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When I was a child, the best day every year was my birthday. No matter how my mom was feeling, she made my birthday magical: big parties and special treats and lots of dancing to the Beatles “Birthday” song when we got home from school. It was a day when I always felt celebrated and special and adored. And so, I loved my birthday – at least, until my mom died. I was 19 at the time, and once the shock wore off, one of my first thoughts was about my birthday. Who was going to celebrate it with me? How would it possibly be special without her in it?…
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My Body Still Knows
It was my racing heart that woke me up around 4 am every morning last week. It was confusing, usually. Why was I feeling so nervous? Sometimes, I’d get up and get a drink of water or just walk around a bit, trying to shake away the anxiety inside my body. But it persisted. Maybe I was nervous about the return to school, I figured. Covid is really bad in DC, so maybe I was worried about getting sick at school, or maybe I was just feeling the general angst in the air every time I go to the grocery store. Maybe it was the snow that kept falling last…
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A Car for Our Future
When we bought the car, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I was pregnant with Austin and I wasn’t comfortable behind the steering wheel and it was so much bigger than our previous car. But we were becoming a family of four, and we just didn’t fit easily in the other car. Or at least both carseats didn’t. And so we bought a Mazda with a third row, a car big enough to fit three car seats when the time came, a car that brought both of our boys home from the hospital, a car that took us to Canada and camping and to a zillion soccer games. It…
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Goodbye, 2021… (Part 1 of 2)
Goodbye, 2021. Goodbye, nightmares. I know I also said this last year (and the year before that and the year before that), but those really terrible ones? For real, no more nightmares, please. Goodbye, junk mail that still arrives for Shawn. Especially when it’s life insurance policies. Goodbye to making everyone happy. Yes, things may have been different in the past. But now, I need to make the best decisions I can for my family, which may not please everyone else. Goodbye worries that our wedding will be ruined or our guests will do all the wrong things. Turned out, in every way it mattered, it was perfect. Goodbye anxiety over…
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See It to Believe It
It was a year into widowhood, and an old group of friends of mine had suggested a short trip out West, a long weekend where we could reunite and also lose ourselves in the landscape of the desert. It had been a good decision to go, I realized, as I sat with them the first night and drank margaritas and tried to brainstorm how to find me a man who could drown my sorrows, at least for a night. We laughed a lot and talked about the days before we had children. They spent a good amount of time listening to me talk about my terrible first dating experiences and…
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Grief, Not Sadness
Some people I know have beautifully decorated, color-coordinated Christmas trees currently displayed in their houses. I am not one of those people. My tree is plastic, to start. Claire’s allergic to trees, so we had to get a plastic one many years ago, but also it was just way easier than going out to cut down a tree with three little kids. It doesn’t smell like a tree and it doesn’t really look like a tree, so my solution is to cover it with all the ornaments we have and try and hide the plastic-ness of it. I have some of the ornaments my mom once put on our tree.…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
