-
He Pushed the Button
The call came out over the loudspeaker. “If there’s a physician on the plane, can you please press your call button?” My dad put down his book and pressed the button. The flight attendant came over. “Are you a doctor?” she asked. “I am,” he said. She told him he was needed in the front, and he followed her up there. My dad was en route to Texas for a week-long break. He was going to play golf with his brother and his friends. He would also get to see our extended family. He’d spent the past two months caring for my kids without so much as a glimpse at…
-
Claire’s New Email Address
Claire has known about email for a long time, but it was only recently that she discovered that some of her friends have their own email addresses. “Mom!” she said excitedly one day last week, “all of my friends have email addresses and I need one too!” I’d waited a long time for this. Actually, Shawn was the one who had looked forward to setting up Claire with an email account when she was old enough for one. In fact, when she was only a few months old, he told me he had secured an email address for her. I remembered the email address. But I couldn’t remember the password.…
-
The Fans in the Stands
“Nice shot Claire!” yelled the man sitting next to me. I barely knew him, but he was a parent of another girl on the basketball team. The shot had actually bounced off the rim of the basketball hoop, but this random father was still yelling encouragement to Claire. She looked in our direction. I gave her a thumbs-up. As I’ve written about before, sports are not my thing. I don’t know the first thing about whether my kid is off-sides or needs to go back and tag first base before running to second. I don’t watch sports and apart from a brief stint as a cheerleader, I don’t play them…
-
Who Has a Better Life Than Us?
A few months ago, I remember thinking something like, “I think I’m in such a different place, because I’m not walking around the neighborhood crying anymore.” Well, strike that. Because that’s exactly what I did last weekend. There wasn’t a specific reason why I started walking about the neighborhood. I was overwhelmed by my kids and one of my friends kindly volunteered to take all three of them and I thought, “I gotta get out of my house.” The sun was shining and I decided to take a walk. As I started walking, I thought about my life. I thought about all of the walks I’d taken in my neighborhood…
-
Our Trip to the Waterpark
For some reason, my kids’ school decided that this year there would be a mid-winter break in addition to all of the other breaks. Of course, I did basically no planning for it because I am barely managing to keep our regular life going, much less organize some big trip. A little over a week ago, I realized that I had no plans for the kids – not even a day trip. So I went online and looked for something fun for us to do. I found an indoor waterpark with an attached hotel. Lots of my kids’ friends were going somewhere much more exciting – to grandma’s house or…
-
The Letter
The letter arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. It was addressed to me. Inside, I found two notes from an old friend of Shawn’s – someone he knew in university who we’d kept up with over the years. “I wrote a note to Claire,” the first note said, “and I want you to look over it and see if it’s okay for her to read.” I opened up the next piece of paper. Inside was a 2-page typed letter addressed to my daughter. “Dear Claire,” it began, “You might not remember me, but I have heard about you since you were born. Your father Shawn and I were…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
