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Where Am I?

A friend asked me this question today....it's a good question, to which I feel I should have a good answer: a date, a deadline, a sure-fire reply with facts and figures to back me up. But I don't. If there's anything I've learned while writing my first book, it's that writing is a lot like parenting: you start out with a great idea--let's have kids!--but the ideas themselves take over pretty much within a week or two of having life--just like kids.

For me, writing a book is like peeling an onion layer by layer and finding a peach pit in the center so you have to take a look at all the layers and figure out where you went wrong. Or making a quilt, patch by patch, but the design for the quilt shifts when you're not looking. Pieces add themselves; others disappear.

Maybe it'll get easier the more books I write. Maybe.

For now, I do have a complete manuscript, but I won't call it "whole." I do have goals: get it whole, get it out to agents by year's end. And in between being a mommy and a wife and a friend and a human being who needs to sleep (apparently) and eat (probably not quite so much) and laugh (definitely), I am working.

I will finish this book. I will. I finally know where I'm going, I can feel it. But my biggest, most important goal? That my kids will not suffer for my ambition.

I've never managed to finish a book before, much less found the confidence to attend a writer's conference and actually pitch my project to agents and editors. All of the patience, the confidence, the "openness" I needed to get this far--I owe to my kids and my husband. They have taught me to stop, look and listen. To accept constructive criticism (hey, if I can be told five days out of seven that dinner looks "gross like cow farts" and still eat it with a smile on my face, I can listen to you completely pick apart my writing with a smile on my face) and most of all, to believe in myself.

My kids and my husband are my biggest fans--of me as a mom, and of me as a writer. They're not star-struck, wide-eyed easy fans--they don't always buy what I'm selling--but even when they don't like my decisions as mother, or where I'm going in a story, they hear something in what I'm saying or doing or reading that I only thought I heard myself before.

For them, my success is not even a matter of belief: it's a matter of knowing.

So, for them, I will not wear myself out so that I can't go canoeing with them, or have the energy to play Polly Pockets with my daughter or listen to my son tell me his latest ideas for his own stories. I will try to the best of my ability to put dinner on the table at least five nights a week--although that isn't exactly a strength, even without the writing interfering. I will blog more consistently when they return to school and, for the first time in eleven years I am home alone all day, and I will be able to work on the book consistently.

Until then, during then, I do the best I can.

Where am I? Still here: being a mom and a wife and a friend, laughing, writing when I can, balancing, living. I might take longer to get wherever I'm going then some, but I'll get there. I always get where I'm going.

Love is Blind

My daughter's room is a probably a fire hazard, but I will take it over the contentious relationship we use to have when it wasn't always like that.

After fighting some serious, awful battles over the tidiness of her room with her over the last several years (she's packed to "run away" on two occasions and asked for a new mother on more occasions then I can count), I realized a few months ago--belatedly, I fully admit--that the whole room "tidiness" issue is in the eye of the beholder. Life around here has been simpler, calmer and so much quieter since I stopped battling her. As an added bonus, our relationship has drastically improved. Some of it I can attribute to her own maturity in general, but most of I know, deep down, is because I've stepped away from what she so passionately cherishes as "her" space.

I'm no Martha Stewart when it comes to housecleaning myself, and our house is generally what I like to describe as "comfortably cluttered." We used to clean up every night before bed, but when my daughter in particular began constructing elaborate playsets, whether it be with blocks or legos or stuffed animals, we would let her keep them up for a few days. But then she began "collecting" things--anything from the homemade confetti she used to make once she discovered scissors and the usual kid stuff like rocks, shells, and party favors to the more eclectic: shampoo bottles, pieces of string she found, deflated balloons that she loved, seeds from apples she particularly enjoyed, a bucket of sand from the time we went to Ocean Shores on Mother's Day, a tupperware container of grass where she had kept a "family" of worms one summer, beads from a broken necklace, old baby clothes she "remembered" wearing and didn't want me to pass on....the list goes on and on.

I have never begrudged her the "collections." I am, after all, the mom who has a cut-glass bowl full of rocks as the centerpiece on our side table or a stack of notebooks--never used and therefore pristine in their beauty and possibilities--on the small counter in the kitchen. My empty vases hold seashells and seaglass, and the shelf that runs the length and width of the living room holds my "collection:" my grandmother's figurines, a a ceramic statue from a friend who went to New Mexico, replicas of Dutch shoes from my brother when he went to Holland, photos of people I have known and loved, places I have been, a metal rooster from Key West, unicorns and miniature beer steins from long gone friends who travelled places I have yet to go. As a kid, I had a long dresser with six long drawers, three on each side, and six small drawers all along the top. Most kids, I found out somewhere along the way, used those small drawers to separte socks from underwear, tights from tshirts. I threw all that stuff together, so that I could I use those drawers for my treasures.

I never liked cleaning up my room, either.

When I was around ten, my sister moved into my room while our dad renovated the upstairs to add on my brother's room. She was--and is--Martha Stewart. To my mind, obsessively so. She was constantly picking up my clothes, my books, demanding that I clear off my bed, asking me how I could sleep, get dressed, simply live, in such disarray. At one point, we had to draw a line down the center of the room. I wasn't allowed to throw my clothes or stacks of stuff on her side; she wasn't allowed to straighten up my side.

To this day I remain perplexed at the entire situation: surely I wasn't that bad, was I? I just didn't like putting things away. One never knows when something is needed again--and that goes for a pair of socks to that scrap of paper with half a poem written on it.

I've been thinking of this a lot, lately, whenever I am forced to peek in my daughter's room. Surely, I wasn't this bad, was I? When I ask my mother what she used to do with me, she laughs and tells me she just turned a blind eye. "It was your room," she said. "The only place, really, in the whole house where you had complete control."

I'm still not my sister, but living in small spaces in college taught me the value of "a place for everything and everything in its place." To a certain extent.

I wish I hadn't learned this at all.

Despite my happy memories of my own mess, my daughter's room drives me beyond sanity. Two days ago, I couldn't even get through the door because she had placed an upside down rattan footstool crammed full of her stuffed animals (they were on a boat) right inside the door and then closed it.

She leaves her clothes in heaps at the end of the day instead of putting them in the easily accessible laundry basket in her closet. She takes stacks of books down to read and doesn't put them away. Last week, she created a "sun" design on the floor with her collection of Disney books. In the middle, she set up some dollhouse furniture and her favorite dolls. She began to have a panic attack when I suggested we pick up her "design." She collects boxes from various places and turns them into houses or spaceships or boats or trains for her dolls or herself. Today I found a ziploc bag of clear liquid far back in the shelf where one of her drawers was supposed to go. The drawer itself, of course, was on the floor.

"What's this?" I asked her. "That's my experiment," she said.
"What is it?"
"It's water," she said. "Remember I told you I was keeping it to see what would happen?"

I had a dim memory of her talking about wanting to see what would happen to water if she kept it around for awhile. I wasn't aware that conversation was a request or even a statement of intent.

"Ah," I said. "So, why does it have to be here? Isn't the drawer supposed to be here?"
"But the cats might pop the bag," she said. "So it can't go on the floor. The drawer can, though."

Of course.

She's been looking for her DS--and mine--since we returned from San Diego over Spring Break. Today, I suggested we just "tidy" up her room, and maybe we'd find them.

"But I cleared a path last night," she reminded me. "I know," I said. She had, in fact, shoved everything to the edges of the room in jumbled piles. "But let's tidy up a bit more." There were six boxes of various sizes in her room, along with a two foot tall stack of books and mounds of clothing. In the "path," she'd set up her Polly Pockets and had been in there for several hours playing that afternoon.

When she is almost-41, and her daughter's bedroom makes her cringe, will she remember her own "mess?"

In the process of "tidying" up, she found 1)her slinky, 2)several of her horses she'd been looking for, 3)her Laura doll and Laura's furniture which had gone missing awhile back, 4)her Indiana Jones hat, which was "camoflauged" by the floor, 5)several books she'd been looking for, 6)her "tornado" bottle she made in science class, which is made out of two 2-liter bottles held together at the openings and, makes a tornado when the liquid in one is poured into the other, 7) her stuffed dolphin "Dolfinny," and 8)both DSes. One DS was in her "oven," which we'd made out of a cardboard box last fall. The other was in her drawer with her music and storybook CDs. "Well, it is electronic," she said by way of explanation. "And the box oven?" I asked. "I guess I thought it was a good place to put it," she said.

Having hid notebooks under my mattress, special pens in my pillowcase and money in my encyclopedias as a kid, I don't have much room to argue.

When she got into the bath, I threw out four box "creations:" all of which were falling apart, one of which I didn't recognize as helping her with, and none of which I had understood what they were supposed to be in the first place. I also threw out a pile of Easter grass she'd told me she'd already thrown out, but had apparently decided to keep under her bed instead.

Her room is neat and tidy and even accessible now. I don't expect it to last more then a few days. But I will bite my tongue and take deep breaths, be thankful her neat-and-tidy brother doesn't have to share a room with her, pray she will find a bit of organization in her future, and finally, do what my mother did with my room: close the door.

Cliff Diving

It's been awhile, I know but here's the deal: I've been writing a novel. A real, fiction, murder-type mystery novel. I even have a "contact" on the local police force, and a lawyer friend who helps me with stuff. To be perfectly honest, I started this thing over ten years ago, when I was struck with what would be a scene from the book while visiting a friend from high school. In an instant a character was talking in my head. Nothing new, really--I've got people talking in my head all the time. The difference was, she wouldn't go away.

Before we go on, a disclaimer: I am not insane. Really! I have a therapist, and he assures me I'm not insane. Creative, he says, and "tuned to a different rhythm," (whatever the heck that means), but definitely not insane.

I immediately went home and started writing. Although I knew, even then, that it was a novel-length thing, the idea of writing a novel terrified me. So, I tried really, really hard to squish my voice's story into a short.

It didn't work. I've spent the last eleven years alternately working on it, tearing it up, starting over, etc. etc. all while having babies and trying to manage a household.

Not to mention the whole husband-wife relationship in there.

Turns out, writing a book is haaarrrrdddddd. Especially when I'm supposed to be nurturing and naturing two kids, a husband, three cats, a dog, a gecko and fish, too.

For me, it's what I think jumping off a cliff must be like. My brother sent me photos of him doing this very thing when he was in the Air Force. Of course, there was ocean or a big lake below him, but still. The idea of diving off a cliff, of giving up complete control of your body, of giving over complete faith that you will land safely without crushing your spine or smashing your head on a rock.....for a long time, every time I started this book, I thought of his photos and tried to jump. It didn't work. I just couldn't take that leap, give up control of my life and the lives of those around me, give myself up to a faith that it would all be OK.

That I would be OK. Even if all I did was to prove myself NOT to be a writer, after all.

For the last year, I've been making steady progress, with the help of a good friend who made me give her weekly reports. I missed my first self-imposed deadline, and I will miss my second coming up here in three days. But I'm OK with that. I'm making progress: I have 178 pages and am 200 words short of 100,000. I know what I'm doing--well, more then when I started--and better yet, where I'm going.

Even though I have been writing steadily for a year and four months, it took me an entire year before I actually found the courage and strength to jump off that cliff. But once I did....it is like nothing I have ever experienced, including (shhh) seeing my children for the first time. It's not that I like writing over them. The two cannot be compared. All I know is...if I have the chance, the opportunity to write another novel, whether anyone ever reads that one or this one, I will take it. I can't imagine giving this up anymore then I can imagine giving up my children.

Of course, in the process of taking that leap, chaos has, as I suspected it would, ensued. All for the better, I think (at least, that's what I'm going with).

My children have become remarkably self-sufficient. My son gets most of his own snacks, and usually helps my daughter get hers, during the times I set aside for writing. They have also become used to my "Ummmm.......I forgot to take the dinner out of the freezer. Who's up for Breakfast-for-Dinner/McDonald's/Forage Night?" To their credit, they are good sports and happy to play along, although my son does has started asking me "What's for dinner.....in three days?" to help "remind" me. They have also been good sports about the whole grocery shopping thing, since I often choose not to do it when I can be writing, instead.

My daughter's response to finding out we are out of yogurt again (one of her main food groups) is a cheery, "That's all right, Mommy! We'll get some probably before I'm old."

Probably.....

My husband, also, has been a remarkably good sport, learning the nuances in my voice or facial expressions that tell him I am not in the mood to be a wife--in any way--that evening because
I have words in my head that need to get out.

I figure I must be doing a good job of balancing all that because otherwise he'd be complaining, or having dates with call girls or something. And I'm almost 100% certain he's not.

To be honest, I'm not sure I would care, right now. There was a time when I was driving this project. That time has passed, and this project is driving me.

It's 2:32 a.m. right now. I finished working on the novel half an hour ago. My fingers ache, and my eyes are crusty with sleep-longing. And yet, my brain isn't done. In the background of this blog, it's going on and on about the next step, the next twist and turn....

It might totally suck. I might totally suck. But I'm beyond caring. It's not for anyone else, anymore. I jumped off the cliff awhile ago. I will hit ground by March, if not before. And I'm already planning my next leap.

End Days: Part One (or T Minus 7 Days)

We are at T-7 days here until school starts. And while I had an awesome, tremendous summer with my kids, I think we are all ready for some time away from each other.

Tonight, my daughter exploded like a water balloon filled with liquid nitrogen. I know, from my self-imposed limited chemistry education, that you probably can't put liquid nitrogen into a water balloon. But let's just say you could. You manage to 1)gain access to some liquid nitrogen and 2)pour it into a cute little pink water balloon. Let's pretend the water balloon also insulates your hands from the cold the liquid nitrogen puts out (shshshsh!! Stop your brain from thinking right now, science people! We're PRETENDING) so you can hold the balloon in your hand and it's all soft and round and squishy and makes you happy, just to look at it.

Just like my daughter does for me, most of the time. Just the fact that she exists gives me this warmth down deep in my belly, a strange sort of amazement mixed with pride that I even had a part in her creation. Even if I hadn't--even if she'd been dropped on my doorstep one morning...most of the time, I am honored to be allowed in her life, and all I can think, when she is crying in my arms because she doesn't ever, ever want to get too big for me to hold, is "Oh, Lord, please don't ever STOP wanting me to hold you."

Then something happens. She wakes up tired. She misses her dad. She's bored. I told her to do something she didn't want to do. I was on the phone too long. I wasn't feeling well so I didn't play ponies with her. Most of the time, her anger stems from something I did or didn't do. She once told me, "I get mad at you because you're supposed to be my perfect mom."

(Yeah, I know, pretty cool she could verbalize it, huh? But still...)

She can be the happiest girl in the world and then I say "no" or tell her to finish her breakfast or answer the phone when it rings and BAM! It doesn't matter that I've been carrying her around with love and gentleness for the last few days. No matter my honest attempts to soothe her, to give her space, to catch her before she falls...she explodes. Unfortunately, she doesn't just spew standard H2O all over me. That, I like to think, I could handle. Water doesn't hurt.

My daughter, my liquid nitrogen water balloon, hurts. She's very, very good at it. Tonight, after exploding at the mere mention of cleaning her room, she called me a "mean mommy." A "witch." She said, "I hate you!" "I wish you would disappear!" "I don't love you!" "I want daddy!" "I don't want you to ever be with me again!" "You're a BAD Mommy!" She also called me a "dumb bitch," but I absolve her of that, since I know exactly where she got that one (sorry, Lady in the Camry in traffic....but really....turning left from the right hand turn lane? Even my fourth grader recognized it as Not A Good Idea.....)

Last month, my doctor burned off a wart on my thigh with a dab of liquid nitrogen on the end of a q-tip. A tiny amount. But it burned and stung and blinded my brain for the barest millisecond. I was thankful I didn't come into contact with the stuff on a daily basis.

Lately, my daughter has been burning and stinging and blinding my brain on a daily basis.

On a good day, during a relatively good week, I can handle it. I can look her in the eyes and tell her I love her, no matter what. I can turn away and let her rage at me and tuck the pain and burning away as inconsequential. I sense it coming, like the way I could sense thunderstorms growing up in the Midwest. And I prepare myself, as best I can. I remind myself she is full of liquid nitrogen, not just water. And I put on what I think of as my emotional HazMat suit.

On a long day, I can't sense her fear, her anger, her disquiet. I can barely sense myself. I can't find my own center, and I usually can't find my emotional HazMat suit. So, on long days, like today, in the middle of an even longer, worse week, when she explodes.....and she inevitably explodes.....I explode back.

We ended the day with her putting herself to bed. It wasn't so much punishment as self-preservation. For her and me.

The bad news is, the liquid nitrogen-filled water balloon doesn't fall far from the tree.

The good news is, tomorrow is another day. I do love her, and I like to think she knows that. Most of the time, I get my emotional HazMat suit on before I risk carrying around my little liquid-nitrogen-filled water balloon on a day when life plays hell with our schedule or she wakes up with that certain frown on her little face.

Most of the time, I like to think, I do OK. Even if I'm not the perfect mom.

Facebook Addiction and Parenting: Can They co-Exist?

Hello, my name is Elena, and I am a FB addict. I just can't help myself: when I should be doing other things, fulfilling other commitments, I just need my FB. I decide to go in for a quick look, a tiny peek, and then I get tangled up in statuses and profile pictures and applications that tell me what Starbuck drink I am. I lose time to saving the planet by sending people pretend flowers. I burn breakfast accepting friend requests and tagging people on my "Notes About Me" page. When a friend recently apologized for not accepting my friend request because he had been so busy, I wondered what on earth could he have been doing? It had been TWO WEEKS! I can barely stay away from Facebook for two days.

A year ago, I had no Facebook in my life. Was I happy? Was I content? Did I have enough friends? Yes, yes, and definitely yes. True, I felt very isolated some days. Being a stay-at-home mom is not the life of luxury I imagined as a kid. With newborns and babies, time is one long moment during which you might not speak to anyone else even close to your age for several days. Toddlers are a bit easier: you have a little more energy, and you start to take the kids places and meet friends for coffee…but then you decide, when your child presents you with a wilted dandelion after a very long week of Terrible Two temper tantrums, that it’s time to have another baby. And you’re back to Square One.

Since my eldest entered preschool, I’ve felt my days are bits and pieces, snips of comings and goings and clock-watching to make sure he was picked up even while making sure my daughter didn’t nap too long or miss her meals .

Now that my eldest is in elementary school, and my youngest is in preschool, some days I spend almost the entire day in the car, running back and forth, shopping for groceries in between dropping one off or picking another up, squeezing dentist appointments in between soccer practice or pony class.

Yes: now I do have time to have lunch with friends, or get to the gym or just sit and read, if I ignore the rug that needs vacuuming. Of course, doing any of that (even the vacuuming) means I also need to ignore the itch at the back of my neck that tells me I need to work on my writing projects every day.

So, am I really so bored that I need to give up fifteen minutes to the writing “25 Things About Me,” or five minutes to finding out what song I am?

Not so much.

But here’s the thing: I’m having the best time doing all of that, and an even better time having all my friends in one place. I always wanted to live in a place where I and my family and all my friends and their families—old, new, liberal, conservative, Lattes or Skinny Mochas—could co-exist happily. Sounds like a Peter, Paul and Mary song, I know. But that was my dream, and look! Here we are: in my own little cyberspace town, having a common bond, at the very least.

It’s not as if I’m choosing my kids over FB. Yes, I’ve burned their breakfast a few times because I was checking statuses, but the truth is I’ve been burning bacon for years without Facebook’s help. Bacon takes awhile to cook, and I get…distracted. Sometimes I even forget I am cooking bacon and start to take a shower (that only happened once, and I was tired that day).

My point is, my Facebook addiction isn’t hurting anyone. It helps me feel connected, it gives me somewhere to go for a few minutes when it’s difficult to get out, and I REALLY need to talk to someone who isn’t asking me where their book is or what do I have to eat THIS week. Some would argue it’s a one-sided conversation on Facebook. I see it as a conversation with a time lag.

No, I have to say: this is a much, much, much better addiction then when I was addicted to carb-free ice cream (and just so you know? Even though it’s carb-free, you can’t eat a giant bowl of it every night and not put on weight, or not have crying jags the next day from the artificial sugar giving you insomnia and mood swings).

So, never mind. I take it back. My name is Elena, and I am proud to be a Facebook-er.

Welcome to my little town.

Time Management 101

Lately, I've been wondering exactly how working mothers handle the whole time management and the guilt thing. I've been observing a friend who has a full time, stressful job at a high-tech company. She runs several committees on the elementary school PTSA. She's creating the website for her son's Cub Scout troop, and she--and her husband--have both gotten to our kids' elementary school early the last few months so as to help out with the shortage of crossing guards (we are a walking school).

And yet, I am pretty sure she's not neglecting her kids. They are both well-mannered, polite, good kids who don't appear to be the monsters that kids can be if they aren't getting the necessary attention. I've been at her house to work on PTSA stuff with her, and her youngest son is apparently perfectly aware that she is "working." He did sit in the room with us and work on his puzzle, but he didn't constantly demand her attention. He didn't attempt to sabotage her meeting with me because she wasn't giving him all her focus. It was obvious to me that she had drawn a line in the sand, and he respected it.

I have a difficult time doing this. Especially, it seems, with my daughter.

In terms of solitary play, my son has always been independent. True, he would cling to my leg like a terrified monkey whenever we went to friends' houses or the drop-in play at the kiddie gym, and he cried whenever I dropped him off at preschool for the entire first year (he was known as The Howler). But at home, he liked to play with me for a bit, and then he'd wander off and be fine on his own. For the last few years, since his sister has been able to actually play, he is happy to play with her for awhile, but then he's done.

His sister is another story. Perhaps it's because she's the opposite of him, and she wants someone to play with all the time. She gets sad and mopes if she thinks she's not the center of attention. She gets excited about going to school, and she wants to have playdates every single day, and sometimes twice a day. She loves birthday parties and people and interaction. She needs to be entertained, and she has a tendency to get very mad when no one will help her achieve that goal.

I also know I have not pushed her to be independent nearly as much as I pushed my son. If nothing else, he had to grow up when she came along. I was also very concerned about his lack of social skills, and I worked hard to help him feel comfortable being independent.

With her....I've started to push, on several things, several times...and then I let it go. "This is it," I think. "She's the last one."

Not thoughts I ever expected would influence my hard-headed logical self. But my children have found pieces of me I never knew existed.

So, it is my daughter who, last week on Veteran's Day, when we were all home and it was raining heavy like it does at this time of year, demanded my attention even after I spent all morning with them. Who cried and stamped her feet and sang her favorite litany ("Mommy doesn't love me, Mommy doesn't love me!") from behind her bedroom door while she threw her stuffed animals at the door. And it is because of those same demands why I am sometimes rushing to get my homework done or put together the my son's PTSA newspaper which I voluntarily edit, or even call a friend.

That same day, I had to call the president of the PTSA. It was all quiet at her house, and I remarked on this, wondering what she did with her kids on this rainy holiday. "Oh," she said, "we did our thing this morning, and now they're listening to their music on the computer and I'm doing my thing."

I was impressed and amazed and in awe. Imagine that: they did their thing together, then they did their own thing, apart. Not forever, just for a few hours. That was when I understood that the thing between me and my daughter could be fixed. Should be fixed.

I emailed the same friend and asked her for advice. She basically said she wants to talk to me about it in person--it's easier to explain and find out from me what's going on. But I'd already been thinking, and talking to my husband, and I already understood the difference: I didn't see any time as "my" time. When the kids were home, all time is "their" time.

The problem with that is twofold: 1)even if I had nothing else to do, ever, there is only so long I can play Star Wars guys, which includes doing a full range of voices for Clone Troopers, SuperBattle Droids and Darth Vader, and 2)I do have other things to do. Even taking away the PTSA work and my Facebook "work" and writing "work" and the whole talking-to-my-friends "work," I still need to come up with meals. Sometimes I need to pay bills, make phone calls to doctors and speech therapists and teachers, make travel arrangements, carpool arrangements, birthday party arrangements. Sometimes I even need to clean another room besides the kitchen (OK, that's so at the bottom of my list, but it would probably be good for the kids to see me clean just for kicks, and not because people are coming over).

And sometimes, the kids just need to play by themselves or with each other, and give us a break from being with each other.

But I feel like such a bad mom when my daughter looks at me with her big hazel eyes and holds my hand and tells me she loves me and really, really, really needs me to play Pet Doctor with her (this is before she has the temper tantrum if I say no).

And why do I feel like a bad mom? Here's the deep thinking realization part: because I don't really value anything else I do except be a mom. Nothing else I do seems as important, or as worthwhile, or as worthy. And, technically, it's probably not. Editing the PTSA newsletter is not worth losing my kids. Writing poems and stories that so far, continue to just get rejected from every magazine on the face of the planet is not worth giving up time with my kids. Updating my profile on Facebook is definitely not as worthy as playing Star Wars guys for a bazillion hours with my daughter (judging by the happiness she gets out of it, that is).

The problem is, all of these things are things I enjoy. They make me happy. They make me feel connected. They make me feel successful.

Raising children is the most difficult job in the universe. If you are successful, you don't necessarily know it until someone else tells you, or until your kid is 40 and says, "Thanks, Mom, for teaching me all that you did." And then, if you're 80, like I will be, will you really care? Will you even be able to hear them, much less recognize them? One can only hope, but the point is, raising children, you don't get a pay raise every year for doing a great job. You don't get bonuses. You don't get awards or community recognition or people wanting you to speak all over the world because you are so damn good at what you do (that's my husband).

A lot of the time, you get other people criticizing your methods. You get advice from strangers on the street. You get "looks" on the playground and in the airport. You get isolation from people your own age.

Sure, you get the "I need a magic kiss, Mommy, to make the owie better." You get the "No, YOU have to put me to bed." You get the "I miss you so much in school, Mommy," and the "Look what I made you, Mommy!" You get the love, and the love is definitely far better then all of that stuff mentioned above. But that doesn't mean it's any less hard, on a day to day basis, when you give all day long and just want one hour to yourself to send people Pieces of Flair on Facebook or write a story that no one else wants to read but your husband.

It doesn't mean that what relaxes you, what makes you feel centered and whole, is any less worthy then talking like Darth Vader to the delight of a little girl.

Today, after talking to my friend some more and talking to myself a lot more, I tried something new. I took the kids to the park for two hours. We walked down the hill; I even brought the wagon, at my daughter's urging, although I was very firm in letting her know I would pull her down in it, but she would have to walk on her own going up (we have the heaviest wagon in the world). I pushed them on the tire swing for half an hour, at least. We walked over to McDonald's and took food back to the park for a late fall picnic. We played on the tire swing until my shoulders ached. We played football. We played hide and seek. We started to play hide and seek freeze tag, but my daughter was sagging, and she got really mad for some reason or another.

I did not get on my cell phone. I did not keep looking at my watch, until the very end when Daughter was obviously worn out. I did not go to the bathroom for a very long time or find a really good hiding place (like my car) where it took them a long time to find me. I did not even use the fat lip my son gave me when his elbow slammed into my face on the tire swing as a reason to sit down. I did not suggest we go home until they were very, very ready to go home.

And when we arrived home, I told them very simply, very nicely, but very firmly, "It's time for you to play by yourself or with each other and it's time for me to do some work."

My son, who would have done this anyway, said, "OK. Sounds great!"

But my daughter....she was the one I was worried about. She is the reason I've thought about doing this before, but have never really done it because, can I say this? I am sometimes afraid of her. Strangers have noted she is a "spitfire," "firecracker," and "headstrong." They have no idea. I have been described as the same, my whole life (my mother just laughs when she sees us together), and yet I feel like she has bested me a thousand times over. The worst part is, I know she knows her...passion...makes me choose my words carefully. Today, on account of talking to myself in my head the whole time we were at the park, I was not afraid of her. I didn't consider all the negative reactions she could have. I didn't ask. I didn't really wait around for her to give me her opinion. I kept moving, mentally, so to speak. Once I said it, it was a done deal.

She looked at me for a long moment, and I could tell she was trying to find the cracks in my armor. I must have appeared whole, because she just said, "OK. But you'll play with me in a little while?"

"Of course," I said.

"OK," she said. "Hey, Brother, you wanna' play with me?"

It could, of course, have been an exceptional day. I could have spent so much time with them they were honestly tired of me. The McDonald's could have acted as an unspoken bribe.

Or I could have figured out that, if I feel my time is worthy, my kids will, too.

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Conversations with My Children

You might have noticed my absence the last few months. Turns out it's difficult to write when the kids are out of school. Of course, me being me (unrealistically optimistic, or a "Fruitbasket," as my husband affectionately calls it), last June I envisioned us all sitting around and democratically agreeing when it was time for fun together, and when it was time for Mommy to go work on her computer. The kids were very willing to let me go work on my computer....just not during the day. Or when they were awake. Or....well. Reality intruded, as it always does, and I found myself cracking open my laptop at around 10 p.m. every night only to fall asleep over my own words (not a great ego-booster, let me tell you).

So, I'm working on getting back into the posting groove. I even have a rough draft on Word right now. And I will get to it in the next few days. I will! But for now, I thought I'd share with you a couple of the many fabulous, eye-opening, intelligent and often hilarious conversations my kids and I had this summer. It was a fabulous summer--it really was.

In the car, out on a Sunday drive, noticing all the pretty churches....we don't go to church. Not for any particular reason, other then I don't want to spend our sometimes only day all together listening to someone else talk while my kids spend an hour being babysat by other people and given information I don't necessarily agree with. But I DO like to say things, sometimes, just to see what response I'll get.

Me: Look at that church! Maybe we should start going to church.
Liam: NO!
Autumn: What do you do at church?
Me: We go and listen to people talk about life and living.
Autumn: What TV shows do they have there?
Liam begins giggling.
Me: Oh, you don't watch TV there, sweety. Not usually.
Autumn: What movies do they show? Do they watch Cinderella?
Liam's giggles blow up into full fledged laughter.
Frank is silent in the driver's seat, but his smile tells me he enjoys watching me step into my own mud puddles as much as I enjoy doing it, although probably for different reasons.
Me: You normally don't watch movies at church, sweety.
Frank: At least not the kind of movies you're thinking of.
Liam is still laughing.
Autumn: Can you shop there?
Me: At church?
Autumn: Is it like a mall?
Me: Nooooo....you know the Bible? And when we talk about Jesus and God?
Autumn: Like at Christmas?
Me: Yep. That's what you do at church: talk about Jesus and God and how to be a good person.
Autumn: But are there churches in malls?
Me: Nooooo....
Liam is about to have an aneurysm he is laughing so hard.
Frank: No, but that's a good idea, baby girl. Churches in malls.....
Me: No, church isn't really about TV or movies or shopping, sweety.
Autumn: Well, then, no thanks. I don't think I really want to go.

Another conversation in the car--many of our best talks take place in the car, probably b/c no one has to meet anyone's eyes. On this occasion, we were coming back from a large meal, and Autumn was sticking out her belly to express how incredibly fat she was.

Liam: "Autumn, you are SO fat you might be having a baby!"
Autumn: Ooohhh, a baby! Here comes a baby, squeezing out my belly button!
Liam: Ooooohhh your belly button is gonna' pop open with that baby!
Shrieks and squeals and laughing chatter about babies coming out of belly buttons and suddenly it turns to ME squeezing them out of my belly button. Partly because I do believe in teachable moments, and partly because I believed babies DID come out of belly buttons until I was twelve and the truth was a shocker, and partly just because I like to say things (see above), I said,
"Actually, babies don't come out of belly buttons. They come out of a woman's vagina."
Dead silence. Frank, again in the driver's seat, rolls his eyes and smirks.
Liam, in a small voice: You mean the hoo-hah?
Me: Yes, but you know the hoo-hah's real name is vagina.
Autumn: We don't like that name.
Liam: Yeah
Me: Yeah, I don't either, really.
More silence.
Liam: So, the mom squeezes out the baby from where she pees?
Autumn: Ewww.
Me: Not exactly. Girls have two holes in their vagina. One for peeing, and one for pushing out babies.
Autumn, wide-eyed, looks at her brother and then bends at her waist, trying as much as possible while still in car seat to examine herself through here clothes.
Liam: Isn't it a little....small? To squeeze out a baby?
Autumn: Mine is DEFINITELY not big enough for a baby.
Me: The special hole gets bigger to accommodate the baby.
More silence. I can see the wheels spinning in their heads, and I gear up, realizing I've stepping into a gold mine of questions along this line--as in, "How does the baby get IN there?" But there is only silence in the back seat. They look back and forth at each other and to Autumn's "hoo-hah" area with wide-eyes.
Liam: But you said you didn't have us that way.
Me: No, I had to have a c-section with both of you. You were both too large for me to deliver vaginally. That's what it's called--vaginal birth. Most women give birth vaginally.
Autumn: By their hoo-hah?
Me: By their hoo-hah, yes.
Liam, finally snapping out of his trance, shaking his head: And once again, I am SO glad I am NOT a girl.
Autumn: I don't think I will EVER have a baby. You can have a baby, Liam.
Liam: Autumn, I am a boy. I do NOT have a hoo-hah to squeeze out a baby.
Autumn, who has an innate sense of the facts of life more so then her brother: Well, you can go get a woman and have a baby with her, Brother, because I am NEVER doing that.
Liam: As long as I don't have to watch her squeeze that baby out....

Carnival

I am locked in a metal cage that is spinning around several hundred feet up in the air. It could be several miles--I'm really bad at distances and measurements--but I don't really want to think about it too much. My teeth are clamped shut and my lips scrunched up together. My legs are splayed, straining for purchase against the metal floor, and my arms are locked in front of me, my hands flat against the grid through which I can see the trees and neighborhood school and the road and the blue, blue sky flying by.

My eight year old son is next to me, and he has control of the metal bar that spins our personal cage around and around even as the creaking, shrieking machinery spins around the wheel we are attached to. At one point I did try to wrestle the bar from his control, but at eight years old and as a budding karate master (he has his purple belt), he has become suddenly, sometimes frighteningly, stronger then me in many areas. Holding on to this bar is one of them. He pushes on the bar even as I am using all my might to hold it back so that we don't spin. And he lets loose a battle yell as our cage turns over, hanging us upside down, as the giant wheel we are attached to spins us into a descending ark.

I want to scream, too, but I clamp my lips even tighter and hold it in, afraid that if I start I won't know how to stop.

All I can think is, I used to live and die for amusement park rides. What happened to me?

I remember my dad telling me, at some point, that amusement park rides were no longer fun for him, that he thought too much about what could go wrong. I also remember thinking, "You are so old. How sad for you. I will never be you."

Of course, he also taught me to "never say never," and recently I've started saying that to my kids.

Only the summer before, while watching my kids go on one kiddie ride after another, I was longing for the summer when my kids would be old enough to go on a "big" ride with me.

Now, here I was, with an eight year old so excited to finally reach the height requirements that he could barely speak, and all I could think of was, "Oh! God! Jehovah! Zeus or Athena! Don'tLetTheMachineLoseANutOrBoltOrAnythingImportant!" I can't even open my eyes, for Christ's sake! I'm not that old yet, am I?

Was that it, then? Had I reached the magical threshold when I could no longer find the simple thrill in freefall?

Maybe.

Maybe, I think as our cage comes out of freefall, coasts across the platform, begins another slow ascension and my son promises not to rock the cage if I open my eyes "just for a minute," maybe we all reach a certain point in our lives when there are so many little thrills we don't need the big ones.

I shake my head at hum and purse my lips. I can't even talk, I am so terrified of all the things that might go wrong.

Of course, the last time I climbed into any sort of amusement park ride, cage or otherwise, was before I had kids. Back then, I didn't care about school bombings or the economy. Pedophiles and kidnappers were bad people, but I was too old to take candy from strangers and, not coming from old or new money, I really doubted anyone would kidnap me. Let's not even get into drivers who thought the neighborhood streets were the Autobahn, schoolyard bulllies, black market handguns or suicide bombers on planes. The bottom line was, if anything bad did happen to me, it happened to me and ME alone (my husband and parents and friends and family--they would have been heartbroken, of course, but they would have survived).

No, before I had kids, the most thrill I got out of my day was when a male friend was late to work one morning and the admin called up to ask me if I knew where he was. We came from different directions, and we took different trains, but the insinuation was that I knew where he was because we PLANNED coming in at different times. You know, like celebrities leave restaurants at different times. Gosh darn it, I said, you figured us out.

I (and my friend) had a lot of fun with that one for a long time.

But in the end, it still wasn't nearly as much fun as whipping around in the Scrambler at Great America, or climbing the biggest roller caoster knowing that two seconds after you're hurtling down at 80 miles per hour, you're going to flip upside down and for a moment, just a single moment, feel like you're flying.

No, before I had kids, I didn't have the daily thrill of wondering if my son would finally choke on his food, he was laughing so hard. Or the constant excitement of waiting for my daughter to flip off the swing and go flying across the patio because she refuses to hold on with both hands. Of course, I also hadn't experienced the edge-of-my-seat tension watching that same daughter, just younger, let go of the couch and walk across the room by herself for the first time. Or the pure trill of elation when my son received a Certificate of Recognition from his school for "displaying great teamwork with his classmates and table group"--teamwork being one of his...ummm....troublespots.

So, maybe it's not age so much as the lifestyle I'm now living. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed. Maybe my thrill-o-meter is full to capacity.

Maybe I'm just afraid that if I think about how all of that stuff makes me feel---really, really makes me feel--I'll start screaming and never stop.

I open my eyes and look over at my son. I don't think I've ever seen his face quite so animated, his eyes so alight with excitement. His smile is so wide it's gotta' hurt. Or does it? I don't remember my smile ever hurting when I was a kid. It only started hurting after college when I had to smile all the time at work.

"Oh man, oh man oh here we go, Mommy, here we go again!" my son yells. He is literally foaming at the corners of his mouth, he is that excited. He braces his legs against the floor, but not out of need to feel ground under his feet, I can tell. Simply so he can get better purchase on the controller-bar. Oh yeah. Here we go again, all right. We're at the pinnacle of the ride again, about to go into freefall, and my son is going to flip us upside down and right side up and every which way in between. He pulls back on the bar and we start to tilt forward.

For a very, very long second we are hanging like that, perpindicular to the ground while the big wheel we are attached to stops to let a rider in at the bottom.

All the bad stuff starts to fly through my mind: the nuts and bolts than can fly off at any moment, the carny not paying attention, the economy, terrorists, the state of our checking account--then we are falling, heading straight for the ground even as my son is pulling back hard on the bar and we are rolling around in a jerking circle.

His screams roar out of his belly like a hurricane, and for the first time, I understand there is absolutle terror beneath his delight. But instead of suppressing it, instead of fearing what his fear will breed, he releases it as easily as our cage is pulled down by gravity.

My stomach flip-flops. Our cage begins its plummet downwards. We are upside down, my ponytail tickling my nose, and even I'm pretty sure I'm going to die, for just a moment, just a single second, I feel like I'm spinning, free of everything, elation and joy co-mingling with the fear until I can no longer tell the difference.

Without the one, how can there be the other?

I open my mouth and, inching my fingers over my son's so we are both pulling back on the bar, I scream.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Sun

A few months ago, after my son and husband caught the new Indiana Jones movie at the theater, my son put together his very own Indiana Jones outfit. For most of the summer, dressed in his overly long tshirt (worn backwards so only the white, not the brand on the front, showed), long-sleeved brown checked shirt that stands in for Indy's leather jacket, and his floppy sun hat (REI calls it a 'Research Rambler'), he ran around the yard singing the Indiana Jones theme song and lassoing trees with the homemade whip which he made from stripping a jump rope of its plastic handles.

The best part was that he kept his rope stuffed in his shorts. Not in a pocket--inside his shorts. Even now, several months after the Indy costume has been put to bed, I can still get a giggle at the memory of the looks on others' faces when Liam would reach into his khaki shorts and pull out that rope. It was a good thing his tshirt was so long.

I didn't ever have the heart to tell him that some moms were moving their children to the other side of the park when he dove into his pants and came out with a length of rope. After all, even if most of the kids were momentarily stunned when he reached into his waistband for his whip (ha-ha), once he had the whip in hand, they all looked a little envious that he had a whip in the first place, not to mention the handy storage space. Kids don't, after all, have our framework to find humor or dismay in such behavior.

He was really proud of his costume, and I was, too: this is the same boy who had always refused to dress up until moments before we were leaving the house to Trick-or-Treat. He never got into the whole costume thing that some of his peers did when they were toddlers, and the closest he's come in recent years to dressing up when it's NOT Halloween is playing 'Pretty, Pretty Princess' with his sister (the game requires players to wear jewelry as they win it). So, maybe you can understand why I didn't tell him to find a new whip storage, or ask him to take off the outfit completely, even when I realized he was sleeping in it.


I was afraid that if I asked him to take it off, he would never put it on again, and I wanted to enjoy this usually wise-beoynd-his-years boy who, for that brief moment in time was just young. In short, I was afraid if I made him take it off, even to wash, he would never become Indy again. Turns out I was half right.

The last time he was in full Indy gear was a very hot day, at least hot for us in the Pacific Northwest. The kids and I were walking to the park, only three blocks away, but Liam was, as I said, in full Indy gear. When my just-short-of-an-order suggestion to take off his "leather jacket," was met with point-blank refusal, I tried logic, which usually works on him.

"It has to be 85 degrees out," I told him, "and it's humid today."

"Indiana Jones doesn't take off his jacket, and he doesn't take off his hat," I was told.

"Indiana Jones isn't real," I countered.

"Don't care. Not doing it."

I suppose, in retrospect, I should have forced him to take it off. But as I said, I was so very reluctant to do that. Worst case, I figured he'd get hot and take it off himself. I guess I didn't realize how very wedded he was to being Indiana Jones.


Despite the abundance of shade at the park, my son chose the most sunniest area in which to run around and whip out his...whip...(sorry, but the puns and little jokes are endless, here) for at least half an hour. He had a drink of water, and then climbed onto the tire swing with his sister, who can easily achieve a Guiness World Record of Tire Swing Spinning, even after a full meal. He did this several times: play, swing, play, swing. Then we played a game of "Icebergs and Boats," which he made up and included lots and lots of running and lassoing. It only lasted ten minutes, if that, because I felt the ruless were slanted in the boats' favors (I was the iceberg, of course), but it was apparently long enough.

My son climbed back onto the tire swing with his crazy spin-addicted sister and within minutes he was pale and clammy and begging me to stop.

Two minutes later, despite moving him to the shade and having long drinks of water, he was close to vomiting. At that point, I forced him to give up his "leather jacket" so I could soak it in the drinking fountain and put it over his head.

"Nooooo!" he cried in outrage, but when I reminded him of the scene in one of the Indy movies where indy was riding through the desert and tied his shirt over his head, Liam agreed that it would, in fact, be something Indy would do. Still, he fell into a quiet which disturbed me.

We made it home. I tucked Liam onto a picnic bench in the shade and my daughter and I half-ran, half-walked up the three blocks to the house. We arrived just as my husband was pulling in, so we piled into the car and drove back to pick up Liam, who was still clammy and pale and very, very quiet. That night, he went into his room and, for the first time in months, undressed for bed.

His Indy outfit was in the hamper, and it wasn't just a holding place for the next morning.

Liam has gone on to play Indiana Jones since then, but without the outfit. He has decided to be Indiana Jones for Halloween, even. But instead of resurrecting his homemade outfit, he chose a store-bought costume.

"Yours is much better," I told him. "Ehhh," he replied. "I can't wear that anymore."

I didn't press, because I sensed he wouldn't have been able to put his feelings into words, anyway. Much like that alien skin that crawled onto Peter Parker in the second (or third?) Spiderman, that outfit was a whole unit for Liam. Unlike an alien skin that can regenerate, Liam's alter ego--the illusion he created for himself--was destroyed once a single piece was taken away from it.

"I'm sorry," I whisper to him sometimes at night, when he is fast asleep and there's no chance of him hearing me. Even as I'm doing it, I know I am neither the first nor the last mother to be sorry for having to do what is necessary, anymore then this will be the last time I will wish I could have done something different.

"I'm sorry," I tell my sleeping boy. "But sometimes Mommy's gotta' do what's she gotta' do."

Happy Mother's Day

As I write this, I'm in the library with all of my worldly possessions at my feet. Or at least my cell phone, keys and credit cards. In today's world, one could make a go of it for awhile with one high limit credit card, and since I have at least two on me, I figure I could stick it out for at least a week.

Do you think a week would be long enough for my children to mature beyond their ages and STOP WHINING?

Probably not, but a mom can dream. The last few days, I've felt that my dream of a light at the end of the whiny kid tunnel is all that's kept me sane and relatively patient.

In truth, my kids are amazing. They are fantastic. They are both smart and funny and silly and beautiful. Never in my wildest imaginings did I imagine I'd be blessed with kids like these. Most of the time, I don't want anything to change. I want my daughter to run into our room and climb into bed with us in the middle of the night, wiggling in between me and my husband, slipping her little legs through my own, wrapping her warm arms around me and pulling me close for always and forever. I want to watch Jurassic Park with my son over and over so his laughter at the lawyer's attempt to hide from the TRex in the bathroom will resonate within my heart for eternity. I want time to stop so they will stay eight and four forever, and since I felt that way when they were each newborns, and again when they were each one, and two and every day in between, I know I will always feel that way, even when they are fifty-five and telling me I can no longer drive.

Most of the time, I know I live my life better because of them, and with them, and for them.

Most of the time.

Then there are the days when I want to run screaming from my house. "Mommy can't hear you," I tell them, when the yelling and the whining and the crying and the fighting becomes overwhelming. "She's going to Aruba."

Of course, I'm not really going to Aruba. I've never been to Aruba, and to be honest it's not even on my List of Places to See Before I Die. I've been to Hawaii, several times, and I figure Aruba, Hawaii--they're both probably very similar, what with all the sand and the water and the sun. I'd tell the kids I'm going to Hawaii, except the kids have been to Hawaii with me. Just the very mention of Hawaii would stimulate my daughter's Hawaiian memories, and her monologues have been known to last for hours.

For some reason, telling the kids I'm going to Aruba shocks them out of whatever crabby state they are in. Usually, it stimulates pure, deep laughter from my son, who never ceases to find it hysterical that he could actually drive his mother to a point where she has to run away in her imagination. My daughter loves the word: "ARUBA." She often begins to make up words that rhyme with Aruba, which only pushes my son's laughter beyond hysteria (try it: Aruba, Gabluba, Jofluja), which in turns makes me laugh.

There are a few times, though, when even "going to Aruba" doesn't work.

Today would be one of those times.

Today, I was prompted to run away for real after a very long week of my eight year old acting like a cranky two year old, my daughter's constant whining (and not just the usual kid whininess--but whining like she thought she was part of those old SNL skits with Wendy Whiner and her family. That skit used to annoy me even before I had kids), and a cloying clinginess on the part of both of them that was odd even for my daughter, who tends to be demanding on the best days.

It doesn't help that the temperature out here hasn't risen about fifty in many weeks. I'm still wearing my Uggs and my winter sweaters, and when we see the sun during brief moments of the day, none of us are sure it's not a hallucination. On top of all this, due to an abnormally busy schedule, I was constantly running from the house to the car to wherever, back and forth all day long. One morning, my daughter and I came home for fifteen minutes before we had to leave again. I don't even know why we went home. It was more out of some obsessive need to be home, if only for a few moments.

Now that I've written it all down, I understand why I bolted out of the house this morning after my son began yet another more-appropriate-for-a-two-year-old emotional outburst during a game.

"I'm going out," I told my husband, "and I don't know when I'll be back."

"I've got it," he said. "Take your time."

He is the best husband and father ever, and it's times like these I wish I would remember when he forgets to do something.

In my head, I was going to Aruba for real this time. I could drive to the airport, I thought, and buy a ticket on the next plane out. Sure, I didn't have clothes, but I could get a job at a resort or a bar or a fishing boat. I could work and earn money for clothes and food. It would be nice to see the sun, and all that work and not very much money for food would be better than the treadmill five days a week.

I thought about it while I worked out at the gym. I thought about it while I shopped for despeartely needed jeans. I thought about it when, having nowhere to go but no really wanting to go home just yet, I drove here, the library, where I hauled out my computer and surfed EOnline. There would definitely be sun in Aruba, I thought, and it would be nice to have a job where my expectations, duties, and lunch breaks were clear.

But I would miss my kids. I would miss my daughter's face when I pick her up from preschool. I would miss my son's flying leaps onto me when I was least expecting it. I would miss the four of us, me and the kids and my husband, driving for hotdogs on Saturdays, singing silly songs and making jokes about porta-potties (singularly the most hilarious idea according to my kids).

I would even miss the tears and the tantrums and the fears and frustrations, because without all of that, none of the joy would give me that sweet, heady sense of success. Serving drinks to drunken, sunburned Aruban tourists would definitely be easier. But none of those tourists would bring me a handwritten letter that said, "I still miss you at skool. But I am funding waas to handel it." None of those tourists would say, "I need to tell you a secret. You're the best friend ever!"

I would miss being a mother.

That said, it's time to go home.

The Easter Bunny: The Final Frontier

I believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy until I was twelve. I swear. Sure, there were rumblings about them not being real from as early as first or second grade, but I resolutely refused to buy into the rumor. When my friends entered into blatant, bold discussions about their parents being involved in the ruse, I simply did not join in. It was obvious to me that they had their truths, and I had mine. Of course, doubt occasionally surfaced in my mind--the older we got it seemed like everyone I knew no longer believed, so maybe there was something to the gossip. But I never saw any evidence to support their claims. I probably wasn't looking very hard, but I never saw any evidence to support my own beliefs, either. True believers don't need evidence. They simply believe, through every corner of their being, without question.

The year I was twelve, my dad asked me if I wanted to help with the wrapping of the Santa presents. While neither he nor my mom and I had ever had a discussion about the reality of Santa, in his defense--I was twelve (almost thirteen would be closer to the mark). My sister was nine, and she was one of those kids on the other side of the fence already. So he probably figured my belief was just a facade for my little brother.

It wasn't, and I will never forget that moment when my belief system came crumbling down upon me like the very earth itself. Dramatic, yes, but that's how I felt. I can still see myself, standing in the living room, right before the stairs, with my dad saying those words and then flashing me a conspiratorial grin as he jogged upstairs, off to commit fraud with wrapping paper and "Love, Santa" labels.

From that day forward, I looked forward to having my own children, so that I might relive the true spirit of Christmas and Easter and losing teeth through them.

Instead, the god of Desire was up to its usual mischief, because my first child has been wisely wary of the whole Mysterious Midnight Visitors since Day One.

My son was one and a half when Santa started freaking him out. He didn't like the idea that Santa would come down our chimney, while he was sleeping. I know; you say, "He was only 20 months. Did he really understand?" Trust me. He understood. The only way we were able to stop his rising hysterics that Christmas Eve was to promise we'd get Santa to leave the presents on the doorstep, outside, and not to come in the house. Thankfully, my son was young enough not to question exactly when we brought the presents inside the next morning, so it was a good Christmas despite his fears.

We decided it was just some free-floating anxiety, and it wouldn't happen the next year.

We were wrong. The following Christmas Eve, when he was two and a half, we had to perform several almost-OCD-like checks on the windows, doors and fireplace grate before he went to bed--to make sure Santa wouldn't be getting in no way, no how.

I began to wonder if he'd been murdered by red-velvet wearing burglars in a past life.

My son's anxieties have lessened as he got older, and when he was five we were even able to "let" Santa come down the chimney. Having a little sister has definitely helped: while his serious doubt about magic and Santa's ability to exceed the speed of light proves he doesn't completely buy into the whole Santa deal, he definitely puts on a good front for Little Sis. I'm also convinced he's accepted Santa's existence, for now, because of the end result: all those pretty presents underneath the tree.

But absolute belief? Down deep life sustaining belief? Not for my boy.

Strangely, the Easter Bunny and, later, the Tooth Fairy, have not disturbed him nearly as much. While he's not real sure what the heck a Fairy would want with a bunch of teeth, he apparently puts it down to her business, and is OK with her sneaking into his bedroom and leaving money underneath his pillow. He was, in fact, very excited for his first Tooth Fairy visit, and while he has questioned her ability to fly, as a tiny creature, with a big bag of teeth or heavy coins, nothing much has come of it. He likes money, maybe even more than gift-wrapped presents, so he's apparently made his peace.

As for the Easter Bunny? I like to think--imagine, my husband says--that I have enjoyed at least a little of that absolute, down deep life sustaining belief in the Easter Bunny. Easter has always excited him, and we never saw any anxiety about the giant bunny hopping into our house in the middle of the night. I suppose a giant bunny sneaking into your house is more benign then an actual man--red-velvet wearing or otherwise--sneaking into your house. After all, CNN never reports about giant bunnies murdering people in their sleep.

Last year my son did spend a few hours ruminating on the Easter Bunny's ability to hop so fast he could hide eggs all over the place in one night, and he did question the Bunny's storage capacity for carrying all the candy needed. But these were merely theoretical musings, and we as a family came up with several creative ways this could be possible, if we did away with a few rules of physics (if we're ruminating with my son and my husband, the rules of physics are always taken seriously, and they view my motto, "Anything is possible" as sheer heresy).

For the few weeks before Easter this year, my son has been talking about staying up late to catch the Easter Bunny, or setting a trap to catch him in the act. I laughed and played along with trap variations until Good Friday, when my curiosity got the better of me. "What," I said, "exactly will you do with the Easter Bunny if you catch him?" "Prove he's real," my son said. "Or prove he's just a man in a bunny suit." "Why?" I asked him. "Who's been saying he's not real?" "Well," my son said. "Some of my classmates don't believe in other life forms outside of this universe."

Not sure we'd heard him correctly, my husband and I both said, almost simultaneously, "What do other life forms have to do with the Easter Bunny?"

Then my son gave us the preview of his teenage "You are such idiots" look, opening his wide eyes even wider and sort of rolling them at us, dropping his jaw and throwing back his shoulders. "He's a Giant Bunny," my son said, "who lays eggs and hops around the world delivering candy. There's no life form like that on this planet. He can't be from Earth! He's got to be of alien origin!"

For the first time, I have hope that little twelve year old diehard believer did live on in him, a little bit--that he didn't get all of his dad's black-and-white views on life. He's thinking harder and better then I ever did, but...there's nothing wrong with a little skepticism to balance out the dogma .

The world might be a better place, if we all thought long and hard about our own down deep life sustaining beliefs and didn't just naively follow our convictions.

You'd think that by now, at the dawn of the 21st century, swimsuits would be created with special nanotechnology so they looked as awesome on you as they do on the hangers. Perhaps if we took some of that time and money we're spending on the alleged global warming and put it towards swimsuit technology, I wouldn't continue to embarrass myself by constantly trying on swimsuits that, despite their labels claiming sizes for WOMEN, make me look like I'm wearing my preschool-age daughter's clothes.

Of course, this is not a new complaint. I get wound up about it almost every summer (except the summer I was pregnant with aforementioned daughter, when I got to wear a big blue tent masquerading as a swimsuit and was very, very excited that the bottoms were only a maternity-sized medium). To be honest, most of the women I know have been making this complaint for many, many years before the appearance of the baby pooches and bye-bye-arms.

I, for one, was making it way back when, before I had either a pooch or flabby arms, before I really knew the true meaning of "fat" (that would come later, when I was pregnant with my son).

Back then, I wore bikinis all the time, especially the four years we lived in Austin, Texas. I can't say I ever enjoyed wearing a bikini. I was proud that I could wear one, and I felt it was expected of me: I was in my early twenties, I worked out, everyone else did. Still, I rarely wore one outside of the pool in our apartment complex. If we went to the lake, I always managed to wear my bikini top and a pair of shorts. Walking from our apartment to the complex pool wrapped in a towel and then lying down on a chaise lounge and trying to ignore the people I lived among was a very different thing, for me, then prancing around practically naked in a social situation. I just wasn't comfortable.

Still, that didn't stop me from touring the greater Austin area in order to find a bikini to wear to a Mardi Gras themed Fourth of July party.

I don't remember the particulars, or exactly why bikinis were the expected attire--my memory lapse has more to do with the amount I drank that night, more than the fact that it was over ten years ago--but whatever the reason, my best friend at the time and I began searching for the perfect bikini. Or at least, I did. As a long, tall, willowy blond goddess, the kind of girl I aspired to be (at only 23, I was still holding out for a late growth spurt--I was okay with my darker hair color), she had no problem wearing a bikini to a party, and she had several on hand in her wardrobe. The difficulty for her was probably just choosing the right one. She was also Hell-bent on making our own Mardi Gras headdresses, just because she loved doing that stuff, and while I was traipsing around town looking for the perfect bikini, she was searching the craft stores for the perfect feathers and beads.

I should have just told GoddessGirl I wasn't comfortable wearing a bikini in that situation. But I wanted to be comfortable. I wanted to have the same confidence and poise that she did. I wanted, like I said, to be taller, prettier, skinnier....

Of course, no matter how I spun it, I wasn't comfortable wearing my bikini in a social situation. I was very, very afraid that my big, ugly belly (I had no idea what a big belly was then) would pop out. To make certain this wouldn't happen, I chose bottoms that were a size too big. Instead of settling on my hips, I pulled them up and over my hips. Not the Queen of Fashion even then, I didn't realize that by covering up my navel I was doing more harm than good. I turned what should have been sexy bikini briefs into granny undies. It didn't help that the bikini was white, with a lacy overlay that I thought was a step up from plain (something else I learned from this was that I should never shop alone).

I knew something wasn't right when GoddessGirl's father answered the door and gave me the old double-take. Then he acted funny, and not funny as in "Oh, wow, my daughter's friend is hot." Which would have been weird enough, but better then the "Holy crap, what is she wearing?" vibe I was getting. GoddessGirl, wrapped up as she was in the enormous headdress she had made (a toddler could have done a better job with mine), either didn't notice, didn't care or didn't want to tell me. She did tell me later that her dad definitely thought I was wearing my underwear, but because she was a good friend she spun it so he came off like a silly old man. There was a reason she was my best friend.

Still, I brushed off my doubts, ignored my discomfort, and got really, really drunk. Drinking always helps to cover up emotion. Not do away with it--it's always there lurking in the background, but when you're drunk you don't care how your sober self feels.

I don't remember much else about the party, other than the drinking and the nagging, overall sense of feeling uncomfortable. I do remember lying on the grass at some point with GoddessGirl and the guy she would marry a few years down the road. I'm not sure why were lying on the grass, or how we ended up there, but I do remember laughing so hard my navel-covered stomach hurt. Too bad I can't remember the killer jokes we were were obviously telling. Oh, and GoddessGirl's guy contracted meningitis somewhere along the way that night, probably from the ball pit--can't get much more unsanitary than a bunch of drunk people rolling around in a tent full of plastic balls.

But overall, my memories of that night are fun, goofy memories. I knew I didn't look fabulous, but I didn't think I looked ridiculous, either, and I was ignoring my discomfort. And really, what woman, even GoddessGirl, hasn't settled at some time or another?

Then I saw the photos.

The situation probably wasn't helped by the fact that in all the photos I'm standing next to the amazing GoddessGirl, she who could (and probably still can) look amazing in rags and garbage bags (and in fact had made an amazing headdress out of feathers and beads and cardboard). The situation probably wasn't helped by the several drinks that I'd had within the first few moments of the party, my inhibitions relaxing so I forgot to stand up straight and keep my eyes wide open. Even Angelina Jolie would look bad with droopy eyes. And the situation was definitely not helped by me yanking my bikini bottoms up far past my hips and just over my belly button, turning them into granny undies instead of...well, bikini bottoms.

But most of all, I think, it was just the plain and simple fact that, out in the bright, Austin sunlight--or moonlight, as the case may be, among the vibrant green expanse of lawn and under the bold pinks and purples of the Mardi Gras decorations, my white bikini looked like underwear.

Expensive underwear, perhaps, but underwear with granny panties and and underwire bra nevertheless.

Underwear.

I still cringe at the photos. Yes, I've kept them. You could say it's part reminder, part a future lesson for my kids: Don't ever do something you're not comfortable doing just because someone told you to.

Yet here I stand, staring at myself in a teensy-weensy bikini underneath the unnaturally harsh flourescents of the fitting room, imagining myself out on the beach in the bikini, running and playing and building sand castles with my kids and worrying the entire time that my boobs were going to pop out. And why? Just to prove I could.

"You," I said to myself, "are almost thirty-nine years old. Don't you think it's time you stop doing things just to prove that you can?"

But myself didn't answer. I was already busy taking off the teensy-weensy bikini and putting on my street clothes. I was thinking about the perfectly fine tankini I had at home, one that did what I wanted it to do: let me live the way I wanted to live.