Here’s what happens when you cross a hypochondriac with the only small town doctor that her crack health care insurance covers: 

I’d been having this hip pain which I attributed to my running hunched over with a crooked hip from my scoliosis (ahhh Deenie, yes I think of her often).  After one late night of internet medical research, I discovered what I really have is a sciatica problem — the back problem du jour, no? Yoga and ibuprofen, right?

Then about a week ago, after the long holiday weekend of scrunching over in a car for hours on end, lifting heavy things, carrying children, plus a few rounds of drunken, competitive badminton, I thought very little (unusual for me) when I got this weird tingly feeling in my ring finger and pinky – that is, until I mentioned the numbness to my friend, the cancer survivor.  I told her I had a weird numbness in my last two fingers. She told me that numbness should always get checked out.

“Why? Could numbness be something bad?”

“You could have tumors on your spine.”

Okay.  I’ll give her a long leash for saying that — she did survive cancer, but WTF? I didn’t sleep a wink that night.  The next day I went in immediately to see the small town crack doctor.  I was expecting her to confirm my second diagnosis made after another late night of internet medical research: I have a sciatica problem and I also have a pinched nerve. 

She doesn’t ask me anything. She doesn’t ask me, for example: what do you do for exercise? Are you on the computer a lot? Do you have any pain in your neck? What kind of shoes do you wear? Have you injured your neck/arm/elbow recently? Have you tried Ibuprofen? Nothing.

Instead she whacks my knees with her rubber hammer and has me squeeze her fingers.  I tell her I’m sure I just have a pinched nerve but I just want to make sure I don’t have tumors on my spine.

“I doubt you have any tumors on your spine” she says.

Doubt?

“I also wanted to make sure I don’t have MS or something” I say.

“Yeah, I thought about MS” she says.

Thought about MS?

“But you don’t think I have MS – right?” I say.

“Well it is suspicious that you have two injuries affecting nerves in your back.  I wonder if that’s a coincidence” she says.

Suspicious? Wonder? Coincidence?

“Well,” she says, glancing at her watch, “I think we should start with muscle relaxers and steroid injections and then go from there”.

“But DO YOU think I have MS?” I say.

“No, I don’t think so, but if you want I can do an MRI on your brain, that way we can tell for sure.”

“Do you think I NEED an MRI on my BRAIN?”

“No, not unless you want one.  Let’s start with the muscle relaxers.  If you have MS or tumors on your spine, the muscle relaxers won’t mask that.”

Mask it?

“So you DO think I have MS.”

“No, I don’t think so,” she glances at her watch again, “but talk it over with your husband and if you decide you want an MRI, just call me.”

“Do YOU think I need an MRI on my BRAIN?”

“No, but if you want one, call me.”

“But why would I want one, do you think I NEED one?”

“No, let’s start with the muscle relaxers first and see if they work.”

I swear to god.  This Abbott and Costello thing went on for like 10 minutes.  I was seriously wetting my pants.  MRI, Tumors, MS, Brain.  Are you kidding me? I mean who wants an MRI?

I didn’t sleep for like three days.  MRI, Tumors, MS, Brain, MRI, Tumors, MS, Brain.

One week later and the tingling is gone. I swallowed a bunch of vitamin B (more late night internet medical research) and have tried to stay off the computer since this seemed to make my fingers more tingly (Hmmmm – coincidence?). My back is better, too.  I’ve been running less, stretching more and we rotated our mattress.  

I’m still worried, though. Every time I have an itch, a tingle or my foot falls asleep, I worry/obsess. MRI, Tumors, MS, Brain.

Warning:Hypochondriac and Crack Doctor - Do not mix.   

While I would never say I was ever fashion-forward, I never thought it would get this bad.  I just got back from the grocery store when I realized I was still wearing my pajama top.  I did take the time to put a bra on, but then why did I put the pajama top back on over the bra? How did this happen?

It got me thinking – how far have I fallen? Let’s take a look:

The other day, I tried on an old maternity dress that didn’t sell at my garage sale.  I thought it looked kind of cute and seriously thought about wearing it.  I came to my senses long enough to change, but I confess the dress is still hanging in my closet (of course I’m not pregnant).

I have light blonde eyebrows so I have to pencil them in.  Once I walked around for an entire day with only one eyebrow drawn on before anyone said anything (it was 6pm before a close friend kindly commented).

Too many times (i.e more than once), I’ve realized that I forgot to brush my teeth – no biggie, just a full day of coffee drinking, hummus eating, and chatting in the faces of friends and strangers.

The other day I went running in a t-shirt that said “I Survived the Norridge Earthquake”.  Um, 1994?

Oh, my favorite: Once I was standing near my table at a restaurant when some woman came up and asked me to seat her and her three friends (”table for four” she kept saying over and over as I stood there looking dumbfounded).  Based soley on my outift, she thought I was the waitress. 

None of this includes my near daily habit of spilling food on myself, smearing deodorant on my shirts or the fact I always seem to forget that low rise jeans should not be worn with my granny undies from Cosco (not that I meant to buy granny undies of course, there was just some misunderstanding with the term “hipster” — note: hipster they are not).

I keep waiting to turn around and find Stacy and Clinton lurking behind me but with my luck, I’ll turn around and find an old boyfriend (while wearing my stained pajama top and one eyebrow).

So what happens now? I’ve done the first step. I admit it: I have a problem.  I’m staging my own intervention, starting my own support group. Everyone is welcome.  Come as you are.   

“So how do you like it here?” she said pouring me more coffee.

I’d been here less than six months when I was invited for coffee by a mom I didn’t know.  She was tall, blonde, and liked to talk about martinis and golf.  Other than that, her invitation was as unfamiliar as she was. 

Her house was pretty and decorated.  There was homemade banana bread arranged on a white platter and coffee served in delicate mugs that burned my palms.

It felt like an audition. I’d heard she was part of a book club that might be accepting new members. I loved to read. I really needed this gig.

I chose my outfit carefully that morning. I was in JCrewville now – my black work clothes were useless here. I threw on a khaki skirt, red t-shirt and flip flops.  It wasn’t Lily Pulitzer but then, neither was I. 

Scootching forward on her toile couch, I tried to sound bright. How should I answer this? 

“Well, to be honest,” I said swallowing the sticky bread, “I’ve sort of had a hard time adjusting. I, um —“

“I know it’s hard here” burst in the other guest.  She was another blonde who had been here several years. Her husband was a native – born and raised here.  She seemed eager to want to show me the ropes.

“Let me give you one piece of advice” the Native’s Wife said.   “Too many people make the mistake of attaching themselves to a clique too quickly and then regretting it.  Take your time.  Get to know them. Then choose your clique.”

She was dead serious.  I sank back into the couch.   

“Hmmmm…” was all I could manage, remembering to blink.

I still think about that coffee date.  It was one of those lacerating moments when I realized life here would not be what I expected.  Something was definitely amuck. I was beginning to get the picture: go to high school, graduate, go to college, graduate, move to a big city, start a career, build a career, get married, get promoted, have a baby, get promoted, quit your job, leave the city, move to a small town, poof! You’re back in high school.

Choose your clique wisely?  Hmmmm… 

I’ll say this: when you’re a stay-at-home mom, friendships are everything. There’s a lot of mental monotony with ushering kids around and fixing meals.  Housework is draining on the good days and degrading on the bad ones.  So we SAHMmies really need friends to keep us going.  Unfortunately with so many intelligent mommies running around with too much un-channeled mental energy, the making of friends can get shockingly competitive and grossly strategic.

Since moving here, I’ve been counseled on who to suck up to and who to avoid. I’ve been warned not to associate myself with a particular person because it could alienate me from others. I’ve been told which volunteer activities will make me the most “visible”  – oh, and I’ve been scolded not to complain or people will think I hate it here (gasp).   

I can’t say I’ve been entirely innocent either.  Living in such a small town, I’m aware of the perceived social categories. To claim it hasn’t influenced my thinking at times would be a lie.   

Yet as a mother of two daughters, I am shocked at how often I need to sternly remind myself of this.  I am the mom. We are the mothers. They learn it from us. We have to be strong and authentic, so they stand a chance.

After seven long years, I only have a few friends here. They are funny, interesting and kind.  I’ve chosen them selectively because I enjoy them for who they are, not because of their perceived social standing.

Truly, I wish I had more — but I refuse to drink any Kool-aid and I keep thinking we’ll be leaving here one day to move to a place where things are different.  But is there really such a place? I refuse to give up hope.

I also have these great friends cherry-picked from other places in my life. They are scattered across the country but they are near to me in so many ways. Without them, I’d be certifiable…and an orphan.

I’ve also spent a lot of time alone — more than I ever did before. It’s not always by choice, but at least I know I can do it now and not get all wacky.  I couldn’t have said that seven years ago. Plus, spending a fair amount of time by myself has forced me to think a little more for myself.  And that’s not such a bad thing, either.

Choose a clique wisely?  Hmmm….

I’ll wisely choose not to.

Hosting a garage sale is one wicked-ass test of emotional fitness. I discovered this over the weekend after displaying all the tangible evidence of my life on the driveway for strangers to come pick through and haggle over. I barely survived it.

I watched this one woman scrutinize my daughter’s little navy dress with the white polka dots.  Elizabeth wore it ten years ago, when she was just a baby, to my cousin’s funeral.  He had died tragically young from a drug overdose and we were all shattered. In that dress, on that day, Elizabeth was my only source of light.

As she nuzzled her fuzzy head into my neck and drooled on my black cardigan, I felt comforted. When she took her fingers out of her mouth and flashed her wet gums to strangers, I knew she was providing the best form of bereavement counseling. 

I wanted to go over and grab that dress back. That little dress was my tiny reminder that when pain nearly stops our hearts, new life arrives to show us that we can smile again.

Then there was the yellow Ralph Lauren duvet with matching pillow shams.  I remember the day my husband and I bought it.  We had just gotten back from our honeymoon and were giddy, in love and clutching fast cash made from returning wedding gifts.

Emboldened by the fresh start ahead of us, we splurged on the silky Egyptian cotton linens. We were so happy to be appointing our married life with much finer things than our single ones could have afforded.  We were naïvely certain that the days of crappy, irregular sheets from the deep-discount table at Bed, Bath and Beyond were forever behind us.

On some level, selling that duvet felt like acknowledging the end of the newlywed belief that married life will always be exciting and fun. Though considerably faded, I wasn’t sure I was ready to abandon it completely.

Nearby in the bin of books sat my tattered copy of Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides”.  It was one of my first pleasure-reads after college while vacationing in Arizona.  As I lay in the sun scalding my skin a dark pink, I fell in love with Tom Wingo’s gorgeous South Carolinian prose. It was the first time I would ever think of an author’s words as lyrical because, well — they were.       

That book marked the beginning of my great love affair with books to which I remain besotted for life. I had marked my first lover “50% off” — which shamed me more than just a little.

And then there were the little froggy rain boots we bought at a beachside gift shop. Once during a rainstorm, Caroline put them on with her fanciest pink nightgown and went outside to dance like Gene Kelly.  She was so deliciously transported into her own world that I raced outside to take her picture, for which she posed proudly.

Those boots marked my little fashionista’s first awareness that very often it is indeed, the shoes that make the dress. 

I looked at the bits and pieces of my life sprawled out before me and I thought: that’s it. I simply could not part with any more of it. I nudged my way in amongst the shoppers in their fanny-packs.  I was ready to start pulling stuff from the sale when I was stopped by a woman with a thick Irish brogue. 

 She wanted to confirm the size the gauzy, white flower-girl dress Elizabeth wore in a wedding last December. She was buying it to send “back home” to her sister in Ireland.  She said it would be perfect for her niece’s first holy communion. 

I imagined a red-haired girl wearing the angelic dress in an old Irish church and I was pleased beyond belief. I know it’s cheesy and predictable to think of all the new memories these belongings will enjoy, but in this case, I was totally fired up.

Godspeed, pretty white dress!

That’s when I knew I would be okay.  

I’m so sad about the passing of Tim Russert.  I seem to be taking it so personally — and it’s not just because he’s one of those familiar TV personalities that you feel you actually know, it’s more than that. 

I come from this crazy politically charged family.  Both ends of the spectrum are fervently represented, from my right-wing activist parents to my left-wing idealist uncles. No one takes it all lightly either, and what results is a big, bad blurring of politics and personal.  

My dad likes to throw out red meat emails to provoke my uncles, ostensibly to debate, but really – I think – because he misses them. They, of course, respond in kind – blasting back passionate arguments from their side, leaving my dad unconvinced but later, (surprisingly) puzzled why they’re not closer.  When it comes to these family political “debates,” scores are never settled, no one ever agrees and a little more damage gets done.

I can’t claim to be above the fray either. My mom and I had a recent scuffle over a political email she sent me.  It was an attack on a candidate’s character, and I responded furiously by attacking hers.

Once at a dinner party, my husband called the hostess a communist.  We were three minutes into our conversation and grilled salmon when he burped up that assault. He was horrified.  I was practically under the table.  

Must politics always be so mean?  It doesn’t take long before our discussions veer into anger. It’s like road-rage on our personal values.   

I read Maureen Dowd and I can’t get past how bitter she seems. I watch Sean Hannity and I think – that guy is an asshole. Bill O’Reilly may claim a “no-spin zone” , but the guy is always cantankerous and growling, ready to pounce.   

And then there was Tim Russert –razor sharp, but jowly and twinkling. He wasn’t angry about politics, he was downright gleeful. Perhaps that’s what made him so effective. When you watched his show, you knew he wanted to get all of the answers – so we could judge for ourselves.

That is what I’ll miss the most. I learned a lot by watching his show. Tim Russert’s classroom was safe from playground bullies. Politics were to be appreciated and respected. He seemed to enjoy the process as much as the ideals, and his enjoyment was infectious.  

Sunday mornings will never be the same.  

School is out.  Thank god.  I can’t take any more crazy school-mom mania.  The overachieving moms get me all worked up with their uber involvement and super fabulousness.  The closer we get to the last day, the harder they organize, schedule, and plan.  I am so not made that way, and I get really grumpy and rebellious/lazy when I’m around them. Cut it out, crazy moms. Go home, eat carbs and stop with your highly organized efforts.

I can’t handle the super summer scheduling of kids either.  I’m a firm believer in free play.  Unleash the imagination! I refuse to sign them up for a bunch of crappy camps that cost a fortune and require me to drive them all over town. I brag about this to the uber moms, hoping to induce a new competition for just letting kids play. They don’t buy it.

I relish the idea of summer: no alarm clocks, no lunches to make, no barking about homework.  Ahhhhhh just sleep, reading and the unfolding of a new day.  Who knows what today will bring?

Apparently, today (the first day!) it brings: fighting, whining, crying, pinching, pulling, demanding, eating, spilling, and trashing. Shit. I need a crappy camp to get them out of the house.  I panic. What was I thinking?  I start flipping through the catalog of expensive day camps. 

Quickly, I rough out a schematic for this week: fairy camp, safety town, hip hop dancing, tennis and lacrosse. I make plans to dip into their college savings to cover next week. Everything’s going to be okay, I tell myself.

Then Elizabeth hands me the list she’s made of “100 Things to do this summer”. She’s done it on her own, inspired by a summer of possibilities. She’s decorated the cover with a crayon drawing of a beach umbrella stuck crookedly into a yellow hump of scrawled beach.  The list is written in purple marker.  It’s four pages long and stapled together in the corner. I read it and relax. Here are just a few of her summer aspirations:

#5   Watch a scary movie

#11  Ride bikes to the library

#18  Visit a relative

#22  Read a book

#35  Make up a dance

#46  Sun bathe

#50  Make friendship bracelets

#66  Go to the beach

#72  Take a nap

#85  Make a sand castle

#97  Catch bugs

I toss the camp catalog in the garbage. Clearly, she has better ideas. I start making lemonade. Welcome to summer.

My fish was dying – again. This would make it my third fish to die in two weeks.  I grabbed the fish bowl and my coat, ran out and hailed a cab.  With icky, fishy water sloshing all over my lap, I directed the cab to the Old Town Aquarium.  I ran in the dark store panicking as my little fish gasped for breath.

“Help!!” I yelled out to no one in particular. “My fish is dying!”

A crunchy, bohemian pet shop dude strolled over and peered into my bowl.

“What’s up?”

“This will be my third fish to die in the last two weeks”, I hollered, “I am doing something wrong.  Please, please help me before I kill this one, too” I blubbered.

The Pet Shop Dude cleared his throat. “Ma’am,” he said, looking directly into my eyes, “It probably will die.  They all do.  You know, it’s really better if you think of a fish as an insect rather than a pet.”

He stopped me cold. Those were wise words.  I’ve recalled them often over the years, altering the nouns but maintaining the cloud-clearing sentiment. Talk about perspective.

Lately, I’ve been bouncing around, tormented by my soul-destroying need for approval.  I have this friend that I can’t figure out.  She is unpredictably open and secretive. One day we talk like great friends, the next day she’s busy and disinterested. Just when I think she’s a keeper, she distances herself. 

Somehow I seem to make this all about me, and then I walk around sad and wounded.  I view it as a personal failure. I’m doing something wrong.  I’m killing the friendship. Then I remember the sage advice of the Pet Shop Dude and I construct a new iteration of his wise words: It’s really better if I think of friendship as a source of enjoyment rather than a source of self-esteem. 

Friends make your life better; they make the road less bumpy. They are there to share in the fun and help guide through the bad, but it’s not their job to make you feel whole –that you need to do for yourself.

I force myself to think of my friend as an insect rather than a pet….and somehow, I feel better.

When we first moved here, I didn’t know what a Hosta was.  My new neighbor, Karen, told me.  That first spring, still stunned by the loss of my career, I looked out at my new yard, and felt helpless and stupid. I was lonely, bored and completely overwhelmed with all the little green shoots popping up, taunting me with their omnipresence. Karen, a serious gardener who is all about good dirt, came over in her rubber boots and started telling me what to do.

I couldn’t tell the difference between a plant and a weed, so she showed me. I went out and bought some cheap gardening gloves and started digging up weeds. I would spend hours bent over, yanking things out by the roots while my daughter, Elizabeth, serenaded me with little melodies. I started to relax.

At Karen’s urging, I watered the climbing roses regularly.  I pruned the spiraea.  I dug up old tulip bulbs that were planted in the wrong places.  I tried unsuccessfully to rescue a dying rhododendron and in the process, learned some basics on pruning, placement and site conditions.

As the weather got warmer, Karen and I would go running together.  She would point out different plants and why she liked them.  We planned our routes around gardens we wanted to show each other.  She gave me an extra copy of her favorite gardening book (Lois Hole’s “Perennial Favorites“). At the end of that first summer, I sat back and enjoyed the payoff: a few good blooms, a blossoming friendship and the beginning of a new education.  It was official: I had a hobby. 

The next spring, Karen and I sat down and planned out a whole new perennial garden by my back patio.  My husband dug up four feet of soil, an event that rivaled an Amish barn-raising.  Neighbors stopped by to watch the progress, marveling and laughing at the job we had undertaken.  We were knee deep in heavy clay and cow manure.  But in two days, we had gorgeous black soil and my new perennials oozed happily into their fertile home. We were exhausted and proud, having ceremoniously claimed the land as our own.

Each spring, I can hardly wait to get started. As soon as the first green leaves peak out from the warming earth, Karen and I begin making plans. With cups of coffee steaming in the morning air, we discuss what we have in mind for our gardens –and then we get to work. 

 With husbands and kids pitching in, we work outside for hours, stopping frequently to admire our progress.  We usually end the work day about the same time and retreat into our respective homes to shower off the mud — only to meet outside again, open a few good bottles of wine and relax on each others patios. These are among my favorite days of living here.

Three years ago, Karen was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She started chemo shortly after Christmas and finished in early June.  On days when she felt strong enough, she put on her rubber boots and headed out to her garden.  With a blanket beneath her and her daughters around her, she weeded and took naps in the sunshine, her bright, bald head resting on her outstretched arms.  It was as if she needed to absorb the life around her.

 I decided not to offer to weed or prune for her.  I thought it would be stealing pleasure, reminding her even more of what the disease had taken. Her garden looked a little sad that summer.  It seemed to be in a state of shock as well.  The growth was quiet and slow, as if waiting for her return.

 This is the third summer since her last treatment.  Her scans are clean, and her garden is flourishing wildly. It is vibrant and defiant, almost messy from the rapid growth. She keeps planting more and more things in it. With the cancer weeded out, there’s no stopping her.  

My garden is doing pretty well, too.  When I sit outside with coffee and the paper, it keeps me company and gives me perspective. I look at it and think: well, yeah– there’s progress.  I’ve done some good here.   

Dostoevsky once said “At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art. Then life will find its very existence from the arts.”  I say the same is true with with life and the garden.

Not too long ago, a young family moved in across the street. Nice, blonde and Dutch-looking, they have two adorable kids that are younger than mine.  I had met the mother, who is soft-spoken, achingly sweet and apparently a little church-going, so I have to really watch my language around her. Other than pleasant small talk, I hadn’t made the best neighborly effort.  We hadn’t had them over for dinner or brought them a pie. I’d been rather guilt-ridden about this.

So one day when my older daughter wanted to have their son, Mason, over for a play date, it was probably the guilt that got in the way.  Mason is a sweet four year-old with a round face, freckles and thick auburn hair. He stutters endearingly and waves furiously at us every time we drive by. He sooo wants to hang with my daughters.

On this particular day, I was a bit more weary and tired than usual.  I was trying to eat less to get rid of my winter fat, so my blood sugar was low which makes me jittery and cranky.  Add that to the fact that I had had a lot of coffee and it was getting close to the dinner-making hour, and you have the beginnings of a perfect storm.  I should have said “no” more firmly, but the guilt and the whining wore me down.

“Pleeeeese, Mom” she begged, “Please, can Mason come over?” 

“Honey, it’s just not a good day,” I countered, wobbly. “I don’t feel good, and I need to clean up and make dinner. I can’t really keep an eye on Mason right now.”

“Oh Mommy, I’ll watch him, I promise” she negotiated.  “You won’t have to watch him at all…pleeeeease?”  

This went back and forth for a while and finally, I caved.  I was tired, worn down, and frankly, thought maybe this could help me get out of the bad-neighbor dog house.

When I called to invite Mason, his mom was down-right elated.  She needed a break. “Thank you, thank you” she kept saying gratefully as she stood on my porch, “I’m just going to go for a quick run, if that’s okay – oh, thank you so much for having him”.

“No problem, take your time” I smiled back neighborly. I shut the door and turned Mason over to my daughter Elizabeth.   

All went well, for the first couple of minutes, than the “wanting” began. Mason wanted a snack.  Mason wanted to use the bathroom.  Mason wanted to watch a movie.  Elizabeth came to me for all of this and I started simmering.  I was growing increasingly shaky and behind schedule.  I needed them out of the house.  I told them to go outside even though it was a cold March day, piles of half-melted snow dotting the muddy backyard.

They went outside, and I began trying to get dinner started.  Now, seriously shaking and running behind on things, I tried to keep an eye on them, but I was scattered and distracted.  I don’t know how much time elapsed before I noticed they were missing.

“Elizabeth!!!!” I yelled out.  No answer.  “ELIZABETH!! Where are you???!!” I yelled out.  Nothing. I started to panic. What if I had lost the new neighbor boy?

I couldn’t see them out the back windows, so I went out the front door, unknowingly leaving it ajar.  As I turned the corner to the back yard, I spotted them.  Elizabeth had the garden hose running in the 30 degree March air.  She was squirting the icy water on Mason’s bare feet and up his pant legs.  She was trying to wash the three-inch thick mud caked up to the thighs of his pants. He just stood there shivering in the foggy vapor, one little bare foot in a pile of snow.  Elizabeth had thick, dark mud up to her thighs and was barefoot as well. I snapped.

“ELIZABETH, What the ?????  Get inside, NOW!!!” I hissed. Mason jumped, wide-eyed and confused.  I scooped him up (gently) by the armpits, took him inside, stripped off his jeans and told him evenly to “go play, Elizabeth will be with you in a minute”. He scurried off into the living room.

 I grabbed Elizabeth by the arm, yanked her inside and wrestled her long, heavy eight-year old body onto the kitchen counter.  I was incensed and out of control. She started sniveling.

“DAMMIT!!!”  I yelled as I put her muddy feet in the sink, “Do you see why I DID NOT WANT MASON OVER HERE??!!, I seethed uncontrollably.  “I told you I did NOT WANT TO BABYSIT MASON right now!!  We should NOT HAVE INVITED HIM.  I have too much to do!!  This is UNACCEPT—-“

“Hello?” I hear behind me.  Shit.

I turned around and there she was, in my kitchen.  Obviously, I hadn’t heard her knock. But there was no way she did not hear me. Her half-naked son was alone in the living room, in his underwear, and probably climbing up an un-bolted bookshelf.

“Oh, hiiiii.” I said.  Shit. Shit. Shit.  “Um, just having a bad mommy moment” I stuttered. “I, um, was trying to —“

“Oh that’s okay”, she cut me off swiftly and gently without looking me in the eye.  “Come on, Mason, let’s go home now!” She sang out.  She swooped up her near-naked son and without stopping, gathered his muddy pants and wet shoes and said, “Thank you, again, for having him.” She smiled quickly and before I could say more, she was out the door, her son balanced on her hip in his underwear, his bare muddy feet flopping wildly as she sprinted across the street.

I’m thinking a pie would have been a better call.

———

Postscript: Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom – who laughs with me about so many things – especially the crazy moments of motherhood.  Could it be that she’s had a few as well? 

My daughter Caroline recently informed us she was adopted.  Apparently she used to live with her “First Family” until they were “killed and eaten by a deer”.  Now, she’s announced, she “has to live with us”.  I think she’s mostly okay with this fate, although occasionally we’ll be going somewhere and she’ll comment nostalgically “Yeah, I used to go there with my First Family.” It seems she and the First Family had a heck of a time together. 

 Poor Caroline. Those nasty, killer, family-eating deer — I guess I’ll have to spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to her.