By: Ann Brown

This is our four-year anniversary, Molly and me. As you know, I adopted her from the animal shelter on the day Michelle Kwan dropped out of the Olympics so the Winter Olympics will always remind me of my dog.

Speaking of which, where IS Michelle K? I haven’t seen her in the stands at the Pacific Coliseum, so unless she is being hidden from the camera by the obscuring presence of that ridiculous bong-totin’ galoot, Michael Phelps, I guess she’s not in Vancouver. I hope she is okay. I hope she is doing better – four years later – than Molly is right now.

Poor Molly. She is not doing great. She’s old, lame and incapable of sleeping for more than two hours at a time. I am back to living the life of a new mommy – up every hour, stumbling and lurching my way towards the back door to let Molly out and then falling asleep on the kitchen counter while I wait for her to come back. Not that I put my newborns out in the back yard to pee while I slept on the kitchen counter, no sireeee. I stayed awake back then. And had headaches all the time. And I was very bitchy. Very bitchy. In fact, Robin once said to me, “I guess the beauty of you being a bitch every day is that no one will ever accuse you of having PMS.”

And now, almost thirty years later, here I am back in the world of the sleep-deprived, only without a baby. In fact, come to think of it, I am the one who sleeps like a baby these days, not Molly:  I wake up every two hours, cry, and then eat until I fall asleep again. All night long. If my pants get any tighter, I am going to have to take to wearing those stretchy Onesies with the snaps on the crotch.

It’s totally fucked up that at the two stages of life when everyone around us most needs their rest – babyhood and infirm old age – we are the worst sleepers. And exhausting the people who are in charge of our very survival is probably not the smartest thing to do. Robin once put that red-hued, gum-numbing medicine in our son’s nose because he was too tired to keep his eyes open while taking his turn soothing our teething baby.  He did it, like, four times during the night and when I saw the poor kid in the morning, he looked like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler.  My friend Julie once got her baby’s toe fungus medicine mixed up with the pink-eye medicine.  You’d think that squirting toe fungus ointment into your baby’s eyes would sober one into paying closer attention, but it just so happens that a few years later, Julie ignored her daughter’s complaints about boogers bothering her nose -ignored her for days – before realizing that the booger in there was actually one of Julie’s pearl earrings.  Oh, and my friend Wade once left his newborn baby in the car after dropping off his wife at a restaurant before he went searching for a free parking place. Which was five blocks away. Which was where he left the car – and the baby – and sprinted to the restaurant, ready to enjoy a nice dinner. Until his wife asked him where the baby was. I bet after that, it wasn’t such a nice dinner with the wife.

I was halfway through a vitamin C tablet at four o’clock this morning while waiting for Molly to finish peeing outside before I realized that it wasn’t a vitamin C tablet at all; it was seven Wheat Thins with Laughing Cow cheese on them. Okay, well, I guess I knew about that, but who can blame me? When you are tired, you do not make good decisions.

I’ve been through this before. Blacky was an old cat, and for most of her life she needed nothing from us. The kids found her when we lived in LA – she was a stray; self-sufficient and completely independent. It was a relationship that knew no demands. When we moved to Oregon, Blacky came with us and adjusted to her new life by settling herself in the upstairs of our new house and never setting foot outside – or downstairs – again.

By the end of her life, I hated Blacky.  I loved her, too, because sometimes even after she’d shit on my carpet and barfed up a bloody hairball in my bed, and even after we had to have all her teeth extracted  (to the tune of a thousand dollars) so all she could eat was baby food, I could still look at that dainty cat face of hers and feel my heart stretch out and soften. But I was exhausted all the time and she cried all night long. She needed a spoonful of food at 3 AM, and then another spoonful at 3:30 and then she pooped and then she meowed that mournful, primal meow for about a half hour.

I used to lie in bed and listen to her calls. Murr-ahow it began, in a soft guttural clearing of her throat. Murr-OHWHW it crescendo-ed, louder and more alien, but I pretended not to hear her. Once, I swear, she jumped on my bed and over-articulated her meows right into my ear, the way we speak loudly and slowly to non-English speakers. Me-ow. Do-you-understand-this, you idiot American human? ME-OW.

A few years ago I complained to my mom about how Blacky was taking over my life. “It’s not worth it, you’re exhausted” she said. “Put her to sleep. You need your sleep.”

I was aghast. My mom just laughed.  “Oh, come on. Stick a little poison in some brisket and give it to her. She’ll eat it right up.”  I didn’t know if she was joking or not.

But either way, I still make sure my mom eats the first bite of her brisket at Passover. I mean, I used to keep Mom up a lot when I was a baby. She might be holding a grudge.

By: Danny Thomas

I spent the better part of the last week as a single parent…

needless to say this blog entry is a little more off the cuff than my prior two.

I haven’t had a lot of time, or inclination to sit around reflecting…

any reflecting time has been spent reflecting on Bushmill’s and Reese’s  Pieces.

Jennifer, went to Cleveland for a Theater Conference – the hoity toity academic was presenting a paper there – and managed to use the time to connect with a few long lost friends and colleagues, as well as get some fabulous intellectual stimulation, and, I think, come home ready to charge into the last few dissertation battles.

Some amazing and interesting things happened while Jen was gone.

I streamlined, I stayed calm, my rope or fuse or whatever was longer.  I set limits and boundaries and followed thru with the consequences. I had no problems ending a meal when it was obvious it was going to lead further into chaos. I had no doubts handing out a serious consequence or determining when it was required.

I found a balance between planned activities and spontaneity. Lil’ Chaos put herself to bed, and got herself dressed in the morning, she was self-sufficient in a lot of ways, as a matter of fact.

I got to put Wobzilla to bed!

I guess as the sole resource, I found reserves of patience I didn’t know I had.

I guess when there was no one around to come in and bat clean up I was able to find the strength or fortitude or determination to follow thru to the end of the game.

I guess on my own I was able and willing to set the bar a little higher for the 4 year old, out of necessity.

It’s amazing how the chemistry of a family is so interwoven – and that when one element is missing it can change the dynamic dramatically.  Amazing too that while we all felt like we were missing a limb and needed Momma terribly, we got by.

Now the challenge remains; how to integrate some of what I learned and did now that Jen is back. It is so easy and reflexive to fall back into old patterns and habits, I mean they don’t even feel like habits and patterns, they just feel like “how it is…” But I know a little something more now, about myself as a father, and it feels good.

It also feels good to have Jen home!

By: Tanya Ward Goodman

Last night, when I opened the door to greet my daughter as she arrived home from school she looked up at me and said, “When our friends and family members die, my heart will break open.”

She is five and a half going on thirty.  Part Hello Kitty, part Sarah Bernhardt.  She is devastatingly sad and ragingly angry and her heart (broken or not) is huge and juicy and filled with passion.  She is clearly the child of my womb.

I moved aside, to let her walk into the house.

“Did something happen to make you sad?”  I asked.

“Just thinking about death,” she replied, skipping into the dining room and doing a little twirl.  “Look what I’ve got.”

She held out a white paper tub.  Beneath a circle of mesh on the lid a mass of small black bodies moved together — shiny black legs and abdomens and an occasional flash of enameled red wings.

“Ladybugs!  They’re ready for an aphid buffet.”

As Sadie made plans to set the ladybugs free in our cauliflower bed where they would decimate the population of aphids, I went back to stirring the risotto on the stove.  My kids have been to several funerals and memorial services.  They are interested in cemeteries and know what a casket is for.  Sadie will often tell people that we have three pets and three graves, which, though slightly disconcerting, is true.  We’ve lost an old cat, a hamster and a fish and we’ve still got an old cat, a hamster and a fish, so chances are this loss is not going to stop.

My dad died just over seven years ago.  When Sadie was three she could not stop asking, “So your Dad is dead, right?”  At first this question brought tears to my eyes, but after awhile, I kept answering and answering and it opened the way to a lot of long conversations.

“Yes, my Dad is dead,” I said.  And Sadie and her brother wondered what happened next.  We talked about heaven and reincarnation and the possibility that this life, here and now, is all we’ve got.  Theo likes the idea of heaven because he wants to know he will continue to move around and Sadie hopes there are angels because they have beautiful wings.  We talked about how dinosaurs might be reincarnated into people, but how they most likely evolved into birds.  We all think it’s nice to imagine that there is a kind of observatory where our loved ones can train telescopes on our lives and gaze at us for a few minutes.

The risotto finished cooking, my son hopped out of the bath and Sadie returned from the garden smiling.  She’d tipped out her little bucket of live things and now she was set on making a necklace for the cat.  Sometimes the workings of her mind are so fluid, it’s hard to keep up.  My dad was this way.  I hope he’s watching.

By: Tanya Ward Goodman

My Mom is headed back to New Mexico.  A couple of hours ago, she walked through a set of airport sliding doors, the sunlight turning her silver hair to a spill of mercury down her back.  In almost no time, she will walk out a similar set of sliding doors into the cold, dark evening of Albuquerque.  This morning, she gasped at the beauty of a flowering acacia, each yellow bud like a fairy’s powder puff, and tonight, she might slip and fall on the icy walk to her front door.

Because it’s still winter where my mother lives, we spent the last five days in search of spring.  At Descanso Gardens in La Canada, winter and spring are just beginning the changing of the guard.  Spent camellias fall to the ground, some still bright as blood, others the brownish color of a squeezed tea bag, while in the big flower beds, tulips nudge their green noses toward the light.

Mom brings her binoculars wherever we go and pauses to stare off in the direction of a particularly interesting tweet or whir.  If she waits long enough, looks hard enough, a bird will appear where at first glance there was only a tangle of bare branches.  We see a Spotted Towhee doing a little jitterbug in the fallen leaves. Mom tells me that the little bird with the brilliant red wings was once known as the Rufus Towhee.

“It drives me crazy when things change,” she says.

Her and me both.  But what can we do?

Mom has been visiting me in Los Angeles for nearly eighteen years, though if I asked her to drive us around, she would look at me as though I asked her to tour the unfamiliar terrain of Mars.  She loves L.A, but is often overwhelmed by it and so over the course of all of these years, we have found a kind of familiar route for her visits.  Despite our best efforts at keeping things constant, we can’t seem to stop things from changing.  When I pick her up at the airport, we almost always go directly to the Rose Café in Venice where she has the quiche and I have the poached salmon.  After lunch, we take a peek at the gift shop and then we walk to the beach.  Mom’s legs are bothering her and so on our last trip to the beach, we did not walk across the sand to the water’s edge, but instead stayed on the sidewalk and looked out at the sea.  Years ago, we might have walked a mile or more, stopping to pick up stones or watch a particularly silly seagull.

We always make a trip to a nursery, even if only to visit the plants.  We like the Sunset Nursery in Silverlake with its cramped aisles and proximity to Pioneer Chicken.  We’ve never eaten the chicken, but it’s funny when the wind shifts and the aroma of scented geraniums or mint mixes suddenly with fried chicken. Lincoln Nursery in Pasadena is wonderful because of their wall of Italian seed packets and vast array of ceramic pots and a trip to Theodore Payne is almost like returning to New Mexico, so drastic is the change in landscape from Los Feliz to Sun Valley.  Over the years, Mom chose plants for pots on the porch of my first apartment and helped transform the weed-choked yard of another apartment into an approximation of an English garden.  She encouraged me to buy a butterfly bush and to start composting.  On this most recent visit, my son harvested little carrots from our raised beds and put them into Mom’s hand and she laughed and showed him how to rub the dirt from the orange root.

Antique stores are another staple in a typical Mom Visit itinerary.  In the past, we’ve wandered the streets of Orange, and Ventura ducking in and out of crowded antique malls until we couldn’t handle the sight of one more Bauer bowl.   On this trip, we headed to Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, where in four blocks, we found Japanese table lamps just like the ones on my Grandma’s side table (marked at $800!), enamel Catherine Holm bowls like the ones in my kitchen cabinet and a life-sized wax figure of an elderly man asleep in a wheelchair.  His price wasn’t marked, and so I said “hello,” before I realized he wasn’t real.

As at the garden and the nursery, we reach out to touch a beautiful thing.  Mom and I spent the last five days running our fingers over leaves, leaning in to smell flowers or cupping our hands around a perfectly round ceramic pitcher.

“I’ve got enough to last until the snow melts,” Mom said when I dropped her at the airport  “I think I can make it, now.”

The light is fading now as I write and when I look out the window, the big Sycamore in my neighbor’s yard looks like an ink drawing, it’s bare branches stark against a bright pink sky.  Mom’s plane is just landing and as she makes her way out into the cold, the last five days will be tucked inside her heart like a tight bud waiting to unfurl.

Tanya Ward Goodman also writes at http://youdearestyou.blogspot.com and http://twgoodman.blogspot.com

By: Ann Brown

Well, it’s all over but for hockey. And downhill. And short track. Oh, and the closing ceremony. But women’s figure skating is finished so there’s really nothing left for me. I feel pretty sure that my exit from televised Olympic coverage won’t be noticed; I mean, I get it – I get it – that life does go on without me although when I stopped watching “Deadliest Catch”, Captain Phil died. I’m just saying.

All in all, I was underwhelmed by Olympic figure skating this year. My mind wandered during most of the event. Oh, I started out glued to the tube, of course, but after a few seconds it suddenly seemed extremely important that I get a tangerine. Or check my emails. During the short programs I even hand stitched a hem in my beige pants, so unglued to the television was I.

I did perk up, however, when a Canadian won anything because I got to sing along with their national anthem. I know all the lyrics, you know, having spent a summer in the wilds of Quebec.

It was the summer of, approximately, 1972 and I took off to be a counselor for an Outward Bound kind of deal in Canada. If you know me at all, you would know that if given the choice between leading a camping trip and pouring hot tar up my nose, I’d reach for the tar and start snorting – and doin’ it, as they say in Quebec, TOOT SWEET. It would take a court order to force me to camp for an entire summer but I was following something stronger than the law: I was following a boyfriend. I am an outdoorsy sort of person in only the loosest definition of the term: I like being tan. I love the whole back-to-nature, outdoorsy experience of getting tan – the comfy chaise lounge, the paperback novel, mango iced tea, the way my silver bangles look against my sun-kissed arms as I dip my chip into guacamole and reach for another mojito. You know, nature.

Clearly, I was a natural for the counselor gig. Heaven help the kids whose survival was to depend on moi that summer. Thank God my boyfriend, Chris, and my friends, Donny and Joanie, were waaay more skilled in camping than I, in that Donny could play all of Jessie Colin Young’s songs on his guitar, Joanie knew how to batik and Chris brought pot. It was going to be fine.

As it turned out, the campers didn’t need us for their survival. Or much else. They were pretty much a self-sufficient group, many of them, ironically, having actually been court-ordered to the program. My job, basically, was to wake them up at the crack of o’ dark hundred and get them gathering and chopping firewood for breakfast, and even at that small task I was not a stellar success with those kids. They ignored me, they mocked me, one young man responded to my daily request that he get up and find the  wood for the morning, by showing me his penis and saying, “hey, Ann, I got your morning wood right here.” I only recently got the joke.

But we could sing. And sing we did every morning upon arising.

“Oh Canada, our home and native land.…”

I sang loudly, feeling a rush of militant activism. Those were challenging years for the two of us – America and me- those Nixon/Agnew years, and I was pissed off most of the time. It felt good to cheat on “The Star Spangled Banner” and climb into bed, musically speaking, with “Oh  Canada.” Every morning, when that  big red maple leaf flag was raised, I was stickin’ it to Tricky Dick.

These days, at least since the presidential election of 2008, I am feeling better about my country but I still love to sing, “Oh Canada”. And that is the song I sang during the medals ceremony for women’s figure skating last Thursday night, even though the Korean flag was being raised. It wasn’t just that I was not wowed by Gold Medalist Kim Ju-Na; she’s perfectly fine, but let’s just be honest, her mother did not die of a heart attack two days before she had to skate the short program so fuck her. Points, shmoints, give the gold to Joannie Rochette. The girl with the saddest story wins.

Kim Ju-Na did cry a little on the podium, however, and that warmed me a bit to her. But I wonder if she was faking, squeezing out a tear or two so she’d be more likable. Tying to think about a cat she once loved that was run over, perhaps, or about the fact that she clearly did not know the lyrics to her own national anthem and she was gonna catch shit when she got home. And I really don’t mean to sound bitchy but it’s not like trying to memorize the fucking Periodic Table.

The pine tree atop fore mountain

stands firmly unchanged under wind and frost as if wrapped in armor

As is our resilient spirit.

I mean, shit, I remembered it by heart just after looking it up on Wikipedia. I think that girl needs some more fat in her diet.

Oh, and little silver-medaled Mao Asada. She cried as she watched the Japanese flag wave. But I bet she was crying because she was afraid to go back to Japan without the gold. I am a little bit worried for her.  I think I saw her coach pinch her when she came off the ice.

Snow White and the Three Figure Skaters: Sad. Glad. Scared. I smell a Disney hit.

So, my Olympic coverage has come to an end. It’s time for me to put my socks back in the drawer and hang up my costume until 2014.

I hope by then I’ll be able to zip it all the way up.

By: Ann Brown

Man down! Man down!

And by “man”, I mean, me.

And by “down”, I mean I hit my ankle against the metal frame of my bed during elimination trials last night and I am injured. INJURED, I tell you.

I had to take Advil this morning, just to be able to sit down and write this post. TWO Advil. And a bagel and a half since I was getting up anyway to get the Advil. Light schmear. I am in training, after all.

If that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, go back and read my previous post. I don’t have time to catch you up – I have serious rehabilitation to do. I am going up against some strong figure skaters this year and I have to be in tip top shape to compete. It’s a cutthroat world out there for overweight 55 year old sock skaters performing in their bedrooms while watching the Olympics on TV. Just Bedazzling my pajama top is a part-time job this week. I’m thinking of calling in some Disney cartoon mice to help me sew. And maybe do a little light cleaning and water the plants while they’re at it. It’s okay to exploit cartoon mice, right? Oh, and perhaps they can give me a discreet little wax, if they are girl mice. Those skate skirts can ride up pretty high.

My ankle is so sore to the touch. This could prove to be exceedingly distracting. It’s hard enough to keep my mind on my routine, what with having to sidestep Molly’s dog bed, Robin’s dirty laundry on the floor, old issues of Cooking Light and Molly’s collection – updated hourly – of hairballs and drool. Did I tell you that I slipped in her barf a few weeks ago? Oh God, it was horrible. I was skating around my room and I suddenly slipped in one of those slo-mo kind of falls, you know? Well, I got up and I was so fixated on the fact that I didn’t hurt myself, it didn’t occur to me to wonder why I fell. It wasn’t until, I swear, like fifteen minutes later that I absent-mindedly ran my hand across my legging and felt something wet, and then I went to more closely investigate the floor. You know, there were times in my life when I’ve gone a little bit wild but I really never thought I’d end up being the kind of person who falls into dog barf and doesn’t even realize it. Hunh.

My short program requires more energy than I am used to exerting in the three years between Olympics when I sort of let myself go, in the sense that I mostly lay around, overeat, and catch up with my stories. My long program requires energy to the point of my not being able to breathe, resulting in my becoming light-headed and laying down on Molly’s dog bed until I am fairly certain that I am not going to die right then and there in my ratty old cotton briefs, Bedazzled flannel pajama top and socks. Oy. There’d be no amount of PTS therapy long enough to help the young paramedics expunge that image from their impressionable minds. I bet at least one of them would go gay on the spot.

Certain members of my family are prone to fainting, myself included, so I am taking no chances on my hard bedroom floor. I have strewn pillows throughout the room so I can grab one or two when the vapors hit me and I know I am going down. I’ve actually been thinking about working that into my choreography (double spin, thrust arms to grab pillow, smile, pass out, come to, lean up on elbows, pose, smile) just in case. Best not to make a whole deal over it, right? My son started to pass out in court the other day and he just said, “excuse me, Your Honor, I have to lie down now”. And then he stretched out on the floor of the courtroom, asked his client to hand him his file and conducted the rest of the hearing from under his table. This is a true story. And he won his case. As he told me on the phone after-wards (this is truly the kind of story a parent only wants to hear after-wards), “Guess I’ll be a kind of David E. Kelly character around this town from now on.” That’s what I call not making a whole deal about it.

But back to Anklewatch 2010.  This is serious. If I cannot sockskate, if I am doomed to merely watch the figure skating competition from my couch, like the rest of the global hoi polloi, well, I may as well just coat my head in olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper and stick it in the oven at 350. My Olympic fantasy life defines me.  What else would I think about on the toilet or while waiting the excruciating two-and-a-half minutes for my microwave popcorn?

So, it’s heat and ice, ice and heat on my ankle for the next few days. Do you mind getting that for me?

Oh, and while you’re up, maybe a bagel. I feel weak.

By: Danny Thomas

I have come to realize that one of the hardest things about being a dad, for me, is that sometimes I have to be Mr. Darling; sometimes I have to throw Nana out of the nursery and ask that my children grow up. And even worse, sometimes I have to ask my children to accept “truths” and “realities” as a function of existing in society. I hate this.

Anyone who knows me well knows that this is counter to my nature, philosophically and practically.  I am a knee jerk agnostic; it is my reflex to question anything I “know” to be “true.” One of my father’s biggest sources of pride is having raised a couple of iconoclasts who are not interested in maintaining the status quo. I have the goal, as a father, to honor that tradition and raise children who are, at the very least, mindful of their assumptions.

Growing up, the fictional characters I related to the most were Pooh, Tigger, and The Incredible Hulk. But Peter Pan, for me went beyond a fictional character; he was my myth, my personal icon, a spirit guide if you will. Obviously as I grew, I came to realize that the romantic idealization of youth can be a deadly trap. At the same time I still can’t let go of the notion that there is something of value to letting yourself believe in magic, letting yourself believe in pixie dust and Neverland. Over the years I have maintained and nurtured my connection to Peter Pan’s rascal spirit.  It has grown to be an appreciation and reverence to what is unexplainable. It is faith, of a sort. Believing in the fantastic is part of the fabric of my character. I will always clap for Tinkerbell.

So it’s hard giving up the role of Peter Pan, but I can live with occasionally being Captain Hook, because while Captain Hook is a bad guy – he still gets to play, he exists in Neverland, in this world of imagination. So I can almost tell myself I am playing the bad guy, that this “time out” or that confiscated toy is a sporting kind of discipline. What really kills me is when the role of Mr. Darling is required.

Mr. Darling rejects imagination as “poppycock.” Mr. Darling is the end of imagination, the end of play. Mr. Darling says it’s time to “grow up.” He rejects the fantastic…and on top of that he treats Nana like a… dog!

But sometimes, it seems, the games go too far, the pretending gets dangerous, or scary, and sometimes we just need a break from our imagination…

And that’s when it’s my job as a parent to don the Mr. Darling sports coat and top hat and decide what is real, or what the truth is for my kids – that is a terrifying responsibility.

As hard as that is for me to swallow, it is another example of something I’m learning while being a father, but it’s comforting to know I’ve always got a little “something” up my sleeve.

By: Ann Brown

Valentine’s Day. It’s all over but for the wilted roses, the candy wrappers and the pundits.

My friend Andrea pretty much summed up how I feel about the whole thing.  She said,”All that perfunctory love. It’s creepy.”

This is why I am friends with Andrea. Well, this, and the fact that our friendship is based on the commitment ceremony we had that went something like this:

Me: (in an email to Andrea) I like you. Let’s be friends.

Andrea: Okay, I like you, too. You are smart and funny.

Me: You are smart and funny, too, and talented.

(Awkward pause, where I notice that she did not say I am talented, too)

Me: So, we’re friends now, right?

Andrea: Totally.

Me: I never want to have to actually see you in person.

Andrea: Cool. And we never have to speak on the phone.

Me: Excellent.

Andrea:  And we will never, ever say to each other, “let’s get together”, even just to be polite.

Me: Definitely.

Andrea: Only emails.

Me: Only emails.

(another awkward pause)

Me: Um, ‘k….so….bye.

Andrea: (message on my screen: “Andrea is now offline”)

We are going on eight years together.

I am the type who turns off the porch light and hides behind the couch when I see a car coming up my driveway. Andrea is the type who built a house that is very, very difficult to find and has no guest room. This portends a long friendship.

And there are others like us out there. Just run over and ask my friend Amy. Oh wait, you can’t; she won’t answer her doorbell. I love Amy. Ironically, Amy and Andrea once met in person. At my 50th birthday party. No surprise that they immediately liked each other. I wonder if they are email friends…I wonder if….huh, I wonder if they make coffee dates with each other and invite each other over for dinner parties and shop for bras together and…..and if they talk about me. And do they laugh merrily at how they have bamboozled me into thinking that they are not social, but it’s really that they don’t want to socialize with ME?

You know what, fuck Andrea and Amy.

(Andrea’s crafts website: www.onblueberryhill.com)

I have a salon, of sorts. My friends Claudia, Claire, Jane and I meet on Facebook every day or so to figure out the world. (I know I should put the word “meet” in quotes but it looks so weenie, so un-hip, as if having an “online” salon is still a novelty to me, or like the way my mom says, “bra” because, as a teenager, I told her to stop saying the weeniest of words -  “brassiere” – but now she says “braaa” as if she is saying only half a word and it sounds even worse.)

I know Claire, but I haven’t seen her in almost sixteen years. I met Claudia and Jane on Claire’s Facebook wall and although Jane has posited that perhaps Claudia is really a twelve year old boy masquerading as a middle-aged woman just to get in on our conversations, Claire has verified that she is, indeed, a bona fide middle aged woman. Anyway, if a twelve-year old boy wants to continue the ruse just to read our musings about menopause and SADD and raising children and shit, well, the more power to him. He will make a great husband some day if he pays attention to what we are saying about ours. Especially to the discussions about the transparency of “honey, why don’t I just give you a back rub” when what they really mean is, “honey, why don’t you just give me a blowjob.” Are you listening, “Claudia”?

(Claire’s website: www.clairelazebnik.com)

I also have an in-person salon, a once a month lunch salon with my friends Jeannette and Michelle. I know this flies in the face of my “don’t ask, don’t get together” policy but Michelle doesn’t really like email and Jeanette has healthy social impulses so she insists we actually get together.  She also actually reads the menu at the restaurant (we always go to the same Thai restaurant, except for a few weeks during the beginning of the Iraq war when we went to an Iraqi restaurant because we worried the owner would be boycotted and go out of business. Which he did, but it might have been because after every time we ate there we got really sick and she orders a different item each time, based entirely – get this – on what she feels like eating that day, not based on habit or fear of change. I run with the wild pack, baby.

(Jeannette’s website: oh wait, she didn’t want me to shamelessly plug her website. But she is an amazing artist and I am going to do it one of these days.  Not that Claire and Andrea WANTED me to shamelessly plug their websites. I just didn’t bother to wait for their responses when I asked if I could)

Now the two Adams in my life are a different story. They have both graciously conceded that I will never pick up the phone when they call nor will I show up at a gathering – chivalrous gentlemen that they are – but as far as I am concerned they owe me because they are the ones who talked me into letting my kid go three thousand miles away from home to college and as a result, I kinda had a little empty nest freakout and took to my bed for a while, catching up on my stories and my Xanax popping but missing out on a bunch of department store sales and, well, basically, Autumn of 2005.

(Adam Klugman fan page on Facebook)

And Robin. When his co-workers and friends suggest dinner dates with us or getting together for a drink, Robin has taken to saying simply, “my wife doesn’t go out.” I like the sound of that. It’s kinda scary, like he has me chained up in the guest bathroom or perhaps I have two hideous heads or something.

Oh shit. Hold on, someone’s at the door.  Turn off the lights.

Get down. Be very quiet.

By: Tosha Woronov

See this?  This is Leo’s artwork that I am throwing away. Trashing.  I’ll bet those of you with kids under 2 will not understand this.  I barely believe it myself.

When Leo was 15 months old, I dragged him to an art center for toddlers.  For $12, the center provided us with 2 hours (we needed 2.5 minutes), a smock, an easel, paper, brushes, washable paint, and most importantly, a floor that belonged to someone else.  I was so excited!  He was so confused!  The kid learned to walk, like, only the day before, so all he really wanted to do was lean on the easel.  It also didn’t occur to me that he wouldn’t immediately know to pick up the brush, dip the brush in the paint, touch the paint-coated brush onto the paper, make a picture.  He just kind of stared at it all.  But still I was determined.  I grabbed his little hand and together we moved the paintbrush around on the paper.  A stroke of blue appeared.  He smiled. We swirled another design onto the page. And another.  He touched the paint. Yes!  Go buddy! Use your hands! Get dirty!  Create! Puh-leaze.  He just wanted to get that damn smock off and get his snack on.  All done mommy!  Creating over.  But still I framed it.  I was so proud.  It’s hanging in his room now, almost 4 years later.  His first – er, our first painting.  If you told me then that I would someday be throwing out his art, I would have scoffed at you, you heartless bastard.

Starting a family? Veteran parents will talk all day long about sleepless nights, the struggle to find “me-time”, the importance of preserving romance in your marriage.  But no one warns you about this.  Each day at pick-up time, Leo digs through his school take-home file, and proudly pulls out two, three, eight masterpieces – paintings, tiny little scraps of paper, hearts, rainbows, glitter-glue splattered motifs, feathers stuck to pom-poms stuck to popsicle sticks, elaborate, geometric, architectural-looking drawings that I know he spent forever on, and, every day, every single day, at least one piece that says “I love you Mommy (Daddy)”, or something to that effect.

Now imagine 6 months later, throwing them away.  His love, in writing.   Little fingers tightly clutching a red marker, his brain telling his arm to tell his hand to craft the letters M-O-M-M-Y …all so I can eventually THROW IT AWAY!!  Trust me, I keep everything, I do.  Ask anyone.  I am the queen of the sentimental.  I organize the shit out of it.  I keep a jar of his quotes, a box of his Halloween costumes, a timeline of his milestones.  But I simply cannot store all of the artwork.  It enters the house (or it’s created in the house), and goes immediately to the mail area so daddy can see it. Then it’s on to the fridge, or the walls of the playroom, or his bedroom, maybe even framed.  Everything else is pretty much stuffed into a large wooden in-tray, where it sits and grows, and GROWS until I can, about twice a year, sift through it all. Those that make the cut move on to their final resting place: giant plastic storage boxes labeled “Leo’s Art.”  We have two boxes so far: “Up to age 4” and “Age 4 to ___”. The rest goes in the TRASH.

And so here I sit, art piled all around, deciding what stays.  Which pieces will be here twenty years from now, to ooh and aah over with his girlfriend?  Who am I to judge?  How to choose one good rainbow over another?  There are 63 rainbow pictures to consider.  I counted.

Enter Leo: What are you doing?

(Whoops.  Busted.)

Me: Oh, just looking at all the beautiful art you made and organizing it.

Leo:  I will help you.

Me: Wonderful!!

Leo:  I made this rainbow when Gigi and Papa were here for my birthday.  I made this heart when I stayed home sick with the throw-ups.  I made this for daddy when he was on his trip.  I made this rainbow for you when you were sick with the throw- ups.    I made this one when I was 4 and 3/4 in art class. We used sticks and straws instead of brushes.   I made this in art class, too.  We used these sock things, filled with sand, and dropped them in the paint, so they would go splat! on the paper.  I made this at Thanksgiving with Gonnie when you were trying to make food for the party.  I made this on Easter. I made this for Charlie.   I made this…

Screw it.  We’ll just have to rent a storage unit.

By: Tanya Ward Goodman

Friday evening, when the clouds are as heavy as my exhausted eyelids, I pay my first visit to a Korean spa.   Though I am in the company of a dear friend, I have to admit, I’m a bit nervous.  First, there’s the whole walking around naked thing and then there’s the scrubbing.  Fierce, fierce scrubbing.  The kind of scrubbing that in a perfect world could turn back the clocks; the kind of scrubbing that could also leave a mark.

At the front desk, my friend and I are issued numbers and locker keys.  In the locker are two extremely small towels and a pale green robe.  Nudity is postponed momentarily as we both pull the thin fabric around our bodies.

“Number 72?”

I raise my wrist to show my bracelet and a stout Korean woman wearing only black panties and bra takes my hand.  She quickly divests me of my robe and gives me the kind of firm pat you might give a horse.

“You soak,” she commands, pointing to a steaming pool.

I slip into the water next to my friend and feel my shoulders relax into the warmth.  Too soon, my number is up.

“Number 72,” my guide says, gesturing for me to get out and follow.

I trail her to an area behind a low wall where there are five or six tables covered with oilcloth.  The walls are tile and next to each table is a large drain in the tile floor.  My guide pats the table and gestures for me to lay face down.  I look across at my friend a couple of tables away and she gives me a huge smile.  I smile back and hoist myself on to the table.

Warm water is poured over my body and then the scrubbing begins.  And it is wonderful.  I feel myself relax as these big, scratchy mitts make their way over my body.  I let my shoulders loosen and give over control of my arms and legs to this kind woman and her cleaning powers.  Her belly bumps against me from time to time, like a friendly pillow.  It could be weird, but it’s not.  She’s has an efficient thoroughness that is almost parental.  And it goes like this: scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing, turning, rinsing… for over thirty minutes.  When it ends, and I am sent to the shower to “rinse well,” my legs wobble.

I return and my guide slips her fingers under my arms, makes a little “tsssk” sound with her tongue and sends me back to the shower.

“Rinse longer.”

Like a dutiful child, I rinse and rinse.

And then the massage begins.  Despite being on a table in a brightly lit, very public room, it is incredibly relaxing.  The sounds of running showers, the little splashes that accompany an entrance or exit to the soaking tubs and the liquid sound of water being poured over the prone bodies of my neighbors on the tables creates a kind of lulling ambient noise.  Just above the music of the water, hushed voices engage in conversation.  The woman massaging my shoulders chats in Korean with the woman working two tables over. Their words are simply sounds to me, blending in and then standing out from the sounds made by sinks and faucets and drains.

I realize that I am having the kind of experience that a baby has every day.  Even as a child grows, I think the words of grown ups continue to form a kind of unintelligible cloud around their heads.  My seven-year-old understands more and more, but I know he often finds himself exactly where I am right now.  It feels good to me to return to this watery, mysterious world, but it also helps me understand why my son is often so filled with frustration.  My return is voluntary, while his journey is canted forward as a kind of escape.

The massage ends and my friend and I dress slowly and prepare to re-enter the world.  Once outside, in answer to a question posed by our rumbling bellies, we head to a nearby restaurant.  At the table, over a feast in small bowls, we share our birth stories.  Hers were hard, slow labors and mine both began with a spectacular burst of water.  It’s been a long time since I repeated these stories.  My children are so tall, so sure of themselves, it’s hard to believe they were once swimming inside me.  Perhaps it was our own trip to a watery world that brings these tales to the mind’s surface and makes them so fresh.  We raise a glass in toast to our friendship and to our children while, outside, the clouds let go of their weight in rain.

Tanya Ward Goodman also writes at http://youdearestyou.blogspot.com and http://twgoodman.blogspot.com