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Flipped Switch
“Mom, I have butterflies.” “You’ll do fine. Just do what you practiced.” Coco was the youngest musician in the warm up room. She watched a teenager in a tulle dress play Bach. The girl sat her viola on...
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Extreme Home Makeover: Cherry’s Room Edition
In the midst of pestilence and disease, I made over Cherry’s bedroom. New paint, curtains, light fixture. I pulled up the Berber and painted the concrete slab a glossy chocolate. The thing about...
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Road to Happy
“What’s your happy road, Daddy?” Dancing With the Stars went to commercial, and my ten-year-old daughter hit mute on the remote. “What?” Bacon’s head was in the latest Albert Brooks’ novel. “Your happy...
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Not Up To a Point
Cherry and Coco On a dog day last summer, I hung by the pool chatting with another mom. Her child was going into fifth grade, the final year of elementary. My oldest was headed to secondary. She asked,...
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Morning Conversation
Today is a state mandated test day for public schools. Cherry Crisp’s grade level is not being tested. She will sit all day, working math problems she already knows how to solve. “Do you have a book to...
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Hark the Herald and All That Jazz
It’s holiday concert time. Tuesday morning, Coco sang at Target. That’s her little head in the back row between the plus sized sweaters (that no one buys because yesterday’s high was 81°) and the...
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Middle School
The first day of school. Khakis and school t-shirts. Coco’s hair in a chignon, courtesy of her sister. Nerd glasses. Converse sneakers.Pride sucks out all my brain cells on days like this. No words...
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Truth in Stereotype
I got out of our car in the church parking lot today and saw this: The family that got into this vehicle after the service couldn’t have looked more ordinary—a twenty-something couple with a newborn...
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The Mother of All Jobs: Don’t Be Basic
The word, basic, doesn’t mean what it used to. I realized this when I took my fifteen-year-old shopping for a new backpack. “That’s so basic white girl, Mom.” The line was delivered with such a sneer...
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You Can’t Phone It In
This is my college kid’s absentee ballot. It might as well be a ticket to the super bowl. It was that hard to obtain. She got it yesterday. Mailed it back this morning. The maze of websites takes a PhD...
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