For New Old Moms to Learn Old New Tricks
Posts by tag
While losing my already threadbare patience over Grace’s mourning the loss of an entire hand due to a hangnail, I can’t help wonder if she somehow caught hypochondria (My Hypochondriac, Myself) from me. Around age 6 I became convinced something was terribly wrong with me, despite what doctors and everyone else said. Undeterred, armed with stacks of Ladies Home Journal, People and Redbook, it was…
Do all mothers Gypsy-Curse their kids? My mother, who I miss thoroughly, Gypsy-Cursed me when I was a wee raging ball of eczema and dozens more inflated or imaginary medical symptoms. When I was seven, I’d routinely wake up at 4am, screaming from a charley horse, which if you are not a child or a hypochondriac, is a spasming calf muscle. ME: I HAVE POLIO!!!!!…
Hand-Foot-Mouth is about as literal an illness name as one can get. Imagine a world so literal that pregnancy is called ‘baby-in-belly’ or (less reliably, these days), ‘I-got-f$@ked’. I almost prefer the poetry of pneumonia to hand-foot-mouth disease. Alls I know is trick-or-treating with a little girl with a fever and mouth ulcers, in a cootie-ridden, strangely smelling Batman Returns costume, while telling all her…