I’ve been a little radio silent around here for a bit. Mostly because I’ve been eating. Or thinking about eating. Or planning the eating.
To be fair, this is the case for me All the Time. I like food. But in my defense at this particular time, my friend Maggie and I just held our first ever Food and Wine Retreat, so All the Thinking About Food = LEGIT. ...
We went on vacation last week, and it’s not lost on me that we’re now part of a narrowing group of American families who can afford ridiculous luxuries like paid time off and time together in the sun and water. Never mind that this holiday was paid for by Nana and Papa, and not us; we won’t pretend generous grandparents involved in their grandkids’ lives and with the means to gift us family time isn’t its own elite past time. We’re beyond lucky. We know it, and we walk a line that’s littered with guilt and gratitude in equal measure. ...
The tentative whispers and the cautious what ifs — the quiet perhapses and the hesitant maybes — can change your life.
I know they’ve changed mine.
Again and again, the what ifs and maybes changed mine.
Like, maybe I love him. And, what if I marry him? And, perhaps I should follow my heart.
Changed my life.
They were toes in the water and the slow first steps, those perhapses of wondering which were born out of longing and transformed into hope. ...
An Open Letter to You
From a Mama of Kids With Special Needs
Dear You,
Dear You, my friend,
Dear You, my neighbor,
Dear You who have kids without special needs… kids with just, you know, the usual slew of bottomless needs,
Dear You who are kids,
Dear You who were once kids,
Dear You,
I want to tell you about my son.
Just for a minute.
And about me and what it’s like for us who live full-time here in this world of kids who are different than normal, whatever normal is. ...
I have things to write, you guys. Stuff to say. Some of it’s drivel, as usual, but some of it’s important.
I want to write about having a kid with special needs and what it means to live with constant, evolving grief while still looking for the joy.
I want to write about how annoying it is when people say, “You think two is hard? TWO? Just wait ’til your kid turns THREE. THAT’S hard,” because three IS worse than two — it TOTALLY IS — except when two is worse than three. And parenting teenagers is WAY, WAY HARDER than parenting littles, unless, you know, parenting littles is harder than parenting teens. ...
I hate homework more than my children hate homework, and I hope you understand I’m not maligning my kids’ Homework-Hating Potential by telling you so.
I mean, sure, not all my kids are consistent about hating homework, especially my deliriously enthusiastic, trend-bucking 1st graders who seem for now to actually enjoy it, but I like to think even they carry some sort of latent homework-hating potential, if only from my side of the gene pool. ...
When I was pregnant with twins and completely out of my mind with Oh Dear God, I Can’t Do This Five Kids Thing, my friend Christy, a fellow mama of multiples, said, “Don’t worry. Every 3 months, something gets easier.”
Christy was right. Well, except when she was wrong. But mostly she was right. Every 3 months, in general, something did get easier. ...
