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When Worlds Collide: Tales of Food, Fun and a Beach Family Vacay

I just returned from the most amazing three-day getaway. No, I wasn’t sipping cocktails at a beach resort in Bali while toasting the love of my life at sunset. Nor was I ziplining through Costa Rica, wind whizzing off my helmet as I shot over a rainforest canopy. Ditto on shopping it up on Rodeo Drive or spinning a roulette wheel in Monte Carlo.

All of those sound amazing, mind you, but they just didn’t fit into my three-day time limit, and they most certainly did not fit into my nine-family-members-on-a-tiny-budget demands.

So we opted for toting chairs and coolers and cranky forty-pound toddlers over a hot, shelly beach on Tybee Island, Georgia. Instead of Bloody Mary’s we nursed bloody shins, and pop knots on foreheads, and giant welts of salt water contact dermatitis.

The weather was as challenging as our toddler’s demands, pummeling us with low-pressure systems and high humidity levels that delivered thunderstorms and kinky-banged selfies, afternoons in crowded hotel rooms, and the untimely death of a freshly-purchased beach canopy.

Luckily, the wildlife we encountered was more docile than the weather, the toddlers, or my hair. We saw pelicans skimming the ocean surface, dolphins flipping in the surf, and tiny alligators in penned-in ponds. And there were gnats. Lots and lots of gnats.

We stayed at the only beach-access hotel on Tybee, in a couple of spongy rooms with high-powered microwaves and low-functioning refrigerators. There was also a melt-as-you-ride elevator up to our third floor accommodations. Tate was obsessed with this magical box of sweat and steel and asked to ride it at least eighty-nine times in any given sixty seconds. Kid you not. He may grow up to be a world-renowned lift engineer for the planet’s seediest dives.

But back to the hotel appliances… they got quite the work out, thanks to our limited budget and kitchen space. I had meticulously planned our dine-in menu to include pop tarts, variety pack snack chips, bananas, and seedy blackberry jam and peanut butter masterpieces in smooshed-up and travel-twisted Sara Lee sandwich bread. There was even that one night when we got super fancy with a brick of Velveeta, a can of Rotel tomatoes, and some complimentary paper cups — turning highly processed food products into individual queso dips, served alongside Kroger Hint o’ Lime tortilla chips. We were so big time.

Now don’t let me steer you wrong — it wasn’t all bargain-fare bon apetit. We did splurge our final night there on snow crab and boil ‘n peel shrimp at a legendary local joint (where we fed the aforementioned gators from cane poles wielding weird little particle board pellets). While a monsoon raged outside, we dined in style amidst twinkly lights and ceiling-mounted fans, causing our hair to shine and billow like Beyonce (and me to grace random stranger’s plated shellfish with strands of frizzy, highighted DNA). Now the food was truly delicious (no hair in our dishes, and those corn cobs — Lawsy!), but I must tell you, our hotel room sandwiches came in a very close second. Nothing quite compares to a straight-from-the-beach-and-half-starved fistful of PB&J for customer satisfaction.

Much to this mama’s dismay, my family lives worlds apart these days, in both distance and dynamics. We reside in three different geographical states along with vast and varied mental states — from big and bodacious to quiet and contemplative, from tightly strung to perpetually unwound (yeah, that would be me) — but when our worlds collide, beautiful things happen. Love and laughter and renewed life to sustain us all (and especially this mama) until our next go round.

I came away with so many big memories from our little weekend, but some of my favorites include: Bentley and Tate riding the waves for hours like fledgling sea turtles; Boop and Parker waging water gun wars at poolside; Mike and Bradley marching on their futile but fabulous mission to rescue our tortured, cartwheeling beach canopy; and Caitlin’s, Bray’s and my giggles during our impromptu girls’ night, complete with rocking chairs and red wine in clear plastic cups (imminently classier than red solos), the youngest amongst us sipping Sprite through her head gear (upping our classy quotient by about a gazillion).

Our weather may have been temperamental – right along with our toddlers– but we still had the most glorious time (and one glorious sunset before all the rain, which Caitlin captured beautifully between sea oats and sand). I can’t tell you how good this trip was for my soul.

Now before I go, I want to leave you with some final foodie fodder: Huey’s beignets in Savannah our last morning there. It may have been drizzling rain, but it was also drizzling praline sauce atop powdered clouds of breakfast transcendence.

So if you’re feeling a bit distant from the people you love the most in the whole wide world and you live in our neck of the woods, take a little three-day vacay to Tybee Island, the tiny little beach with the big heart just outside the sweet southern city of Savannah.

Do it for the family, do it for the fun, do it for the food. Just do it. No matter what. (And do it for Huey’s. No matter what.)

July 20, 2017 0

The American Opioid Crisis: Why Parents of Even Young Children Should Stay Vigilant

My family and I (three toddlers, a preteen in braces, two adult daughters, two husbands and a too small budget) just got back from the beach for a quick weekend get-a-way.

While there, I stressed about all the normal things a mama worries about when taking her kiddos to the beach: sharks, jellyfish, sunburn, drowning, strangers, lightning strikes… and not necessarily in that order. All are typical mama bear worries. But I stayed close and vigilant, and I felt secure in the knowledge that I was taking all the proper precautions.

What I did not worry about was an opioid overdose. I mean, why should I? My boys are three – hardly in the demographic danger zone. And my adult daughters do not use and never have.

Turns out, I should worry. An opioid overdose could pose a very real threat to all of us, despite none of us being addicts. I’m not talking drug abuse anyway. I’m talking overdose.

But just what does that differentiation matter, if none in my family is a user anyway?

Apparently, a lot. Because this morning I saw a story on the news about a 10-year old boy in Miami who died of a Fentanyl overdose on June 23rd. Yes, 10, and yes, Fentanyl.

And while there have been other stories seemingly like this one — of young children, toddlers and elementary aged — who have died of overdoses after accidentally ingesting controlled substances, those stories are usually followed up with accusations of parental drug abuse. And arrests. And pictures in case files of crack pipes and needles and mysterious powders on the premises.

This was not that kind of story.

This boy’s mother has not and will not be charged. His parents are completely innocent of all wrong doing. Their child did nothing wrong. Did nothing risky. He had simply gone swimming and played in a neighborhood park.

Authorities believe he inadvertently came in contact with the highly-lethal Fentanyl either while visiting a neighborhood pool or afterwards on his walk home. It would’ve only taken a milligram or two sitting on a towel or park swing, which he then either absorbed or inhaled or ingested after unknowingly touching the synthetic substance.

This is horrifying on every level. Everyone knows toddlers and children everywhere touch anything and everything. And then their curious fingers wind up in their mouths way more often than any mother is comfortable admitting. But up until now, the fear has been strep or staph or the common cold on those doorknobs and monkey bars and tabletops. Not highly lethal doses of drugs. I can’t imagine that was ever a consideration. Up until now.

I watch the news. I’ve seen the stories. Our country is in a major opioid crisis. Deaths from overdose have risen 110% in some parts of our nation. Fentanyl is one of the reasons.

Now, I know first responders have to be cautious. I know they use gloves and carry Narcan. I know they are trained to spot the symptoms of overdose — in others and themselves, as they are at risk of coming into contact with the drug and its users every single day. Of course, they have to be super cautious.

But I never thought I had to. As long as I am careful about who comes into my house and whose house I let the boys into, I assumed we were all in the clear. Clearly, I’ve been wrong.

So what do I do now? How do I protect my children, all of us, from such a dangerous and almost invisible substance? Protect them from a drug that can kill in doses as incredibly small as grains of sand? From a drug that has no smell or taste? From a drug 100 times more potent than heroin? From a drug that can cause an overdose in mere minutes?

The stories and statistics send me into hyperventilation and hypervigilance. I already wipe down buggies at grocery stores and tables at restaurants. Now, I will be on the lookout for strange powders, I will carry wipes with me everywhere I go, and I will swab any and every available surface — whether it looks clear or not. Lysol stock will soar from my diligence.

And sadly, playgrounds and public toilets will receive my most earnest attentions. Addicts use these places. I’ve seen movies. And, if that weren’t enough, I’ve seen evidence that points to this reality.

While travelling this weekend, my husband and son were forced to use an Atlanta gas station restroom. Not necessarily our first choice, but when a newly potty-trained toddler tells you he has to go – you’d best proceed to the nearest available option. (We used the lawn of a small country church on the way home – much cleaner, and we knew God would understand.) But back to that city gas station — Security knocked on the door when Mike and Parker were in there for longer than the allotted two minutes posted on the door, revealing to me how very naïve I truly am, and how very dark our world truly is.

Because as a mother, if I see a father and his young son go into a restroom and take a little longer than what would be deemed normal, I think “mom-of-toddler” thoughts. I automatically assume that the poor dad is in there juggling britches and Mickey Mouse underpants and that toy dump truck the kid had with him, while helicoptering his tyke over the toilet seat away from the dangers of e coli bacteria. I do not think “security-guard-in-urban-setting” thoughts. I do not automatically assume that the grown-ass man in the toilet with the toddler is either: 1) up to no good with a sweet, little innocent, or 2) he’s up to no good with a sweet little innocent in tow. Either way is horrific and apparently, a very real occurrence.

I guess there are a hell of a lot more things on this earth than are dreamt of in my rose-colored philosophy. So while I was vigilantly keeping an eye out for sharks, jellyfish, sunburn, drowning, strangers, and lightning strikes, I didn’t realize that there are potential dangers lurking out there far deadlier than sharks and far more random and lethal than lightning strikes.

But I will be taking proper precautions for those now, too.

And I will pray. A lot.

July 19, 2017 0

My Grandmother: 22 years after her death, she’s still guiding me

The sore bloomed like a rose, slightly left of center and fiery red, the day after my grandmother died — twenty-two years ago, this week. It arrived in direct contrast with the single, flawless white rose that bloomed outside her window the morning of her death.

Its origins were mysterious. I had not injured myself. A bug did not bite me. It wasn’t a rash. No doctors were ever able diagnose its cause – or the effects it produced — a general malaise, low-grade fever, extreme thirst, and the haunting feeling that something simply wasn’t right that lasted for months.

It wept in itchy, angry scales of grief, a physical manifestation of an internal pain. And when it finally shed all its sugared petals, it left behind the palest primrose scar.

For a while, I could easily see it, shimmering just beneath the surface, pulsing with the pain of her loss, but also telling me she was there, she was with me.

Somewhere in the last two decades, as I learned to cope with my life without her, it slipped under the surface. Went dormant and invisible. I would search for it sometimes, run my fingertips over its resting place. Especially on those days when I most wished she were there to hold my hand. My wedding day. The morning of our first IVF appointment. The day we brought our boys home from the NICU.

I miss the light, mothy touch of her fingers. I miss her reassurance and her love. I miss the holidays at her house. Seeing her settled into her plush, padded lazy boy nest, blowsy with blankets and pillows, eyes and mouth animated with story after hyperbolic story. Tall tales of horses and hogs and uncles and cousins. Histories I should’ve recorded. Should’ve written down.

I should’ve done something.

Especially when she got sick. When she gave up her nest for a hospital bed in the back bedroom. When her face turned sallow as parchment. When her hair came out in fuzzy tufts on her pillow. When the mothy touch of those fingers took to frantically pinching pleats in the bedsheets. When my cousin and I spoon fed her cream of wheat three times a day because it was all she would eat.

Until she wouldn’t. Until she told us she’d had enough of that infernal cream of shit.

Why didn’t I record them then? I’ve forgotten the major details of most of her stories. I’ve failed her.

The scar surfaced again this weekend. It swam back to me on the anniversary of its original appearance. It has to be a sign. And I believe in signs.

She’s made plenty of other appearances along the way, but it was always her scent that appeared. I would catch a whiff of her Tennessee scotch snuff and know she was there: in the elevator the day of our IVF transfer; in the centerpieces at our wedding (ok, I put her scent there on purpose, but she was there when she held back the rain – a halo of sun in the midst of a radar of storms); when Mike pushed my wheelchair through the halls of the hospital on our way to hold our boys for the first time. A sniff of snuff told me this is my path, this is my destiny. And it is beautiful.

Twenty-two years ago, this week, my grandmother made her way to heaven on the buoyant chords of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. My cousin Jenny and I knew it was time. We brought in the recorded piano music our cousin Teresa had given her years before and we pushed play. When the Canon came on, grandma quietly slid into the current and swam to the stars.

The doctors couldn’t diagnose the rose that bloomed on my chest over two decades ago this week. But e.e. cummings could. He diagnosed it in a prophetic poem in 1952:

Here is the deeper secret nobody knows

(the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

I carry [her] heart (I carry it in my heart)

And her heart has swum to the surface once more. She’s trying to tell me something. So I’m listening. I hope it’s her stories. I won’t fail her this time.

July 10, 2017 0

How to Potty Train Twin Boys (Lord, I Wish this Were an Instruction Manual)

But it’s not. It is a desperation outlet for a mama at her wit’s end. It has been a long and arduous journey, with no clear ending in sight.

Here we are, over halfway through my teacher’s summer, and I am failing miserably at the one and only assignment on my mama to-do list (or maybe I should call it my to-doo doo list): potty training my three-year old boys.

Now I don’t want to mislead you. One boy is nearly there. He is currently wearing Captain America underpants sixteen hours a day with zero recorded accidents. (And that includes two twelve-hour road trips to Michigan and back with only two pitstops.) Why, then, you might ask, do I say “nearly there?” Because going number two is hardly a number one priority for Parker. He will hold his feces for days just to avoid the whole messy situation. And then, just when you think his intestines will perforate he quietly asks, with a sheepish twinkle in his eye, for a diaper. The potty is out of the question. It’s either a diaper or an impacted colon. Those are the options he gives us.

Why, you might ask, is he never afraid to liquidate his holdings, but is positively terrified to make a solid deposit? Your question is my question. He won’t say. Or at least, he can’t. He can’t vocalize his fear. And the experts claim it is unequivocally fear. Fear of losing a part of himself. Or of falling into the giant porcelain abyss. Or whatever other crazy cause they come up with. After all, nothing about a three-year old’s thought process is logical. I just know the minute we give him a diaper he goes over to a private corner and bears down like he’s birthing a boulder. And generally, after days of holding out, he is.

So with regard to potty training my twin boys, I’m half way there. Just below 50%, which in a teacher’s grade book is failing big time.

But if I look at it in terms of baseball statistics, our summer is going well. Like really, really well. So I prefer to look at it this way. They are my boys and this is summer, so what better analogy to use than one involving the boys of summer? In this scenario, I’m batting slightly less than .500 (taking into consideration the whole pee vs poo ratio for the one boy). And while I’m certainly no sports analyst, and the balls I know more about are the shape of inflated pig’s bladders and slung by a fellow wearing shoulder pads rather than round ones slung by a guy on a mound chewing tobacco (the guy, not the mound), I do know enough to know that batting .500 for an entire season is a damn-near impossible feat. But so is training twin boys. So I tell myself that. To feel better about our current situation. And our current situation is… Yeah, I don’t even know what to call it.

We are striking out at every turn with our youngest – the control-freak, OCD wunderkind who has mastered an entire repertoire of Disney soundtracks and the phonetic alphabet. But he hasn’t mastered this. And we’ve tried every potty-training life-hack known to momkind.

First, we bought colorful and appealing superhero undies. We oohed and ahhed over their comfort and built-in superpowers. He was unimpressed. We had his brother model them. He was equally unimpressed. We forced him into them. (Unimpressed is not the word to use here.) We figured his perfectionist nature wouldn’t allow him to have an accident. We were so wrong. All we got out of the endeavor was piddle stains on our Persian rugs and strained nerves on every last one of us.

We tried letting him watch the rest of us go potty. He actually loves this scenario. He laughs at the bubbles we make in the toilet basin, especially brother and daddy, who have distance and hose pressure on their side. But that’s all we get. Laughs. We get laughs.

We tried stripping him naked — because apparently that’s a tactic that works for some folks. Alas, not us. He lay in the floor for what felt like forever, writhing in hysteria and begging for his diaper and Santa PJs. (Yes, it’s July. Christmas in July is a thing. Don’t you watch the shopping networks?) And in all honesty, I’ve tried replacing them with a more seasonal option, but that’s going about as well as our potty training forays.

We tried peeing in the grass in the backyard (Well, Parker and Dad have. I abstained). Boys are supposed to love this. To see it as liberating — some sort of connection with Neanderthal roots maybe? I have no idea. Anyway, daddy and brother modeled the behavior. Tate was uninspired.

We would try positive reinforcement, but there’s been nothing to praise of yet.

We even lowered ourselves to the point of pitting brother against brother – thinking the whole competition factor would kick in. Nobody wants to be a loser, right? Yeah, that didn’t work. Tate happily praises Parker for his numerous successes, running to bring him his reward without even trying to sneak a Skittle for himself. So that pretty much tells me we are at a stalemate here, folks.

A stalemate of mammoth proportions. Our situation is so dire that Tate will no longer voluntarily climb into a bathtub out of fear of that natural urge that hits when a body meets warm water. Loss of bladder control has become his worst nightmare. (I pray he wasn’t irreparably scarred by the whole tinkling superhero fiasco.)

We are living in a constant state of anxiety – and near-filth – these days. I sling him, as he climbs my torso like a frightened kitten, into the tub where I then I scrub him as fast as humanly possible, hitting all the major cracks and crevices, while he frantically whimpers: I’m gonna pee pee on myself! I’m gonna pee pee on myself!

Which prompts me to sweep him out of the tub and over to the pot, where there’s nary a whiz to be heard. Just his dad explaining, over and over, “Don’t play with it, just push it down. Don’t play with it, just push it down.” So that’s what he says, now, too. “Don’t play with it, just push it down.” All the while, though, our littlest midget is spinning his widget.

The situation is not healthy for any of us, and I really have no idea how to fix it. Like, at all. I’m at a total loss. I was lulled into a false sense of security after having the girls. They were successfully potty-trained before they were two. And of course, I’d always heard the rumors that boys are harder. And I’m here to tell you those aren’t rumors. Those are cold, hard case files from boy moms the world over. And I know I am generalizing here. I’ve heard tales of boys out there confidently flinging their diapers aside at 18 months, eager to pee like daddy, standing tall and showering the shrubs or bathroom tiles or family pets in willful abandon. But I am here to say I do not know any of them. There’s no evidentiary proof.

I figure I can look at my summer to-do list two ways. I’m either failing miserably, or I’m knocking it out of the park. As an eternal optimist, I’m going with the latter.

So in our household, my boys of summer are celebrating our season’s success with Skittles rewards for one guy and Disney tune showcases for the other. We are a team with diverse talents. And we are winning.

July 6, 2017 0

Call Me Crazy, Just Don’t Call me a Crazy Bitch: Why I Teach Feminism

A dear friend of mine just brought to my attention a scholarly article called, Hysteria, Witches, and The Wandering Uterus: A Brief History: or, Why I Teach ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ by Terri Kapsalis, a professor at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Among other things, Kapsalis discusses the Victorian diagnosis of hysteria – or the belief in a “wandering uterus” being the cause for basically any, and all, female physical ailments. If a patient was full of phlegm, or suffering from depression, or had a migraine — no matter what the issue — it was surmised that her wild and wanton womb had been creeping around where it didn’t belong again. Not kidding here.

And what, pray tell, was the reason it wandered? Why, it was hankering for a heaping helping of man juice, of course.

Of course. The God-designed purpose of the uterus. To receive man-seed and bring forth life. The only sure way to cure a “hysterical” woman was to keep her barefoot and pregnant. Jizz a day keeps the doctor away.

Such beliefs and diagnoses invalidated legitimate medical complaints of women from Ancient Egypt all the way up to the modern era. Everything was chalked up to hormones. And while diagnostic medicine has moved away from such ridiculous notions, public opinions about the psychological state of womanhood has not.

When we women get too big for our proverbial britches, when we become too intellectual, too political, too competitive, too driven, when we dare to do something beyond the roles society has deemed appropriate for our “kind” – you know, wives, mothers, maybe teachers or nurses – then we are seen as a threat. We are dangerous. So we are called deranged, out of control, hysterical.

And we are slammed right back into that whole wandering womb pigeon hole again. Obviously, we need to sip some more from that whole cult of domesticity Kool Aid again to get us back to our proper place – back on the path of the straight and narrow.

Look at Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, even Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Palin. They’ve all been called crazy bitches. Hysterical females. Because, as the article so wisely notes, “hysteria is a bipartisan weapon.” A powerful woman is a dangerous woman, no matter the party. I, myself, have been guilty of labeling a couple of these women with the same blasphemous insults that have been used against my favorites. It’s an easy trap to fall into. And every time I trip up, I empower the status quo.

And the status quo is white and male and always eager to see women fail. Sexism is a bullshit topic, according to them. Made up. And feminism is a dirty word.That’s definitely the mentality in certain branches of my family. And in certain corners of my classroom.

Not with AP students, at least not most of them. Most of them love to explore social and political movements. They find counter culture stimulating. They yearn for wider understanding than simply their daddy’s dictums, their pastor’s politics or their Uncle Johns’ world views. They long to balance and counterbalance their minds. To glean understanding from all walks of life. To broaden their understanding and to embrace empathy. They want to absorb, not only with their minds, but with their hearts and souls, too.

But in my general education classrooms, feminism receives eye-rolls. Books with female heroines get groans and barely touched assignments. We don’t want to read a book about a girl, they say. Sexism is imagined, they say. Glass ceilings are made up. Rape statistics are exaggerated. Sexual discrimination is the hashtag of the moment.

And as a teacher, I ask myself how in the world can I change such mindsets? Such opinions? Such blatant denials and refusals? Is it even possible to help someone overcome a prejudice they don’t believe exists? How do you help someone see when they refuse to open their eyes?

Now usually it is the white males in my classroom who refuse to explore the possibilities of inequality — of any kind, but especially sexism. But sometimes it’s the females, too. And that blows my mind even more.

But then, it also gives me hope. Hope that maybe these young women don’t understand that discrimination exists because maybe for them, it hasn’t. Because their fathers and grandfathers and churches haven’t preached weakness in women the way I had it preached to me. They didn’t grow up the way I did. And that gives me so much hope. Hope that the times, they are a changing.

But most of the young women in my classroom, they get it. They know the discrimination. Because they’ve seen it with their own eyes and they’ve felt it in their own skin – not necessarily in terms of business and politics, not yet. They are still young. But when we talk about their bodies, about body shaming and slut shaming and the shame that comes with sexual assault – the floodgates are opened. These girls have seen this. They know this.

And I know without a doubt that every single time I bring up that infamous 1-in-4 statistic, that someone in my class has been there. Odds are more than one someone in my class. These numbers, sadly, don’t lie. And as teenage girls soon to go off to college or careers or military service, my students are squarely in the demographic most at risk. They could become – or already have been – part of that statistic.

I know because I have received private notes from students who were victimized by family members, or by neighbors, or by so-called friends, or even by teachers. I have had students stay after class to say it aloud for the very first time. I have had students bravely tell their stories in class to everyone present. As a teacher, I have read about incidents of sexual abuse. I have heard about incidents of sexual abuse. And I have reported incidents of sexual abuse.

So, yes, even though the topic of feminism gets eye rolls and zeros in the grade book from students who refuse to learn about or acknowledge that sexism exists, I will continue to broach the subject. I will continue to present and discuss literature like “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Handmaid’s Tale. I will continue to wander off the path of the straight and white and narrow-minded. I do it because of those students who have been touched by sexism. And for those students who deny it exists. I do it for them, too. Call me crazy, but I believe I am helping empower women and eradicate sexism one book, one student, one semester at a time.

So go ahead, call me crazy. But don’t you dare call me a crazy bitch.

June 29, 2017 1

Why I’m Afraid of the Dark: True Southern Gothic

The summer solstice is here. That means summertime. Where the days are long and the nights are sticky. Pools and fireworks and barbecued weenies. Mermaid days. Firefly nights.

I love me some summer. Always have. As a teacher, I love them even more than ever. They are my chance to relax and recover. They are unbelievably important to my state of mind.

But I remember one summer way back when that totally wracked my state of mind. It was the summer that ended my childhood. It was the summer before my sixth-grade year. It was the summer I heard demons in my living room. It was the summer I learned we were moving to a giant metropolis and leaving my friends and fun and beloved frog pond far behind. It was the summer of my fall.

Up until then I’d been knobby-kneed, sun kissed, and barefoot. I had three sisters, a new baby brother, and more than a mild addiction to lime Kool Aid. I wore my hair long and tangled and crunchy with chlorine. I loved horses and roller skates and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I knew nothing about life but what my small little patch of Yoknapatawpha had taught me: kudzu and snake skins and sandy creek beds; frog ponds and field corn and honeysuckle vines. My own little Garden of Eden postage stamp.

My friends and I – a neighborhood pack of elementary school vagabonds — roamed the backroads and the brambles in search of the most perfect summer. And we damned near found it amidst a syrup of sweat and random scents: deadheaded marigolds, sunbaked magnolia blossoms, warm pine needles, maypops cracked wide open on hot asphalt, and truckloads of mosquito spray, which we rode our bikes behind like we were soaring through clouds in fighter jets. Those are the smells I remember from that summer. It was a summer full to the brim. Mosquitoes and memories multiplying under a speckled canopy of freckles and stars.

And then came the demons.

It wasn’t what you would think. It wasn’t howling and hissing and holy water sizzling on flesh. I saw that sort of thing later, in some Hollywood versions of possession. No, this to me was, and still is, far scarier. Because it happened. To me. In real life. And it was nothing like in the movies.

It happened in a run-of-the-mill southern den, amid a velveteen sofa, a couple of flame-stitched wingbacks, and a good many, good-intentioned, God-fearing people. There was a laying-on of hands, a cacophony of tongue-speaking… and hissing. I remember harsh, guttural hissings. Lots of repetitive phrases, lots of In the Name of the Lords and Get behind me, Satans.

This is not something your average eleven-year-old should be exposed to. Just saying.

It left me terrified of the dark to this day.

It happened in our living room during a cell meeting – the little home prayer groups that were sprouting up all around our neck of the southeast back then. Led by people dissatisfied with the ways of organized religion. Rather ironic, considering they organized their own, new brand of religion, which ended up leaving me terrified of any and all organized religion.

It was just a small gathering of people I’d grown up around. And they were there, in our living room, worshipping God in the way they thought best. Lots of singing, praying, lifting of hands, and speaking in tongues. I was used to it.

Until it took that turn. That devilish turn. I remember – or maybe I invented — a smile. The biggest smile you ever did see on the biggest, best man I ever knew. A great, big-bellied, big-hearted man with a great big watermelon smile. Only this smile wasn’t his smile. It was creepy and folded in. Like a jack-o-lantern two weeks too old.

As dozens of men surrounded the smile, and dozens of women prayed fervently, that smile broke my innocence. And I can never go back.

To this day, I can’t watch possession movies. I just can’t. Give me all the Criminal Minds and Law & Orders and Sherlocks you’ve got. I lap them up — my adult version of lime Kool-Aid. I am more than mildly addicted. But possession flicks? Nope. Not happening.

And whenever I wake at 3:00 AM – the witching hour, the devil’s hour — I shiver and slide over closer to my sleeping husband, terrified of the knowledge I absorbed way back then.

It can’t be undone. It can’t be dismissed.

Were the demons real? Who knows? I was told once that I was possessed, too. I was pretty sure I wasn’t. Still, it was scary as all get out to be told that. And to witness all that I witnessed. For there were far more exorcisms than just the one.

And this summer, I’ve been revisiting that time — working on a novel that integrates some of those same situations and the ensuing darkness that enveloped me.

It all began with a grinning demon. And it all ended with a damsel in distress.

It took her years to escape. She’s still working on it, actually.

June 21, 2017 0

What it Takes to Be a Football Family

It is mid-June. Summer hasn’t even officially begun– the solstice hits this week – but already the father of my children is helmet-deep in football camp and has been for nearly a month.

I am married to a high school football coach. My twin toddlers have a high school football coach for a dad. He is one heck of a father, one heck of a husband, and one heck of a coach. And as another season grinds its way into gear, I’ve been thinking a lot about how football and being a football family demand a lot of similar physical and emotional commitments.

Football, and being a football family, takes teamwork. And luckily, my husband and I make a damn good team. In his football job on game nights, my husband is up in the booth — away from the field, but very much in on the action. His daddy job at home is not that much different. He’s not on the field (football keeps him away from home most days until just before the boys’ bedtime and sometimes not even then), but he’s very much in on the action. He monitors, helps make adjustments, keeps me motivated, and provides endless emotional support. There’s no way I could run this program without him.

Football, and being a football family, takes hard work and dedication. The two of us have accentuated the importance of routine and fundamentals with our twins from the get-go. Nap times and dinner times and screen times and bedtimes are established and rarely vary. The boys know and understand our expectations, which provides me immeasurable advantage when I’m putting them through their paces alone at home during the season. They are disciplined and –for the most part – dedicated to the routine. But that doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong in an instant. Blitzes can still blindside me. Take downs can occur. Turnovers can and do happen. But discipline and vision can shift that momentum right back to the proper side again, just like in football.

Which brings me to how football, and being a football family, requires a solid game plan. Without one, your team will rarely be victorious. And even if you do have one in place, you won’t always get the W. Still, it is pure insanity to play ball without one. Since most of our family’s day-to-day offense is on this mama’s shoulders during season, our schemes must be solid and darn-near foolproof. I’ve come to rely on zone blocking and a solid running game. There’s no time for huddle (and no one around to huddle with even if there were time). Now most days, everything goes according to plan. But regardless of the amount of reps and hands-on instruction you’ve given, execution is rarely without flaws. Balls get dropped. Occasionally a player goes down. Penalties are accrued. Mama’s nerves get sacked. And that’s where my coaching husband and father to my children excels most.

I’m talking motivation, here. Because football, and being a football family, requires motivation. Twins can make life crazy. And when you’re going it alone for the vast majority of the season, you need both inner and outer motivation. With husband in my corner, I have the outside motivation covered. He knows how to give just the right pep talk to pull me back into the game, more energized and ready to succeed than before. But for those times when he’s not available for consult – those times when I have to get up, dust myself off and execute the game plan without anyone else around to bounce off ideas, I have to dig deep and rely on those hard-and-fast fundamentals. I have to trust the vision, to do what we do, run what we run, and believe in our teamwork and tenacity. We’ve tried to plan for every possible scenario, to account for every gap, and to have the flexibility to take what comes at us and roll with it.

Yes, football and being a football family requires physical demands and emotional commitments from everyone involved. And not everyone is cut out for it. There are so many lonely dinners and difficult bath times. There are so many rushed labor-day cookouts and daddy-less trick-or-treats. There are so many tears from kids who miss their daddies — and occasionally from mamas missing them too. Because there may not be crying in baseball, but believe me, there is crying in football. A lot of crying.

But most of those tears are the good kind. The happy kind. The proud kind. The kind you blink away as your boys run to the fence to give Daddy a kiss during summer practice. The kind that sting your eyes with pride as you and your boys rush the field for a hug and kiss after the game. The kind you shed after your husband reads you a text sent from a player who just secured a D-1 scholarship. The kind that run down your cheeks and off your chin after a championship run that ends in success.

The kind that unexpectedly well up when you think about how much you love your football husband, your football family, and your football life – your hard, hectic, wild and way-harder-than-you-ever-thought-possible football life.

June 19, 2017 0

The Seven Sisters: The Good, The Bad, and The Family

There’s a star cluster called the Pleiades — also known as the Seven Sisters — that has always intrigued me. Could be because family is so integral to who I am. And sisterhood. And the night sky… If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you understand these things.

Anyway, this past weekend was one of mythical proportions. It was filled with love, laughter, outlandish games, vodka sodas, wine tastings, bawdy tales, and seven women of similar genetics and vastly different personalities, whom I herein christen The Seven Sisters (Sadly, we were missing an eighth among us. If she’d been there, we would’ve rewritten legend.) Now we may not all be sisters, but we are all a sisterhood, and we are definitely family.

And I whole-heartedly believe in the restorative power of family; and for me, that means our sisterhood. Not because I am a man-hater. Far from it. But it’s because we are a family of women: strong, capable, salty, sanguine women.

You see, for a very long while, girls were the only gestational products in our ironically-named Peters clan. I grew up with a matriarchal grandmother, dozens of aunts and girl cousins, even loads of female pets. The guys (not counting the ones who married in) came along much later. Every male in the second (and even third) generation was born the baby of the family, so I (and my sisters and cousins) was raised in an estrogen-fueled ecosystem. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We are a dame gang — and damn glad of it, I might add. We are the bomb dot compadres of family. All our lives, we’ve laughed hysterically till we cried, and we’ve cried hysterically till we laughed. We know each other inside and out. The good, the bad, and the bawdy – especially the bawdy.

So this earthy Pleiades flew in from our respective spots in the universe and descended on Dallas using a birthday as an excuse for a mini reunion. We partied it up in grand style. We drank champagne; ate cake (three kinds); lounged by the pool; sucked helium out of latex balloons; crowded into cars like keystone cops; hunkered down in an office and yelled surprise; got hushed in a spa whirlpool for laughing too hard; snuck into wedding venues to ogle expensive floral arrangements; played crazy games involving vulgar phrases on our tongues, plastic speculums in our mouths, and ball sacks dangling between our ankles. We lost necklaces and pants and occasionally our tempers in the chaos. But mostly we laughed. Long and hard – fine characteristics for Peters.

Now we women can be catty. We can be snippy and selfish and hangry – Lord, can we get hangry! But we can also be supportive and nurturing and full of love and gratitude. This weekend, we seven sisters were all the afore-mentioned things. But mostly, we were supportive. We, nurtured, we loved… and we laughed. Boy, did we laugh.

And boy, did we need it. Laughter cuts through the hardness of life — the anger, resentment, jealousy, exhaustion, drudgery and darkness — all those heavy things we carry around with us that seem to collect like soot and dim our destiny. Next thing you know we’re coated and coalescing in a grimy mess of negative space.

But in our family laughter is never far away, always ready to rattle our ribcages and rinse our souls. It is the best and cheapest cleanser out there. And our dame gang is really good at it — especially the bawdy kind. We may be women, but we balk at being ladies.

It seems that this weekend our deepest belly laughs came in the form of dietary distress:

We laughed about a certain dairy and gluten allergy among us, that left all of us in an up close and personal haze of malodorous funk.

Then we jumped to the story of how a certain beloved someone in our crew once threw up in our hometown historic district – amongst the verbenas and verandahs — after consuming twelve too many White Russians. (I gest. It was only nine.)

Then the conversation took a darkish, (dungish, if you will) turn and brought us to that time when one-who-shall-remain-nameless left a trail of poo up a driveway and down an entryway like violently digested breadcrumbs in a Hansel and Gretel horror tale.

And then, right in keeping with our theme, I managed to wander into a restroom where I discovered, in the swankiest of five-star locales, a toilet splashed in frankly impossible places with diarrhea. It was a veritable Jackson Pollock marble and fecal matterpiece. We laughed about it till tears ran down our legs.

Yes, this weekend we shared some crazy shit (ahem), but we also shared some sacred secrets, too. Things near and dear to our hearts and our souls: priorities and pursuits; insecurities and angsts, triumphs and trials.

We were there for one another. We supported, counseled, distracted, and drank. (Some of us more than others.) And along the way we saw each other’s dark and blotchy and bitchy and brave sides. And we saw that they look pretty much like our own.

This weekend we shared it all. And we will continue to share it all. The good, the bad and the ugly. Because we are women, and we are family.

We are The Seven Sisters and that’s just kind of what we do.

P.S. We also discovered along the way that we’re all genetically modified fools for ugly hot guys – men who are not classically handsome, but good God almighty, are they sexy. Humphrey Bogart is the eternal king of Ugly Hot Guys, but several of us have placed Benedict Cumberbatch at a place of honor at his round table.

June 15, 2017 0

I Won’t Sit Still and Blog Pretty

One year ago, today, I published a blog for the first time. Yesterday, I was told I should be quiet for the first time (with regard to my blogging, anyway…)

Inevitably when I write about something hard – whether it’s the death of innocent children or the dearth of wisdom in the White House – someone disagrees. Someone challenges my voice.

And I know that’s the nature of communication. People will inevitably disagree with you. And they have that right. That doesn’t mean I still don’t have the right to explore my thoughts and opinions and to voice them.

I write this blog for myself. It is therapeutic. It is cathartic and healthy. It is a way for me to use my voice. Because there was a time – for a very long time, actually — when my voice was silent. It was too squashed and maimed to be used.

It took a long time to build up my vocal chords, so to speak. So much so, that now, when I say something that I feel is important and needs to be said – and it strikes chords or nerves in others — I don’t know how to react; how to respond. If it is acknowledgement, I feel embarrassment. I was taught to be a wallflower. To blend into the background.

And if it is a challenge, I shut down. My brain immediately crackles and hums with the static and white noise of learned ignorance. I was taught that my thoughts weren’t thoughts. They were emotions. I was a hormone-fueled woman driven by emotions; I was unbalanced. And because of that unbalance, I should just still and look pretty. Don’t stand up, don’t speak out, I was warned.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was famously silenced on the Senate floor this year. At her workplace, where she rolls up her sleeves with nineteen other women and eighty men who were elected to ensure that all of America’s diverse voices are heard. Ironic, don’t you think?

But Senator Warren doesn’t play nice when the patriarchy puffs its chest. She has fight in her. She breathes fire. And if they try to snuff it out, she just flares up somewhere else. So when they silenced her on the Senate floor, she took it outside. (Isn’t that what men do when they get pissed and want to fight? They take it outside? Isn’t that the euphemism?) Well, Elizabeth Warren got pissed, was determined to fight, and took it outside. She fought the establishment. She fought the patriarchy. Even when she was warned (as the majority leader so infamously stated), nevertheless, she persisted.

Today is my one year blogging anniversary and I, likewise, will persist. This blog helps me. It helps me process my opinions into words on a page. Words that help me stay the course and press forward. Words that help me work through my overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. And as I write out those words I edit and edit and edit. I am as careful and calculated as a baker. I sift and weigh and measure and adjust – until I’m confident that what I’m saying is what I truly want to say. What I truly believe. And that it is as palatable as I can possibly make it – even though I know it’s not going to suit everybody’s taste.

Now I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t bother me when someone criticizes. Nor will I say that it doesn’t feel good when people approve. It feels nice to have my opinions acknowledged. my passions and feelings accepted. (Yes, I voice those, too – because I have learned emotions do not make me a weak, hormonally-imbalanced woman; my emotions do not invalidate my opinions). But I do not blog for the “likes” or the comments, or to try to “go viral.” If that were the case, I would be failing miserably because I am a far cry from viral, let me tell you. I have no cult following – or really much of any following. But none of that matters to me.

What matters is that I have a voice. And I have the right for that voice to be heard. And I do my utmost not to offend people. I really do. (Remember that baker’s analogy?) I have been rash at times, though. I admit it. Particularly in the days following the election. Several of those blogs may have cost me a friendship or two. And I wish that were not the case.

But that still won’t change how I think, and why I think, and the fact that, yes — in spite of all attempts to program me otherwise — I think. And believe me, I think long and hard about what I’m going to say on my blog. Because voice is powerful stuff. We all know the pen is mightier than the sword. So I try really hard not to wound.

There’s a poem by Eavan Boland I love called, “It’s a Woman’s World.” It fights female stereotypes in many clever and determined ways. And it argues that “as far as history goes, [women] were never on the scene of the crime.” We’ve never held the sword. As a result, “no page scores the low music of our outrage.” Boland goes on to argue, however, that despite the attempts to conquer and control our tongues, we women are fire-eaters. Our mouths are burning plumes, and we will be heard.

Elizabeth Warren is certainly a fire eater, a flame thrower. She knows the fight will be hard. She admits “there’s going to be a lot that we will lose. But I guarantee, the one thing we will not lose, we will not lose our voices.”

I believe we all have been given gifts from God, gifts we are programmed from the depths of our genetic markers to use, regardless of our upbringings and hardships. I believe mine is my voice. And although mine is not necessarily an audible one, it is a voice meant to be heard. And I will project it through written word.

I will not lose my voice ever again.

June 6, 2017 0

Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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