I now look forward to the day when someone tells me I'm just like my mother. And I'm really hoping it will be her.
Maybe not in my lifetime, but maybe in my children's lifetime, homosexuality will be like red hair or brown skin or a preference for cheese: not a good thing or a bad thing, just a thing that people won't have to be afraid to share.
I've always tried to teach my children to be grateful for the good in their lives, and while we try to appreciate it every day, Thanksgiving is the one time of year when we don't need reminding. A recent conversation with my son, though, has made me rethink the "good" part of the equation.
I don't know what I enjoy anymore. I hadn't anticipated that it would ever come up, apparently, because in the grand plan of my life, I didn't plan for this. I knew I wanted to have kids, and I knew I wanted to be a writer. I've done both, yet suddenly they're not enough.
There is only film where my father should be.
"I can't quite reconcile that I'm now the mom saying the things I used to hate to hear as a child."
"You'd think they would know it's not a disease," my daughter said as we watched Emma's parents on Glee discuss her OCD. "Jeesh. I'm a kid and I know that."
The fact that I'm a parent does not obviate my need to reassess, re-evaluate and continue to craft my goals and resolutions, and while I can't say with 100 percent certainty, I am pretty sure they involve more than getting dressed.
Let's face it; where your birthday falls can be directly proportional to how much attention you get, and things like that are darn important. They affect self-esteem. They affect sibling relations. And, of course, they affect presents.
Traditional romance can get watered down once there are kids in the picture. With light-sleeping children, the vision of years of potential therapy bills surrounds us every time my husband and I try to remember how we made them in the first place.
Bullying, some would argue, is also a tradition. It's been happening for generations, and is often even passed down within families. The weapons change through the years, but the victims tend to remain constant, kids who are different.
We're lifting the lid on "Toilet Repair Month." I know, I know, I'm sort of down in the dumps about it too; just when you think you could overflow with excitement about summer, there it goes, swirling away. May it rust -- er, rest -- in peace.
I'm not too young for menopause -- my children are too young for it. Or, rather, for me to be in it. I just finished telling them how a woman's body makes babies, and now I have to tell them how it stops.
I assume I know my children pretty well. I know their likes, dislikes, fears and dreams. I used to know these things, anyway. Now, I'm not so sure.
He came home from school a few days later, put down his backpack, and said, "Hi, Mom! Um . . . you were drunk, weren't you?"
Someone told me once that your child needs a cell phone when you need your child to have a cell phone. That makes sense to me.
I couldn't help wondering what the heck my daughter is listening to these days and why it is even allowed on the radio. Things have changed so much since I was a kid, it seems.
I'd heard of the phenomenon, six-years-old going on 16, but assumed my parenting skills were such that I'd be exempt. She couldn't be more excited about school and I couldn't be more afraid.
The purpose of a vacation, they say, is to make us feel better. It is an opportunity to escape from real life for awhile, to pamper ourselves, to do things we ordinarily don't do.
The problem with tweeting, it would seem, even if one is able to keep the tweets on the level of the mundane, is a lack of editor. A lack of filter. It's like unprotected sex.
I do not clean. I do not cook. My house may be a mess, but scientists discovered that a certain amount of dirt and dust may actually be helpful in building kids' immune systems.
Men's wrinkled faces are "craggy" and "rugged." Women's are "lined" and "worn." Men get theirs through a lifetime of adventures, while ours come from being old and tired.
I'm not a perfect mom, but I always thought I was a good one. Then one day I broke my daughter's leg.
The fact that there is drama, that there are embarrassing situations, that I am capable of saying and doing stupid things sans alcohol was truly an eye-opener.
My husband went grocery shopping the other day and came home with my favorite cookies. You're waiting for me to say, "April Fool," aren't you?
