From the category archives:
Hattie Belle and I have an evening just to ourselves. I surprise her with a DVD rental: Tangled. She’s seen it, but I haven’t. “OH MY GOSH. MOMMY, YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE IT,” she says in her big, bold, OMG voice. “She’s brave and strong, and the mommy doesn’t even die.” “Good,” I say. [...]
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Sophie sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” all by herself, in front of the whole school. Spring 2010. Her idea. We never saw it coming.
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A friend wrote me, “A slut does everyone. A bitch does everyone but you.”
That made me laugh.
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We settle in to watch her choice on Netflix: episodes of my favorite childhood show, Fame. Her choice. I cannot believe my luck. She can’t get enough of Doris and Montgomery and Leroy and Coco and Bruno and the girl from Footloose. [...]
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I still have no idea how to write about Iceland. So I will catch you up on something else. My mother stopped talking to me in 2010. Briefly. I knew I was in especially Big Trouble when she stopped responding to my Facebook posts. I pled and I plead…The Moe: I sent a picture. I [...]
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“Tomorrow I’m SEVEN,” she hoots.
“I know, baby. How about that?”
“SEVEN!” she crows. She could not be more delighted. She is glistening, glowing, with almost-seven joy.
“Seven, my love. I am so glad I had you. Where would I be without you and your cuddles? Without my sweet funny secondborn baby girl?”
“Your life might be really boring,” she states matter-of-factly.
“I believe you are absolutely correct.”
“SEVEN,” she says again. “WOW.”
“Seven, baby. How about that.”
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“Do we…actually have…you know…the STUFF required for baking? Like, pans?” asked Sophie.
“I DO NOT KNOW, MY CHILDREN. But I feel optimistic that your father left us at least one pan. Let us search!”
They exchanged glances and folded their arms. They watched as I rummaged in the back of the bottom cupboards. Aha! An ancient amber glass pan, but not the 8 x 8 x 2 the crankypants instructions called for.
“MY CHILDREN, IT IS THE INCORRECT SIZE. Does this matter, in the world of baking? Do you know?”
“I don’t think it matters,” said Hattie B, hopefully.
I found another pan, a dingy metal one. “We can pour the mix into TWO pans!”
They squinted at me as if I were speaking in tongues.
“TWO PANS! SEE? WE SHALL BAKE.”
I clapped my hands and passed out butter sticks.
“HENCEFORTH, YOU SHALL BUTTER THE PANS! I have seen this on TV.”
“We do this with Daddy,” Hattie offered, helpfully.
“OH. Well. Yes. Then you know,” I replied.
“We know,” they chimed.
They buttered the pans. They broke eggs into a bowl while I whisked butter on the stove.
“I BAKE! THEREFORE, I ROCK! HEAR YE! YOUR MOTHER, YEA, VERILY, SHE ROCKETH THE HOUSE.”
They will remember my idiocy fondly, someday.
I poured the eggs into the creamy melted butter on the stove. I added the brownie mix. I stirred. But not fast.
No one told me baking was a competitive timed sport.
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Me: I’m so proud of you. Your teacher said you never get caught up in the mean stuff. That even when you don’t feel like playing with someone, you say it in a nice way, that you just need some quiet time. She said you’re kind to everyone. H: That’s because I LEARN that from [...]
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Sometimes, I am humbled by how well I understand my elder daughter and her motivations, what makes her tick. I know I will not always feel this way, when she slips away to the dark side of the moon. I know I will hold my breath through those teen years, hoping to make contact when she circles back around, back into my greedy, mama sunlight.
She walks back into the kitchen, where she finds me grinning at her homework.
“THEY BOTH CONVEX,” I say, reading her assessment of two shapes.
“Huh?”
“THEY BOTH CONVEX,” I repeat, pointing to her hastily, carelessly scribbled sentence. She is too dreamy to check her work. She wants it done.
She chuckles.
“No ‘are’”. They both convex. You both concave. I rhombus, on Mondays.”
If this does not strike you as funny, be glad you are not my daughter.
Fortunately, she and I have the same sense of humor. She cracks up at her error.
“I like that you thought it was a verb. Gone convexing.”
“Yeah,” she laughs. “I started off thinking it was, you know, an action.”
We look at each other and burst into hysterics.
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