Author of the novel WHEN YOU LOSE CONTROL

At Sacred Heart, we were taught to obey. The cruel and frumpy teachers loved to remind us of the fifth commandment, honor thy mother and thy father. They told us frequently that this extended to teachers as well. If we wanted to really be godly, this fact should apply to all adults. What could ever possibly go wrong giving that advice to children? When we walked down the hallways, it was to be in a silent and impeccably straight line. When we were told to be quiet, we were to silence ourselves immediately. When teachers told us to do something, we were to do it. Or else.  One afternoon towards the end of first grade, we had a special afternoon planned; the teacher we would have next year for second grade, Mrs. Edwards, was going to come and get to know us for a class period. To be continued... 

So much work for one strawberry milkshake. A drive in the rain, elbowing past multiple Door Dash people, and then the wait. The wait of epic proportions.  In a small and sleepy city ('city') in a mostly empty restaurant in the middle of the week, you'd think walking up to the ice cream window and grabbing a milkshake would take, like, five minutes, tops. Nope. There was no one at the window. A DD called out to an employee, asking if an order was ready. The DD was met with a barking, "HUH!?" and not much else.  A bunch of employees lingered in the background, sweeping in pointless tandem. There was no one at the window. More DDs arrived. The claw machine game let out a somewhat dismal calliope every few minutes. More Door Dashers. More wait time. A pink sea lion wearing a Pier 39 sweatshirt nestled in the middle of the claw machine, peeking out and looking like it, too, wanted to escape.  No customer service. More rain. An employee came over and promised to be with...

Things once tedious,  getting caught in the rain,  grocery shopping,  making meals,  could be fun or happy. 

I thought I'd take the kids to the pool. "Haha," said the rain, "You are a fool!" "We want the trampoline park or arcade!" screeched little voices.  Oh, good god, such noisy choices. We made our way to Fun and Games down the street. Oh, the headache I was to meet. For after Space Invaders and Dino Blaster, was the hurdle I was not to master.  I cannot say this too profounder,  there's the beast, the friggen cash-in counter.  Heaps of prizes to delight each child; but with low ticket numbers, you can't go wild. "Jackson, you have forty-five tickets."  No understanding, only crickets. "What about the giant bear?" he asked, pointing toward it. "Jackson, no, you can't afford it." "Okay," he said, not understanding.  "I'll take that toy boat," was his demanding. "Forty-five tickets is all you have; maybe pick some candy." Oh, how I wished I had Tylenol handy! What felt like hours la...

Most people call my grandmother Miss Pat. I call her Cranky P. She's been miserable as long as I've known her. No one can huff the way she does.  She sighs at a losing lottery ticket. She grunts when she climbs the attic stairs. She groans when she walks down her creaky hallway. When the Red Sox lose, they earn a gruff "UH -huh ," and her tiny remote slams to the coffee table. When things don't go her way, she sputters, "WELL!" and tightens her folded arms. She pronounces the word days as deez, and her stories always begin, "So I sez to Lynda..." Cranky P is a myriad of unsmiling sounds, but none are family legend like her resounding, wall-shaking,  "RIGHT, RALPH!" Which was directed a hundred times a day at her husband.  She was married to Ralph for over fifty years, And I think she hated him as long as I've known her.

It's so simple, really.  I took the kids that I nanny to the library to sign them up for the summer reading program, thrilled that both have a love of reading and honored to foster the joy of reading.  The way their program works is the child gets rewarded for time spent reading. To mark this, you get to put different beads onto a necklace. The beads represent units of time, and each bead gets bigger and better with each increment. The 15-minute beads are small and basic; the 4-hour beads are large and animal shaped, etc.  I took this to mean, for example, you could choose 4, 15-minute beads or 1, 1-hour bead, and that was that. However, the librarian explained to the kids that if they decided they wanted to trade in, say, 4 small beads for the one-hour bead, that was fine. All summer long, they could trade beads as their minds and tastes changed.  As this trivial information hit me, I reflexively flinched, thinking about how this whole scenario would have gone in my...

Due to some epic traveling, this blog will be suspended for about two weeks.