Category Archives: Uncategorized

Jun
07
2013

i’m lovin’ it

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I’d like to leave you this week with some bobs and bits of ridiculous stuff I found while trolling Facebook that might help you, too, waste valuable time today.

941755_10151641003932722_308371440_nFirst, if you spent a good portion of 2012 trying to figure out what all the fuss was over Breaking Bad and then about two straight weeks of doing nothing but binging on the AMC series, you’re probably starving for the tale of Walter White to resume in August. While you wait, have fun trying to find all your old friends in this cartoon. Already forgot about Gus, Gale and Tortuga? Here’s a cheat sheet:     http://studiostobie.com/studio/?p=1040

 

 

The limited release of Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing has reminded me how much I love the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator who also brought us one of my all-time favorites, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esiIFLI3ryI

And I know I’m super-late to the Brene Brown party, but I can’t stop thinking/talking about her TEDX talk on vulnerability (just ask my therapist):

And finally, why can’t they just shut up and listen?

Jun
05
2013

fuck fear

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My girlfriend emailed me this video yesterday and had written “Fuck Fear” in the subject line and I was inspired not just by the whole “Lean In” thing but by the sentiment of those two words combined.

I’m tired of being afraid. Of not feeling good enough. And I have to keep reminding myself, “If not now, when?”

Luckily, just looking at myself in the mirror nowadays is a reminder that I am not the girl I used to be, when I see the slight sag in my belly while I’m sitting drying my hair or the deep wrinkle creating a slash down the side of my cheek.

And I will be very disappointed with myself if I don’t at least TRY to live the life I want to live before it’s too late.

So I started this year off by announcing to my therapist early in January (thus going on the record) that I was no longer fucking around and had three goals for my year:

  1. To concentrate on my writing.
  2. To go on an adventure.
  3.  To to be open to love.

And while, as noted previously, I haven’t been super-proactive in the love department, I’ve actually followed through on the other two.

Obviously, at long last I got it together and launched the blog and while I don’t post as often as I’d like to, I’ve been pretty regular with my writing. And now that I’ve conquered that part of the equation, I’ve decided to throw my hat into the official blogger ring and attend the BlogHer conference in Chicago and hobnob with fellow over-sharers in July.

(Sidebar: I knew it was a sign I should attend when BlogHer announced that Sheryl Sandberg would be their keynote speaker.)

And in August, right before I say hello to 47, I will spend a week sailing around the Dodocanese Islands on a small boat surrounded by strangers on what I hope is the adventure I’ve been longing for yet tired of waiting to find someone to share it with.

So, I say, “Fuck you” to fear (or try to, at least) and not only do I encourage my daughters to take risks and believe in themselves, but my boys as well.

My youngest son, who’s 10, learned that this morning when we found ourselves scrambling, once again, to get him out the door to an early saxophone lesson. It’s been the bane of our existence the entire school year, getting him to the weekly lesson and practicing at home a few times a week. It’s all led to him feeling inadequate as the other kids have improved and he continues to struggle with the instrument.

So I looked into his big eyes this morning as we sat parked in front of the school, — and really, you’ve never seen such bright blue eyes — just brimming with tears, and I assured him that he could be just as good as those other kids, he just needed to get serious and practice hard before next week’s concert.

And then I told him what I named this essay  and to dry his tears and get out there and give it his all.

Because life is an equal opportunity challenger, as we are reminded is this quote that I’ve been loving by Teddy Roosevelt delivered over 100 years ago:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again … who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

My little guy got out of the car and walked towards the school’s front entrance, weighed down by the instrument case in one hand and a backpack stuffed with about 20 pounds of text books and pretzels, hanging from his back. About 10 steps from the front door he turned around and gave me a little wave and then opened the door and entered the arena.

May
14
2013

Five Reasons Mother’s Day Was Pretty Okay

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IMG_2445 I used to joke that Mother’s Day was not for mothers. If it were, I reasoned, moms would be able to slip away, guilt-free, and spend the day free from butt wiping and nugget baking or whatever was the urgent-need-du-jour.

But that never seemed to be the case. There were brunches to attend and pasta necklaces to wear.

I went to visit a college friend over Mother’s Day weekend a few years ago and my kids and their dad were, like, totally insulted. How could I choose a weekend of shopping, glasses of wine and catching up with a dear friend over them asking me, repeatedly, what I wanted to do on Mother’s Day?

If Mother’s Day was truly all about giving moms a break, we would just be able to switch our OFF DUTY lights on like yellow cab and ignore all those frantically waving arms trying to get our attention.

But somewhere along the way, Mother’s Day has started to seem a little more special to me. I look forward to seeing what the kids have up their sleeves. And I don’t know if it’s because they’re older or that their dad’s not around to pick up the holiday slack, but the kids have really stepped up their Mother’s Day game.

Or maybe it’s just that I’ve learned to keep my expectations low. That could be part of the equation, too.

But even with only two kids living at home this Mother’s Day, I felt loved and appreciated – if only for a day – by my people.

Forthwith, the top five reasons why my Mother’s Day was pretty okay this year:

IMG_2439REASON #5: My house did not catch fire.

He might have had to get up at 6:30 a.m. to pull it all together and in the meantime, put everyone in the house at risk while we slept, but my 10-year-old son can whip up a solid batch of scrambled eggs for breakfast in bed. They may have been served cold and arrived earlier than I planned on waking, but I could feel the love rising off the plate. And, he remembered I liked hot sauce.

IMG_2436REASON #4: Love and candy from miles away.

Although they weren’t home for the big day, my two college kids had the foresight and wherewithal to send me flowers and candy that arrived Saturday. Was the effort likely spearheaded by my daughter? Probably. Were the flowers ultimately bought with money I had deposited in their bank accounts? Of course. But could you ever put a price on the enclosed card that declared, “We miss you so much mom!”? No way.

IMG_2442REASON #3: I was a happy guest.

My sister hosted our family for lunch and it was lovely, filled with lots of siblings, our mom and steak. I even brought along a cake. But the party prep and cleanup were handled by my sister and her husband and for that, I was supremely grateful.

 

IMG_2443REASON #2:  The ultimate gift from a teenager.

The 15-year-old handed me a card with an envelope addressed “Mother Dearest” in kidnapper-style cut out letters (she knows I am a sucker for that form of correspondence).

Inside was a post-it note announcing I was about to embark upon a scavenger hunt, and off I went, searching for the next post it note marked with a clue and a letter. Once they were all collected, I unscrambled the letters and found they spelled: “Check your Facebook.”

525736_10151589668497173_1625768403_nI grabbed my phone and found a friend request from this daughter who had made it her mission to avoid being linked to me on social media, despite her two older siblings succumbing over the last few years. And while she also got me a gift card for a massage, don’t tell her that that was just icing on the cake. She had me at Facebook.

REASON #1: A crack in the wall.

My ex husband and I have had a less-than-ideal split. We married way too young and had different visions of what a committed relationship should look like but somewhere in between the arguing and long stretches of silence, we brought four children into this world. And he held my hand and fed me ice chips and loves those people as much as I do.

While we were married, he had to buy me flowers and have the kids make me a card. It was part of the deal. But now, with all that obligation long out the window, any gesture from him is seen in a different light.

So when I saw the text from him wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day first thing Sunday morning, I felt that maybe there was hope for us after all. Like Reagan and Gorbachev, maybe we could find a way to tear down that wall, if not for us, then for the good of our people. And that, would be the best gift of all.

IMG_4798

 

 

Apr
23
2013

growing up and liking it

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Recently, conversations about STDs and the regular use of deodorant reminded me of the two worlds of parenting I straddle with my four children.

My two sons bookend their sisters as the oldest and youngest of the brood and with 10 years between them, the only thing the boys have ever been on the same page about simultaneously is their mutual fascination with lizards (one has one, one wants one).

Early one day, I spoke with my oldest guy who’s 20 and away at school. It’s cute now, how we check in every once in a while and he tells he about his life in college and sometimes that he’s feeling blue. I love that we’ve finally moved away from being on the defense with each other like we’re the Knicks and Bulls (obviously I’m Carmelo in this scenario) to practically being on the same team (he can be Jason Kidd). Although if I really wanted to get this NBA metaphor right, it’s more like I’m the team owner and he’s the star player, because he’s always looking for a raise.

So he called one morning and we chatted about classes and his health and he told me that his fraternity had hosted a bunch of other chapters over the weekend for various activities (the details I did not ask).

One program of note was that the guys had a speaker come to talk to them about STDs. The presenter was really funny, my son said, “But Mom, you should have seen the pictures.”

He didn’t even try to describe them to me, they were that bad.

They were so profoundly horrifying that he said a bunch of the guys was considering going to the infirmary to get tested, just to make sure their situations never appeared in a future slideshow.

Later that day, I made my way over to our elementary school to preview a film that my younger son would be shown later this school year. You know, “THE MOVIE.”

It’s called “Growing Up And Liking It,” and it’s what’s shown to all the fourth graders at our school at the end of the school year:

A: as a public service to all those teachers trapped in hot classrooms with incredibly moist and stinky children to encourage regular deodorant use and,

B: to give these little guys teetering on the edge of puberty a heads up that some stuff is about to go down both on the inside and the outside of their bodies and not to be alarmed.

So, the girls get a lesson on their developing bodies and that exciting monthly event that they will grow weary of managing some 40-something years later. It even requires two DVDs to tell them all about it. And boys get the great news — spelled out in about five minutes — that their junk will grow (maybe this distinction is what put women at a disadvantage at the dawn of time).

Of course, I’ve already had three kids see THE MOVIE and I joked to all the other fourth grade mommies there that I was taking a refresher course in puberty. And there was a part of me that wanted to know just what it was my son was about to be told. But there was also a strong desire to just go back in time. My little boy lets me do that. To turn back the clock to a time before sores and pustules, bongs and Fourlouko were a part of my parenting landscape.

It turns out, it’s still the same movie that his brother saw 10 years earlier, populated by little kids in late 80s playwear and the music kind of drags, like it would get caught and needed to even out.

It starts softly, the voiceover telling the kids, teetering on the edge of middle school, that they are about to go through some changes and start thinking about things in a new way and before I know it, tears are filling my eyes.

It’s been such a long road with this little guy, who’s six years younger than his closest sibling and practically an only child, that I can’t believe he’s just moments away from becoming as grisly and ornery as the rest of them. I see glimpses sometimes of what the future holds, him balking at doing something he’s told or saying “Mom” in a certain tone, and it reminds me that even the sweetest of children falls prey to teen spirit. My house stank of it for years.

I’ve been so lucky to have been able to stay in childhood for as long as I have as a mom.  But pretty soon, I know, I’ll have to pack up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the pogo stick and the assortment of plastic cups that have taken up valuable space in my kitchen for the last 20 years.

One of the other moms who came to see THE MOVIE arrived pushing a stroller. She had the baby in the fall and he happened to be about 10 years younger than her oldest child in fourth grade.

The other moms and I joked that she’d be back at school in a decade for her refresher course and cooed at the baby, and all I could think about was what a long road she had ahead of her.

And how lucky she was.

Apr
14
2013

take the plunge

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I know I’ve said in the past that one of the few times I missed having a man around the house was when it snowed.

That is not true.

I also wish there was somebody else around here (there doesn’t even need to be a penis involved) to help out when I see dead things floating in the pool and when a toilet starts to overflow.

Which seems to be happening around here a lot lately.

Now, I’ll take responsibility for failing to mention to my children that toilet bowls aren’t like really fancy trash cans. You can’t just put anything in there and flush without thinking there are going to be repercussions months, or sometimes even seconds, down the line.

I walked into my own bathroom last week (which now everyone uses because of the kitty litter box lurking in the kids’ bathroom) to find mounds of paper towels filling the bowl. One of the kids had cleaned something off the bathroom mirror and instead of tossing it into the trashcan literally one millimeter away, she opted to dispose of it in the toilet (yet failed to seal the deal with a flush).

Having grown up living with a temperamental septic tank, I was incredulous that anyone would even consider flushing anything but toilet paper.

“How was I supposed to know?” asked the culprit, rather nonplussed, and more than a little irritated that her mom was being such a freak about the toilet.

I also didn’t think I had to mention to the girls, in this day and age – what with all the signs posted in like every goddamn public restroom stall you sit down in – that only toilet paper should be disposed of in the toilet.

The girls were shocked to learn that feminine products, no matter how small and seemingly streamlined they may appear to be,  cannot be disposed of through the toilet. “Wait, what?” said one. “That’s stupid.”

Stupid, perhaps. But only until toilet water is starting to pour down the sides of the bowl. Then, as you are trying to remember where the fucking plunger is, it starts to make perfect sense.

.

Mar
22
2013

impulse control

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My ex-husband used to tell the funniest story about the day his parents got new barstools when he was a kid.

This was the Seventies, when installing a bar in your basement and hanging a dartboard just steps away from your washing machine seemed not only relaxing, but logical.

My ex’s parents were teachers and careful about finances so the shiny new naugahyde stools that arrived that day were a big deal.

But all my ex could think of as he saw them sitting in his basement was what it would be like to slice through the seats with the Exacto knife he saw laying nearby.

So, he’s like 8 or 9, something like that, and he figures, “What’s a few quick nips with the blade?” and before he knows it, he’s cut through a few of the chairs.

He comes out of the destructive daze long enough to assess the situation and think, “I’m fucked,” and decides to wait it out in the bathtub.

Now, his dad could be intimidating back in the day. He was a high school basketball coach and gym teacher, a former Marine, and he pretty much insisted that you toe the line or he’ll reach down and break it off your foot.

So my ex is nervously bathing when he hears his father come home from work and head straight for the basement to see the new stools. He hears the footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, pause and  a few beats later his father is screaming my former mother-in-law’s name.

I guess the list of suspects was pretty short because in no time, my ex’s dad was barreling into the bathroom and pulling his wet body out of the tub by the arm for retribution.

Remember, this was the Seventies – long before timeouts and quiet chairs – when violence was an often-used implement in the parenting tool belt.

We used to laugh our asses off at that story. I am actually laughing now thinking about it. My ex would shake his head and say, “I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. I just couldn’t control myself.”

Now, in hindsight, I have chalked that story up to the guy’s impulse-control issues. It seems that sometimes, he couldn’t stop himself. Perhaps a red flag.

But yesterday, I started to consider that maybe it’s a universal issue, the unstoppable urge to commit a forbidden act.

While making dinner last night, I heard loud banging coming from the garage. I opened the door to find my 10-year-old son standing holding a bat in mid-swing surrounded by a pile of white chips all over the floor.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” he blurted about one second after I opened the door and assessed that he had been banging the shit out of the sheetrock in a corner of the garage right by the kitchen door.

I freaked out, screaming for him to get a dustpan and clean it up and wondering out loud what he was thinking about, because he is so NOT impulsive. He’s cautious and careful and incredibly thoughtful.

But maybe, like Hannah in the season finale of Girls who just had to shove those Qtips in her eardrums (seriously, what the fuck), some urges are impossible to resist.

I mentioned this theory to my girlfriend Joanie and she started laughing, remembering how she and her siblings burned holes into the interior door of the new car her dad had brought home when they were kids. They had found the cigarette lighter and sat in the back seat and pressed circles into the nylon of the two back doors, much to their parents’ chagrin.

And then I was reminded of a time I discovered the lighter in the back of my grandfather’s car. I had pressed it in, not knowing what it was and when it eventually popped out, I pulled it out for inspection. Somehow I remember knowing I probably shouldn’t press my pointer finger inside to touch the glowing red coils. But I couldn’t resist. I remember trying to hide the pain from my dad and the white-callused tip of my finger that had just sustained a first-degree burn shoved between my knees.

And I’d like to tell you about the time I found a razor blade lying around my grandparents’ house when I was eight, but I’ve got to go return a bunch of things I bought online late one night last week.

 

 

 

 

Mar
20
2013

dear sheryl

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Dear Sheryl,

OMG, I totally love Tina, too!

I read Bossypants once and listened to it, like, three times on long drives. I even let my then-9-year-old son listen along, which I’m aware is incredibly inappropriate, but I can’t help but hope that some of Tina’s funny, feminist wisdom seeped into his budding male psyche.

And I know you’ve got a couple of kids, so I’m wondering if it was Tina’s “A Mother’s Prayer for Her Daughter” that moved you, as it did me. Did this wish of hers resonate with you, too?: “And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.”

Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixHpLjumkCw

And, wait, you love Anna Quindlen? I love Anna Quindlen. I’ve followed her since my mom introduced me to her “Life in the Thirties” column in the Times and lapped up everything she’s written since. In a pivotal moment of the fantasy Lifetime Movie of my life that loops through my head, I actually got to meet Ms. Quindlen while in the throes of my divorce. Afterwards, when faced with the challenge of a bullying ex-partner or out-of-control teen, I would actually think, “What would Anna do?” And 9 times out of 10, I’d think, “She would not be putting up with this bullshit,” and react accordingly.

Sheryl, I also couldn’t help but notice that you are familiar with the Shel Silverstein lexicon. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent curled up on a twin bed with a few bodies tucked alongside me reading our favorite Where the Sidewalk Ends poems over and over. “One Sister For Sale” was always a favorite, but I liked to go back to “Jimmy Jet and His TV Set” from time to time as a cautionary tale for my little ones (sometimes I’d check their bottoms to see if cords were starting to sprout).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And when the kids were just old enough, I made sure our “Free to Be, You and Me” CD was on heavy rotation in the car as we drove around town to remind the kids that a penis, or lack thereof, does not dictate who you are or what you are to become. Oh, and that “Parents Are People,” too.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0_qbtLnsVI

And YOU want to meet JK Rowling? I want to meet her, too! But whereas there is a very good chance that you will actually meet Harry Potter’s creator, I had to settle for a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando a few years back.

So, it’s weird. When I read the interview with you in the Times’ “By the Book” feature last weekend and noticed all these similarities, I was like, “Holy crap. Sheryl Sandberg and I are, like, practically the same person.”

It leaves me asking this: How is it that you ended up the COO of Facebook and I became a New Jersey housewife?

Just wondering,

Confused in the Garden State

Mar
12
2013

knocked up

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Everybody’s good at something. For instance, my neighbor Susan makes delicious cupcakes, my friend Kathy is a really fast runner and my ex-husband shovels snow like, well, nobody’s business.

I am really good at getting pregnant. Seriously, it just comes naturally to me. My ex just had to give me a sexy look and nine months later we’d be drowning in dirty diapers and tears (often our own).

So, this natural talent of mine really jibed with the overwhelming urge I had as a young married woman to have a lot of babies. In retrospect, it’s clear that I was trying to work through some earlier conflicts, which was mixed with a desire to create the family I always wanted. But at the time, I just thought I had a bad case of baby lust.

Had I been left to my own devices and perhaps had a better marriage, who knows how many kids I would have ended up with. But after a while, my ex finally took matters into his own hands and with a quick snip, shut me down at four.

Had he had his way, we would have stopped at two children. We had a boy and a girl, my ex reasoned, and they were both healthy — arriving with the requisite number of fingers and toes. Why tempt fate?

Probably most other couples would have already had the “How many children do you want?” conversation well before they were saddled with two kids already in diapers. But he and I were never really ones for planning, or important conversations, so it came as a shock to me to hear he wanted to shut my baby factory down when it was just getting going.

It’s hard to say what drove my insatiable thirst for more and more children. Maybe I liked growing up with a lot of siblings and wanted that for my own children. Maybe there was an innate desire to feel special as the mother of a large brood. Or maybe I just found something I was really good at.

My oldest two kids were only 17 months apart, so I bided my time before I began my campaign for #3. But when my ex appeared to be holding his ground, I steamrolled right over him and got knocked up anyway.

But the universe has a way of reminding you just who is in control, and I ended up miscarrying that pregnancy. I wallowed in that loss until my ex finally succumbed and gave me baby number three — like a sympathy pregnancy. I did, however, have to guarantee that the child would grow up to receive the Heisman Trophy, which is going to be tricky since she’s terrible at football.

Now, you would think at this point, with three kids in four years and not more than 30 years old,  I’d have been crying uncle. My life was a never-ending loop of Barney, baths and chicken nuggets.

But I have never been very good at finding my “off” button when I’m doing something that I liked, and craved just one more child to feel complete.  I actually told my ex that a fourth child would complete me, like I was goddamn Jerry Maguire.

When reason failed, I had no option but to once again put my baby making plan into covert operation. But, seriously, how my ex really believed that I was all of a sudden really into getting it on all the time, makes me wonder whether dudes employ thought or reason in that department. And that’s where the guy didn’t even stand a chance.

Boom! I got pregnant. And then, Boom! I had a miscarriage. And then Boom! I got pregnant and once again Boom! Lost that baby, too.

And that, my friends, is when I decided to shut the factory down myself. The loss was too overwhelming, I just couldn’t live through it again. So I gave away all the strollers and bouncy seats and baby clothes and all that baby shit in my crawl space and focused instead on the three babies I already had.

And, of course, you probably guessed what came next. I got pregnant and this one stuck. My youngest child was born almost six years after I had baby #3.

And you know what? I’ve never felt the baby itch again. My guess it that teenagers will do that to a person.

Feb
22
2013

wish you were here

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When my oldest child, who’s now a sophomore in college, began looking at schools, its distance from our home was never a concern. And frankly, at that point in our relationship, my thought was that a little space might do the two of us some good.

So when he decided to go to a school that was an eight-hour drive away from our house and far from any major airports or train stations, my reaction was, “Have fun!”

Kid #2, a daughter, was just one year behind and when she decided she wanted to apply early decision to the same big, state school, I went along with it. At that point, new to being single and working full-time, my parenting strategy was that if it wasn’t on fire and screaming, “SAVE ME,” I wasn’t about to over think it. “Go for it,” I told her.

In August, we stuffed our car with color-coordinated bins, towels and comforters from Target, set up her dorm room as if it was about to be featured in a House Beautiful spread, waved good-bye and journeyed home.

And that, I figured, was that.

They’d be busy with classes and making new friends and learning all about beer bongs, and before we’d know it, they’d be home with a mountain of laundry for Thanksgiving.

What do I fucking know?

It turns out, college can be stressful for these kids. There are exams that you bomb and classes that need to be dropped. You need to get used to having a flexible schedule and managing your time and getting to bed before 3 a.m. There’s no shrewish older woman living with who reminds you to wake up and go to sleep. No one is there to cut up a kiwi for your breakfast or tell you to eat your broccoli. No one gives a shit.

And then the moment arrives, a few weeks into fall semester, when the new college student comes to the stunning realization that he actually misses that place from which he couldn’t wait to escape and the people that live there. It dawns on that freshman that home was actually not so bad. And neither was his family.

And as a mom, it’s not so easy being on the other end of a text or a phone call when these moments hit. When I can’t just gather that kid close and tell him or her it’s okay and maybe sneak away to get lunch and spend time alone. Just us.

My son started texting me this week and asking about wisdom teeth and when does one know they need to come out. I’ve had very little experience with this subject, other than having my own removed in my early 20’s. (The incident proved yet another missed opportunity to realize that when my soon-to-be-husband, who accompanied me to the extraction, fainted in the recovery room upon seeing me, thus seizing all the attention of the medical staff, that I would never be the star of that relationship.)

So when my kid’s texts morphed from “What’s up with wisdom teeth?” to “My mouth fucking kills,” I was still hoping to downplay the situation. “Gargle with a little salt water,” I advised. “Take some Tylenol.”

This fire was too far away for a quick dousing.

I made an appointment for a consultation with an oral surgeon when my son returns home for spring break in March, and thought I had a handle on the situation.

Until that child called me around 11:00 Wednesday night, upset. Like, really upset because his mouth felt like it was actually on fire.

There I was lying in bed, half delirious with Stephen Colbert and his silliness lighting up my darkened room, with a really upset kid/man on the line and feeling helpless.

But of course, by 9 a.m. the following day, I had wrangled a prescription for antibiotics and made an emergency appointment with an oral surgeon this weekend. He and his sister will make the long drive home in the car they have down at school and regardless of whether that thing needs to be pulled or the doctor can just do something temporary to get my kid through to spring break, I am happy that I will be able to just have him here. I won’t have to rely on an iPhone photo or a text from him to know what’s going on. There’s great comfort in that.

And when Kids 3 and 4 start their college search, you better believe they won’t be going anywhere I can’t get to in just a few hours.

 

Feb
18
2013

the name game

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As I was getting ready to finalize my divorce, I opted to take advantage of the one-time opportunity to legally change my name the day the deed was done at no cost. After spending a grillion dollars to get out of the marriage, it seemed like an offer that at least needed to be considered.

But the decision did not come easy.

I kept polling my kids about how they would feel if my last name was different from theirs, and finally one of my daughters was like, “Just do it already.”

The tipping point came while I was serving on our school’s board of education. Board members’ names are called throughout the monthly meetings – Robert’s Rules-style – for voting. It’s always the formal names used too, no “Kevin” or “Kathleen,” but “Mr. Smith” or “Mrs. Jones.”

During one meeting a few months before my divorce was final, I just couldn’t answer to Mrs. X again. Here I was doing something that was mine, all mine, while answering to somebody else’s name. My wooden name plaque was updated following the divorce and I was proud to sit behind it for the rest of my term on the board.

An article in the Sunday New York Times Style section yesterday explored how some women not only revert to their maiden names following divorce, but go one step further by adopting invented surnames or forgoing the last name altogether.

While I could get behind being known as Amazing Amy or Mrs. Ryan Gosling, I kind of liked returning to my old name. It’s like I never really gave that old Amy a chance. I never really let that girl show me what she could do before I was busy shrugging her off to slip on a new name like it was a new pair of shoes.

When I got married at 24, I didn’t think twice about changing my name. I was in love and apparently didn’t think twice about a lot of things. I would suggest to my daughters when they are getting married to give it some thought. Not in case things didn’t work out with their future husbands, mind you, but as a way of staying connected to who they are.

Sometimes we lose sight of that. I know I did.

It’s weird that women give up their names so easily in our culture and men very rarely do. I think couples should assess who’s got the better name and run with that.

When I went to the DMV after the divorce to change the name on my driver’s license, clutching a Ziploc bag filled with all the ID points you now need, an older woman straight out of central casting sat behind the desk and grabbed my plastic bag. She scrutinized all my information and just when I thought she was going to tell me I needed to go home and dig up another utility bill or Social Security card, she looked up and said, “I like your maiden name better.”

I assumed that in some circles, I would always be Mrs. X. In the beginning, my kids’ friends would say, “Hi, Mrs. X” and then cringe as if they said something wrong and I would assure them they had said nothing offensive. Now, they don’t give it a second thought. The kids of a close girlfriend of mine dabble with an assortment of names: “Miss X,” “Ms. X,” and the teenage girl finally settled on “Amy,” which her mom quickly squelched and now I’m back to Mrs. X. And that’s okay.

There’s confusion living in a small town for so long and being known one way, only to try to get everyone to call you something else.  Fast-forward a couple of years, and my new old name has started to stick. A woman I know in town told me that she was telling her husband – who I’ve only gotten to know after my divorce – that I had sent him an e-mail, but she was using my married name. “Who’s Mrs. X?” he finally asked.

I worry that it makes my kids feel that we’re even less of a family now that we all have different last names. But then I think about the few women I know who married and kept their maiden names and despite confusion at doctor’s offices and calling to set up play dates, at the end of the day the kids know who their mom is.

Maybe there’s hope for younger generations. When my youngest son and I were addressing envelopes to mail to his sister at camp last summer, I showed him how I had written my name for the return address and he asked if he should do the same on his letter.

“Well, you’ll use your name, buddy,” I explained, pointing to the upper left hand corner of the envelope.

“I think I’ll use yours, “ he told me, starting to write his first name and my last name together in blue ink. “You know, I am half yours.”

And so he is.

A version of this essay was posted on Patch.com on July 20, 2011.