Category Archives: About Mom

February 26, 2012 · 9:05 pm

Oscar Fashion From the Stained Carpet

There’s nothing like the Oscars to remind me that my fashion lacks star quality.  While celebrities sashay down the red carpet in Vera Wang and Versace, I spend my days as a mom dressed in the best discount stores and clearance racks have to offer. And it’s not necessarily a bad attempt most days. When I parade down the sidewalk during afterschool pick-up, other moms in their daily uniform of T-shirts and black yoga pants shout, “Karen, who are you wearing?”

“Vintage Mossimo for Target,” I say as I gracefully dodge a path of gumballs in my three-inch Dansko clogs. Really, anything matches a pair of Levis.

I’m not into the whole yoga pants as fashion thing. I do make an effort to dress in something remotely considered an outfit every day. But fashion forward? Not quite so.

My apparel hasn’t changed much since college, so I can’t say I technically dress like a mom. But my hemlines have certainly dropped a few inches and my necklines don’t have quite the same plunge. A few sneak-peeks in a kindergarten class taught me that cleavage can’t be handled by anyone over the infant stage. I didn’t want to be the popular volunteer. And it’s not like there’s much of a peep show going on in that area.

The movie stars at the Oscars may be sequined, feathered, and stilted, but I need comfort around the clock. I need clothes I can bend in, take a nap in, scrape my lunch off and go about my day in, and good, supportive shoes that don’t make my back scream with pain at the end of the day. If clogs and Birkenstocks are those shoes, so be it.

When my husband comes home from work and sees me in layers of warmth and my newest clearance find, slippers purchased more for heat than beauty, I know he wonders whether I’ve gotten a sitter for the night. My favorite slippers may look like butchered Ewoks, but those lovelies are the only things to keep my feet happy till the spring thaw.

No Ewoks were harmed in the making of these slippers.

I could sit up all night oohing and aahing over all the glamour on TV, but this momma needs her beauty sleep. And I have a stained carpet to walk in the morning.

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February 6, 2012 · 9:25 am

This Nosy Neighbor Needs a Dossier

On days when I spend a fair amount of time working on the computer, I see a lot of what happens on my street. As the gears in my brain squeak and grind, I look out the window and watch cars and people go by. We live on a cul-de-sac that can be surprisingly busy and since I’m home during the day, I feel it’s my duty to see what those strangers are up to. It’s amazing how many unmarked white vans drive by. When I mention to my husband what I’ve seen on any given day, he always says the same thing: “Did you write it in your dossier?”

It’s become quite a joke, both for me and for him. He thinks I’m nosy. I say if some van pulls into someone’s driveway and starts loading up furniture, or worse, bodies rolled up in a rug, the cops are going to want a description. And, I think, are you kidding me with dossier? It’s pronounced ˈdȯ-sē-ˌā, according to Merriam-Webster, and it’s a file you keep of detailed records on someone or something. I had to secretly look it up the first time he said it because who in the world says that? I’ll tell you who: the same man who pronounces vase as vozz. Someone who didn’t have a brother to beat him up for saying fancy words, that’s who.

Who is my husband calling nosy?

So back to my dossier, or lack thereof. If I had one, it would be pretty lame: a hawk on my porch, people walking their dogs, pest control, a man wearing a bathrobe and I hope something under it rushing to get his trash can to the curb—hello, fuzzy slippers. And several dozen of those white vans. They always creep me out because all of the crime shows my husband makes me watch start out with some nondescript work van and the ring of a doorbell. Ding-dong! “I didn’t call for a plumb…oof!”

Our house backs up to a nature trail, and one day I saw a guy peeing in a big holly tree. Now that’s something I don’t see every day and am happy not to. My kids play up in that big holly tree. I banged on the windows. “Hey, you! Man with the wee-wee! Put that thing away!” I ducked so he couldn’t see me. Sometimes I have to protect my territory while others are away. No one said this job was easy. People can’t be marking my turf.

I’ve also seen some suspicious things driving through the neighborhood. A man parked on the side of the road brushed his teeth. I can’t begin to imagine why. And another day something in a remote corner between neighborhoods looked kinky and I assume it wasn’t legal. But I didn’t get a good look at that.

I consider myself more of an observant neighbor, a watchdog. But sometimes people like me take the heat. Call me nosy if you must. But if a white van pulls up in my driveway, I just hope somebody’s watching out for me.

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December 9, 2011 · 12:13 pm

Mom with a Migraine

BoomBoom. BoomBOOM. My pounding, screaming head throbs with each beat of my heart. With migraine in full force, life as a mom has just gotten complicated. The afternoon whirlwind of kids throwing bookbags to the floor, fighting over who gets to wash hands first, snack orders, and relaying the day’s events tumbles through my head like rocks in a dryer.

I manage to smile, request quiet, and get them upstairs to play so I can crawl under the covers for a nap. Sometimes they play and leave me alone. Sometimes they need the toy at the tippy top of the shelf. And they need it now. Sometimes there is screaming followed by tears. Still, it is better than when they were young and I couldn’t nap at all. I lay on the floor in misery as my nine-month-old used me as a trampoline while I willed myself not to vomit.

For nearly 30 years, migraines have racked my head with pain and my stomach with unending nausea. I spent many Friday nights of my fourth-grade year in bed with a migraine. Many times I threw up. I gagged on horse-pill-sized extra-strength Tylenol, once coughing one across the room. I’ve missed out on countless events. The ones I suffered through, I missed out on in spirit.

I’ve spent many hours lying in bed with an ice pack on my head, pitying myself, wondering what I did to deserve this curse. I’ve bawled, wanted to bang my head against the wall. I’ve begged and pleaded for mercy and done everything short of making a deal with the devil for the pain to go away. There are certainly some things I would rather not have. Even when I was younger, I knew I’d rather go through a lifetime of this than have something far worse.

I’ve tried massage, biofeedback, and TENS, which is some kind of electrical stimulation that frankly just freaked me out. I’ve tried lots of medicines, and most don’t work. There are some I just won’t take because I still have to drive my kids around. I know my triggers: stress, weather changes, hormones. Things mostly out of my control.

Friends offer to take the kids off my hands while I sleep off the effects of the medicine, but I always say no. I appreciate it. Everyone has their own problems, their own days when they don’t feel well, and I can’t have people rescuing me every time I feel bad. It would be often and I’d spend all of my good days repaying favors.

I deal. I muddle through the afternoon, take the kids outside, struggle through homework, put something that resembles dinner on the table. It may be a box of mac and cheese and a bag of carrots. It may be some leftover limp pancakes. The kids know. “Mommy has a heddik.”

I wish my family didn’t have to deal with this several times a month. But this is my life and this curse has made me who I am. A curse can be a gift. For every head-splitting migraine day, there is a next day. And that day after, when I feel good, I don’t take anything for granted.

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December 2, 2011 · 2:05 pm

It Is a Wonderful Life

Twenty-five years ago I sat in an itchy brown chair in a brown paneled den, flipping through channels to escape the heat of a scorching summer day. I landed on a black-and-white movie that was just beginning, though I didn’t catch the name. Several minutes in, I was hooked.

Some kids were using shovels to sled down a hill, and one of them went too far and plunged into icy water. I had to see what happened next. I was instantly captivated by the scene’s hero, George Bailey. The movie turned out to be It’s a Wonderful Life. It also turned out to be my all-time favorite. Ever.

I can’t think of a movie that I have loved as long or that speaks to me as this movie has. Even then, as an awkward sixth-grader, wondering when boys would ever notice me (and they didn’t for many, many years) and dealing with friendship woes and other social plagues, I could see how life can get the better of you. I could see how a person who has so much doesn’t see the difference he makes every day, and how attitude and loved ones can pull you through life’s rough patches.

I spent an entire afternoon in that chair, running to the bathroom between commercial breaks or bolting to the kitchen for a bag of chips. I didn’t want to miss a second.

I pulled for George Bailey. I learned that sometimes life doesn’t turn out like you expect it to, but you roll with it and make the best of it, just like George Bailey did. He didn’t have much. But he had so much. The gift of family and friends, happiness and good health, and doing good for others. Wealth can’t buy any of that. It didn’t for Mr. Potter.

Each year, when George Bailey sees what a good life he has and runs through the snow-covered streets, I’m there, yelling, “Merry Christmas, George Bailey!” through teary eyes and a lump in my throat because it still moves me. Every year, this movie is a reminder that I have everything I need.

It is a wonderful life. Your family and friends are your riches, and life is what you make of it. That’s what a sixth grader learned on a hot summer day. Merry Christmas, George Bailey.

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