What I Learned On My Summer Vacation

Last week marked the official end to summer.   This was old news to many of us who said goodbye to summer weeks ago.  Perhaps at the exact moment we were photographing our children (looking the best they will look all year long) holding their Pinterest-inspired first day of school signs.  We have already grudgingly readjusted to the strictures of routine and schedule and simultaneously given up caring what they look like when they go to school.  Nearly one month in to the school year, my boys left the house looking as if they had not brushed their hair in 4 days.  And last week I let them wear stripes on stripes.  Don’t judge. Read more...

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Not Everything Has To Be A Teachable Moment

Last week was a hard week to be a parent, especially to two little boys who love to watch football.

Everywhere you turned, someone was talking about the massive scandals involving several NFL players and their deplorable conduct.  On television.  In the newspapers.  In line at the grocery store.  I did everything in my power to shield them from all of it.  I didn’t even let them watch the NFL halftime shows on Sunday because I knew what the topic of discussion would be.

I suppose I could have told them a watered down version of events.  It is, after all, in vogue in the parenting world to turn every moment into a “teachable moment.”  I suppose we could have had a didactic discussion about whether employers should be able to fire you for your off-the-job conduct.  Or whether when you hold yourself out as a role model, you accept that you should be held to a higher standard. Read more...

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Make a Wish

I got home from the Virginia game late on Saturday night and this was waiting for me:

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A container of personalized New York Football Giants M&Ms – a present from my college roommate who had to suffer through years of my football obsession while she was trying to get her molecular biology homework done.

As I was standing in the kitchen eating them (I hadn’t had dinner after all), the words jumped out at me.

Make a wish.

That is the essence of loving any sports team, isn’t it? Read more...

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Are You Ready for Some Football Part II: How Football Finally Made Me Cry

You can read Part I of the story here.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve cried this summer.  I’m fine, remember?

I didn’t cry at my dad’s memorial service.  In fact, I reveled in the celebration of his life and took odd comfort in consoling the people who came and cried on my shoulder.

I didn’t cry as I spent 8 weeks living in my parents’ house, the house I grew up in, surrounded by his things. I looked at his clothes hanging in the closet, at his briefcase filled with law review articles, at the pictures of him scattered on tabletops and bookcases. I liked seeing those traces of him everywhere, as if he was about to bound through the doorway at any moment, ready to kiss my mom on the forehead and tell the boys a silly joke. Read more...

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Are You Ready for Some Football?: Love, loss, and America’s Game

After months of despondently pretending to care about tennis and golf and baseball while secretly watching reruns of the 1982 Peach Bowl on ESPN Classic, the drought is finally over.  With August comes a return to all that is good with the world.

Football.

I love everything about football.  College or NFL. Televised or live.  I love the play calls, the pageantry, the speculation over coaching hires and recruiting.  Most of all, I love being a fan. Since I was a little girl, I have loved my Giants and my Wahoos. But truthfully I will watch any game, any time, anywhere. Read more...

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‘Twas the night before school

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Today is my least favorite day of the year.  The day before school starts.  The end of summer.  The beginning of homework and drudgery.

The end of fun.

Jack has been dreading this day for weeks.  He angsts. He frets. He worries about things to come instead of basking in the remaining moments of his freedom.  He is, after all, his mother’s child.  I do my best to distract him, to cheer him up, to reassure him he will love it once he gets there.  But I am pretty sure he can see right through me. Read more...

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Summer Crushes

07 16 14_0001Oh the summer crush.  There is nothing like it.   I don’t know whether it’s the potentially fleeting nature of the relationship that makes it so intense.    Perhaps a summer crush is special because it is accompanied by the exhilaration of seasonal freedom.  Unlike the other nine months of the year, reason and obligation take a backseat to the vagaries of the heart in the summer.  Maybe everything is amplified by warmer temperatures and the heady smells of suntan lotion, chlorine, and french fries from the snack bar.  Whatever the reason, in the summer you sit a little closer, gaze a little longer, giggle a little louder, and love a little harder. Read more...

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The Family We Choose

08 12 14_0001This is what 38 years of friendship look like.  Easy.  Real.  True.

38 years ago, our mothers asked each other to be godmothers to their new daughters.  27 years after that, we were each other’s maids of honor.  Fast forward another 3 and we are godmothers to each other’s babies.  And all the moments of all the years in between are just too good to reduce to words.

When we were younger, I idolized her incredible spirit of adventure, her fearlessness, her inimitable ability to make everyone laugh, her giant heart that embraced everything and everyone.  I still do.  But now I admire how she didn’t sacrifice those qualities on the altar of adulthood.  Instead, she effortlessly parlayed all of them into her marriage, her children and her work. Read more...

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I’m Fine

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“I’m fine.”  I don’t know how many times I have said that over the last 6 weeks since my father died.  My father died.  Those words still seem odd to say.  Odder still that they flow trippingly off my tongue as if I were simply recounting where we went for summer vacation.

It is a well-established fact that I am a regular crier.  I excel at crying.  Happy tears, sad tears, exhausted tears, frustrated tears, nostalgic tears.  They have all been a part of my weekly repertoire for 38 years.  Sappy commercial? Check.  Wistful memory of the boys when they were babies? You bet.  Random song on the radio? Yup.  Hard day?  Too tired?  Proud parental moment?  Bad blisters?  Yes, yes, yes, and yes.  You name it, I have cried because of it. Read more...

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Look at me, look at me!

06 16 14_0001Nearly every afternoon in the summer, you can find me in the pool.  Not at the pool.  In the pool.   With 8 kids lined up waiting patiently to jump to me.  Or 5 boys practicing the sweep the leg move from Karate Kid as they try to dunk me.  These kids range in age from 3 to 8 and sometimes I don’t know half of them.  I’m “the pool lady.”

Last year, there was a woman stretched out languidly on her chaise lounge, flipping through a magazine, in the area I affectionately call the “adult” section.  You know – the place where people go to relax and read and get a suntan.  The place you go when your kids start insisting on sitting at their own table.  Far away.  The place where dreams go to die as far as I’m concerned.  She looked up at me as one of the boys tackled me in the water, smiled a bless-your-heart kind of smile, and said “don’t worry, you’ll be over here with us soon enough.” Read more...

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Love Never Ends

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When I was seven years old, a particularly fierce thunderstorm swept through town one night.  One of those southern summer storms that shakes the walls of the house and the nerves of its occupants – especially the little ones.  Sensing my palpable fear, my dad quietly took my hand and asked me to come watch the storm with him.  I shelved my trepidation and accompanied him to the sun porch on the side of our house that had floor to ceiling windows.

As the storm put on a magnificent display, I sat on my father’s lap and listened to him quietly talk about calculating the distance of the storm by counting the seconds between thunder and lightning, why light travels faster than sound, and the origins of electrical pulses in the sky.  Every time I jumped at the sound of a thunder clap, he gently put his hand on my forearm and immediately my heart rate slowed down.  When the storm finally ebbed, I realized that I was completely relaxed. Read more...

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A gentleman and a scholar

03 07 14_0127There are certain special people in this world.  There are those that do things on a grand scale for the whole world to see.  And then there are those who quietly, but perhaps more powerfully, change the world through a myriad of tiny, seemingly inconsequential, acts of love.  Acts of generosity done completely anonymously.

This man was one of those people.

This man was the smartest man I have ever met, and everyone who met him would tell you the exact same thing.  His rapacious intellectual curiosity led him to read everything.  Everything.  From 19th century art to European military history to how Steven Speilberg filmed Jaws.  He wrote his own crossword puzzles for fun in the middle of the night and could beat you in Scrabble with one hand tied behind his back.  But when you talked to him, he made you feel as though you were the most interesting and intelligent person in the world.  He had the answer to everything, but he always helped you figure it out yourself.
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On the Road Again: Why Kids Today Don’t Know How Much Fun a Roadtrip Can Be

roadtrip (1) With the advent of summer comes a rite of passage in many families: The Summer Roadtrip. When kids today bemoan the horror of an impending car trip, those of us who are now of parental age are quick to remind our offspring that we spent our youths crammed into the backseat of a station wagon with none of today’s vehicular luxuries.

In the interest of determining who had to endure more (because there always has to be a winner), I thought I thought I would compare the two experiences.

1. Space Read more...

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Ten Things That Are NOT Cool About Getting Older

A companion piece to the Ten Things That Are Cool About Getting Older

10.  Instead of those crappy Cosmo quizzes about how to land the man/woman of your dreams, the only quizzes you take now are ones from your investment adviser entitled “Will You Have Enough to Retire?”   And it turns out, no matter what numbers you put in the boxes, the answer is always NO.  Believe me, I have tried to game the system. I put in astronomical exaggerations for what we are currently putting into our 401(k) and it’s still not enough.  Apparently we will have to work.  Forever. Read more...

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To my little brother on the occasion of his engagement…

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The day that my little brother was born was the greatest day of my childhood.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably add that the other highlights of the day included a blizzard (a meteorological miracle in southeastern Virginia) and my grandparents arriving with an armload of presents for me because I was now a big sister.

The import of this new position was not lost on me.  I was, after all, four years old and in the heyday of playing mother to all my baby dolls.  And now I had a real one.  I fed him; I carried him; I fetched his toys; I read him books; I dressed him up in ridiculous ensembles.  When he developed his own language, I was the only one who could translate for him.  When he was in high school, I smuggled him into bars underage (gasp).  When he was in college and I was in law school, I did his laundry, fed him dinner, and took his bloody shirt (don’t ask) to the dry cleaners and explained that it was not, in fact, evidence from a crime scene.  In return, he has always loved me unconditionally, accepted every one of my many faults, and made me laugh when no one else could. Read more...

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