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.