The Late Arrival

The test said I was pregnant. Undoubtedly. Indubitably. Pregnant. The shock of it all drove me to the vodka I brought home as a souvenir from our recent cruise, and to the precipice of stress smoking. You know, the kind of smoking where you can hear the inhale followed by a 30-second whrhhhhhhh of an exhale that obliterates an entire cigarette. But then I remembered, no that can’t be a thing because this little person inside of me will also be drinking whatever I drink and can’t even roll down a window for air when I whrhhhhhhh . That person arrived a day early. A couple days later, I wrapped her up to go home with us. All I could think was a WHOLE NEW PERSON IS COMING HOME TO LIVE WITH US FOREVER .  Then she did this: Oh precious little girl, we have NO idea what we're doing! I burst out in tears. I mean, I just wasn’t prepared and I knew it. We brought her home anyway. She was funny, smart (way smarter than me and I knew that when she was three-years-old and called ...

What brings you joy? Like, actual joy? Somehow, the question came up in conversation with friends. I didn't want to put myself out there, so I sat back and listened: My relationship with friends. When I accomplish [insert accomplishment here] When people really get what I do all day. When I... When I... When I ... From my judgey perch, something uncharacteristically pushy inside me added Okay. But what brings us joy outside of ourselves? I'm pretty sure that's probably the last time I'll be invited anywhere. But anyway. There was a long pause and people (including me) began shifting uncomfortably. I mean, what in my definition of joy is not exclusively and inextricably linked to some benefit to me? How self-centered and self-serving am I anyway? We kept shifting and soon changed the topic. But I kept thinking: what brings me joy that isn't about me at its core? I came up with a few. And by a few, I mean few : Watching the lightbulb moment. Thes...

Think about the words...what are they saying? What are they saying to you? I hadn't really thought about the words to the song. All I knew is that I couldn't sing like my sister -- my one and only sister -- a ridiculously AMAZING singer -- who was called upon to sing The National Anthem when then Presidential Candidate Jesse Jackson came to town. Words? What words? Juniors in high school who have been handed a Christmas solo to sing in the annual concert don't think about words to the song. They only think about hitting that astronomically high high note, or if a packed gym full of people would think that for once in her life, this dork wouldn't look like such a dork. At least I did. That is, until my mom, the original singer, church minister of music and leader of traveling Gospel music group (who, by the way, sang "on program" with Martin Luther King, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers and James Cleveland ) said I should. So I did. She listened f...

I wonder how long this is gonna take. I mean, we went through classes but they never really gave us a time lapse of development. Realistically, this could take days...I've heard the horror stories. And how much is it gonna hurt? Every thought was about me as we drove to the hospital that night. Every thought preceding those thoughts, in fact, was about me. I had resigned myself to never seeing my toes again, never putting on socks or shoes independently and that I'd be pregnant forever. Even the final tipping point -- the thought that put us on the road to the hospital -- was about. ME: As if my feet being strangers to my eyes isn't enough, now I've got cramps. Like period cramps. Like excruciating period cramps. My husband snored as I powered through the crampy stomach until it dawned on me: Uh-oh. I better wake him up. This baby is happening now , despite the doctor prediction's of its arrival of the next day. Eight hours and a final push later, she arri...

Now look right here, I said, touching the space between my brows. Picking up the t-shaped millimeter ruler, I looked directly into the eyes of my patient and measured. The t-shaped millimeter ruler had a name, but I still don't know the technical name for it even twenty-some-odd years later. It was a tool used by opticians like me way back in the day who worked at optical stores. The place I worked was a franchised shop in the neighborhood mall. Optician training was trial by fire, but within three years, I learned the difference between progressive lenses and bi-focals; the difference between base curves and diameters; I knew how to UV coat an unfinished lens, set it into the chuck, run the edger and rotate the lenses into the frame according to an axis dependent upon the patient's astigmatism. Impressed yet? Of course, there were other things I learned too, unrelated to the fine art of Opticianing. (And no, that is not a technical term. I ju...

It's Mother's Day, an appropriate time to not only give a nod Heavenward to moms who have gone on before us, but to also acknowledge how we got here as moms. And by we, I mean women, men, adoptive moms, aunties, uncles, grandpas, grandmas and a whole host of people whose path brought them to motherhood. It's in this spirit I share a story I had the pleasure of telling at Milwaukee's fourth annual Listen To Your Mother Show . Because it's all about the journey; and sometimes, despite all the preparation we think we've done, we find out that getting to the destination we call Motherhood is half the fun...depending on your definition of fun. Expecting A Baby 13 years ago, my husband and I found out we were going to have a baby. Actually, we were expecting a baby . I was going to have the baby . I’d be a first time mom; and my body - this baby’s first home. When the doctor gave us the news, I thought to myself: There’s a tiny human inside of me . ...

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40 The breeze whispers through open windows on a clear summer day. It carries with it the aroma of freshly cut grass and the lawn mower’s steady drone as my husband paces back and forth, following our backyard’s perimeter. The drone abruptly stops. In minutes he appears at the back door. Get out here NOW , he shout-whispers. I race outside following where he leads, praying we’re not looking for detached toe in the grass. There were no toes, just bunnies. We coo and fight back every urge to pick up the baby bunnies because we know their mumma will return for them. And she did. Thirty minutes later, they were gone. ********************* The skies are purplish gray. Scattered spots of orange promise sunshine’s return after the afternoon’s violent windstorm. Sidewalks are littered with snapped branches too weak to cling to the...

After leaving my job back in June, my bank account has now gone Ryan Gosling on me. Like any red-blooded American woman, I can't resist Ryan Gosling, so I dove in. Understand, the last time I applied for a job was fifteen years ago. FIFTEEN. It was simple back then. I'd show up with a resume and a starchy blue suit, scribble in forms with a fancy pen, sign the application and leave. There'd either be an interview call a couple days later or a thanks-but-no-thanks letter in the mail. It was simple. But online applications are icy cold as a Wisconsin winter and as frustrating as driving through a snowstorm in rush hour. First, I searched. Then I refined the search by city, then I further refined by miles away from the city that I just refined. Then, I searched by industry and then refined the industry by sub-industry. How refined of me. After an hour, I finally found the position and description. Press Here to Apply! Yay! I thought, Techn...

Remember when she found the tallest inflatable slide at the festival? She crawled to the top with a trail of fifty kids lined up behind her waiting their turn. You panicked while I beamed with pride at our daughter’s fearlessness. She decided the top was too top and refused to slide down, damned the kids behind her. But you were her Prince Charming that day, scaling up along the side and coaxing her down to the ground. She felt safe, was unapologetic and I saw you relish your role as her protector. My heart melted at the scene, and I took her stubbornness as an early sign of an independent attitude, nearly immune from herd mentality. It’s been ten years since that day. She’s now a teen who is fearless about standing out, and you – you still see yourself as Prince Charming. And that’s sweet. But, honey, there are some things from which Prince Charming can’t rescue her. She’s part you and part me. She’s our biracial daughter, and though we know and she knows she's...

This is ridiculously adorable. And funny.  Go ahead and watch; it'll only take a minute. I cried laughing the first time I saw that little fluffy dog refusing to enter the house because he needed someone to open a door that only he could see. I watched it again and laughed just as hard. Then I looped it a third time for good measure, but that's when something eerily familiar resonated with me. Doggone if that little dog and his invisible closed door didn't remind me of me.  I think we've all stood on the outside, looking in and waiting for someone to open doors that existed only in our minds. For me, the 'right time' was my door. I kept waiting for the time when we'd be more financially stable, or for the time when stress would resolve itself and then -- then I could get out of a miserable job situation and into peace of mind.  I waited outside of that closed door only to finally realize the right time wasn't even a real obst...

This is the house we used to live in This is the place I used to know This is the house we used to live in Where if I liked could always go -Smithereens My second earliest memory is a tiled floor. Rich reds, burgundy and brown tiles, an inch wide each and three inches long. They overlapped and intertwined each other making a shiny patchwork of floor just inside the house’s entrance. From there, a Jacob’s ladder staircase that seemed too high, too majestic to see what was at the top. It was 1974, back when you could buy a house with four bedrooms, a formal dining room and bathrooms enough to keep kids and adults alike from going at each other’s throats for $28,000. Which is exactly what my parents did. $28,000 for scenes and sounds permanently etched in my memory and retrievable at will.   Echoes of Baptist hymns and selections from the Fred Waring songbook mom played on the living room’s upright piano. Front steps where Zeus, the family dog ...