By the end of the 1990’s, parenting had gone nuts. Suddenly, we had to practically prepare our children for Yale while they were still in the womb. When “the oughts” decade started, we were all scrambling to churn out perfect kids when really, we were perfectly overwhelming them with too many lessons, practices and flash cards.
Now, however, the pendulum is swinging back the other way. The recession had a part in it. If you can no longer afford the $5,000 a year youth hockey team, street hockey in the driveway is beginning to look good. I hope it’s a trend that lasts well into the 10’s, or whatever we’ll call this new decade.
Meanwhile, here’s a reminder that you are a good mom, and your kids aren’t so bad either:
Elmo never sang in my car. Not even once. No Barney, no Wiggles, no Dora, the Explorer “Dance Fiesta.” After 400 consecutive sleepless nights, courtesy of my kids, I just couldn’t overwhelm my senses more than they already had been. And there’s just not enough coffee to get you through 20 miles of “Elmo’s Lowdown Hoedown.” (more…)
Are the kids home for the holidays? Is Christmas break going to break you? Hide for five minutes and enjoy Jen Singer’s Momma Said… video, “The 12 Days of Christmas Break.”
Here’s reason #213 why I should have paid for the expedited shipping for my father’s Christmas present. When it hadn’t shown up by last night, I panicked. All I wanted to do was track the package that had supposedly been sent by the company in question, but their customer service rep got in the way. Here is an online conversation with customer service, with sensitive information removed or changed to protect the innocent and what I read between the lines: (more…)
Back then, I could keep up with him on the soccer field more easily.
He was 18, and I had no business being there. It was too much, too soon, and yet, I didn’t want to leave.
I was playing right defense on my brother Scott’s “over-the-hill” soccer team, guarding a kid who’d tagged along with his dad so he could get ready for his league match later that day. Apparently, dribbling around me – a middle-aged mother of two who was not quite a year in remission from an aggressive form of lymphoma – was this kid’s warm-up. For me though, just standing on the turf field in my soccer cleats so soon after completing six rounds of chemotherapy and five weeks of radiation was a comeback. Or it was supposed to be. (more…)
I keep having this nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten something — something that would need to be wrapped by Thursday night. How can it be that my Christmas shopping took me exactly one trip to Target and a few clicks of my mouse? What — or who — am I forgetting? (more…)
I see you at the school bus stop, and, frankly, you look frazzled. Like you’ve got too many things on your mind, too many things to do, too much on your plate before the kids are home for the holiday break. Too many places to be at once, too many recitals, too many parties and too many get-togethers.
Too much shopping to finish. Too much decorating to do. Too much to juggle this holiday season.
And I know you don’t want to complain. You don’t want to seem like a scrooge. So you smile and tell me you’re “ready” for the holidays, when really, you’ve got a load of wet snowpants making a racket in the dryer, and you can’t find the vanilla for the cookies you’d planned to make tonight. You know, after you finish hunting down photos and cotton balls (a.k.a “snow”) for the “surprise” holiday craft the kids are making for you at school.
You thought you’d surprise them back by decorating the pine tree out front, only to discover that the 1,000 lights you ran out to buy during the kids’ basketball practice pretty much covers 1/8 of the stinkin’ tree. So you stand outside in the freezing rain, staring at the neighbor’s elaborate selection of decorations, and wonder why you’d even bothered at all.
You try to remind yourself that the kids won’t be kids that much longer. You remember that they’ll leave you soon enough, and then you’ll have to share the holidays with their in-laws. And you’ll miss them. You truly will. And you’ll miss what the holidays were like when they lived at home. But your previously wet hat is frozen solid now, and you have to go pick the kids up at basketball.
Yet, as you’re leaving your driveway, you see something that lifts your spirit…
And for a moment, you realize how pretty this time of year can be, and now grateful you are to have family and friends to celebrate the holidays with again this year. As you pull out the camera you keep in your purse, just in case, and snap this photo, you think about what a pretty holiday card it would be.
Then you remember that you forgot to order holiday cards and you’re out of stamps anyhow. Plus, you’re late for basketball pick-up, and you’ve got no time to stop for vanilla. And then I see you at the school bus stop, and you smile and wish me a happy holiday. I smile back and wish you a happy new year, before we both head to our houses to get scratch something off our to-do lists.
Last month, I held a fundraiser and remission party called “Kiss Cancer Goodbye” here in my community. More than 150 people came to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, eat good food at the Smoke Rise Village Inn and dance to music by the Flying Mueller Brothers and the Sugar Hill Gang. They also came to hear my speech, “If Cancer is a Gift, Where Can I Return it?”, about my battle with non Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
My friend Kanokan Sookaram caught the festivities on film, so that everyone who couldn’t be there — and even those who were — can enjoy.
First, here’s my speech, “If Cancer is a Gift, Where Can I Return it?”, followed by a video about the party:
It’s mid-way through December, and yet, we’ve received only six holiday cards by snail mail. At first, I thought people struck us off their list because I quit sending cards. I thought maybe we had cooties. But when I commented on it on Twitter and Facebook, I found out that other people are receiving the same dearth of holiday cards, too. Either we all have cooties, or, more likely, Twitter killed our Christmas cards.
I wrote this one last year, but it still holds true. Add another year of the recession and social media’s increasing popularity, and perhaps we all feel like this. Do you? (more…)
While you’re busy running around making holiday preparations for everyone else, why not take a second for a chance to treat yourself? Or maybe you’re looking for the perfect gift for that hard-to-buy-for woman in your life?
Leave a message in the comments section under this entry by Thursday, December 17th at midnight ET for your chance to wina gift basket giveaway, courtesy of SC Johnson, including: (more…)
