She is her mother’s daughter, this little one. She can’t let go of the past and its false promises, its promises of “if only, then everything would be better.”

She did not want to go to her father’s house last night. This is not the usual, not at all. We were stunned by her wailing, clutching the back of the sofa, begging to know why we can’t all just live in the same house, weeping that her parents being divorced means that nothing, ever, is going to be better.
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Kiddo #2 is going through a rough time. Bedtime is bad. Real bad. Again.

She’s eight years old, starting third grade this week. She’ll be nine in November. But this summer was too much for her, I know it, I can see it.

I told her dad today that I thought we’d screwed up, that we should have listened better to her when she said she wasn’t ready for sleepaway camp. She’d rallied, not wanting to let anyone down, I think. But it took a toll on her. There’s just no pretending that it didn’t. It took all she had to keep it together for one week of camp, and her coping resources were maxed out. Her reserves are empty, and it may be some time before she can fill them again.
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Another school year is here (or almost here, in our case, but not quite). As nice as it will be to have a schedule again to fill up all that scary blank space on the calendar, I’m daunted by the time and money challenges that lie ahead for 2012-13.

Sixth and third grades: more homework, more responsibilities, more sports equipment, and more clothing to replace what they’ve outgrown. New England autumns and winters don’t help, either—this is definitely the land of at least three seasons of clothes and footwear.

So I’m trying to come up with a better game plan for this single-mama household. Chaos reigns a little too often here, and I’d like that to change. That’s tricky, of course, in a home with two dogs, two cats, two kids and one adult, so I’m looking for some wisdom from you!

What’s working for your family—small, large or in-between?
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I am sorting through bills and paperwork and growling like feral animal, as I do at least four times a day. I have found letters alluding to summer reading lists for my children, but I cannot find the actual summer reading lists.

NO LIKEY. I hate summer reading lists, and everything having to do with them. I growl more loudly.

Firstborn enters and plops down beside me, looking all smart and cultured and acutely, vehemently well-read, which only peeves me more. “You’re still not done?”

“What have you heard me say about summer reading lists? You’ve heard me say bad words about the summer reading lists, right? Like, every year. THEY PROVOKE ME TO SAY BAD WORDS IN FRONT OF MY CHILDREN. Teachers who issue summer reading homework? They should be reported to the Department of Social Services. For PROVOKING PARENTS TO SWEAR ON AN ANNUAL BASIS.”

“Uh-huh,” says Firstborn, who is amused, as ever, by my visible frustration and verbal use of ALL CAPS. She scratches my back with her fingernails to soothe me while she picks up a piece of crumpled paper. She scans it. “What’s this one?”

“Homework for parents,” I whine. “Why don’t they understand? This is summertime. Mommy is supposed to be lying by a very chlorinated pool, drinking her Special Summer-Edition Mommy Juice, wearing a polka-dot bikini and a stunt double, while you and your sister kick your legs out of treehouses and swing in tire swings and wander in swamps and poke at toads with sticks and sell lemonade in sexual-offender-free zones. But noooooo. What do I get in the mail? Adult homework, in which I am supposed to write about my goals for my ALREADY PERFECTLY PERFECT CHILDREN.”
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Kid #2 and I are obsessed with the Olympics. I’ve always been obsessed with the Olympics, but this is the first time she’s been old enough and happy enough to watch with me. We’ve been hooting and hollering like fools every night during primetime coverage and in the afternoons during the more random sports. We don’t care what sport it is. We like it all. We like the kangaroo prancing of the high jumpers. We like the hurdlers and the runners and the sprinters. We like the pole vaulters and the divers and the horseback riders and the gymnasts, artistic and rhythmic. We like all the human interest stories. We like Mary Carillo, trying to play bagpipes and walking on the Prime Meridian in Greenwich and drinking green smoothies with Oscar Pistorius. And we like beach volleyball, because we figured out the scoring system all by ourselves.
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July has gone, and August is here, bringing with it my daughters. Back from sleepaway camp (first time around for the younger one, second time for the firstborn), the girls are twelve years older and seven feet taller and are probably already married with kids, but just haven’t told me yet.

I cannot stop hugging them. They don’t mind, not even a bit.

The older one tells me that my letters to her at camp made her laugh so hard, the other girls demanded to hear them. So every day, she would read my words out loud to the entire tipi.

This information makes me feel like the coolest mom ever. I try not to blush.

Camp was easy for the firstborn. No sweat. She stayed for two weeks, no prob, no homesickness. She is, at the age of 11, a consummate adventurer.

Camp was not as easy for the little one. She toughed it out for one week, not wanting to disappoint her dad or his parents. My letters had a different effect on her.

“I nearly cried happy tears when I read your emails,” she tells me, sitting in my lap, snuggling like the Snuggle Champ she is. “I missed you soooooo much. Then I was like, okay, Hannah, you can DO this. Just make it through another day.”

“I am so proud of you,” I tell her. “Like, I am almost passing out from proudness. You are so, so brave. The way you talked to yourself and stayed calm — that’s amazing.”

She nods, accepting the compliment. “I knew people would ask me, ‘How was camp?’ And I kept telling myself, okay, it will be better if I have an answer.”
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The anxiety is like a third child. I have to manage her carefully. She’s a tough one. Today, she’s made it clear she doesn’t want to go far from the house. Still, I push the issue. I drag my anxiety to Rite-Aid, to the pet supply store, to the Thai place for takeout. I stop at the bike place as well. I need a beach cruiser. I need to burn off this energy.

Anxiety says UH-UH, GET HOME, OR I WILL MUCK WITH YOUR INTESTINES. She is stubborn like that, my anxiety. I know she means business. When she wants home, she wants home, and her own bathroom.

Nothing is coming out right today. I can’t find the words. At the Rite-Aid, I stutter, I stumble on my words, I flush from cheeks to neck. Anxiety is constantly pulling on my leg, pulling on my heartstrings, clinging to my neck, crawling onto my shoulders. I want to put her down for a nap, but she’s having none of that.

What would help? I miss my animals in Massachusetts. I miss my female friends, especially, across the globe. Women seem to understand anxiety. They talk about such things. I miss my daughters, who have been away for a month with their dad. I miss my mom, who is being a very good sport about caring for my animals while I am here in Southern California. The split-life is tough for a homebody, despite the fact I am lucky to have it.
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Two newscasters, both impossibly thin with shiny blowouts and jutting calves, make chitchat as they wait for the plane to arrive. Several cameramen jockey for position. Those of us who have been sitting at Gate C2 for an hour, waiting to depart, wonder whom the news teams are expecting.

The airline personnel seem to know what’s up. Every few minutes, they offer the news teams an update: They’re in range. The plane’s in range. Any minute now.

Another passenger notices that I am scrutinizing the situation, like she is. She sidles over to me. “Who are they waiting for?” she asks me.

“I was trying to figure that out myself,” I said

Other passengers approach.

“Do you know?” “Have they said?”

“No, we’re all wondering.”

A diverted flight, a hijacker? A politician? A celebrity, A- or D-list?

Our flight has finally been listed as delayed. This is not exactly news to the growing crowd at C2. What we want to know is who’s due to arrive.

A young African-American cameraman to my right is explaining the excitement. I strain to hear his words: “A little girl from the Make-a-Wish Foundation. She’s going to the Saratoga Ballet.”

“What did he just say?”

I feel dirty passing along the information. This is no Lindsay Lohan.

“It’s…she’s a little girl…from the Make-a-Wish Foundation.”

The woman who first approached me bites her lip. “Oh,” she says.

I nod.

The woman’s daughter trots over. “Who is it?” she asks us.

“Come, let’s go back to our seats,” says the woman.

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I get panicky when the girls are away. They’re with their dad, visiting the Canadian side of the family.

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

Which means, naturally, I start worrying about inanimate objects.

Like, I snapped the shampoo bottle closed WITHOUT LETTING AIR BACK IN. So my poor shampoo bottle was bent over at the middle, squished, suffocating for air. I quick popped the hatch so it could inhale again, then exhaled myself in relief. It was a life-or-death situation, despite the fact that shampoo bottles DO NOT HAVE LUNGS.

This is how I roll.

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We forget, as often as we can, that childbirth can be as cruel as it is miraculous.

This is the most polite way to say this: A college classmate just lost his beloved wife due to complications during labor. Complications is a kind word for pain, fear and horror leading to loss beyond imagining.

Their newborn daughter—and only child—will never know the mother who’d been so eagerly awaiting her birth. Family and friends are in shock, trying to come to terms with this loss that should not be, this terrible turn of events. In one day, my classmate becomes a single father and a widower.

There are no words for this, nothing original to be said, nothing that can be said to make any of this right or better or easier.

I knelt and said a prayer for my classmate and his baby daughter. My hand went to my belly, unconsciously, wanting to protect, all over again. I don’t know the circumstances.

In 2001, my then-husband was at risk of losing me, our first daughter, or both of us to severe preeclampsia. Induced early, our daughter was born at only four pounds. The only details that matter now: she made it; I recovered.

I don’t understand why this could not also have been their story. It should have been their story.
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