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Monday motherhood: the week’s empty nest

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My three siblings who have children all experienced an empty nest in the past few years, my brother just recently.  I can barely talk to them about it because I love a full house and can’t imagine the deafening silence that will ensue once the girls have flown the coop.  On an itty-bitty scale, let’s talk about Mondays. We’re in an excellent place right now with our kids.  Regarding the delicate years around puberty (as bad a word as penis and vagina, I think), Goldie is happily on the other … [Read more...]

Monday motherhood: DNA, blame and credit

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DNA illustration

God bless those who adopt.  I’ve always thought myself too egocentric to raise a child with someone’s genes other than my own (and the husband’s).  Of course, conceiving wasn’t a problem for me (and isn’t necessarily the reason parents adopt) so alternative ways to have a family were never discussed.  And still, there are issues regarding biological versus adopted children that go both ways, namely – blame and credit.  I suppose I wanted to accept both. Miss T and Bun Bun are naturally gifted … [Read more...]

Monday motherhood: Felix Baumgartner

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In 1984, I jumped out of an airplane with my friend Frank Spinelli.  Haven’t seen him in years but we’ll always have New Jersey, where we spent the morning learning how to pull a rip cord to release the backup parachute in the event the main one didn’t open.  It did, for both of us, and so we lived to tell of our stupid adventure – which was definitely a positive outcome for our future children.  I'm a mother of three.  Frank just had his first. Did you see Felix Baumgartner jump from space … [Read more...]

Weekend cafe: motherhood and KONY 2012

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My nearly thirteen-year-old daughter came into the kitchen the other day and said something like this: “Mom, there’s this whole thing online, on Facebook, this guy Joseph Kony is kidnapping children in the middle of the night and killing them and raping girls and everybody is signing this petition and we have to stop him.”  I told her to hold on and wait a minute, and said something like: “Online/Facebook stuff that kids send back and forth to each other is usually hysterical and not based on … [Read more...]

Monday motherhood: the parent volunteer

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Volunteerism is not a disorder.  Most of us have it within our cellular make-up, though we don’t all practice it wisely, or ever.  Through a completely non-scientific study – anecdotal really, just me, alone with my thoughts on a run yesterday afternoon – the parent volunteer has been broken down into ten categories with corresponding psychological evaluations. Let’s first consider: 1. ‘The parent who cannot volunteer’ They’re the single mother or father with four children, they have seven … [Read more...]

Monday motherhood: doing what needs to be done

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As a writer, I love deadlines.  Were it not for someone waiting on me to finish a project or a post, I’d never get to the end of anything.  Most writers are the same - regardless of a crisis of imagination, writer’s block, or a simple malaise. Yesterday, the husband and I ran a half-marathon downtown. -- Side note: While he continues to get faster the older he becomes, my times become slower…and slower…and slower, the hair grayer, the limbs stiffer.  He looks as young as when we were first … [Read more...]