Aura had her five-year physical this week. I’m not sure why I always get a touch anxious when it’s time for one of these things. It doesn’t help that the entire experience always starts with a stint in the waiting room during which Aura cagily eyes all available toy options and then beelines for the…
Recently, I feel like Aura has been left holding the short end of the stick. To be sure, I really don’t know what the short end of a stick entails besides being short, but in this case I think it might involve less playing with your mother and possibly a dab of boredom. There have…
It always gives me a gigantic thrill to see Aura run straight to the waves when we visit my mother in RI, to watch the way she throws her typical caution to the salty wind and splashes right in, going deeper until we warn her to stop. I take greedy breaths of the ocean air,…
Years after we should have made some proper estate planning changes (read: a couple of years ago) (read read: like we were supposed to) (read read read: but you’re also supposed to have a wedding album made after you’re married yet that hasn’t stopped me from staring at two boxes of proofs for six years,…
Even before recent events and funerals, it had not escaped my attention that I was a member of the Amazing Shrinking Family. Mix up a bunch of only children, a healthy dose of familial estrangement, and a dab too many elderly relatives and you eventually end up with a very compact family. On most days,…
One day many moons ago, when I was probably around 11 or 12, my truly beloved grandmother decided to impart some wisdom. “When you are married, you should always make sure you look nice when your husband comes home,” she told me, tidying up the kitchen, which was always spotless and the scene of innumerable…
I have blindingly clear memories of being seven years old. I know it was 15 20 25 years ago GOD WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME I’M OLD but it matters not: You experience pain of the magnitude I experienced and you remember. Scraped knees paled in comparison. The time I got my five-year-old…
The other day, I was regaling a friend with a story of the previous night, a rather atypical evening riddled with Aura’s 10 and 11 p.m. wake-ups and then her sudden bout of midnight-timed chatter. “Oh, you poor thing,” the other mother said when I finished. “You must be so tired, not having gone to…
I freely acknowledge that I am not a vision of marital bliss by the time Adam arrives home most nights. He’ll walk in the door, announcing his exhaustion, and I’ll stare at him with something bordering on wrath. Carrot peels from dinner prep stuck to my face, driveway chalk crusted under my nails, a laundry…
Apparently, the planets have aligned, the stars have crossed, and a ritual sacrifice of a Polly Pocket or two (RELAX, one of them was already missing her left arm and the other one bore an off-putting resemblance to Mickey Rourke) has been made, for we have a babysitter. This is a rare occurrence, so rare…