-
Highs and Lows
Every night at dinner, we go around the table and share our highs and lows. Usually, Claire’s highs revolve around some sort of fun activity (“baking cakes with mom!”) and Austin’s highs are often about the food we are eating (he is my child who really loves my cooking, bless him.) Tommy is more of a wild card. With less ability to carefully reflect on his day, he often copies Austin or says something nonsensical. But over the past week he’s had a theme: his father. Tommy still calls Shawn by his name, something I’ve tried long and hard to change but I’ve come to accept. The thing is, Tommy…
-
School and Single Parenting
Every single parent I know is obsessed with what’s going to happen in September. Will schools fully open? Will we have to continue to home school our children? Will we do some sort of hybrid model? There are so many questions and no good solutions. Consequently, everyone is freaking out. I was talking to an acquaintance the other day and we were lamenting what the fall might look like. She and her partner are able to work remotely, but noted that without school, she gets very little done. I commiserated with her, because I get it. But do you know what I was thinking? It may be bad for you,…
-
Put Your Dishes in the Dishwasher
I have a sign in my kitchen with our three house rules. They are rules that I borrowed from my aunt Nancy (aka “Nana”), ones that all of the grandkids know they must follow when they are at her house: Put your dishes in the dishwasher No crying unless there’s blood If you want something, get it yourself I mean, these are pretty solid rules. Clean up your own stuff. Don’t whine about things that aren’t a big deal. Try and solve your own problems. Sure, maybe there could be one about behaving compassionately, but I guess Nana assumed good intent towards others. Or maybe there could be one about…
-
“Making It”
When I was in graduate school, I listened to a presentation by a professor about single moms. At the time, I was a 28-year-old without children, so I didn’t question much of what he said (although he wasn’t a parent or a woman, which did make me think, “how does he really know what they think?” Actually, now that I write that as a 41-year-old single mom, I’m thinking, “there’s no way he truly understood what their experiences were like!” But I digress.) Anyway, his theory was that the single moms were grouped into two categories which basically consisted of “I can’t do this anymore” and “making it.” I actually…
-
How Widowed Parenting Prepared Me for Coronavirus Parenting
I looked over at Tommy as he ate breakfast yesterday and realized that he looked just like an advertisement for bad parenting. He was shirtless, watching a Captain Underpants movie on an iPad and eating Eggo waffles that he was liberally dipping in syrup. He wasn’t even using a fork. I thought about taking a photo of him and texting a few friends with the headline, “mother of the year!” Of course, that text would have been seeping in irony. No way have I been mother of the year at any point during this pandemic. My kids have eaten more sugar than ever and they are in front of screens…
-
My Nine-Year-Old Boy
We found out that you were a boy on Christmas Day. We had asked the ultrasound technician to put the sex of our second child in an envelope, and then we opened it together with our extended family. A boy! That night, we drove back to where we were staying. Claire was in the back seat, sleeping, and your father drove silently. “I am going to have a son,” he said, finally, breaking the silence. “I know,” I said. “I mean, we are going to have a son,” he said, correcting himself. I smiled at him. I knew what he meant. “I want to be a good father to my…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
