
and your teddy
and your thumb.

(from "The Fury of Overshoes" by Anne Sexton)

Last week, I read Anne Sexton's "The Fury of Overshoes" with a class of nearly checked-out second semester seniors.  They grimly worked through the analysis, dutifully noting the symbolism of the protective overshoes, the speaker's yearning, the poet's use of line breaks.   Then I asked them to write about their own childhood furies, fears and frustrations.

Suddenly, the rows of eye-rollers, furtive-texters and across-the-room-pantomimers were scribbling furiously, lips pursed, brows furrowed.  When I stopped them after 10 minutes they bursted with their torments: unfounded fears of parents moving away in the night, anxiety about possibly vampiric brothers, confiscated nightlights begetting sleepless weeks, embarassed parents packing away beloved blankies.  After the bell rang, their comparison of traumas continued down the hall.  The consensus: what seemed big then is small now.

In preparing the lesson, I had, of course, thought of my own girls, of monsters under beds and the fury of pacifiers packed away.  But my students, distanced from childhood, not yet engulfed in adulthood and years from parenthood, were at the perfect age for this kind of reminiscense, and the way the topic ignited them, the clarity of their memories, made me think some more.

It has been a long winter.  Things have gone wrong. Feet of snow are sapping my patience, and freezing temperatures have already slurped up our heating oil budget. I recently plugged in the vacuum cleaner and inexplicably blew out the electricity to half of our poorly-wired house. One dark morning last week my husband went out to start the car before work and...nothing. And all of this has birthed a frustration that in certain moments has presented itself as fury.  I have hurled my fury at my husband, he has blasted his at me, and we've both freed it on the house.  Though never directed at the girls, the fury has certainly been flung all around them.

My students' stories, told with much hilarity but a hint of solemnity, centered largely on fears, rather than frustrations and furies, and reminded me that that I really don't want to be responsible for spawning my girls' nightmares or constructing the monsters under their beds. Yet even as I ruminated on this, congratulating myself for drawing such a neat line from words to work to life, I found myself late for an appointment, stuck behind a creeping plow, shaking my fist and shouting at the stream of cars that whizzed past without letting me change lanes.  When I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw Little E strapped into her seat behind me, her eyes and mouth three shocked O's.

The things that have been plaguing us are only marginally more real than the rats that one of my students was convinced would emerge from the walls as he slept in his upper-middle class suburban bedroom.  We can put on another sweater and call an electrician and a tow truck.  It is stuff and we are fine; I should know this.  And still I keep coming back to more of Sexton's words:

Oh thumb,
I want a drink,
it is dark,
where are the big people,
when will I get there,
taking giant steps
all day,
each day
and thinking
nothing of it?

Dream: The writing life

Last month we went to our first parent-teacher conference of the year for Big E.  Her teacher raved about her writing --the plot development, the creativity, the voice. I nodded, smiling politely, then asked what kind of math practice we should be doing with her.

Please know, I'm truly proud of her writing.  I found the pirate adventure story that her teacher showed us riveting, and I don't think I'm overstating when I call her "Pinky Lou Pickens" series, penned in bed at night, a genius combination of  "Amelia Bedelia" and Junie B. Jones.  But she told me that math is her favorite and far be it from me to fail to support her interests --especially in what I imagine to be a potentially lucrative field.

And there's also this: I was once a little girl who wrote stories, whose teachers praised her mightily.  I'm not too humble to tell you that when I was around Big E's age I won my family a Carvel ice cream cake and half-a-dozen flying saucers when my story about a very special elf placed second in the local paper's Christmas writing contest.  In junior high I was honored for my submissions in gradewide essay contests in both seventh and eighth grade (about my undying love of The Constitution and a quick and simple solution to homelessness, respectively).  In high school, my otherwise thoroughly unimpressed senior year English teacher was so pleased with my college essay that she kept a copy to share with future classes.  All of this, plus praise from college and graduate school professors, and yet my resume is curiously light on professional writing experience.   

Yesterday, I had a post about my secret stint in fast food syndictated on Blogher.com.  It will pay just about what I used to take home for a weekend at McDonald's and was such a major coup in my non-existent writing career that my husband brought home flowers.  Prior to that, the closest I'd come to being a published author was writing ancillary materials for a textbook company. And while I am heartened to imagine the great service I've done the overworked, underprepared English teacher who will rely on my animated Powerpoint plot summary of Romeo and Juliet to kill some class time, it doesn't meaure up to the literary greatness that I think my elementary school teachers would have predicted.

There are a lot of really good writers in this world.  At least once a day I read something --a thoughtful magazine article, a moving essay by one of my students, a witty blog post-- that sets me in awe of another's talents.  This proliferation of gifted wordsmiths, along with the fact that literary success is not always tied to abilities --anyone pick up Snooki's latest chef d'oeuvre?--  makes me hope, proud as I am to hear her teacher gush, that Big E can find fulfillment in an area that promises a clearer path.

Growing up, I was always horrified by parents who hoped to dictate the course of their children's career path, especially if they were so hypocritical as to put their own job choice off-limits.  I swore I would never be that kind of mother, and so I won't.  But it is easy to see the question of what my girls should be when they grow up through the eyes of, well, a grown-up and to allow pragmatism to get in the way of supportive parenting. Following your dreams may be rewarding but so is staying out of debt and accruing a healthy savings (I would imagine).  Despite that, I know that a big part of my job is to nurture my children's talents and support them in whatever it is they choose to accomplish, and if either of them should choose the writing life, I'll be there to sharpen their pencils, proofread their manuscripts, and bring a fresh box of Sharpies to their signings.

Still, as long as she's liking math, maybe I should pick up an abacus or something to show my support, because I'd be just as happy changing calculator batteries and polishing Fields Medals.

Dream: How I spent my Christmas vacation

I had my annual Boxing Day breakdown at the dinner table this year.

The day after Christmas has often left me feeling deflated, let down after weeks of build-up.  This year, though, my tears sprung from feeling full to bursting with the sweet moments of past couple months and not wanting to pack any of them away.  But we were preparing for a trip to Disney World, my in-laws' Christmas gift to us, and hustling to box and bag up the season before we left.

When my husband told me that he was throwing away the gingerbread house that Big E made at school and that she was fine with it because she could just make another one next year, I got teary.  Next year, I may not get to visit her class on gingerbread house day, may miss the deliberation over where to place the peppermints and how to best simulate smoke from a tootsie roll chimney.  Next year, Little E may not be quite so taken with the three-foot snowman decoration in her daycare's foyer and may not sling her arm around his shoulders everyday and demand I take a picture.  Next year, they'll both be another year older and it breaks my heart.

And that's not all.  Next year, I may not be lucky enough to still have my part-time schedule, may be back to trudging through full-time work.  Even worse, I thought of all of the awful things that I've watched others endure --illness, injury, grief and loss.  Only luck has spared me and my family, but what if next year finds us on the other side?

I would likely not have kind things to say about the woman with the lovely children, idyllic holiday, career satisfaction, wholly untragic life, and all-expenses paid trip to the Happiest Place on Earth, who still finds cause to weep at the dinner table.  Yet there I was: despairing under the weight of my own happiness and good fortune.

I wish I could say that I came to some great realization that allowed me to accept the passage of time, to figure out how to stop looking back with longing and foward with trepidation.  That didn't happen, but our trip did get cancelled by the snowstorm.

And I wish I could say that I at least managed to hold it together about that. 

Dream: For my girls, on the close of another year

I was raised without religion and as a result, my knowledge of The Bible is basic at best. Yet at this time of year I reflect on my cobbled understanding of the Christmas story, and I feel a rush of recognition; though I'm pretty sure this is sacrilegious, I find communion in the story of a woman who, in the dark stillness of a December night, experiences a miracle of birth and light. 

It happened to me, too.  Twice.

Big E emerged into the December darkness to make me a mother seven years ago.  I labored for 24 hours, battered by the pain but unrelenting in my determination to have a drug-free birth.  In the last late night hours before Big E was born, I was delirious with pain and fatigue, moaning to the midwife, over and over like a mantra, "I'm dying; you're killing me."

When my husband and I headed to the hospital through a cold, dark December night four years ago, I thought they'd probably send us home.  Though the contractions were coming a minute apart, they were nowhere near as crushing as I remembered from Big E's birth.  No longer as rigid in my convictions, I was open to an epidural this time around, but the opportunity never presented itself.  Little E was born 45 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, to the sound of the Christmas carols our nurse had switched on in the birthing room.

Their personalities often seem as polar as the circumstances of their births.  Big E, on turning seven, has graduated from little kid status to just plain kid and scolds her sister for talking too loudly while she's trying to read, which she does almost ceaselessly.  Little E, now just about four, still hangs on my leg to be carried.  When I tell her she's too big, she pouts that she's just a little baby and I give in, wishing she were right, still loving her clinging presence on my hip.  While good girl Big E stands rod straight and loudly enunciates a line from the Daisy Scout Promise to the crowd at her investiture ceremony, comedienne Little E, slumped on my lap, slaps her forehead and moans, "Oh brother, this is taking forever," to the amused agreement of the parents around us.

I never could have known seven years ago what my children would be to me.  How could I have realized they would render me at once so immune and so vulnerable?  Their existence blunts the stings and throbs of my daily life, yet even the tiniest harms they encounter sear my heart.  They are my beacon, the beam that guides me, that filtered through the gray haze of hormones and sleep deprivation after Big E's birth and burned through the dusky gloom of my work troubles last year.  If they are okay, my world is okay; thus, I must always make my world okay so that they will be, too.

I cry nearly every time I have to clear their drawers of outgrown clothes, reminiscing over every chocolate stained T-shirt and threadbare pair of jeans, and yet I thrill at every new stage, every little skill mastered, every small step taken.  I hate that we have moved through another year, but I would never want to miss knowing the women they will become.

And bittersweet as it is to mark a year gone, I know that as long as my girls are anywhere in this world there will be light in mine.

Dream: Sunshine State of Mind

For reasons I don't fully understand, my husband loves infomercials and home shopping shows.  He has never purchased anything from television but will actually stay up at night to watch a pseudo-documentary on Sounds of the Seventies.  His favorite is the Quacker Factory lady.

If you are unacquainted with her, she is an older lady who seems to have developed a sizeable following hawking bedazzled t-shirts and elastic waist pants.  (Have a look here.)  My husband finds her and her empire hilarious, but for a long time I dismissed her as just another lunatic loudmouth in a whimsical sweater.  Until one day last summer when I learned that she is actually a kindred spirit.

You see, I learned that, like me, Quacker Factory Lady loves palm trees, and, like me, she promised herself that she would one day live in a place where they could grow in her yard.  Sadly, our paths diverge at the point where she actually made this happen for herself, while I am left planning vacations in Orlando and Orange County and dreaming of teaching English in Bali.

My love of palm trees is not so much about the tree itself as it is about what it represents to me.  Palm trees are many things: hot sand, warm breezes, umbrella drinks. Yet, I know that most people with palm trees in their yards must actually go to work, shop for groceries, mop floors, oversee homework, and on and on.  And this doesn't matter, because palm trees are to me, above all, about sun.  They are the anti-winter.

I recently reconnected with a high school friend on Facebook and learned that she had settled in Florida.  She told me that she is a stay-at-home mom and there was mention of a nanny and a black tie gala, photographic evidence of gleaming marble countertops and a backyard pool.  It was not these things that stoked my envy.  It was her declaration that when the temperature dips below 70 they all put on jackets.  This is in stark contrast to me.  Where they have the luxury of bundling up at the hint of a chill, I must persevere and so I've developed a defiantly thick skin. 

The day the clocks fell back was my husband's last soccer game of the season.  It was gray and bitterly cold, and yet I loaded the kids in the car and headed to the game; my only concessions to the chill were some hastily packed hats and mittens and a stop for hot chocolate.  The players on the sidelines bobbed up and down, blew puffs of steam into their cupped hands for warmth, and snuck suspicious glances at the girls and me.  Surely, we looked insane: I wore a vest rather than a full coat and Big E, following my lead, abandoned her jacket after a few minutes.  And as we sat there and I willed the slate gray sky to azure and the biting wind to a balmy breeze, I convinced the girls that we should move to Florida.

By the awkwardness of my husband's squirm when I later told him of my plan, I'm guessing I needn't call the realtor.  But maybe this Christmas he'll get me a little consolation prize...

Dream: The baby season

For the past seven years, this time of year, when the nights grow chillier and the foliage is blunted from scorching to rusted, has brought my mind to the same place.  More than harvest or Halloween, these late days of autumn are, to me, the baby season.

 On Halloween, 2003 my husband and I sat on the stoop of the house where we had a tiny second-floor condo.  I had been pregnant with Big E since early that spring, but it had been an anxiety-ridden pregnancy full of scares and complications, and it wasn't until a neighbor asked that night about my due date that I allowed myself to realize that I was, indeed, a pregnant lady, that in a few weeks we would have a baby. 

Three years later, on the same night, Big E, as a fairy princess, and I, eight months pregnant, trick-or-treated around our new neighborhood where we had our own house and no longer shared a stoop.  The baby who would be Little E was due in mid-December, one day after Big E's third birthday, and I reminded myself that I really was a pregnant lady and that soon that squirmimg, kicking hump in my middle would be a swaddled baby who would grow into a tiny person like its sister.

When the baby season comes, I think of these Halloweens and of the two December nights when I struggled and pushed and screamed my girls into being.  And I think of the bubbly anticipation of all the nights between, of knowing what was coming, but not exactly, of knowing when it was coming, but not for sure.  I don't think about the skyrocketing blood pressure of both my pregnancies, those painfully urgent and undecipherable infant screams, the gray post-partum lows, the sad sibling lurking in the background.  I don't think about the days when I feel like I might drown in all of the tears and scowls, the no fairs, the why nots, the she always get everythings. 

I do think about doing it all again.  I think about the sleepy babies nursing and stroking my hair, about toothless smiles and little hands grabbing my fingers.  I think about the drawings that say I love Mom, about little sneakers skipping along next to mine, and about giggling girls burrowing into bed with us on weekend mornings.

Then I remember: our home and our cars are at capacity with two children.  If our finances are strained now, what would happen when we started a new round of daycare payments, not to mention adding a third college tuition?  And, above all,  we are happy and unspeakably lucky to have the healthy, hilarious, lovely girls that we do.  Would a third enhance this or throw it all into chaos? 

If I were to have maintained the clean symmetry that I achieved in spacing the girls nearly three years to the day, year folding neatly over year like a paper fan, I would have trick-or-treated with a baby on my hip this year.  While neither my husband nor I can slam the door on the possibility of one more, with each day we are watching it slowly close on its own.

Yet, every once in a while, especially now in the baby season,  I reach back and stay that door, if only for a while.

Dream: Glass Cases

I am a much better curator of memories than I am a liver of moments.

I have been reminded of this a lot over the past few weeks.  I cross state lines to cheer on my college football team and even referenced the school in my daughters' middle names, and yet on the day I graduated I was so happy to leave that I swore I would never go back.  The other night I felt myself tearing up nostalgically at the movie Dumbo as Mrs. Jumbo lovingly inspected her new baby, but I spent Big E's babyhood reduced to a jiggling heap of frustration and anxiety.  This morning at school a group of exchange students from France arrived and I sentimentally recounted to my students my own sophomore year trip to Paris; it wasn't until I was in the parking lot that I remembered how my host family had sent me up to a cold, lonely bedroom to wait for hours before dinner.

Coincidentally, it was during those chilled Gallic hours that I first read (and then re-read) The Catcher in the Rye whose protagonist Holden fixates on the glass-cased dioramas at The American Museum of Natural History.  Fearful of change, he appreciates their static nature.  This is close to the opposite of my need for glass cases, for it is only after things have changed that I can look back fondly at the diorama of days gone by. 

It is not that I never gaze appreciatively on a sweet moment, it is just that my eye is drawn more often to the less dazzling details: the children are whining, the house is a mess, I have a backpack full of grading to do.  Later, in my mental exhibition, I will polish and position it all to its best advantage.  I will see only the golden sunny vacation, the fun-filled playdate, the weekend of lounging with the family. 

Really, that is what I am doing with this blog and probably why I have been enjoying it so much.  I can take an experience, say venting work frustrations on my husband or pouting on a family skating trip and imbue it with sage like observations.  I am no longer a shrew or a party-pooper, I am wise and reflective.  I am Doogie Howser, M.D., without the genius IQ and the bedside manner.

Here is where I should claim some plan to change this aspect of me.  But I don't really think I can do that; it's too deeply ingrained.  I will, however, try not to share my dark vision with those around me.  Beyond that, all I can do is appreciate the gift of an optimist's memory.  It is, after all, the memories that endure.