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

It was one hundred degrees the evening I decided to stay at home with my first child. She was three days old, I was 8, 018 days old. In retrospect, the decision was astronomical. I was choosing a life of relative poverty and social pariahdom. But the moment came in absolute clarity, in the parking lot of a Video Update on a Phoenix night. Because the alternative was unfathomable, and maybe that is how many decisions are made, by choosing a path of lesser evils, by the process of elimination. We want the least terrible option. After moving to Florida to be near Jake's closest friend when Rhiannon was three months old, I found myself not only jobless (which, it turns out, is a job hazard when you opt to be a stay at home parent), friendless, and carless. From the early muggy morning hours till the sun had begun to slither its way down, I sat alone in a third floor apartment with a newborn. Jake and I had one car, a black Honda Civic, with a payment of $183 per month that was $183 mo

In 1995, as I was curling my hair in my dorm mirror, I heard a fervor outside my room door. When I opened it, I found a dozen or more kids, some wrapped in towels, rejoicing in the hallway. The verdict for the OJ trial had come down, and the jury had declared him innocent. I was quiet and introspective about the pronouncement for a few reasons. One of them was that I had an odd dream, in which I was babysitting the Simpson children, when their father had quietly come to me to tell me he was innocent. It was a crazy dream, and surely one born of stress and confusion, but made even more so with the unabashed celebration in his acquittal. I often find myself on the wrong side of the popular opinion. I don't believe Carol Baskins killed her husband (for those who with the Tiger King). I don't think the Bachelor is good TV. I don't think Shakespeare was the genius he was hailed to be, and recently, I don't hate our quarantine. I have been a mother now for twenty one yea

There was once a girl who traveled across the continent to go to college. At 18 years old, she thought herself a trailblazer, a nomad with lofty goals. She left behind a life many would envy- loyal friends, a nuclear family (fractured but not broken), and a town still small enough to invite small town jokes by its residents, many who would live there for a lifetime.  As many eighteen year olds do, she thought herself the nucleus of her world. In her bags, she had love letters from boys she left behind, and gifts from her childhood friends. She had a copy of The Places You'll Go, a course catalog she had highlighted in the early summer days, her dreams of being a doctor between every line she marked. She had the heartbreak on her sleeve so many girls her age wore, a puppy love that ran its course, the tragic deaths of adoring grandparents, the divorce that had fractured (but not broken) the family. But she considered herself an optimist, a true glass is half full kind of gal, with

Years ago, PBS aired a television series about a family who was temporarily placed in a “little house on the prairie” type situation, as a learning experience and obviously for viewers’ voyeuristic enjoyment. When Jake and I heard about it, we both agreed that we wished our kids could be put right smack into our childhood for some perspective. This last month has been a huge learning curve for so many people. I’m speaking, of course, of the banal and the frivolous, because to  speak about the deaths and tragedy is unspeakable. But it’s felt like an era long gone. Over the last two years, I’ve become frustrated with the status quo. Everyone in my life too busy to hang out, my own family constantly on the run. Between lacrosse practices and instrument lessons and photography sessions and Jake’s traveling and all of the random little errands that fill a day, it was like all of the people I loved were standing just far enough away that I couldn’t reach them. Life felt a little blurry. My

As moms, I believe we are somehow taught that the busier we are, the more productive we are. If we are stay at home moms, we are meant to believe we are failing our children if they are not in every sport, every musical class, every scouting group or playgroup. As working moms, we are meant to believe that by earning a paycheck outside the home, our children are somehow neglected.  This virus has upended life for every parent. What was once up is now down, what was once left is now right. Working mothers are now experiencing life at home, and stay at home moms are now experiencing the crushing weight of the feeling of having to provide for a family when the chips are down.  In a week, or a month, or a year, there will begin a new normal. Perhaps concerts and movie theaters will have gone by the wayside, germophobia running rampant. Perhaps families will begin a great stockpiling of goods as they did in the days of the depression, with an ever looming second foot waiting to fall.  B