I am creating a monster, methinks. Actually, I’ve already created a monster. I have successfully managed – for the 252nd time this year – to turn Chloe into a stressed-out teenager. The reason for this particular episode of stress: her indecision about participating in a team sport this fall and my insistence that she make a decision already, for crying out loud!
Continue reading To Sport or Not to Sport: A Teenager’s Lament
Our family loves to travel. Everyone except Sophie, that is. For her, the ideal voyage is the trip from her bedroom to the kitchen downstairs. I, on the other hand, live for travel. In fact, I believe I suffer a moderate to severe case of travel addiction. As soon as we return from a vacation, I feel an uncontrollable urge to plan the next one. It sometimes feels like an illness.
I know Chloe and Sophie love me. Yet my girls are no different from the millions of other kids around the world who treat their parents like chopped liver.
I’m Mom. My devotion to my daughters’ well-being sometimes feels all-consuming. I’m laser-focused on their happiness (except when I’m not). In case the girls ever harbor any doubts about my love for them, the following list should allay their concerns about where my loyalty lies.
Continue reading Sitting on Sand & Other Things I Do For Love
We have a small immediate family. Chloe and Sophie don’t have any first cousins in the United States and their only living grandparent is my mom. My brother resides in Texas and my husband’s siblings and their kids live in France. We see my brother twice a year at most and we’re lucky if we see our French family every two or three years. Despite having my mom nearby and remedying some of that familial isolation by maintaining close ties to a couple of aunts and uncles and their children, it feels lonely sometimes.
Continue reading Cousins Forging Ties, Language Barrier Be Damned
Once upon a time, I was obsessive about music. So were my friends. We stood in line for hours, often through the night (oh, how times were different), at our local record shop in order to snag concert tickets. We were eclectic in our tastes and as long as the artists met our discerning standards for what constituted “cool,” we managed to find a way to see them perform live. Bruce Springsteen, U2, Rolling Stones, The Cure, Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Billy Idol, Billy Joel, Elvis Costello, Tracy Chapman, Steve Winwood, The Police, Suzanne Vega, to name but a few. Music defined our teenage years.
Continue reading On Concerts, My Teenage Daughter & My Teenage Self
The ‘S’ word in our house is not ‘shit.’ Nope. We curse so frequently (yet another reason why we’ll never win parenting of the year awards) that the girls are completely immune to all the expletives that regularly spew out of our mouths like torrents of Vesuvius lava onto Pompeii.
The ‘S’ word that causes groans, glares of disdain and sometimes tears is ‘sports.’ Dr. Seuss may not like green eggs and ham, but we do not like sports. Our kids do not have the benefit of role models when it comes to physical activity. My husband and I occasionally and reluctantly exercise to help minimize our chances of premature death and make us feel less guilty about our addiction to chocolate, but we don’t exert ourselves with anything resembling enthusiasm.
Continue reading The ‘S’ Word in Our House is Not a 4-Letter Word
Scene: Miguel’s Baja Grill, a cheerfully decorated and deliciously authentic Mexican restaurant on Moab’s main drag.
Chloe is intrigued by the habanero pepper on her plate. She examines it closely. She thinks it’s cute. The server warns her that it’s not like a regular pepper. It’s on the plate as a garnish. It’s super spicy, he says, practically challenging her to take a bite. According to Habanero Madness (don’t you just love how the Internet puts every arcane fact at your fingertips), it’s one of the hottest chili peppers in the world. The jalapeño is a wimp by comparison.
Continue reading The Day Chloe Ate a Habanero Pepper, Won $10 and Lived to Tell the Tale
Chloe attended a week of camp at Cornell where she and a group of 15 other teens from all over the world spent their mornings in a writing workshop. Sufficiently inspired, her creative juices started to flow and she produced a couple of poems that she agreed to share here.
Continue reading The Dandelion & The Kiss, Two Poems by Chloe
The last part of our trip was devoted to the Utah desert in all its glory. As I mentioned in my last post, it was as hot as Hades in Moab. So we did what all of the locals and tourists do. We woke up early every morning, much to Sophie’s chagrin. Comments like, “Mom! Why are you doing this to me?” “Why are you torturing me? ” “This is not a vacation!” were inevitably accompanied by cold hard stares, harumpfs and groans.
Continue reading Adventures & Misadventures, Part III: Arches & Canyonlands
