Happy Birthday, Baby

364 days ago, I had to sleep in a recliner.

I could not see my feet.

I had eaten all of the candy bars my children were supposed to sell for school.

Walking up the stairs seemed like the worst thing someone could ask me to do.

No. Asking me to sit on the floor and play and then get up seemed like the worst thing someone could ask me to do.

I was 39 weeks pregnant and this little monster squirmed inside me. All. The. Time.

364 days ago, I knew that he would be a fighter. People would ask, hesitant but endearingly eager, "Is he kicking?" And if he was snoozing in my belly, all I had to do was press my hand down, and boy, did that baby get mad. He would kick my hand away, like, "Hey! Encroaching on my space, here!" On sonogram days, and there were many, the second that magic wand was pressed against my stomach, Little Man would knock it away. "Whoa!" was what the radiologist would say. I couldn't help but smile. My baby was fierce, and there would be no messing with him.

It's hard for me to write about Max. He is unexpectedly different from his brothers, but similar in nuance-y ways. He'll do something that will remind me of one of them, but it's just a hint, just a breeze of their different personalities. He takes everything and makes it completely his own, including his face, despite the never-ending moment-to-moment narration by extended family of who he most looks like. (He looks like himself.)

So. For the sake of simplicity, here are the highlights of what I have loved most about being Max's mom in this first year of his life:

1. Holding him. Even though he's by far the heaviest of my babies, he's all round and delicious and fuzzy, especially at bedtime.

2. Kissing his cheeks. Have you seen them?

3. Squeezing his thighs. For the first two months of his life his legs were like spaghetti. I was terrified that he would never catch up and be in a percentile. But he did catch up. My goodness, he did.

4. His silly faces. 

5. The fact that he tries really hard not to laugh, but sometimes they slip out, and then he's all mad at himself over such an emotional display.

6. He is, for the most part, a very content baby. Very chill compared to Noah. (Though the Incredible Hulk is chill compared to Noah.)

7. His cankles.

8. Feeding him anything. 

9. The way he has always been very decided about being done or over something. He closes his eyes, turns his head dramatically, and shoves whatever it is away. I love someone who knows what he wants. Or doesn't want.

10. Bath time.

11. Finding out that if I could go back and do it all differently, I won't actually do it differently. At least as far as mothering infants is concerned. Joey and Noah are nine and six, and memories of their babyhood were growing fuzzy and rose-colored. When people remarked about how anxious and, frankly, crazy I was with them as babies, I shrugged, thinking of how far I'd come as a mom and how much I'd learned. Then along came Max, and it turns out, no, I didn't learn anything. I worry about all of my children in equally irrational and insane ways regardless of all logic and lessons learned. Soon after Max was born, I was sitting criss-cross applesauce in front of him on the floor, worrying. Joe said, "What are you doing?" and I said, "Worrying," and Joe said, "Huh. Most people mellow out after they've had three kids, but not you. You just...sure love them a lot." So diplomatic.

12. His ear lobes.

13. His chubby wrists.

14. Honest to God--changing diapers. Nothing keeps you vibrant quite like a wild diaper change filled with the unexpected.

15. Waiting and being rewarded. First because it was my most miserable pregnancy. Then, all the milestones. They felt like they took forever--smiling, laughing, sitting up, crawling--and in some ways Max definitely took his time. But I didn't feel the rush so much this time. I loved him being squishy and round and all the things he is. When all the milestones finally happened, it was just more of an excuse to squeeze him and love him. (As opposed to how we were with Joey, who probably will find all kinds of Ivy League brochures in his baby books when he grows up because not only was he early with all milestones but achieved them with real panache. Apparently.)

16. His eyelashes.

17. He said "Mama" first but now prefers to fling "Dada" in the faces of all loved ones. "Dada" and, weirdly, "Poo." He says it like a little pigeon.

18. He loves music. He's instantly calmed by it and loves to dance around with his mama.

19. He loves his brothers. He (quite mistakenly) puts all his faith and trust in them.

20. He is all the good of all of us rolled into one little person. He is Joey's sound sleep, Noah's earnestness, Joe's silliness, my amazing charm and wit.

It was easy a year ago to know that each life in our family would change with Max's arrival. It's easy to say that they did. It just isn't easy to explain how. One small person, filled with so many smiles and so many poops, made us disorganized, out of control, confused, and crazier than we ever were. He changed all of our roles in this house in a huge way and we won't ever be the same. 

We'll forever be better, and happier, and more full of love because of Max.

(above photo taken by Natalie Komosinski)

Grandma

The hardest thing about it, I think, is the way my brain continues to be surprised. Each time I expect to see the strong person I have known my whole life, and instead I see someone exhausted and frail. Her mind is as sharp as ever, and my heart hurts knowing that she is acutely aware of everything that is happening to her.

My grandmother ran races and marathons until she was eighty-one years old. She worked out. And I mean, aside from running, she lifted weights. My friends' grandparents did not run or lift weights. She once asked me to polka with her. We were at my uncle's wedding and she wanted to polka. "I don't know how," I'd said helplessly. "That's okay," she'd replied, and she lifted me up off the ground in her strong arms and carried me around that dance floor, polka style. I was seventeen years old.

When I reach for her now, I am aware that she cannot lift me up to polka, but I am still surprised that her hugs are like a whisper. "I love you," they say, and I am grateful.

But I miss her fierceness. I miss seeing her at the dinner table, her elbows propped up, her hands clasped to the side of her face, joining in the conversation. She argued, she laughed, she drank wine with dinner and coffee at dessert. She passed the pasta and she declined the dessert placed in front of her, only to sneak a bite here and there when she thought no one was looking.

I have her eyes. She has always told me that. "Green eyes like Grandma." When I was young and foolish and knew everything and nothing, I'd roll my eyes and wish for blue eyes like my father or brown eyes like the Van Morrison song. But it is her eyes that still hold her spirit. They still have her spark, her lightness. She looks at me with her bright eyes and says what she has always said, "How's my Mary?"

If I close my eyes, I can still see her strong. Her broad shoulders, held straight and proud. I can picture a thousand different times she has found me in a crowded room with her green eyes to say, "How's my Mary?" When I was sick. On every birthday. Christmas night, after she'd finish the dishes and find me sitting at her piano. At Sunday dinner. In the hospital after all three of my children were born. When she held my hand and stared at me hard and said, "You cannot be a writer until you sit down and write."

She is eighty-four years old. She has cancer. And still she fights. She does not run anymore, but for her, the race is not over.

Please pray for my grandma. She is wonderful.

Someone In My House

I make really delicious ham. I feel like I can say that with confidence, because I've done it twice and both times, it turned out delicious. So. Good job, me. But that's not even the wonderful part. The wonderful part is that when anyone in our family cooks a ham, my sister takes the leftovers and creates the most magnificent pea soup in the whole wide world.

I made ham for Easter and was eager for Jane to take the ham leftovers yesterday, but she didn't come to my house to pick it up until exactly the time I was putting Max in for a nap. With his white noise machine. While he was crying. So I missed that, to both my and my sister's annoyances. She was annoyed about banging away on my door, probably, and I was annoyed that I had to wait even longer for my pea soup.

Today was the day the stars aligned. The ham was procured, the soup was created. I was on absolute pins and needles, I tell you. But when to get it? So much was happening. Report cards came home with my older boys today--the excitement was barely contained because I am and ever shall be a huge dork--I made a delicious dinner that my children actually ate, Max took amazing naps, and, also, and this may not seem like much to you, but I'm reading a really good book. It's hard for me to follow what's happening in the real world when I'm reading a really good book, and once you throw in report card day, I'm not ashamed to admit it's all too much.

Anyway.

Joey had baseball tonight, which meant that I set Noah up watching his favorite TV show (Ninjago, which I'd never even heard of until a few weeks ago) while I gave baby Max his bath upstairs. Max was exceptionally cute tonight, waving his naked arms all about and blowing raspberries and making all kinds of declarations in a new and bold way. I took a little longer than usual, then, because I couldn't resist kissing his big round cheekies and giving him raspberries right back. (Last night, as a complete off-topic share, I tried giving him a "big boy bath" in the big tub. He wasn't a fan.) Anyway, after he was all clean and smelling delicious, I bundled him up in his towel, a "baby burrito," I call it, and took him to his room for his pajamas. As I was dressing him, Noah appeared.

"Do you need something?" I asked, but I might as well have not spoken at all. Noah walked right on by, into his own room, and began searching. And I mean really looking for something, ducking down to look under his bed and peeking around the corners made by furniture.

"Noah?"

"I'm looking for Janie," he called, but he didn't turn around. I could tell by his voice he was perplexed, though definitely not as perplexed as I was.

"Janie my sister?" I clarified.

"Yes. I'm sure I saw her pass by. She's got to be here somewhere."

Not knowing what else to do, I looked out the door of Max's room, side to side, understanding it was ridiculous but wondering if perhaps my sister was in my house without my knowing it.

"Noah, why do think Jane is here?"

"Because. I'm sure I saw her."

Now he came into Max's room, marched right past me, and flung open the drapes to see if her car was in the driveway.

"Well, that's weird," he said, his eyebrows furrowed. "Where's her car?"

"Noah, I don't think she's here."

"Huh. I mean, I guess I could have been wrong."

"Well, I'll have to call her and see what happened."

"Oh! Good idea! And have her come back with the cousins so I have someone to play with!"

"Noah, it's a school night. Jane is not bringing your cousins over."

"Oh. She should have brought them the last time she was here."

Right. During her fictitious visit to my house. The whole scene made me start to giggle, and in my head I couldn't wait to get my sister on the phone to tell her this story. I hoped my husband would be back from Joey's baseball practice so he could hear me tell the story and I wouldn't have to do it twice. It's always best the first time.

After I tucked Max into bed, it was Noah's turn. The whole Janie thing forgotten, I helped him into his jammies and read him the next chapter in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, and then tucked him into bed. It wasn't long after that that Joey returned from baseball. Once he was all showered and bejammied, I tucked him in (are you feeling the exhaustion of all the tucking? goodness!) and finally, blessedly, came downstairs to the quiet of my house at night. Grownup Time.

Excited to see my husband, I began crossing through the kitchen to the family room, when something stopped me in my tracks. A large Tupperware container on my counter. Not mine. Not one I'd placed there. And it was fancy Tupperware, which could only mean one thing. It was Jane's.

"Joe!" I hissed. "Joe! Where did this Tupperware come from?" Before he could answer, I lifted the lid. Sure enough, it was filled to the brim with tantalizing pea soup. "Jane brought the soup!"

"Oh," said Joe, distractedly reading something on his laptop.

"Was Jane at baseball?" I asked, frustrated that he wasn't paying attention to me. I'm always frustrated when people in my life don't pay me enough attention.

"Yes."

"Did she give you the soup?"

"What? The soup. Yeah."

I started laughing, looking around for the phone. "This is a funny story," I called to him, already dialing Jane's number. "You have to hear it."

When Jane got on the phone, I laughed hysterically while relaying the whole story.

Jane, however, was only politely laughing. Like, humoring me.

"But I was there," she said. "Noah is the one who let me in."

"WHAT?!" I said. "But...he was so confused while looking for you! And then I figured Joe must have brought the soup home from baseball..."

I shook my head. Joey had brought home this little beauty from art today:

So I thought maybe Noah had just drunk from the same water bottle. I mean, how could he not realize he'd got up from watching his favorite show, unlocked our door, and let a person enter the house? Especially his favorite visitor in the world.

But THEN. 

Jane said, "The weirdest thing is that he helped let me in. He unlocked the door and everything."

"Noah did?"

"No, Joe did."

"WHAT?!!" I whirled around, the phone still pressed to my ear. I shouted at my husband, twelve inches away, "Did YOU let Jane in the house??"

"Of course," he said calmly. "I thought you knew that. Now I see why you're confused."

Now Jane was laughing real, genuine laughter while I sputtered at both of them. At the whole situation.

"Ugh!" I shouted. "Nobody ever knows what's going on! Nobody gives good information around here!" And then, over Jane's giggles, I blurted the real truth: "I hate living with boys!!!!!" 

I hate it so much, I end up with pictures like this:

Going To Grandma's

My elementary school nurse was Mrs. Oliver. She had short gray hair and glasses, and she always wore sweaters and just-past-the-knee-length skirts. And ugly shoes. Really ugly shoes. In a school of what had to be about seven or eight hundred kids, she knew me by name. Because I was in her office every day.

I find this sort of funny now, because as a germophobic mother I tell my own children they must never, ever go to the nurse unless they are actually very sick. It's germ central! But nothing could have kept me from Mrs. Oliver's office when I was a kid. I knew all the tricks: Eyes half open. Droopy shoulders. Let your hair fall in your face a little. Furrow your eyebrows. And most importantly, never smile. Any sign of happiness will send you right back to class.

Sometimes Mrs. Oliver would get me crackers and juice from the cafeteria to help me "perk up." Sometimes she'd just let me lay there with a bucket we both knew I didn't need. But mostly, she gave in and called my grandma. And my grandma always--always--came and got me.

"One of these days," Mrs. Oliver said once as my grandmother collected me, "I'm coming to Grandma's with you. I need to see for myself why you seem to love going there so often!"

I hadn't been at all embarrassed (I rarely realized I should be). Instead I'd looked up into my grandmother's green, green eyes to find her smiling down at me. "Any time, Mrs. Oliver!" she'd said cheerfully. "You're welcome any time at all." Then she helped me with my coat, put an arm around me, and guided me out of school and down the front walk to where her big old Lincoln sat waiting.

My grandmother never drove the speed limit. Her fat car cruised along slowly to her turquoise split-level house in Lackawanna. I'd yank my backpack out of the car with me and as we walked up to the front door, we could already hear the loud, urgent barks of her pit bull, Shiner. Shiner was the fattest dog I've ever known, and was all white with a big black spot around his eye. He seemed to believe he was a purse-sized dog, and when we'd enter he'd hop and jump all over us gleefully. Grandma always had to shove at him with her hip so he wouldn't knock me down, all the while shouting, "DOWN, Shiner! Come ON, Shine! Get outta here!" The sound of his cord-like tail would be thwop-thwopping, and Grandma would guide me into the house and up the short staircase to her living room. It smelled like fruit and vegetables and whatever she'd cooked that morning. It smelled like Grandma herself.

She'd go upstairs and get me a pillow from her bed and set me up cozily on her satiny black and gold couch, easily the ugliest piece of furniture I've ever seen. My grandparents to this day insist that Shiner would curl up beside me for the duration of my stay, never leaving my side and growling at anyone who came near me. I don't really remember that. What I remember is leaning back against my grandmother's pillow, her covering me with a blanket, me closing my eyes, and knowing that no matter what had been bothering me at school that day, right now I was okay. Everything would be okay.

She served me fruit salad and sandwiches for lunch. Once, she made me a shrimp cocktail. We would pretend her house was a restaurant and she'd use a little notepad to "take my order." She liked to periodically press her hand on my forehead to check my temperature, something I think we both knew was just plain silly, and she would tell me stories about when my mom was a little girl. And I would listen, imagining getting to live with my grandma all the time, eating as much fruit salad as I ever wanted and never having to go to school because she clearly wouldn't ever make me go.

When my mom would come and pick me up later, dread would creep up into my chest. Not only did I have to go home, home to a brother and a sister and not being the center of attention anymore, but I was sure to get a good lecture on the downfalls of people who pretend to be sick to get out of school. I would sit on the couch silently while my mother tiraded on, until my grandmother would emerge from the kitchen and look at me fondly, saying, "Oh, Judy, she didn't feel good. She just needed a little day off. Right, Mary Pat?"

It wasn't just when I was sick that I got to spend time with my grandma, either. She was a very young grandmother compared to what my friends had. My memory tells me she was fifty-five the entire time I was in grammar school, which doesn't really make sense, but I know she was the only grandma who still had black hair and wore makeup, and definitely the only grandmother who ran (and won) marathons. Being so young, she took my brother, sister, and I everywhere, and stayed with us when our parents took their yearly honeymoon for a week. She bought us exactly what we wanted at Christmas, no matter how ridiculous, and she took us wherever we asked to go: Show Biz (which was around the corner from our house and pretty much a Chuck E. Cheese), Burger King, picnics at the Botanical Gardens. She drove so slowly but we laughed the entire time, because my brother was always teasing her and telling jokes. She once let my brother and sister roll down the windows of her car so they could climb in and out of it like they did in The Dukes of Hazzard. I wanted to so bad, but I was just too short to make the climb. My father would never have let us do something like that (he was big on taking care of his cars and we had a lot of strict rules, including never climb in and out of the windows). And of course, to add to the hilarity of all, my grandmother always did something ridiculous, like lock her keys in the car, or forget her entire wallet (she once asked a horse and carriage driver, "Do you take checks?"), or, to our greatest amusement, get really, really angry with one of us and yell at us the whole way to wherever we were going. When I think of every big moment of my childhood, the birthdays, the holidays, the Communions, even the proms and things like that when I was older, every one of those memories will show my grandmother in the background, always simply a part of the scene.

I've been thinking of these things a lot lately, these things and of how lucky I am that my own children have gotten to know and spend time with her. The first time I took Joey and Noah to Florida, Noah spent pretty much the whole trip in Grandma's lap, just chatting away, and those memories of my sick days at her house came flooding back. It wasn't ever anything particular that we did together, it was that whatever I said, she listened and responded to me like I was a real, interesting person. I love that Noah appreciates that in her, too. It creates an ache in my heart, though, because these days Grandma is having her own sick time, and I know she isn't faking just so she can get out of school or have a visit with her favorite person in the world. I also know that she's one of the strongest people I'll ever know...I mean, she doesn't run marathons anymore (she stopped just a couple of years ago; she's eighty-three now), but she does go to the gym every day and work out. Jeepers. If ever there was an eighty-three year old woman who was going to kick illness, it's my grandmother. Any time I start to doubt that, I'm going to picture the time she was shouting at her hundred-fifty pound pit bull, "Come ON, Shine! SHINER! Get outta here!" and whacking him over the back with her giant, gilt-paged Bible. (Don't worry; he barely felt it.)

Grandma, I love you so.

The Gift of Time

Today was supposed to be my last official day home with my kids. Last October I tried hard to focus on the positives: I was having a baby, a beautiful one, and I was able to stay home with him a few weeks longer than originally planned. But the realistic me was focused on the fact that a few weeks longer only meant that I'd still have to leave an awfully tiny baby at home.

Fast forward to now, and I don't have to go back to work after all! And somehow, taking off a whole school year is way easier for me to handle than just half of one. I'm not nearly so focused on having to go back. Instead, I'm thinking of all these things with huge relief:

1. I won't miss baby's first word, which will surely be "Mama," because we're already so much in love. I mean, he loves his dad and his brothers, too, but he definitely loves me best.

2. I won't miss baby crawling! I don't know why, but crawling is almost more thrilling to me than walking. I think it's because I struggle so with infancy so much. I've loved all of my babies desperately, but not because I love babies. Just because they're mine, and because as they grow, they turn into my people. It really isn't about babies at all, who in general I find to be both nerve-wracking and baffling.

3. I won't have to worry about someone shaking my baby. I never worried about this with Joey and Noah, and I blame that on the fact that I was really young, comparatively, when I had them. I spent time worrying about small things, like spitting up and sleep schedules, rather than even thinking of all the other, greater dangers that could befall them. I think that for me at that time, it was easier to believe my greatest worries were such little things. Now, however, I read the news, and it's spoiled my illusions forever. So. Yeah.

4. I don't have to go to work. This is not as lazy as it sounds. First of all, I'd have to leave my three-month-old (and my kindergartener, and my third-grader) and go to be with other people's children who, let's face it, I'm never going to care about as much as the children I'm leaving behind. Sorry, but if you thought otherwise, be real! Second, I was out of sick days. Already, in the first have of the year, Noah alone has missed nine days. Any time I needed to stay home and take care of him, I'd have to take unpaid leave, which equals additional stress. And last, teaching is a rough industry right now. Just saying.

5. I get this many more chances to be the first one to make Max laugh. I seriously thought he would have by now, and I'd be terribly upset if I had to go back without hearing it.

6. I'll be able to go to Noah's Mother's Day celebration at school AND his kindergarten graduation (which I would have had to miss due to not having any sick/personal days left).

7. I get to take my family on a trip during a non-peak season. Because if we had to go during a peak season, we wouldn't be able to afford the airfare for all of us.

I have thought about the fact that I might miss Max's first steps next fall, but I reassure myself by thinking that a) he might be an insanely early walker (though by the looks of things, probably not; he hasn't even laughed yet, after all) or b) we'll have an awesome nanny who will do something cool like knock him over if it looks like he's going to walk before I get home.

In the meantime, I am focusing on how the tough stuff is temporary, how the good things are so insanely good, and how my children fill me up and make everything so, so worth it.

Because My Dad Can Dance

My father came from a family of four boys and one girl. His sister is the youngest, and in my current situation, I can see how it was that my grandmother ended up with five children, the very last one in pigtails and bows.

I didn't know my grandmother long, in the scheme of things. She died when I was ten, and though it was monumental in my life for a long time--my first experience with loss and death--it has now faded to something fuzzy, surrounded by the haze of an old memory. I can tell you she made the best turkey sandwiches ever, and equally good chicken wings. She smoked, and rocked in a rocking chair with her eyes closed while singing. The chair always creaked. Creaking rocking chairs are a haunting sound for me, because in those days when the memory of Grandma was monumental, I believed she was haunting me, too.

Another thing I know is that she made my father, and presumably his brothers though it's my understanding that Grandma wasn't always necessarily known for fairness, take ballroom dancing lessons. I think this is pretty much the greatest thing I've ever heard. I've always meant to do this with my own boys--still plan to, in fact--because there's a loud, undeniable truth about men. The ones who can dance are really cool. Playing an instrument is pretty great, too.

My dad played the accordion.

Anyway, the other day my mom and I were chatting on the phone and happened to come to this exact topic. "Grandma made Dad take dancing lessons," my mother told me, as if this was news I hadn't been told a thousand times over the course of my life, each and every time the word "dancing" was mentioned in my father's presence.

"Yeah, Ma, I know," I said. Then I smiled. "I think it's cool. I think boys should know how to dance. And you know what? At all the Father-Daughter dances, my dad was always the best dancer."

"What?" my mom asked. "Dad?"

"Yeah! He twirled me and threw me in the air. He had all the moves." And in my memory, though it's probably made up, I brought up the image of crowds forming around us, clapping to the beat of the music, while I matched my dad step for step.

"Wow," was my mom's response. "You really love him."

I made a face in surprise. It was such an odd thing to say for a lot of reasons. First of all, why wasn't she wholeheartedly agreeing that Dad is groovy? Secondly, it was sort of a "duh" moment. Of course I really love my dad.

I mean, there's the fact that he gets a sort of scary shade of angry when he's yelling, where this one particular vein pops out of his forehead and you find yourself mentally reciting every prayer you were ever taught. There's the fact that when I had to work for him as a teenager, first as his "cleaning" girl (because I really just "cleaned"--I never actually did anything effective, to Dad's everlasting dismay) and then later as a night-time secretary, he fired me every single day. Every day. I'm not kidding. I'm not going to say I wasn't a royal pain, but who fires his own daughter? Especially his favorite daughter? My dad, that's who.

And don't even get me started on how unreasonably strict he was about going out with my friends in high school. One night a weekend. No exceptions. The other night was dedicated to "family time." I usually spent this night in my room with the door closed since all my dad ever watched on TV was the history and discovery channels and who wants to watch animals mating with their father on Saturday night? Call me immature all you want. It was UNcomfortable.

But there are so many things, bigger things, that will never get hazy in my memory, and that matter so much more. They make those other, more annoying things the funny stories we tell around the table after dinner, sitting with this guy who loves to laugh. He taught me to tie my shoes (two loops, not one), how to swim, how to waterski, and how to drive. He took me to bookstores every weekend and let me pick as many books as I wanted and never, ever said no. "I'll never mind spending money on books for you," he said once after I'd thanked him. "I just love to see you read." It is a moment among thousands that is branded inside me, one that has not only made me the person I am but the mother I am, too. Because I say the same thing to Joey, too. He flies through books like I did, done before the day is over, already eager for the next story. And I tell him, like my dad did to me, "Of course you can have another book." And we don't like to lend them out or give them away. We keep them all, even once we've run out of room. Not because we're being selfish, but because each and every one matters.

My children believe, like I did, that the sun hisses when it touches Lake Erie on cricket-filled summer nights when the sand is cool and the lake is quiet. Because of my dad. They think I'm the coolest because I can throw, catch, and hit a baseball. That I like the sound of a car's engine when it accelerates. That rain smells clean. And that sometimes, the very best thing is to just be still and let the world go on around you in all of its magic and wonder.

Because that's my dad. He's the magic.

There are things that I get from my mom. Undeniably, I am most like her. But I find that most of those things are part of my nature, and that so much of what I've had to learn, what I've had to change, what I've come to expect from others...it's all based on things my dad has taught me.

So, I guess my mom is right. I do really love him.

Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there.

Think of the Good Things

My Sicilian mother taught me that if you have a dream that someone dies, someone (not necessarily the same person) is going to have a baby. She also said the reverse is true, if you dream someone has a baby, someone else will die.

I have never found this to be true.

Oddly enough, however, every time I am pregnant, a lot of people I know pass away. I am not saying I have any sort of power over this. I know that I don't, I just find it to be an odd coincidence, especially in light of my mom's old superstition. Right around the time I learned I was pregnant with Joey, my great uncle passed away. "It's going to be a boy," my mother declared. Despite the fact that I called him my little Isabella until the sonogram, my mother was right. During that pregnancy, a number of other close relatives passed away, as well.

When I found out I was pregnant with Noah for sure (the only baby who was not a surprise in our house, despite what nosy, know-it-all onlookers may believe), my husband Joe was so excited he dashed out to tell the whole world. I was so annoyed! To me, pregnancy kind of "belongs" to the mother and he totally stole my thunder. I guess that seems unfair to a lot of people (namely men), but that's just how I see it. But it ended up being a wonderful thing that Joe did, because he was able to share the news with his grandfather, a very beloved member of our family, before he passed away just days later. And during the next nine months, though something wonderful and exciting was happening for us in our house, we lost several other people who we knew and loved.

Just a couple of months ago my sister invited me to help her paint some rooms in her house. She helps me with a lot of things (like...a LOT), so I agreed. On our way to buy the paint, I brought up Mom's old  superstition, and then shared my own experiences.

"That's weird," she said.

It happened that day that we had just lost our uncle. It was sudden, and he is our closest relative in our family we have ever had to say that kind of good-bye to. Jane, especially, was affected--I'm not sure if it's because she is the oldest, more sensitive than the rest of us, or just saw him often. For me, it was a shock. I'm not sure I'm even over it, or able to talk about it much. My dad's family is a huge part of who I am and choices I've made. Losing part of them is strange, especially since we didn't see it coming.

"Yeah," I responded to my sister after a moment. "Because I'm pregnant."

I'm pretty sure she almost drove off the road.

This week alone I've found out that two people I've known have passed away. I don't know if I'm seeing this because it's merely part of getting older and growing up--I'm sure my elders would assure me it is--or if it's my emotional state due to being pregnant. I can't imagine it's actually true that more people I know die when I'm pregnant, and yet as I feel myself growing excited about my something new and different, I am surrounded by a grief that doesn't seem to have a chance to lift.

I remember once when I was teaching, I asked my students what they noticed while they were reading. It's an innocent enough question with lots of room for right answers, but nobody raised their hands. (Typical little jerks.) So I prompted. I prodded. I threw out leading questions. They gave me plot summary, rather than the unusual and special little details authors leave in stories, like footprints to the ending.

"No!" I shouted. They all leaned away, as students in my class are wont to do because I'm told that I'm scary. "No! Don't you want to be noticers? How many of you can tell me what the poster above the drinking fountain says?"

None of them responded. (Typical little jerks.)

"It says 'Character is who you are when no one is looking.'"

One kid shouted out, "I knew that, I was just afraid to say it!"

Yeah, right. Like that person who watches Jeopardy! and always knows the answer right after the contestant or Alex revealed it.

Anyway, it led us into a huge discussion about how in life, it's really important to not just float along, taking things as they come, but to also notice things. People, though we might not often think about it, do act in a purposeful way. Signs are hung for a reason. Rules are there for a reason. Usually, there's a great story behind them. But if we try harder to notice the things that everyone does on purpose, and to even notice the patterns in things that aren't deliberate, we might become fuller and more compassionate people ourselves.

"Be a noticer!" I shouted with enthusiasm.

They rolled their eyes. Some yawned.

I learned this from my parents in very different ways. My mother always reminded me that people are always watching us when we don't know it. They're noticing me when maybe I'm acting like a jerk. "That's what they'll remember," she always said. "Not the good things you do to be noticed, but the things you do that show who you really are." She was always right about that.

My father, on the other hand, was more the type to pay attention to the small things. On warm summer nights, he could always be found lost in thought on the front or back patio, peacefully watching everything around him. It was these times when I loved to go and sit beside him, because he was likely to share a neat little story from when he was young. His life was fascinating to me. One night watching the sunset on the beach, he revealed to me that when he was a little boy, he'd sneak away from his family to come and sit just as we were. When I asked why, he chuckled and said, "Usually to sneak a smoke." He was seven in that story, by the way.

A lot of the time, we forget to slow down in our busy lives to be noticers. When I learned that a high school classmate of mine passed away suddenly, and my heart crumbled inside of me, I realized how much about her I could remember, though I haven't seen her in fifteen years. I remember the exact shade of her hair, the way she laughed at everybody's jokes in class. I realized she was in most of my classes all four years of high school, and while we weren't close friends, she was present in many of my high school memories, all of which have become a part of who I am now. Realizing all that I noticed, and all that we were both a part of, is both jarring and reassuring to me as I deal with how unfair it is that she is gone. Because while she is gone, she is still present in many, many people. She is a part of us.

The last thing I want to say incorporates two more things I've learned along the way. (Sorry if this is preachy...is it preachy? I'm sorry.) One comes from a friend and colleague of mine, a person who is crazily different from me, so much so, we end up believing a lot of the same things. (That's not the lesson.) Something she always says rings so true for me right now, as I feel all the the things pregnant ladies feel. She says, "It's amazing how weather is so often a metaphor for what's going on in life." After I dropped Noah off at school today, I was driving down one of the older streets in our town and enjoying the canopy created by the full, old trees lining the road. Noah calls them "summer trees" since they only have leaves in summertime. While I drove, I did something I do every year. I thought about all of the things that will happen while these leaves, these in particular, are in bloom. Everything that will happen before they fall for another winter.

When spring came in 2005, I thought about how those leaves would see my first baby. I would spend a whole summer learning what it meant to be a mother. In 2008, the buds on the trees meant my second baby would arrive at any minute, and the leaves would see Joey become a big brother and Joe and I struggle to learn how to do all the things we'd learned...with two.

This year, these leaves will be falling as our third child arrives. Before, having children seemed like new beginnings to me. And in a way, that's what autumn is. But to me, it's more about change. I am so excited for a last chance to do it all, for tiny clothes and tiny fingers and little hats and first steps. But this time, it will mean change for more than just me. It will be a change for all of us, who have grown into a routine we did not expect to be altered in this way. Noah, our baby, will surrender his throne to become a middle child. Joey will give up having his own room. And Joe and I will find out what it means to not have an even parent-to-child ratio. What it will mean to have an eighth-grader and a kindergartener, a college student and an elementary student. It is something new, it is something scary. It is something different.

But that brings me to my last lesson. Noah turned to me today in the middle of my morning grumpiness and said, "Mommy, mornings are okay. Just think about everything good. Don't think about anything bad. Then you can feel good again."

I realized--I noticed--that it has become a habit to me to always prepare for the bad days. The tough days, the ones when you don't catch a break. With kids, I find they come much more often than they did before. But I think I've become so used to preparing for these days that they have filled my head a little too much. Amidst the grief and the sadness around me, it will be okay if I follow Noah's advice. There are wonderful things, too. And as I fill my heart with prayers for the families and friends who need them, I think I will also fill myself up thinking about the dream I had last night, where I held a tiny baby girl in my arms and felt her soft fuzzy hair on my chin.


Disclaimer: I have not had THE sonogram yet. I have no idea if I'm really having a girl. It was just a dream. 

Things My Mother Taught Me

Happy Mother's Day!

I've been sitting here in front of my laptop for about twenty long minutes, a blank screen glaring at me all accusingly. The thing is, I know I want to write about my mother today, but the thing is, I have no idea where to begin.

The thing is, she's complicated.

I considered making this a tribute to how beautiful she is. No matter what else she's ever been--strict, overbearing, unreasonable, insane--she was always the prettiest mom. I look nothing like her, unfortunately. To my blond curly hair, hers is black and poker-straight. To my light green eyes, hers are, well, she'd tell you brown, but they're really black. In fact, when she's angry, they're a little on the satanic side. Especially since she wears such bold eye makeup. Dark black eyeliner and thick mascara, and then she'd look at you with her eyes all wide and perfectly round like saucers, and this black outlining the crisp whites, all around the coal black centers, and...man. When she looked that way, I saw my life flash before my eyes, I'm telling you. And, weirdly, she was always cooking, so there'd usually be some sort of weapon in her hands. Like a meat mallet or a wooden spoon. It's totally true that she chased my brother, sister, and me through the house with the spoon. She never caught us, though. We'd lock ourselves in the bathroom and she'd stand on the other side saying loving, coaxing things like, "YOU KIDS ARE GONNA KILL ME, DO YOU HEAR ME?" Well, actually, Mom, the whole state of New York hears you. "I'M GONNA CALL YOUR FATHER AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN THEN? HE'S GONNA KILL YOU!" The important things to note here are: A) She put the fear of God in us and B) she always let us get away. I can say now as an adult: God, that's good mothering. I always try to do the same for my kids.

I considered discussing what made my mom different from other moms, aside from her beauty. But there are just too many things. Quite honestly, I'm so much like her, I think I'd just end up tooting my own horn, anyway. (Which I do enough in other posts.) So instead, I've decided to create a list of the best advice she's ever given me.

1) Make it garlicky, and make it sweet. When in doubt, add parmesan. (This is for cooking, but can be a life metaphor if you wish.)

2) Hair: the bigger, the better, baby.

3) Be bold. Stand straight. People are watching.

4) No matter how bad someone is to you, smile and be nice. Have a good time. No--have the best time.

5) Smiling makes you a thousand times more beautiful.

6) Isn't it just easier to be nice? (The answer is no, it's way easier to be a bitch, but nice pays better.)

7) Shopping makes everything better.

8) Giving to the people you love is the best feeling.

9) Always cook enough for 700 people.

10) Always answer the door and the phone.

11) Words our men don't like: No, Wrong, Don't.

12) Words our men like: Yes, You're Right, and What can I do for you, dear?

13) It's okay to have the loudest, most ridiculous laugh in the room.

14) ADD/being scatterbrained are hereditary. There's no hope for me, but I'm still awesome.

15) No matter how far you've come, how publicly or loudly you've committed, you can always change your mind and do the right thing. 

16) Family comes first.

17) Family love is unconditional.

18) Never upset the woman holding a meat mallet or large knife.

19) Never tell Judy bad news when she's driving.

20) If someone has just had eye surgery and says, "No, it's okay, I can drive," it's not true.

21) Act in a way that no one has anything bad to say about you.

22) It's never okay to fart.

23) When Dad gets really mad, it's kind of funny. But if he sees you laughing, he gets more mad.

24) When Mom gets really mad, it's not funny. Hug her and kiss her and tell her she's beautiful.

25) Don't make mistakes.

26) You can never go wrong with a Polo dress.

27) Nobody wants to talk to you when you're on the phone with somebody else. And turn off your ringer in public.

28) A woman is not just her husband and children. She is much, much more, and should have and do things that remind her of that daily.

29) When you are feeling angry and venomous, shut your mouth and walk away.

30) Those times when it seems like only you notice that a person is awful, don't be the one to continually point it out. If you're right, they will "dig their own grave." (That's a Judy-ism.)

31) Children need and want their mothers no matter how old they are. Children need and want their mothers no matter what they say. Children need and want their mothers, even when they think they don't.

There are a lot of things I can describe concisely and well. Big Macs. Paintings. Middle schoolers. But my mother? I don't think there is any one word for her. And it's not enough to say she's everything, either. She's more like...everything, lit on fire, rolling down a dry, grassy hill. She's also the person who knows me best, knows my thoughts and feelings before I even know they're there, gives me my words when I can't find them.

Dear Mom, you have been the lighthouse in my storm, every time. I love you.

Butter Lambs and Easter Baskets

Easter has never been my favorite holiday. On a certain level, I feel a little bad about it, because as a Catholic I'm supposed to feel extra reverent and know this is the most important day of the days, but I've always found it a little disappointing. Perhaps it's because I live in Buffalo, and the weather is rarely as nice as they show it on TV, or maybe it's because when I was little my brother and sister kept moving my hidden Easter basket on me every time I got close so I could never actually find it. (Isn't that mean? Don't you feel sorry for me?)

Today my husband Joe is taking our boys to have their Easter baskets blessed. I'm not sure if this a Catholic thing, or if it's just a Polish Catholic thing. Though Joe and I both did this as children (with our Polish grandmothers), we've never done it before with our own kids. In fact, I was really surprised when he told me he wanted to. Like...really? You want to go to church an extra time and take the boys? And then, there was another thing.

When he told me, I leaned over and whispered, "But won't the baskets be empty? Because, you know, the Easter Bunny won't have come yet?" I threw in a lot of winks and nudges, too. Because I'm subtle like that.

Joe just rolled his eyes, which means there were about fourteen different times that I had to lean over and whisper, "But won't the baskets be EMPTY?" See how "empty" had to be capitalized that time? Every time I had to ask again without receiving a proper answer, I became a little more nervous. Of all the things about having children, reviving the magic has been the most fun. I was terrified Joe might be considering killing that.

The thing is, when I was a little girl and my grandmother took my brother, sister, and me to have our baskets blessed, we didn't bring our own baskets from home. (Because they would be empty while we prepared for the arrival of E.B.--duh.) Rather, my grandmother had three baskets she kept at her house for the three of us, and which she gladly filled up with goodies ahead of time. It was actually really exciting, because we'd get to see our treats but not have them. That kind of suspense is so intense she probably could have filled the baskets with a pack of looseleaf paper instead of the chocolate bunnies and jelly bean and foiled eggs she was always sure to include, and we would have been equally excited.

But I'm pretty sure that my kids have to bring their own baskets today, and maybe it was my pregnant brain, but I couldn't seem to figure out how this was all going to work, other than the kids walking into church to have empty baskets blessed.

"No," Joe finally said this morning. "We'll put stuff in them."

"Like what?" I asked, horrified that my worst fear was confirmed.

"Like...the colored eggs. And maybe a butter lamb."

"A butter lamb?" I repeated. I couldn't help it. Thanks, Joe, for reaffirming for me how lame Easter can be. "Here kids, here you go, here's your very own butter."

"You don't get it, do you?" he said then. "It's all part of the tradition."

And it struck me. When I was little, my grandma gave me chocolate and goodies. We got all dressed up in our Easter clothes, went to the chapel in the basement of Our Lady of Victory Basilica, and sat very quietly while staring into baskets filled with treats we couldn't have. Afterward, she took us to the Botanical Gardens to see the Easter Bunny. Church aside, the whole thing was magic for me. It was a way of building up and getting more excited for the holiday. It was spending a special day with my grandmother, a person we really, really love and were close to as children. No matter what Buffalo's weather was, inside the Botanical Gardens we took off our coats and ran through rows and rows of spring flowers and forgot winter and took off to find the Easter Bunny. No wonder Easter is so disappointing for me now. We haven't gone with Grandma for a long, long time. (It all ended on the fateful day of the Horse and Carriage Ride That Never Happened, a story for another blog.)

Maybe this all started as a Polish custom, but in the end, every family really creates and recreates their own traditions. It doesn't have to follow a definition, it just has to be something special your children will remember doing with you year after year. I guess the kids probably could bring empty baskets, if that's what we chose, and they'd never realize there was anything weird about it. But, alas. Apparently, they're getting butter lambs.

Noah in a wig? Nope. That's me at my Grandma's when I was Noah's age, peeking in my basket.

The Sibling Connection

I shared a room with my sister until I was twelve. This means that in conversations, I might say something like, "I shared a room with my sister, but only when I was little."

On the other hand--and my sister only just recently pointed this out to me--the six year age difference between us means that she had to share a room with me until she was eighteen. That's, like, a really long time. Poor Jane. No wonder she was so scarred. And rumor has it I was kind of annoying.

I do remember there being good times, like when she let me climb into her bed once during a violent thunderstorm (though if you think about it, over the course of twelve years, there were probably dozens of thunderstorms and she only reached out that one time). When I was six, she bought me my first Barbie and built me a dollhouse out of crates and boxes in our closet. A few weeks later she dismantled it because it was in her way, but still. The initial thought was so nice.

I always believed my parents put on the addition and gave us our own rooms because they simply felt like remodeling and having a fancy master bedroom. Apparently, this is not true. Apparently, they already had a perfectly lovely master bedroom and built the addition because my sister hated sharing a room with me so much she threatened terrible things. Like leaving home and going away to college.

And yet now, my insane sons want to share a room. They request it almost nightly. And it isn't just my own experience that makes this mind-boggling to me, it's how different the boys are. Almost incompatible. Joey is an angel sleeper, and Noah is...um, well, he's Noah. "Sleep is NOT my thing." He's always surprised when I announce bedtime, like perhaps I'll just see reason and understand that bedtime is a heap of nonsense. "Bedtime!" He scowls and scoffs. He rolls his eyes. He flops over backward, hand over forehead.

But while Joey bemoans his brother's noisy and annoying habits, they continue to enthusiastically request to sleep in the same room. At first I thought it could be for moral support, since they both suffer from vivid and terrifying nightmares (they must dream about losing me, poor dears). But then they both call out for me, anyway, forcing me to grumble and mutter sophomoric things like, "WTF" as I trudge up the stairs to save the freaking day. Again.

I thought maybe it was for company. Both boys wake up absurdly early every day (regardless of bed time), so I waited for them to chat and giggle with flashlights like they do before they fall asleep. Or something. But, no. They argued and called out, "Mo-om! Noah's shaking the ladder on the bunk bed!" or "Mo-om! Joey's cup fell off the top bunk and hit my head!" Nice.

So then I have to give up trying to figure out the details of why my kids are weird and just accept that maybe they really like each other. Jane and I didn't for a long time, but I guess that's where birth order and age difference come in. Or gender. But what really seems to matter is the connection. I find that when I take my boys out in the world and one or both of them has a friend to play with, they still look for each other. No matter where we are, one finds his way to his brother. I think they feel more secure that way. And I know that for me, even if sharing a room didn't work out for us, things are just more real when I share them with my sister. Favorite television shows, books, movies, secrets...everything bears more weight and substance after I've discussed it with her.

This is something my husband cannot understand, and when the phone rings for the second or third time in one day I watch him furrow his brow or roll his eyes. Sometimes he mutters a, "Didn't you just talk to her?" It's the same kind of thing that happened on a play date with the boys last week. Noah continued to wander away from his friend to go see what his brother was doing. Someone perfectly great was right in front of him, but there was this need to connect with Joey. It's what siblings are for, I guess, at least, it's always been that way for me. I would have thought it was weird if my kids were any different. God gives you a person who will love you no matter what you do, who will listen no matter how stupid you are, who will know you when you don't know yourself. Someone you can sit next to and not have to say anything. Someone who knows where you come from better than anybody else, who had the same crazy mother and the same father who called bathrobes "housecoats" and could never EVER be asked for homework help because he just gave you extra work.

I admit I sometimes feel left out when Joey and Noah form a sort of unit that I'm not a part of, but I also love when I'm just about to close the bedroom door, and in the glow of the twinkle lights wrapped around their footboards, I see two little blond heads peeking out from beneath piles of blankets in the bunkbeds. As I pull the door shut, I hear a whisper, "Joey? Are you awake?" and an answer, "Go to sleep, Noah." By the time my foot hits the bottom stair, there is giggling.

P.S.--If this post seems slightly disjointed, it's because my sister called in the middle of my writing it.

GLU TEN

A lot of people might not guess this about my older sister, but she's very funny. And she's the best sort of funny...the kind that is so much in earnest, she doesn't mean to make anyone laugh.

Last night, for example, we were out for dinner together with our husbands at a local hibachi restaurant.  Hibachi was a good compromise for us all because the men could have their flame-thrown protein and rice and vegetable while Jane and I could have sushi. No one could have meat, as it was a Friday during Lent, but--major score--there were plenty of seafood options.

Jane always has a particularly difficult time ordering her meals because she has self-inflicted dietary restrictions. A lifelong victim of stomachaches (me, too, by the way), she narrowed down the more violent causes to dairy and gluten. This makes going to a restaurant with her a real treat. Especially yesterday.

When our server came to our table to take our drink order, I think we should have foreseen that Jane might have further issues. I tried to order Pellegrino water. A lovely young Japanese woman, she struggled to pronounce the name of the water. Not wanting to make her uncomfortable, I quickly switched my order to "sparkling water." Her eyebrows furrowed, though she continued to smile brightly, and then she thrust her pen and paper at me and said, "You write it?" at which point I said, "That's okay. Regular water is fine."

But THEN.

It was time to order our food. My brother-in-law, my husband, and I rattled off our requests with no trouble at all. When the waitress turned to Jane, pen poised at the ready, Jane said, "The spicy seafood soup, is that gluten-free?"

"Spicy seafood soup?"

"Is it gluten free?"

The server frowned. "Not free. You have to pay."

Jane leaned forward and opened her eyes wider, so that perhaps the server could see into her brain. "GLUTEN. GLOOOOOOOO-TEN. GLUTEN!"

"You write it?"

"No flour? FLO-UR. Wheat?"

"Flowers?" She looked at a vase behind my head, and for the first time appeared nervous.

"GLUTEN!" Jane shouted. "GLUTEN FREE! TELL THE CHEF I'M GLUTEN FREE!"

"Okay, I tell him."

As the waitress scurried away, Jane leaned forward close to me, as if concerned the rest of the diners might hear her after she just shouted out her dietary limitations. She whispered, "I have to say, I was a bit put off by the language barrier."

Really? I don't think anyone noticed.

Non-Negotiable

My mother bought me this really fantastic hair straightener for Christmas. I used to faithfully straighten my hair every day, until one day I realized that stepping out of the shower and just being ready is actually way easier. Who knew? So I gave up straightening my hair for many, many years.

Until my mother bought me this present. I must admit, it's pretty amazing. It doesn't take me very long--which is saying something, since my hair is pretty thick (I've actually been told by snarky hair dressers that I'd just better WARN them on the phone next time because my hair is "unreasonably thick," as if I have any control over that), and it doesn't make my hair all large and in charge, either.

Well, today, time wasn't on my side and I didn't have time even for the super fabulous quick straightening, and I wore my hair curly. I must tell you, each time I passed by my own reflection it was like seeing an old friend I'd been missing. And oddly, I felt relieved. Like for a little while there, I hadn't quite been my real self, and now I am again.

The more I thought about it, the more reflective I became about when exactly I became definitively me. Waaay back when Joe and I first got engaged, a friend of mine and I were discussing the various ups and downs of embarking on a new life with another person, and she quite wisely said, "You just have to be really clear about what you decide are you non-negotiables." My response was quick (if naive), "That he love me, take care of me, not leave me or cheat on me or hurt me," and she sort of laughed and rolled her eyes and said, "Well, aren't those everyone's non-negotiables? What are yours?" But for me, at that time in my life, those were it. I'd actually been in a place where they weren't glaringly obvious to another person, and I figured I would never need much more than that, so as long as Joe could be counted upon to be, you know, a decent human, we'd be all good. And since I'd already known Joe at that point for ten years, I felt pretty confident I knew what I was getting into.

Lucky for me.

Because quite honestly, if you asked me today, I bet I could brainstorm a whole shiny new list of what my non-negotiables are. Topping the list would be do NOT roll your eyes at me and do NOT move things from where I put them. Ridiculous? Yes. Negotiable? No.

So what happened between then and now? The obvious answer (and the cliche one) is life. Life happened. More specifically? Let's see if I can outline a few of the more glaring specifics that have changed me into the curly-haired person I was so relieved to see in the mirror this morning.

1. Children. Children are messy and annoying and dealing with them alone totally sucks. Dealing with them with another thinking human is, like...impossibly hard. Imagine: I have one idea of how to handle Noah singing "Video Killed the Radio Star" at 2 am, and my husband--what is he thinking?--has the audacity to have a different one. The moral of the story: Nobody can predict their child will have an affinity for singing vintage rock songs in the middle of the night.

2. Mail. Young people really don't understand about mail. My older sister was completely in love with it. The affair began when my parents first subscribed to TV Guide, and it only became more passionate from there. For this reason, I wrongly predicted that one day receiving my own mail would be a magical and satisfying experience. How wrong I was! Mail brings bills and other kinds of bad news. It is a reminder of everything you have to do but don't want to do. It contains advertisements for things you want to buy, but your bank just sent you a letter saying you can't afford to. Sometimes, it contains random letters you suspect might carry illness. (At least if you're me.) And then these envelopes, these harborers of evil, pile up and up in a really inconvenient place in your home. Because half are for you and half are for another person and some are for now and some are for later. You create a system for managing it all, and then the other person, the person who was only meant to love you and take care of you and never hurt you (non-negotiably), comes along and moves the system to a different place. A secret place. It might be the garbage. It might be the cupboard. It doesn't matter. It was moved. Moral of the story: My sister is weird and mail is bad.

3. Modern literature. I have one name for you: Jodi Picoult. Reading Jodi Picoult, or any other writers who have subscribed to using her kind of endings, is akin, in my humble belief, to a person offering you a basket of freshly baked cookies. "They're still warm," the person might say. You're elated.You heart soars. Warm cookies? you think. How delightful! Calories? I don't mind spending them on freshly baked cookies! You reach in, take a cookie, and bring it to your mouth. You bite. And then, more than anything, you want to spit the cookie back out. Those were not chocolate chips. They were raisins. Oatmeal raisin cookies are my equivalent to Jodi Picoult books.

4. Owning a dog. I understand that Joe and I did things a little backward. The way most people do it is they get the dog before they have the children. Joe and I messed up. We had the babies first. Babies are hard! Babies are trouble! Babies do not sleep and then they grow up and sing "Video Killed the Radio Star" at 2 am. I actually rolled my eyes and laughed at people who owned dogs but had no children. But now? Now I see the usefulness of their choice. How much more patient I could have been with someone who isn't human if I didn't actually already care for and nurture small humans. Now, all I keep thinking about is, "I have to clean up your mess and you're not even a person. This blows." No moral here, as far as I can see. But I may not be seeing things in the clearest light since I've been up at 2 am for almost five years listening to rock songs.

I became a teacher because I was done with college. I became a wife. I became a mom. I own a house. I have an SUV that seriously hates me. I hate cold weather and I live in a place that has miserable weather for at least eight months of the year.

But when I looked in the mirror this morning, and saw my own old face surrounded by curly hair, I smiled and walked on, humming a certain Buggles song under my breath as I went. Behind my eyes a slide show played, showing me an array similar to the following.

Everybody's Baby

When the millennium was just barely born, and I was just barely twenty years old, I had reason to drive myself to the hospital. This is a terribly big deal, you must understand, because the words "I had to" and "myself" were rarely strung together in my life at that point.

I was excited to be at the hospital early in the year 2000, because I had no life experience. I had little knowledge of suffering, and little understanding of loss. And I was there for neither reason. I was there, quite the contrary, to celebrate something new.

My sister, the oldest in my family, had just had a baby girl. My sister's first baby. My first niece, first grandchild of my parents. First everything. And that made our new girl, tiny little angel, everybody's baby. The day she was born, it was like a whole new family was born. There was a reason to be excited about all the things we'd forgotten in our new adult angst. Suddenly, where everything had been old hat, we saw new, tiny hat. Magic. Possibility. I entered the hospital room, and she was bundled up in a tiny blanket, nothing to see but the tuft of blazing red hair that peeked out from the swaddle.

There are very few people I've loved so fast in my life, but my Olivia is one of them. Somehow, though she was my sister's, and as I've said, everybody's, somehow she belonged especially to me. Not because I was her godmother, or because I'm Jane's only sister, but somehow, when her eyes blinked open at me as she was placed in my arms, we connected. I think God must have decided in that moment I'd only give birth to boys because he knew I'd never love another girl quite like I love this one.

I spent Olivia's first year as her nanny, gladly arranging my college schedule around my sister's work schedule, so that I could be there as a trusted person to care for her. I'd hold her red head just under my chin, smelling her good baby smell, and we'd fall asleep together in the rocking chair in my sister's living room. As she grew, and showed more of her special stubborn streak, I was the one who rocked her to sleep willingly (as I wasn't the one waking with her in the night). I was the one who knew that Africa by Toto could lull her like nothing else. I was the one who was willing to lay next to her indefinitely until her sweet bronze lashes would fall to slumber, and her perfect round cheeks relaxed with the angelic sleep that only babies know.

Thirteen years later, I am signing my two sons up for Little League. I am rushing through the house to find town IDs and birth certificates. I have a teenage girl--hear that? a teenage girl--in my car, ready to run into the town center to drop off these forms that my husband and I misplaced, or forgot, or whatever the reason is that we were unprepared this time (because I'm no longer twenty and the words "I had to" and "myself" are regularities and can cause quite the mess). She is tall--too tall for my family. Her hair is flowing fire, a cascade of lava that matches her personality. She is a girl to be reckoned with. She wears skinny jeans and tall fur-capped boots and--inexplicably--a sequinned hat. I guess at some point every girl makes the mistake of not knowing sequins are ridiculous. Lucky for my girl, it is now when she is freshly thirteen and not down the road when she has a fancy date with a fancy boy who will want to roll his eyes because sequins are ridiculous.

I watch her dash through newly fallen snow, dainty and coordinated as I never was, her sequinned hat sparkling against the white around her, her red hair standing out against the blank desolation of winter. It is the perfect metaphor for my Olivia. She is anything but plain. She is anything but quiet. She will be heard, she will be seen, she will be noticed. She is the fire against the snow against all odds.

We are so, so proud of the girl you have become, Olivia Rose. I am so proud to be your goddy. Happy Birthday, Teenage Girl.

My baby girl holding my baby boy.

Your Life's Going Down the Toilet!

I want you to watch the above video clip from the movie Moonstruck. It's only about a minute long.

I love this movie, and I love this scene. While this exact moment may not be from my life, the relationships, the exchanges, and the nuances are all very applicable to my family and to me. When I am having a bad day, I love catching this on TV or even pulling it up on Youtube. "Your life's going down the toilet!" is something my parents have both said to me all throughout my life at varying times, from the day I didn't feel like doing my homework in high school to the day my life really did go down the toilet to the present, where I doubt myself as a mother every single day and it seems like my parents' mission in life is to fuel that doubt. Any doubt. Mary Pat's down? Cool. Let's kick her.

And yet...this is my family's means of support. "Dysfunctional!" you spit at me. Maybe. But more than that, it's validation and a kick to get moving. "Mary Pat, what the hell's the matter with you?" And even though we are not from Queens or Brooklyn, even though we are all mostly Polish (except my Sicilian Mama) and from Buffalo, this Italian accent kicks in when they say this to me: What the hell's the matter with you? It's generally followed up by a really loving voice change: "You've got so much good. God has given you everything. Why can't you just--" And then you can fill in the blank there, because what follows is usually a demand to do what they want, like do the Sunday dinner dishes (which my sister and sister-in-law voodoo-minded their way out of the other night--WTF), or buy better groceries (my dad: "Why the hell don't you have ginger ale in the house? Who doesn't buy ginger ale?" We don't.), or whatever it is that minute, that day.

But today's one of those days. The kind where you reach into the community candy bowl on the kitchen counter dying for a Krackel bar, and you know what? There's no Krackel bars. You dig and you dig--you know you spotted one at breakfast and mentally filed that for later, because breakfast isn't an appropriate time for Krackel bars--and you come up empty. Damn it, there's no Krackels. OR Mr. Goodbars, if you really want to know. So then you're stuck with Special Dark. It's a whole bowl full of Special Dark. It may as well be a glass half empty at that point.

I dragged myself away from the bowl and peeled off the wrapper of the unwanted Special Dark, savored the flavor I didn't want, and sat down here and thought, "What would make me feel better?" I just read on Twitter, "What do you read when you don't feel well?" or something to that effect. I generally consider myself rather literary, but if I'm so sick I need comfort, or so down I'll eat Special Dark, I have no energy to read. I just want scenes to display themselves before my eyes, plots to unfold in front of me that show someone who is worse off than I am, about to become better off than I am.

This scene from Moonstruck is perfect. It's exactly what came to my mind when I read that Twitter post. These people, Olympia Dukakis and Cher as Italian mother and daughter, are my mom and me. Not the premise, the relationship. The worry, the angst, the retort, the "Fine! You gotta help me!" after everything else. And, if you watch the rest of the scene unfold--it is, in fact, the end of the movie if you didn't know--your heart will be warm and fat and full. My favorite way for my heart to be. Exactly the way a family should always make you feel, even if they shout, "Your life's going down the toilet!"

And my mom? She's just the type to sit down and share a Special Dark with me. Or even better, ring the doorbell with a bag full of Krackels. And over that, she will say, "Your life's going down the toilet," and we'll lean in close, and burst into belly-aching laughter that takes our breath and makes us wheeze.