“So you’re a novelist?”

I realize the question is for me. I turn away from the airplane window to the woman on my right, who is studying my face intently. Several hours ago, we’d exchanged pleasantries and I’d mentioned that I was a writer.

“No, not a novelist,” I say.

She and her husband both look terribly disappointed.

“What do you write, then?” she wants to know.

“Whatever people will pay me to write,” I say. “I’ve written for magazines, papers—”

The husband perks up considerably. “Anything we’ve heard of?”

“Uh, well, let’s see. I wrote for the Boston Globe, the Sunday Magazine,” I say. “And I’ve done a lot of marketing materials.”

He nods, but he is not impressed. I am seriously wishing I had ordered the gin and tonic.

“But no book?” says the wife.

“No book. I write plays, though. And poetry. But they don’t pay the mortgage.”

“No. I imagine they wouldn’t,” says the wife.

The husband clears his throat. “So…are you part of a pool? A team of writers?”

I just want to read my book, the book on my lap, the book written by a real writer. I want that gin and tonic very, very, very badly. “No, no team. I have a parenting blog, and what work I do find often comes through that. But there’s not a lot of work right now. Freelancers are in a tough spot.”

They continue staring at me, as if I am an exotic zoo specimen, and they are not quite sure they like what they see.
Read the rest of this entry

I walk into my bedroom. Sitting on my bed is a short, thin, dark-haired woman. She’s hunched over one of the cats. I have no idea who she is. In the span of several milliseconds, I wonder how she got in, what she wants, and what I should say to her.

“Oh,” is what I say, finally. My daughter swivels on the bed, her fingers still buried in our tortoiseshell kitty’s fur.

“What?” she says.

“You…you just…you get taller every day,” I say.

This is not exactly what I am thinking, but I can’t find the words. Not right then.

She’s just come home from four days in Indiana, without either of her parents. AS IN, MY BABY FLEW ON A PLANE WITHOUT HER MOM OR HER DAD TO CRADLE HER TIGHTLY AS TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED, LIKE SCARY HIJACKERS AND DRUNK LECHEROUS BUSINESSMEN AND TURBULENCE AND AT LEAST THREE FIERY CRASHES, ALL WITH STOPOVERS IN LAS VEGAS.

She survived none and all of these things, depending on your point of view.

Read the rest of this entry

I may be a misanthrope, but occasionally, I notice when my iPhone goes missing.

The other day, I realized it had been hours since I’d thought of it or heard it buzz. I went hunting.

Green tote bag, where had I put it? Ah, yes. Got home, plopped said bag on couch. There it was.

I reached inside and came out with a wad of soaking wet tissues and receipts.

This was bad. This was very, very bad. What the hell?

I dug frantically for my phone and hit plastic: a mostly empty water bottle. Cap, still on. Yet somehow it had leaked. Effity eff eff.

I fished and came up with my phone, finally. It looked fine, just a few drops of water beading on its orange plastic case. I pushed the button. Nothing.

I pushed again. Uh-uh.

Maybe I turned it off, I thought. I pressed the top button, the one that generally is not part of my life.

A BIG EXTRA-LOUD NOTHING.
Read the rest of this entry

What did you tell yourself you would never do? Only to realize, years later, as an old coot, that you’d gone ahead and done it? Or become it?

I’m curious.

I’m pushing 42 here. I’m hoping this age really is the answer to everything. I’ve already accumulated plenty of towels, AND I generally wait for other people to tell me when to panic. I must be on the right track.

As my birthday approaches, I find myself waxing a teensy bit nostalgic, a teensy bit regretful, and a whole lotta oh my dear Lord how did that happen?

I told myself I wasn’t a cat person.

I swore I’d never get divorced.

I predicted I’d have two boys.
Read the rest of this entry

The bumblebee had a bun. The ladybug, her identical twin, had a clumsy mess of French braids, studded with plastic barrettes.

I panicked. My neon green T-shirt said “ASK ME!” The bumblebee, the ladybug and I were going to hear about this.

One of the dance recital police ladies approached, pointing at the bumblebee.

“Uh-oh,” said my daughter, the zebra.

“She’s going to need to go to the French-braiding station,” the dance recital police lady ordered.

“Um, I thought French braids or buns were acceptable, no?”

Dance recital police lady frowned. “Not for the actual performance. You’d better get her over to the French-braiding station. Like, now. There’s already a line.”

She summoned the ladybug to stand before her. The ladybug held her ground impressively.

“My mommy did French braids on me,” the ladybug told the dance recital police lady. “But she gave up when it was my sister’s turn because the French braids were too hard.”

The harried dance recital police officer considered this. I chewed my lip. All around us, little feathered yellow chickens and Sleeping Beauties and Cinderellas and jazzy tappers and Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo girls and parasol carriers and monkeys and kissy dolls and hip-hop Baby Beyonces were wreaking havoc, twirling and spinning and tearing their tights and spilling contraband items like Pepperidge Farms Goldfish.

Dance recital police lady decided to let ladybug’s subpar French braids go. She had bigger goldfish to fry. She scowled at me. “Tell her mother no plastic barrettes next time. They catch the light.”

“Will do,” I said.
Read the rest of this entry

“Stay in your room,” they warn me. “We’ve got everything under control.”

“I’ll only come out if I smell smoke,” I say.

Five minutes later, Daughter #1 pops her head through my bedroom door. “Um, when you preheat the oven?”

“Yes?”

“Do you, like…leave it on? Once it gets to the right temperature?”

“Yes,” I say.

She nods and skips back down the stairs.

A moment later, Daughter #2 sticks her head into my room.

“You can’t hear what we’re talking about, right?” she says sternly.

“I really can’t,” I say.

“Would you even tell us if you could?”

“Well,” I say, pondering this. “I suppose if I thought you might be really disappointed, I might just not tell you.”

“But you didn’t hear.”

“Nope. I really didn’t.”

“Okay.” She hops downstairs to help her sister. Their dad dropped them off this morning with a bunch of mystery groceries, a nice gesture on his part, so they could make me breakfast for Mother’s Day.

I realize I am not actually worried that they will burn down the house. This is progress, I think. The kids are all right.
Read the rest of this entry

I ask you: What did you not know that you needed to do this year, so far?

Funny story. Turns out I needed to drive four hours, meet my best friend from childhood at a god-forsaken hotel in the Twilight Zone of Pennsylvania, don purple workout gear, and dive belly-first into mud.

There was more, of course. I also needed to run 3.1 miles through hay bales and rocks and swampy bits and tires and over an 8-foot-high wall and a 35-foot-high cargo net. That was part of it.

Physics lesson: What goes up does not necessarily come down, at least, not right away. It’s scary at the top, when your legs and arms have turned to jelly.

I did eventually get down. And we crossed the finish line, in respectable time. And that’s when I realized, Oh, I needed to do that. I didn’t know it, but that’s exactly what I needed to do this year.
Read the rest of this entry

Just like I can’t seem to explain what anyone does for a living (”um, he…well…it’s kind of like…computers, sort of, but not, you know, the kind of person who knows, like, how to pronounce ‘Linux’” or, you know”), I am clueless about house stuff.

This is me being clueless about house stuff:

The state of Massachusetts sent a team of, um, you know, guys who check the things that burn, like, oil, or gas, or whatever, to my house. They were there to check the…the thingy. For, like, EFFICIENCY.

Always—but especially since the divorce—I am certain that any men who show up at my door (often including the ones I’ve dated) mean me no good, NO GOOD WHATSOEVER. Every time a serviceman shows up, I have the urge to ask him for five minutes so I can finish my will on LegalZoom.com and to then tell him I prefer a nice sharp quick stabbing with my own cleanish chef knives, as opposed to bludgeoning by unsanitary windowless-van serial-killer tools.

These guys, the heating efficiency guys, they had name tags sewn onto their shirts. My first thought was, “OH, THEIR MOTHERS ARE IN ON IT, TOO.”
Read the rest of this entry

So 2011 was a bit of a ride in the relationship department, in case you hadn’t heard. Facebook doesn’t yet have a diagram that would accurately convey my relationship status changes for 2011, or I’d copy it here. I’m thinking it would look something like a squiggly fat black line scrawled by a hyperactive toddler, a dark surly maze of crayon scribble. I went from attached to single to dating to attached to engaged to confused to more confused to oh crap to single again to single forever to time to revisit dating women to dating that’s not really dating to single again.

Whew.

I’d like to think that everything happens for a reason. It sounds good and it’s reassuring, and if you say it with enough certainty at a dinner party or in the checkout line at the supermarket, whoever you’re talking to might just leave you alone about the miserable, sordid, mortifying details of what went down.

When the engagement became unengaged in late 2011 (like a car out of gear, drifting backwards down a hill, slipping into a dark lake, never to be seen again), my first reaction was OH THAT’S JUST SWELL, THAT’S AWESOMESAUCE. Because, really, there’s only so much character a 40something single mama can take. At a certain point, character-building becomes overkill, and you wind up wishing to God and the Universe to back the hell off so you can attempt life as a happy, shallow bee-yotch. BUT NO. For nearly five years, I’ve felt like an unlucky foie gras goose, being force-fed Character and Very Unwanted Wisdom. I’m sick of the stuff. JUST EAT MY F@CKING LIVER, ALREADY. Like most single mothers, I am now so full of character, I can practically puke it up onto crackers on demand.
Read the rest of this entry

I need a new mouthguard, she says. We have a lacrosse game tomorrow.

This is perhaps the oddest thing about single parenting: when your kids return from your co-parent’s house two inches taller and needing equipment for a sport you have never before heard them mention.

Lacrosse? I ask. I gulp. I am still adjusting to her playing field hockey with howling banshees twice her size.

She shrugs. I decided to give it a try.

Alrighty then, I say. I admire her willingness to run with sticks.

At the sporting goods store, she hunts for mouthguards while I browse running shoes for my upcoming muddy, wet 5K. I always feel like an imposter in the running shoes section. I hate running. I mean, I really, really, really hate running. And I get the feeling the sport hates me for pretending to be a runner. We are leery of each other, me and running.
Read the rest of this entry