It’s Me. Hi

Welcome to the New Year! I’m so grateful to be back. It’s been a minute. (Actually, it’s been over four years and a pandemic’s worth of gritty life lessons and, let’s face it, that’s an eternity.) If we don’t already know each other, I used to work here. I used to tell stories, about my daughters and my experiences parenting them, starting when they were the formidable ages of four and six. Then I barely blinked and they transformed into nine and eleven, all while I was still vowing to organize the closets by season. Eventually I gave up that crazy notion, but not the stories. They kept coming, and I’ve missed writing them here, for you. There’s a deep comradery in the telling, and I hope you feel it in the reading. The moments I end up sharing are not always my best – generally they’re when I’ve screwed up royally – but I can usually find someone out there who can relate, or at least is willing to laugh with me. That’s the magic. Stories can make us feel less alone. And I know, as parents, and maybe just as people, we need that now more than ever. And so, here I am, armed with two teenaged girls, a husband who made me promise not to include him in any of this, and the need to bare my soul a little bit. One thing I know for sure? I have way more questions than answers. But I’m here anyway, and so are you, so let’s get started, shall we?

This is the third reincarnation of me writing about my girls. It started with a weekly column in The Free Press twelve years ago. “The Parent Trip” was comprised of stories that mostly involved previously unimaginable messes made by my kids or the pets and me wondering how to clean them up while appearing to be in control. Also exhaustion. Doubts. Worrying that I might screw this whole parenting thing up somehow and harm these perfect little angels who – when left unattended for thirty seconds – were washing the carpet with jars of Penaten. I never did fully extract that white chalky residue. Back then I started sentences with the precursor, “As soon as,” to make myself feel like I was edging closer to Easy Street. As soon as they’re out of diapers, we’re home free. As soon as Two stops eating dirt from the plant pots, we’ve made it.

When I moved my column to The Fix, I changed the title to “Family Stoke”. At that point I figured I’d started to get my feet under me, parenting wise. Both girls were in some semblance of school, Six rode her own bike around town so no more hundred-pound load in the Chariot, and most of the messes and pets were contained. But as the physical stage of parenting started to lessen, the emotional side kicked into high gear. “Mom, what will we do if you die?” “Why didn’t I get invited to the birthday party?” “Why do you tell us not to lie, but you lied about Santa?” Oh boy.

I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere in a blur of blissful chaos, my babies became independent, intelligent women who know who they are and how to set up an iPhone. Their wings have spread and it’s taking everything in me not to zip tie them to the nest. I’m almost, finally, completely at the easy stage - as soon as I can convince them to stay at home. Forever. In the meantime? I wish this whole thing would just slow down a little bit.