love

Crackberry portrait of a mother

by mayberry on April 27, 2008

Now that my mother is retired, she and my dad are traveling like crazy. A great deal of it is business (for her; she still does consulting and sits on corporate and nonprofit boards) and gigs (for him). My dad is 71 and incredibly fit and healthy but he seems to be very conscious of his advancing age. He is driven to travel a lot now because he is afraid that soon he will be unable to do so. Being recently diagnosed with prostate cancer didn’t help, even though it is in a very early stage and is slow-growing.

So right now they are on a nearly two-week cruise around the Canary Islands, Gibraltar, southern Spain, and Portugal. Because of the cancer thing, and because my brother was in the process of making a big career decision (Mr. Vegan is moving to the land of chicken & cheese!), and just because she’s an addict like the rest of us, Mom ponied up for some kind of international plan for her BlackBerry so she could stay in touch while she’s gone.

This morning I got this (I added the link):

I’m occupying my mind by doing this message because if I look out the window of the bus, I experience sheer terror. We are coming down a significant mountain on a tiny road full of scary switchbacks–what is a big tour bus doing on a road like this?! Madeira is gorgeous.

I really think Mom needs a blog. Or maybe she should skip right to Twitter.

For serious, though (and I’ve said this before), I feel blessed to have a mom with a Life. Selfishly, I’d love it if she lived close by and could babysit at the drop of a hat because she never had any other plans. But she’s given me (and my sister and my daughter) the gift of knowing that there are a lot of ways to be there for your children. Including ones that come with a keyboard the size of a credit card.

Thanks, Portraits of Mom photo contest and Parent Bloggers Network, for the opportunity to brag on my mom today! It’s a Blog Blast, so you can post your own for the chance to win a gift certificate to a local photography studio.

Also, free stuff alert: FOUR Earth Day giveaways at the Full Mommy!

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Deja vu all over again

by mayberry on April 4, 2008

Didn’t I just write a birthday post? Poor little guy is always trailing on his sister’s heels. He was so disappointed yesterday when Jo got to bring her birthday treats to school and he didn’t. But now, Opie, this is it! Congratulations. Today is your day.

My sweet boy,
It should be noted that I am writing this post later than I had intended. That’s because you were such a PITA at bedtime last night that I fell asleep before you did. I finally woke up two hours later, wedged awkwardly in the armchair (just like every night of the first year of your life, come to think of it). By that time there was nothing for it but to go to bed myself.

You redeemed yourself, as always, waking up sunshiney and smiling and so pleased to be reminded that today is your birthday. And despite your two-ness and now your three-ness (oh, the three-ness. I hate three), you are still that darling child who will chirp, unprompted, “Thank you for the dinner Mommy! It’s vewwy dewwicious”; or who will tell me my hair looks pretty or who will remind me that we pet our dog “vewwy gent-a-ly.”

Just like your sister, you have changed so much this year. I still find it hard to think of you as a preschooler. No more baby (except, uh, for those Nuks and diapers). You talk–and talk and talk–and sing and dance and run and swim. You love to cook and play your collection of musical instruments. (About that drum set you wanted for your birthday … not happening. Sorry.) You love airplanes and have been my stalwart companion on so many trips.

I am still so thankful for you and always will be. Happy birthday, Opie. You’re off to great places.

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Now we are six

by mayberry on April 3, 2008


To my favorite girl,

Two nights ago I told you, “Tomorrow is your very last day in your whole life to be five years old!” A smile slid across your face at the thought. I know it’s because you were thinking of your birthday, and all the accompanying treats and presents and attention. But I like to think you realized too what’s so special about this time, this moment of passing from one year to the next.

I’m so proud of how much you’ve grown and learned this year. You can ride a bike and cross the monkey bars and swing a hula hoop. You can read and write and add and subtract. You love science and nature. You can even pull a tractor and direct movies!

I’m proud of the subtler things too. Just the other day when a boy I know you think is a little weird said “hello” to you on the playground, you responded politely and with a smile. You share your toys and books with your brother without complaint. You’ve suddenly grown aware of, and fond of, our dog (even though you’re already making plans for the next pet we’ll get “when she dies”–a bunny or a bichon frise).

It would take another year to sum up all the wonderful things about you and by then there will be so many more.

Happy birthday, clever girl.

The End (from the collection Now We Are Six) by A.A. Milne

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

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Peace be with you

by mayberry on November 7, 2007

I just found out a few days ago that my uncle will not be coming to our family’s Thanksgiving celebration this year. This is the uncle that I grew up with — who is my godfather; who lived a block away; who could and did fix anything we needed; who told jokes with punchlines like “I left my harp in Sam Clam’s disco” and “Silly rabbi, kicks are for Trids!” and offered milk by asking if we’d like a glass of “Chateau le Meyer.” (Mmm, Meyer Dairy … but that’s another story for another post.)

He can’t come because he is under house arrest after his second DUI. He has an ankle bracelet and can’t leave the house except to go to work, nor can he have any alcohol in the house. The good news is that the punishment seems to be working. He hasn’t, as far as anyone can tell, had a drink in a few months and he is seeing a counselor for the first time in his life.

I’m hopeful. I had been very concerned about him. For several years he had been in a downward spiral, existing on little more than coffee and cigarettes during the day and alcohol in the evenings. He lost a part-time job, one he very much enjoyed, when he showed up drunk. In his regular work, he builds houses so I worried about injuries on top of the possibility of car wrecks and disease. His wife tried to help and got nowhere.

Of course there’s no one reason why anyone becomes an alcoholic. In his case, I speculate that it was a complicated soup of genetics, unresolved grief at the loss of his parents, perhaps an undiagnosed learning disability that caused him to do poorly in school and lack self-esteem.

I also believe that post-traumatic stress from his time in Viet Nam was involved. His brother (another uncle, whom I barely knew) also served and also suffered in the years that followed: abandoning his family, bouncing from city to city and job to job; eventually dying of cirrhosis and cancer in a VA hospital.

This post was inspired by today’s Blog Blast for Peace. Because in the same way that I worried, and still worry, about my uncles, I worry about those soldiers, sailors, and airmen serving today, and about the repercussions that they and their families will experience for decades to come. Just like those commercials that proclaim “Depression hurts everyone,” so does war, and in so many hidden ways.

For today, I am thankful that my uncle may be, just may be, healing. I hope he finds peace and comfort, and I hope the same for all victims of war.

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But never, not ever, in a bathroom

by mayberry on October 10, 2007

My nursing days ended–most likely for good–over a year ago, so I can’t participate in today’s Great Virtual Breast Fest (brainchild of the League of Maternal Justice). But if you can’t see me nursing, perhaps some of these other absolutely beautiful babies and mamas?

I breastfed for a total of 32 months (holy cow) and guess what? I occasionally left my home, with my babies during that nearly three-year period. That means I have nursed:

  • on airplanes and in airports
  • on busses
  • in (parked) cars
  • in dozens of restaurants
  • in stores and shopping malls
  • in Central Park
  • in many other parks
  • in my boss’s office (during a meeting)
  • in my own office (sometimes with baby, sometimes with pump)
  • at the hair salon and the dentist’s
  • during a pelvic exam (I wish I were kidding)
  • at church
  • in front of my dad, my brother, my uncle, my brother-in-law, and my mother-in-law’s “gentleman friend”

I only wish I had some photographic evidence to stick in Facebook‘s eye. Well, maybe not from that time during the pelvic.

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Rare beast captured on film

by mayberry on June 17, 2007

It’s Daddy in the wild!

Happy Father’s Day to my two dads. Um… I mean my dad and my kids’ dad.

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What makes me a mom

by mayberry on May 11, 2007

Ever since Parent Bloggers and Light Iris posed the question “What makes you a mother?” I’ve been thinking about how I’d answer. I knew right away it had very little to do with carrying and birthing my babies. Though I love to trade pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding war stories as much as the next mom, I believe that adoptive, foster, and stepmothers, along with other mother figures (like the grandmother and three childless aunts who helped raise my husband alongside his “birth” mom) are every bit as motherly as I am.

What really makes me a mom, I thought, are two things: sacrifice and bodily fluids. I’m a mother because I’ve given up hours–weeks–of sleep to my children. I’ve slowed my career, changed my name and my financial priorities, moved to Mayberry. My body has been permanently scarred and temporarily bruised. Every meal I eat is interrupted, and eligible for sharing whether I want to give it away or not. There’s no one else I’d do all that for.

And I know you know what I mean about the fluids. Sure I picked up dog poop before I had kids. I changed diapers often when I babysat. But before I had kids I never had the pleasure of hearing a poop blowout happen from the front seat of the car, then extricating a craptastic little baby out of a car seat, carrying her inside face down and at arms’ length, peeling off her clothes without befouling her hair, and spending a half-hour bleaching everything in sight. I never knew how it felt to stuff my bra with nursing pads (and still wake up with soaked pajamas every morning). I never leaped across the back seat of a speeding car to catch another person’s vomit.

Yeah. Motherhood. It’s pretty gross. But these two make me a mother, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Now you go: Put up a post about what makes you a mom and you could win a $100 GC to Spafinders.com. You could use it for a glute massage! Get all the details at Parent Bloggers Network.

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Mother’s Night

by mayberry on May 1, 2007

Originally posted at Life: The Ongoing Education as part of the Blog Exchange.

11:30 p.m. I finally finish working/blogging/folding laundry/puttering around. I’m nearly ready for bed, brushing my teeth, when I hear my son’s cry.

I enter his dim room. He’s standing in his crib, sobbing. I can hear the tears and the snot all over his face, even though I can’t see them. I crawl around on the floor, feeling for the pacifiers he’s either dropped or hurled to the floor in anger. One, two, three—I feed them back to him through the bars. He crouches down long enough to pick them up, and just as quickly pulls himself back onto his feet.

I stand next to the crib and he grabs for me, his arms tight underneath mine, his head on my shoulder. “Hold you,” he gasps between sobs. “Hold you, Mama.” I rub his back and tell him, over and over: “It’s nighttime now. I’ll hold you in the morning.”

Still angry, still sobbing, he soon gives up. He sits down, but he can’t help himself. “Hold you, Mama. Hold you.” But now the yawns come, too, amid the sobs and the pleas and those sharp, damp intakes of breath.

I sink down to the floor, stretch out, wait. Keep murmuring. “In the morning, sweetie. In the morning.” The wails soften and the intervals between them stretch longer. Eventually I hear the chok-chok-chok of the pacifier in his mouth, the slowing of his breathing.

Cautiously, gingerly, I stand. Tiptoe to the door, my hand on the knob.

“Mama stay.”

“Yes, baby. Mama will stay.” I return to my post on the floor, waiting and listening. Mama stays.

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Love is a man who…

by mayberry on February 14, 2007


…does the dishes


… and the laundry

… and then shares his clubhouse with his sister.

Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you were showered with flowers, jewelry, calorie-free chocolate, and whatever else your heart desired.

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Mother May I

by mayberry on May 1, 2006

Originally posted at Binkytown as part of the Blog Exchange.

My mom has given me lots of things over the years: nice blue eyes, the ability to read really fast, a gorgeous wedding gown that I never would’ve shelled out for on my own, Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends when I got sick on vacation at age 8, at least 75% of my children’s wardrobes, and so much more.

But one of the things I’m most grateful for is my ability to be comfortable in my own (mostly unpimpled and unwrinkled, thanks for that too Mom) skin. I wasn’t particularly laid-back as a child, but I’ve become so as an adult. I’ve just learned that worrying is a waste of time, and what mom has extra time lying around to waste? Neither my mom nor I are fretful mothers, hovering over our offspring just waiting for an accident to happen, spinning out worst-case scenarios in our heads. My son may have the bruises to prove it, but at least he is a happy, self-confident explorer. I’d rather he fall down a few (hundred) times than never even try to conquer a flight of stairs or scale the side of the bath (he may be only two feet tall, but he can hike his bitty little leg all the way up to the edge of the tub, ‘cause he wants to get in that bad).

My mom blazed a trail for me. She had a job and a career at a time when so many other mothers didn’t. And in spite of a strong dose of judgment and tsk-tsking, she and my dad raised three happy, successful children. Now that I’m the one with little kids, I don’t feel like I have to ask permission to do what I do. Mother may I work “outside the home”? Mother may I send my kids to day care? Mother may I serve chicken nuggets for dinner once in awhile? Sure. Fine. Yes. Everything will be fine. What better role model could I want than my own mom? (And besides, I learned a lot of important working-mom lessons from her: Outsource the stuff that’s not worth your time. Teach kids to help around the house early. Hire good caregivers. Order pizza a lot.)

What’s more, I know she’d support me if I decided to stay home full-time with the kids instead. This despite the large amount of dough she and my dad put up for my Ivy League education. They both have doctorates. Their three children have more tattoos (4) than advanced degrees (1) among us, and that one is my brother’s master of fine arts … not exactly an MD. And they couldn’t be more proud of us all.

I hope my own confidence isn’t misplaced, and that I never am so cocky as to think I have this mothering thing down pat—I most certainly know I have plenty more to learn, and always will. But I’ll try my best to give both of my children the gift I’ve received from their grandmother: the ability to know myself, and to like myself both because of, and in spite of, what I know.

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