The below entry was originally posted on MySpace (remember that?) on January 30, 2008, less than a year after my mother died. I have re-posted it below in honor of my mother's birthday. She would have been 66 today. This month marks 10 years since I last saw her.  This morning Therapist Seth asked me about my mom's heart. Aside from her weakened body, the clothes she wore, the few possessions she owned, and the houses she lived in (or didn't), what was the condition of her heart? She was kind, I said, and empathetic. She would take home any stray animal she found, especially if it were sick or hurt. She would give you some of whatever she had, no matter how little, if it would help. When she ran out of money, she fed her cat crumbled bread. When I needed antidepressants in high school, she had her doctor write a prescription for two pills -- then she took one, and gave me the other -- for years. When my engagement broke off in college, she sat on the phone for hours at a ...

If Facebook and Instagram are to be believed, there are women in our country who have clutter-free, artfully decorated, visitor-ready houses at all times. I suspect Mary Poppins floated in on her black umbrella, sang "Spoonful of Sugar" in a full-throated soprano, and the debris of daily life magically marched into its assigned drawers and cubbies of its own accord. I'm still waiting for her to get to my house. I have two children under age 4 and a husband who works odd hours, so my musical experience is more like Jakob Dylan repeatedly singing the line "this place is always such a mess, sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn" from " One Headlight ." Toys and dog hair litter the floor, you can write cursive (if schools still teach it) in the dust on my bookshelves, and the counter tops are a veritable treasure trove of miscellany. One of the biggest collectors of stuff is the kitchen. Like the heart of the body collects cholesterol, the he...

Heading into the parent-teacher meeting, I was nervous. Was pushing for my son to keep Baby Doll with him at preschool a bad choice for his long-term emotional development? Am I fighting for the right decision? And what if my son's preschool teacher drew a hard line and said nobody keeps the comfort item, no way, no how ? What would I do then? I prefer everything to have a clear set of instructions. Unfortunately, parenting doesn't work like that. Without a map or guidelines, or even a glimpse of the bigger picture, we're all just guessing our way through a beautiful and dangerous labyrinth. Worry is my constant accessory, like a leaden heart-shaped pendant on a chain around my neck. All I had to go on here was what I felt, and what my kiddo felt, and some vague sense of moving forward.  Start here. "I can't go on the carpet!" my son told me emphatically. I didn't know what this meant, and the helplessness was agonizing. "Tell me what scar...

Standing under what should have been a warm, soothing shower spray, I had a sudden thought: What if my son poops his pants at school? And the school has to call me to come get him, but it's during the baby's nap time so I have to go upstairs and wake her, and I think it's easiest to take her infant carrier upstairs to plop her right inside in hopes she'd fall back asleep in the car, but then carrying her and the carrier I trip and tumble down the stairs and break my arm, and I have to call the school to say I can't come get my son because I have to call 911 and go to the emergency room and I don't know who is going to take care of either child while I'm there and my poor sweet son would have to spend an eternity standing in his soiled pants, in front of the other kids, wondering where momma was and why she wasn't coming to make this better. There in the shower, overcome with guilt and heartache and worry for my child, I felt lightheaded, hot, and v...

Oh, I was smug. I was haughty. I was positively vainglorious . "Mmm, yes, that does sound difficult," I would tell other moms. "I wish I knew what to say. My little cherub, heart of my heart, organic apple of my eye, is just a wonderful eater. He has fruit and vegetables with every meal . We just don't have those problems." Once upon a time, I had a child who loved food. Life was beautiful all the time. Sunshine and rainbows hung over my immaculate home. A unicorn grazed lazily in the front yard. And inside, my child was happily eating whatever I put on his plate. Green beans. Italian meatloaf. Ripe, red strawberries. Homemade three-cheese mac-and-cheese with cubed organic chicken and a crispy Panko crumble topping, baked in a cupcake tin to form perfect single servings. He was a red-blooded American male, and he liked to eat. For a while, anyway. It turns out that the older kids get, the more opinions they have, and the more they want to exercise thos...

Come closer, dear child. You have the most intoxicating aroma about you. It smells like new school supplies. That pack on your back has the pungent, stiff fragrance of new plastic -- the kind you find on character book bags, in pencil boxes, and wafting around action figures patiently waiting for you to come home and play. Those pencils smell like soft wood shavings, faintly cedar, and cool stony graphite. Your rectangular pink eraser, bright as bubble gum, has the essence of rubber and vinyl and the hope of getting it right on the third try. And this package of construction paper has a bouquet like cardboard, but far sweeter and softer. It brings to mind the creamy, faintly chemical smell of Elmer's glue. I bet you have some of that in there, too, just waiting to be globbed onto thirsty paper. You're going to take those redolent school supplies with you into a classroom, child, where you'll be greeted by more odors whose memory will stay with you well past your...

I hadn't been feeling like myself, or whatever fragments of my self are left at the end of each day. Where my sense of humor used to be there was a flatness; where formerly was a desire to get lost in a 30-minute TV program now was me mentally cataloging the things I would pack when I finally said screw it, I'm out ; where I used to have a creative drive was now me driving in the car aimlessly just to be alone for a few more blessed minutes. For more than three years, my life had revolved around the needs of one or two tiny, helpless, unpredictable humans. For the previous few weeks, I'd been suffering the slings and arrows of parenting a petulant 3-year-old and a teething infant at the same time. In any 60 minutes, I hated 59 of them (with the other minute being me sneaking off to pee alone). At any given time I was THISCLOSE to losing my shit, walking out the door, and strongly considering never coming back. This was more than just needing a break. It was me starti...

In the summer of my seventh year, my family landed in Southeast Texas. We had driven there in a distressingly orange Volvo station wagon with sticky vinyl seats and a "way-back." Inexplicably, my mom called her Betsy For a few years thereafter, each month during summer vacation my brother, my mom, and I would climb into the family car and head to town to go grocery shopping. (At the time, "town" consisted of three stop lights, three fast-food joints (the McDonald's didn't come until 8th grade), and one set of railroad tracks that separated us from the grocery store). It was 98 degrees in the shade and the car's air conditioning hadn't worked since the turn of the decade. Three miles with the windows down can seem like three lifetimes when you're not even 10 years old.

It's June. Look out -- summer is coming. Ah, yes, summer in Ohio...those approximately 12 days in late July, when the temperatures creep up to a balmy 84 degrees and Lake Erie averages about 72 degrees. If you go, don't forget to bring a wet suit for wading -- the water's about 6-10 degrees colder than Livestrong.com recommends for vigorous exercise . Even triathlon competitors wear wetsuits in water colder than 78 degrees. There is no way this Gulf of Mexico girl is taking a relaxing dip in that. Instead I will chill on our newly outfitted back deck, which now features a large cantilever umbrella to shield my fish-belly white skin from the sun and a 36-inch ottoman on which to prop my feet. My happy place All that I'm missing is a fruity adult beverage. Unfortunately, my knowledge of alcohol ends at how much rum to put in a Captain and Coke. So when I need an easy fruity drink recipe, I yell one of my favorite battle cries: To Pinterest! I type in the wor...

It was an ugly break-up. I was a sophomore in college; plenty old enough to get my heart broken, but not old enough to know what to do about it. The guy I had been dating for a few months cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend back home during Thanksgiving break. I didn't learn of it until Christmas break, when she -- who I did not know and had never wanted to meet -- showed up at my roommate's parent's house while I was visiting and confessed their offense with more than a little pride. We split, then drifted back together as the young and inexperienced often do. By Easter, we were sitting on the back steps of my dorm and he was telling me that I had too many personal problems and was dragging him down. I must have cried rivers, though I don't really remember. So it goes with young love. On a dead-end road across the street from my dorm was the city animal shelter. I began volunteering there on long Friday afternoons when I had nothing better to fill the time. So i...

you will never be this small again. tomorrow you will have grown a millimeter and mastered another new skill; you will fit a little less snugly into my arms. so tonight I will hold you as long as I can to memorize your weight and the rhythm of your breaths the smell of your hair, the softness of your skin before life gives you any calluses. I will hold you here and rock in this chair long past the point where my arms grow tired because this is why I wanted you this is what I came here for -- to hold you while you sleep and dream and heal my heart with love 10-20-13 (All poetry contained herein is the sole property and copyright of the author, and may not be reproduced without permission.) 

Dear Me, It is May 1998. Right now you are merely 17 but you've survived enough hardship to make you a bona fide adult, if that's how we're counting. Keep going. It will get worse before it gets better, but I promise it will get better. Some day you will soar. In the meantime, I hope you'll suffer me to give you a few bits of advice. It's about your mother. A twisty subject, I know, especially as you are on the cusp of breaking free of this town and the crushing weight of your childhood. But please listen and take these things to heart. I'm going to save you a lot of regret. Record her voice. It doesn't matter what she says -- hello or I'm going outside for a smoke or the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog . (Remember when she taught you how to peck that phrase on her massive manual typewriter? The keys struck so hard, punctuation scarred the backs of her pages.) Make sure, though, that she says your name. Years from now you'll unde...

In my house, we sing a lot of songs. Not #1 hits. Not even Top 40. We sing mostly made-up -- and often inappropriate -- songs. I got the habit from my husband, who's been doing this as long as I've known him and probably long before that. Typically he changes the words from well-known anthems to suit whatever he's doing or whoever he is talking to at the time. For example, he co-opted the 1971 tune "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band and turned it into a ditty about our first Boston terrier and his unfortunate encounter with employer discrimination: "Sign says long-eared fuzzy puppies need not apply..." For the record, Patch was neither long-eared nor fuzzy, and to my knowledge he never applied for a job. But why let facts interfere with good lyrics? Sometimes the hubs makes up original, heartfelt lyrics on the spot. One notable hair-band-esque riff he repeatedly sang during our courtship, while we spoke on the phone long-distance, was "ta...

T-minus 14 days Have acquired potty training operations manual from local library. Book helpfully explained myriad ways in which I have sabotaged myself by waiting until almost age 3 to begin potty training. Threw book angrily onto coffee table next to random collection of five plastic baby spoons and one mutilated Cube-Bot. That book isn't the boss of me. It can't tell me what to do. Target identified. T-minus 12 days Dropped off toddler's preschool registration documents, which clearly state that said toddler's attendance is contingent upon ability to use a toilet successfully without assistance. Retrieved discarded potty training manual from table where it was concealed beneath December issue of Thomas & Friends magazine.   T-minus 9 days Procured book for toddler referencing one Daniel Tiger and his urination proclivities. Features not-at-all-realistic sounding toilet flush when button is pressed. Toddler seems to enjoy pressing button, but refuses ...

So here we are. My hometown: a few square miles of Southeast Texas known for rice elevators, ill-timed trains, a Sam's distribution center, and a couple of state prisons. It's probably been 10 years since I was last here, and I didn't picture coming back. Some say you can never go home again. I can't seem to leave. South of town, about 2 miles past the old high school with the wrong-colored tiles, there will be a street on the left. It used to be called Oak Lane and was gravel, but now it's paved and goes by a different name -- as most things do when they've been upgraded. This house on the left at the dead end, this white brick one, is where I moved the summer before 2nd grade. That's the spot on the street where I fell off my bike on my 7th birthday and got stitches in my head. Right there by the trees is where we buried our Siamese cat. This is where I first learned about utility bills, and how the city could shut off your electricity in the middl...

L. O., 65, was declared dead February 24, 2016. He was found by police in his rusted10-foot travel trailer which stank of mildew and stale cigarette smoke and was piled with trash, old newspaper clippings, and indecipherable notes written on the backs of Wal-mart receipts. In the absence of knowing what he wished done with his remains, L.'s family opted for the easiest and least expensive route of cremation. Pace-Stancil Funeral Home is handling arrangements, because they happened to be the mortuary on call that morning. Born on March 11, 1950, in greater Cleveland, L. was a graduate of high school and college, though he made no discernible use of his education. He was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force for which he flew large, angry planes over Vietnam. Throughout his adult life his chronic unemployment was interrupted by an intermittent series of jobs, each apparently less skilled than the one before, which resulted in his living in several states including Arkansas, Missouri, C...

A friend of mine, god bless her, had her second child a few days ago. She's home from the hospital now, where they kick you out 48 hours after you squeezed a miniature human out of your body (72 hours if doctors had to slice through your innards to retrieve the baby), and in the throes of the stage I like to call What The Hell Have I Done? In a recent email I congratulated her, and she wrote back -- under the mistaken belief that I have this motherhood thing figured out -- asking "How do I parent 2? How much wine is too much? Tell me everything." I replied: "The best advice I can give is to figure out who has the most pressing need and take care of that first. Sometimes it's you. And that's okay. It's hard. In about three months you'll come up for air, wondering what the hell happened. But you will have survived, and probably the baby and the toddler will too, and that's what's important. Hang in there. Also skip the wine and go stra...

Free to a good home - 3 postpartum maxi pads Designed to absorb Lake Erie For the discerning woman who recently pushed something the size of a watermelon out of something the size of a walnut. Pink-wrapped, NWOT pads are genuine hospital-issue and approximately the thickness of a queen pillow-top mattress. The high-end luxury hotel kind, not the bargain-basement mattresses found in Motel 6. Designed to absorb Lake Erie every eight hours without any pesky leaks or troublesome Asian carp. Generously sized, these formidable pads will easily span any woman's mangled undercarriage, from her gelatinous post-baby bellybutton to the top of her tremendously sore ass crack. Works nicely with ice packs. Suggested use: from first days home from hospital until you can sit down without wincing (approximately 7-14 days). Also would work as a comfortable resting place for any medium-sized dog, such as golden retriever or basset hound. As a bonus, you can compare your once-perky boobs to the ...