For New Old Moms to Learn Old New Tricks
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Words cannot fully convey the embarrassment, shame and helplessness one feels when adoption lawyers, social workers and even one’s own mother urges one to ‘make black friends’. Of course, one does know black people and consider them friends, or friend-ish… and one has phone numbers and emails and Instagram and Twitter accounts to back this assertion up, but when one examines one’s soul, especially after…
Why does every teachable moment in my poor kid’s life begin with This Old Mom making a ginormous mistake? Either I’m not listening or listening while multi-tasking which is basically not listening or it’s impossible to understand what Grace is saying because her current stabs at English give her an accent that veers from Brooklyn to Boston to Creole- sometimes in the same word. One…
It’s the aisle I’ve never been in before. Actually it’s not even a whole aisle. Somewhere after the Do-Rags, one is suddenly intently staring at replacement wiper blades. Odd how abruptly Ethnic morphs into Automotive. I’m kneeling in the Ethnic Aisle because my mother cursed me, long ago. As a kid, I begged my mom to let my limp, fine hair grow long like the…
Life is easily divided up into who you are before kids and after. This was written long before my kid changed my life. Thank God she has no Bad Aunts. My sister went into labor early so I thought it best to get the hell out of Dodge, aka, suburban Connecticut. I was packed and ready to train it to JFK, but the nanny who…
Who knew that Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was written as a comic memoir? A quick visit to Amy Chua’s website reveals she wrote Tiger Mother as a self deprecating confessional of just how utterly she failed at raising her kids in the same strict, no-nonsense Chinese way her immigrant parents raised her. But when the book was released, something was lost in translation….
The first time I realized my father was old was when I made him a mixtape of my new favorite band, Sachal Jazz Ensemble. He skeptically eyed the thoughtfully curated tracks of this fascinating Pakistani collective playing Dave Brubek. He quietly tossed the CD on a table and told me no music created after 1965 is worth listening to. He actually believes he’s heard everything…
When the conversation in the car (why does all the serious shit-shat (before Grace it was chit-chat) always happen when I’m driving the car?) starts with- GRACE: No one in my school likes black. Everyone doesn’t like black. ME: (freaking out, eying my daughter in the rear view mirror, which makes me narrowly avoid t-boning a There-Will-Be-Blood-mustachioed-hipster-in-an-ombre ’93 Allante) What do you mean? What does…
This Old Mom rarely (if ever) feels like she’s figured out parenting (precisely when did parent become a verb?) — but for one night the taste of momhood was seriously super duper sweet. It was 9:00pm, I’d been trying to get her into bed for 2 hours and Grace’s attempts to stretch out her bedtime rivalled a Jerry Lewis telethon or hostage situation. I was…
#1 The Tickly Place (I realize these are dialogues more than monologues. Poetic license is a thing and I’m taking it.) Interior. The Benjamin Moore Dove Grey painted gender neutral bedroom of a 3.5 year old girl who hates dresses and loves cars. Tacky cars. Monster trucks and Mater and Lightning McQueen cars that I hide behind organically harvested wood toys made by lesbian woodworkers…
Been fuming over the Oscar Nomination bullshit and the resulting social media sandstorm. While waiting in Hollywood Urgent Care due to my head being about to explode, I made the mistake of reading Charlotte Rampling’s comments on the nomination backlash. Really, Charlotte? The uproar and boycott is ‘racist to white people’? (Cue a freaked out publicist maniacally drafting Rampling’s “I was misinterpreted, misinformed, mis-medicated and/or…