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Claire’s Hero
At the start of fourth grade, Claire came home with an assignment to write about her hero. “I picked you!” she announced to me. She then spent much of the afternoon finding a photo that she liked of me and writing about why I was her hero. It was really sweet and touching. My kid – the one who’s just on the cusp of being a tween – still thinks her mama is awesome, at least some of the time. As she was working on it, I sat down next to her to see what she’d written. “My mom is a brave courageous person,” it said. “My mother inspires me…
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Parent 2
My kids all came home after the first day of school with backpacks full of forms. “You have to fill everything out today!” Claire instructed. Even though I’m a teacher, I still can’t understand how schools make you fill out the same information a dozen times. Can’t they put all this stuff in a database or something? Of course, I never minded it that much before, because filling out forms was merely an annoyance. But now that I have to look at the “Parent 2” slot each time I fill out one of these forms, it makes me sad. Last year, I started writing “no Parent 2” but that didn’t…
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The Marine
While traveling this summer, I had one day that was particularly bad. I was alone with my three kids and we’d been bumped from our original flight to a later one. We were seated in random seats across the very last row of the plane, and everyone was exhausted. As we got on, I instructed Claire to hold Tommy’s hand and make sure he didn’t fall in the crack between the airplane and the tarmac. When we got to the last row, a kind woman there offered to switch seats so that all three kids could sit in a row. She said she didn’t mind and then offered me the…
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The Scar
Claire has been to the emergency room exactly one time, when she ate a pistachio nut and had an allergic reaction that had to be treated with epinephrine. My boys, however, have been at least a dozen times between them. They’ve received stitches and slings and warnings from doctors to never again do whatever it was they were doing. It’s a stereotype to be sure, but damn if my boys don’t go to the ER much more than my girl. I managed to make it through six months without anyone getting hurt. But of course it was Austin who broke that streak last Friday night. After Shawn died, this was actually…
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What If the Plane Crashes?
I’ve taken my kids on airplanes since the very early days of their lives. Claire was only six weeks old the first time she rode on a plane, and I remember boarding the flight with Shawn and about fifteen bags to guarantee we had everything. As I sat down, the man in front of me turned around and said, “that baby better not scream for the entire flight.” Claire was six weeks old. Through some miracle, she slept through the entire flight and I smugly de-boarded the plane afterwards. Shawn was livid at the rude man, but I felt victorious. I must have been doing everything right if my baby…
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Brussels Sprouts
A few days ago, I came home from an afternoon at the pool and said “screw it” to a formal dinner. The kids were starving and I had eggs in the refrigerator, so that’s what everyone was getting. I also decided that we’d all get in our PJs and then eat dinner while watching Kung Fu Panda. Obviously, there’s a lot of “winging it” going on now that school’s out. In any case, I sent Claire and Tommy up to take baths, and Austin begged to go over to see the next-door neighbor. I relented. He’d taken a shower (I think?) at the pool, or at least he told me…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
