are you there, dog? It's me, kerensa

I am checking my watch (because in the olden days, there were no brightly lit cell phone screens to scream the time) every five minutes, convinced that the pressure I am feeling is my first child, making her way into our world. I question everyone around me, not sure I even know what to expect with labor. They all give me varying ideas, and so I convince myself this is it. I expect more fanfare- flags, trumpets, a baffled and eager husband to leave me stranded in my driveway a la She's Having a Baby, but business goes on as usual, and eventually the contractions go away. My work phone still rings, I still answer it, and another day passes with no infant to bring home. Each day is a mystery, not knowing how it will end. Perhaps I will go home and eat a burrito, or perhaps I will squeeze a newborn through my loins. I get butterflies every time I feel a contraction, I have a bag packed. And then repacked. And then packed again. I have utter conviction that I will do it all naturally,

2001 Rhiannon is a little girl, just a month over two. She is a play by herself, hum on the potty, Elmo obsessed dollop of a girl, with blonde pigtails and wide brown eyes. I am just past my twenty fourth birthday, in an unsure place in my life, ironing my shirt in the guest room, with the only surety I have playing by my feet with found objects. The phone rings. It is an old fashioned phone by today's standards, a black princess with a purring ringer, and a cord connected to the wall. It is my husband on the other line. My husband of only a year, one year of tumult and ships passing in the proverbial night. I turn on the television, per his command and am in time to see a second plane fly into a second tower. I sit on the bed in my bra, my wrinkled shirt forgotten. Baby Rhiannon sits, unknowing, singing to herself by my feet. My only surety, an anchor to reality. In a month, I will be pregnant again, never questioning bringing another child into the evil, evil world. 2002 I am sev

She is five years old, and although she is only five, she knows her parents do not have much money. She has asked them to take her to see ET in the movie theater and they have told her they will take her somewhere special, if only they can take a small nap. She asks them what she can do while they nap, and they say twiddle her thumbs. So she sits on the green couch in the living room, whose windows look over Hamilton Street, and spends a bit of time figuring out how to twiddle. When they get into the car, the drive seems very long. Madison Ave is far in the rearview mirror, and she is getting sleepy in the car. Perhaps when they get there, her parents can twiddle their thumbs while she naps. Suddenly, an enormous ferris wheel catches her eye, and she feels a flip flop in her belly. She must not get her hopes up, but oh they float to the surface despite how hard she pushes them down. It is only when they pull into the immense parking lot that she realizes those fireflies of hope are fre

The first time I met my uncle's partner, he bought me an ice cream sundae so large, I remember it to this day. We sat across from each other in a half empty ice cream shoppe before he gave me a Washington DC teddy bear and wished me a Happy Easter. I went home after my trip with stories about Uncle Tom's friend until my mother sat me down for the "talk". I was nine years old, and suddenly my world was bigger, and filled with a new kind of love. Through the years, Uncle George became a fixture in our family, as beloved as the rest of the spouses in the family, and I always felt a certain kinship for him, as we were the unbloods- the ones born outside of the bloodline, with our own perspective in. Knowing my uncles were gay from such a young age allowed me insight that other children my age did not have. I could recognize the boys in school who just didn't "get" the girl, as the other boys did. I was angered more easily than everyone else when words we

I am sitting in the parking lot of the video store, with my suddenly flatter belly, tearing up because I have left my four day old baby in the care of my mother for this errand. A small errand, to be sure, but the absence seems so thick, I am choking. I am flashing forward in my mind to six, eight weeks down the road, when I will have to put my tiny little person in the hands of a stranger, in hopes she will not be harmed, or lost in a shuffle. At the mere thought, I could vomit, and when I look into Jake's very young face, I know I am not alone. We are, at that moment, in agreement. Thus becomes my accidental occupation. Being a stay at home mom was not my plan. Growing up, I wrote stories, and planned my future down to minute details. Which car I would drive, how many children I would have, and coincidentally enough- that my husband's name would start with J (thank you twirled apple stems). And never for a moment did I waver in planning to become a doctor. And yet, just like

A tiny little boy in his Yankee cap, perched on the battered wood in the dugout waves to me, and I realize he is my boy. He has the flushed cheeks of an Irishman, and his hat is a bit askew. He has the nonchalance of a real ball player, and for just a moment, I am left breathless. A boy who only yesterday was struggling with his first steps, is now the beginnings of a tiny man, and I am a surreptitious observer behind a fence. I watch him joke with his friends, his effervescent grin spreading light throughout the dugout, his foot on the bench only slightly too small for the cleat it inhabits. I want to tell him I love him, but it will embarrass him, so I turn my head to damper the urge. There are a thousand boys in the fields tonight. Some reluctantly, there to satisfy their father's need for vicariousness. Aging dads, with rounded paunches creeping over their belts, their caps hiding thinning hair and grey are holding clipboards and calling for the Mikeys, the Lukes, the Nicks to

I preface this by saying I am the daughter of a teacher, and stepdaughter of another. I am the next door neighbor to three teachers. I am the friend to many teachers. I have 5 children in the public school system. Over the last several weeks, I have read the internet posts, the Facebook comments, the political diatribes and nonsense being spewed on Fox News, and very few stories have hit me quite like this one. It is true that my mother got holidays and summers off. However, to supplement her very low income, she often taught summer school, volunteered to head extra curriculars, and mentored her graduated students well after their tassles had been turned. We did not live a particularly lavish lifestyle, but it was one filled with the same gifts she shared with her students. We visited museums, trekked through the woods to find and sample fiddleheads, and when an opportunity to educate us arose, she took it. Years later, I would take notice of how many of her students still chose to k

I am about to utter something I never could have foreseen myself saying. I am thankful to my parents for being pretty broke when I was a kid. When I observe the entitled children around me (my own included, unfortunately), I am surprised at their lack of life skills. Growing up on a mountain, I learned to fend for myself. When it snowed, we shoveled, we built forts, we sledded, we skied, we skated. My children ask for hot chocolate. Without daring to go outside. When we used to lose power, we read by candlelight, and pulled blankets up to the coal stove ( because we had run out of oil). My children ask if the DS is charged, and why our TV does not have battery backup. I pass by girls on the side of the road, with their overpriced SUVs sporting a flat, and I am concerned about the fact that she has not been taught to change tires, change spark plugs, change oil,as I was. I hope her beautiful SUV does not break down on her in a bad section of town at night. When I was young, I split logs

"I don't know how you do it", they say in a half-admiringly, half-dismissive way, and I wave them off, not out of rudeness but out of a sense of confusion. While many things in my life are far from easy, the things that make people say this phrase are among the easier. So I feel, when I hear this, that I must be missing something. If I were doing all the things I should be doing, would I still be able to accomplish these obviously extraneous tasks? If by making elaborate cupcakes, I am forgetting to clean the disposal, or by spending time with the PTA, am I forgetting to clean behind the stove? I am absurdly guilty on both counts, among many others. I am both envious and curious of those women upon whose floors you may eat, or whose curtains are freshly laundered, and beds always made. I forget the tiny things and they grow. I have long expired salad dressings in my fridge, and an old doctor bill I have forgotten to pay on my desk. My van is a veritable explosion of forbi