Check out the March issue of
for my article:
(along with more information on Journaling and Writing Tips)
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Grab My Button
A Short Season
January 27, 2010 – 4:33 pm
This was one of the first essays I wrote as a mother. It was picked to be part of an online collection of essays three years ago, but I thought of it today as I was looking at schools for my 2nd little guy.
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Just give me a minute. Mommy needs a minute. I need to finish making these phone calls. Can you wait a few minutes until I’m done with this last bit of writing? Maybe you can look at your books while I get this done? Please, just give me a second to think. I just need a little bit of time, and, in a few minutes, I will be able to help you with that. Can that wait? Do you really need my help?
Maybe it came too easy, to put off my son’s requests for my time. But the words tumbled out, sometimes before he even asked, and I tried to shove in one more activity before I quickly helped him build the Lego tower or fashion a suitcase out of a cardboard box and duct tape for his collection of coupons.
That is the life of a mother, always squeezed for time. And life has to happen. So it is not the offense of making him wait that bothers me; there has to be balance and I need to get things done. The sadness I have is that sometimes time ran out. Sometimes I halfheartedly listened. And, sometimes, precious moments slipped past while I wasn’t even looking.
My Skirt! (Essay)
January 2, 2010 – 5:11 pm
Channeling My Inner Erma
January 2, 2010 – 5:09 pm
I Take Care of the Kids (and Other Stuff)
December 7, 2009 – 6:40 pm
(Again, this is a story that I never found a published ”home” for so I thought I would share it here. It is hard to abandon any of my babies without a decent farewell.)
“What do you do for a living?”
I was attending a social function with my husband for one of the classes he was taking for graduate school. At a table crowded with people at least ten years younger than me, I tried to remember what it was like back when I was in college. But my reminiscing was cut short as one of my husband’s female classmates leaned through the conversations on course selections and global politics to ask me about my chosen profession.
This was not the first time I had been asked about my work status during my tenure as a stay-at-home mom to my six year old and two year old boys. But it was the first time I was asked by a young college student who probably had yet to consider how motherhood would one day impact her life.
Before I had children, I had given little thought to the fact that my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother were all, at some point, stay-at-home mothers. But since their days in their chosen profession, the title of stay-at-home mom does not have the same luster.
