I'm standing in that unused space between the kitchen and the raised dining room with the fake parquet floor. In front of me is a waist-high set of black wire shelves where my dad keeps the detritus of his day - wallet, plastic coin pouch that he squeezes to open, bits of paper with notes about Jesus being Lord and yesterday's lotto numbers. And he's yelling at me: "Extraneous details! I don't need extraneous details!" I'm 7 or 11 or 9, and he can't name my school teachers, my favorite cartoons, or the friend at whose house I just slept over. All those details I try to tell him about my days or my nights, in that winding and never-to-the-point way of children's stories, are cut off with a scolding that I am drowning him in a wash of tiny, impertinent minutiae. Points so fine you'd think he'd been stabbed.    I feel shrunken and unimportant, like a once-intricate wax figure melted down into a blob of generalities.  7-year-old me So when my s...

 "That Santa stuff isn't real," the boy from across the street told my kids.  Uh-oh.  I was upstairs folding laundry, but I still heard the boom that would likely lead to an avalanche of eye-opening revelations (and maybe some tears).  "Who do you think comes in your house at 3 in the morning and leaves you presents?" my 9-year-old son insisted. "He's real, I've seen him! At the mall!" my daughter, who had just turned 7, chimed in. "That's just a guy in a suit," the neighbor boy replied dismissively. Proof of life From the second floor, I called out, "Okay, that's enough!" to the kids arguing in my living room. Pretending we suddenly had to eat dinner, my husband asked the neighbor boy to leave. And we braced ourselves for what might be coming.  My son is a very young 9. He still loves playing dinosaur fights with his stuffies, snuggles with me at bedtime while I sing the same lullaby I've sung since he was a tod...

Sleep when the baby sleeps.  But not when you're driving aimlessly to keep him asleep, or rinsing the sour tang of formula out of tiny clothes, or talking a walk with the stroller because you haven't seen the outdoors in three days. Sleep when the baby sleeps, but not when you're making dinner or being interrupted in the shower again or when your husband is asking about your day which revolves entirely around doing for others.  Sleep when the toddler sleeps, but not when she's teething or refusing a nap or finally sleeping and this is the only blessed hour of silence you have.  Sleep when the children sleep, but not through stomach viruses and weird sounds in the night, thirst or bad dreams, hacking coughs or nosebleeds. Not through repeated night terrors, burning questions, and mornings early enough to scald your eyes. Sleep when the pre-teens sleep. But not when they're at their first sleepover or swimming in heartbreak or struggling to find their tribe. There is ...

I want to live on the edge, but with a 401K and a black minivan where I can blast Snoop Dogg. I want to have a wedge-shaped yard chock full of outdoor accessories, to buy in bulk, and hear the latest gossip about who got an HOA violation for her grass being over the 8-inch limit even though she measured it and it was only 6 inches, thankyouverymuch.  I want my kids to ride their bikes in circles until they get dizzy and fall down, and then go set up a lemonade stand on the main road to snare homeowners who aren't lucky enough to live in our spherical utopia. I want to live that cul-de-sac life. Upper class of the middle class. There's something extra special about a suburban street terminating in a bulbous dead-end. It sets apart residents of that circular community-within-a-community while also bringing them closer together. Closer than those aloof residents who enjoy seemingly unlimited street parking, anyway.  Translated literally from French, cul-de-sac means "arse of ...

Into every family vacation, a little misfortune must fall. Here's how to tell when it's time to end your beach vacation: 10. A wave steals husband's sunglasses  9. Backs of your hands get sunburned 8. Found a tick in the 6-year-old's hair 7. Somebody mentions the alligators at the state park, "but they don't bother you none" 6. Husband loses his hat 5. 9-year-old throws tantrum that we never let him do anything (while holding a boogie board, standing in the ocean, on vacation) 4. Sprained your ankle 10 minutes into a trip to the beach 3. 6-year-old gets stung by a jellyfish, has complete freak-out melt-down screaming on the beach 2. You run out of Blue Bell ice cream 1. Electricity goes out at the resort when it's 93 degrees outside These, my friends, are sure signs that it's time to pack it up, at least until next year. 6-year-old: "Are we going to take any ice cream home?"  

America worships children.  Parenthood is a religion with its own symbols, texts, and rites. The adoration of a protruding stomach, a dog-eared copy of What To Expect When You're Expecting, baptism by potty training. We warn other drivers of our babies on board as we move toward monuments built for children, stuffed full of entertainment or education or endless (unnecessary) consumer supplies. Then we drag our hours to the alter to be sacrificed for play dates, extracurricular activities, and child-centered vacations. Parents are a body continually devoured, week after tiresome week. Yet America generally ignores mothers.  Judged for not having children as well as having too many, women are pushed out of the hospital 48 hours after pushing out a new life, still bloody and battered. While fathers return to old responsibilities, mothers take one of two paths: Devote the minutes of the day to enriching play and early learning for which they have no training, or work like they're ...

Dear Secretary of State: This letter is to inform you of my decision to organize my uterus, fallopian tubes, cervix, vaginal canal, and associated reproductive tissues (henceforth "MY UTERUS, LLC") into a domestic Limited Liability Company.  This will be a single-member LLC, entered into by myself, being the sole owner and operator of the aforementioned reproductive system.  Much like small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, uteri are the literal blood and tissue that keep the country moving forward. While small businesses account for 43.5 percent of the gross domestic product, uteri account for 100 percent of the people.  The purpose of MY UTERUS is to provide a uniquely safe and nourishing environment in which to grow a fertilized egg throughout the stages of gestation - from zygote to embryo to fetus to viable baby. However, recent court cases have shown that, in my state, I no longer have full rights to control my unique bodily organ in the ways that...

I had to ask my son last night.  I didn't want to scare him by telling him what happened in Texas, but I had to know how his teachers had prepared him for what has happened at far, far too many schools since Columbine High School.  "Honey, have your teachers talked to you about what to do if a bad guy with a gun came inside the school?"  He didn't even hesitate. He didn't even hesitate. "Yeah. They said to lock the door and go out the window," my son answered. "Unless the bad guy is coming in through the window, then we go out the door."  My sweet child -- who has been alive fewer years than have passed since a gunman blasted his way through a glass panel at Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 20 first-graders and six staff -- has been trained on what to do during a shooting.  He is not law enforcement. He was not conscripted into the military.  He is 9.  I know how he's the first one to come to the aid of another person. I've seen him sto...

Sometimes grief grabs you by the heart and squeezes so hard that love comes out.  Five years after moving into this house, I finally painted the master bedroom. Last weekend I was crawling along the floor foot after tedious foot, cutting in where the baseboard meets the wall, splitting the long straight lines of white into two colors - like a before and after - when I stopped for a second to consider the moment.  And I thought,  I wish my mom could see me in this good life.   Tears pricked my eyes and heavy sadness fell on me like a thick blanket. Grief is like that sometimes, sudden and blinding. I wanted to cry. I wanted to lay down right there, brush in hand, and dissolve into sleep. Most of all, I desperately wanted to see my mom and have her see me, so far from where I was when she left.  The windows of the room were open, an unusually warm spring breeze drifting in. My husband was mowing. The man I moved 1200 miles to join, near family I had just met, in ...

"Enough psychiatric prescriptions are written each year to give one to every person in America. If we are treating everyone, what are we really treating? Life? Because life isn't a symptom." Four years ago, these words were spat at me by a miserable man trying to pass himself off as a psychiatrist employed by the No. 2 hospital system in the world.  Last Friday, his voice echoed through my head while I stared at my bottle of alprazolam. Brand name: Xanax.  My anxiety first showed up in grade school and was thought to be a "nervous stomach." The kind of stomach that prevented me from eating out in public because I would become so nervous that I'd vomit.  By high school I suffered panic attacks that left me sitting on cold tile floors, sweating and shaking and fighting nausea. As an adult, I learned yoga breathing and coping strategies. Still, I occasionally get so upset or anxious that I run back and forth to the bathroom with bowel complaints.  Thanks to co...

I frowned at the infographic. Detailed symptoms and signs for varying stress levels in neat, color-coded columns. As if emotions - life - were that easy to catalog. Green means you and your calm, steady demeanor are thriving, focusing, taking things in stride. If you're feeling yellow, then something isn't quite right but you keep on keeping on. Orange indicates struggle; you feel like you can't continue, you're self-medicating and performing poorly. By the time you get to red - "I can't survive this" - you're experiencing a disabling distress and loss of function.  Mental health and mental wellness (and there is a difference) are not so easily separated into rectangles like jars. Feelings are sloppy and uncooperative, like trying to pour water from a cup but instead it dribbles down the side of the glass and onto the floor.  This list pokes me uncomfortably between the ribs, tells me I have never thrived for more than a month at a time. I hang out in ...

Calling Poison Control was not in my plans, yet here I am. People rarely use rubbing alcohol yet everyone keeps a bottle, typically in the back of a medicine cabinet or under a sink. Yours is probably covered in a layer of dust to rival the ruins of Pompeii, with a label that was printed in a font discontinued when laser printers were invented. That's the way of domestic afterthoughts. Several years ago the bottle I was probably gifted at my christening ran out, and I moseyed up to Target to buy another dusty, leftover bottle from the bottom shelf of the health and beauty aisles. As soon as I got it home, that brittle plastic bottle gave up the ghost and began leaking from its side seam. It threatened to ruin the other forgotten things buried in my linen closet, like the rectal thermometer from when my kids were babies (RECTAL written on it in permanent marker), a pair of eyeglasses missing one screw, and a set of hot rollers that survived the 2001 flash-flood of La Nana Creek whic...