Adventure Mom

It’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m naked, save for underwear, lying beneath a clean-smelling bath sheet, knees slightly elevated above a rolled towel. I shut my eyes to block the outside world, to abide in bliss’s bubble as completely as possible. The occasional sound of an airplane outside fills my ears. Inside, Dido sings  Here With Me   from a CD player. But mostly, my head resonates and buzzes – vibrating with comfort and joy.   My friend, Louise runs her business (called Divine MassageTherapy), from a purpose-built room in the bottom level of her home. She rakes long, strong fingers through my hair, from the crown of my head to the nape of my neck. This sends squiggles of pleasure swimming down my neck, through my torso, along my legs, to my toe-tips. It’s like the kindest, gentlest electrocution you can imagine: my head is the current’s entry point; my feet provide the exit. Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop… This is my massage mantra. And Louise gives great massag

Last Friday Night I’m standing in the kitchen on a Friday night, pulling peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies from the oven, when Pete walks in. “Hey, Babe,” he says. “Oh, smells good in here.” The combination of peanut butter, chocolate and the lingering scent of tomato sauce and pesto from homemade pizza makes our house smell like love. The scents dull my disappointment over our cancelled date: the PAHT-nah and I are supposed to be in town, feasting on Asian food. Pete called earlier in the afternoon, saying his boss wasn’t flying out until seven that night, so he’d be home late. Damn. We need a night away from the kids. We need to talk. We need to eat a good meal we neither have to cook nor clean up. “How was work?” I ask, even though I could recite the answer myself: “Full-on; hardly a moment’s break; they’re asking for ten impossible things before noon…” Instead, Pete tells me the day wasn’t half-bad; he had a beer with the boss after work.  He goes upst

                       Bother to Write I spoke to a university journalism class in the States today. It was a Skype call; a presentation I’d prepared about the importance of good writing skills for a journalism career. For any career. I went through the standard spiel about using active voice, metaphor, being correct, complete, careful and clever. I threw in quotes from some of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott and Bob Dotson (who says success [in the news business] “does not depend on being dealt a good hand. It’s playing a bad hand well, over and over again”). But only towards the end of the talk did I touch on what for me, is the heart of the matter.  Good journalistic writing is about more than not pissing off or confusing your audience; It’s about connecting people to their neighbors and helping them feel more informed. Personal essay (for me, in the guise of this blog) connects me with other fractured humans; friends and strangers willing to share joy and empathize wi

Monster in the Closet/Where the Wild Things Aren’t A monster might emerge from the closet. The monster might eat me. I don’t want the monster to get me. Oh, look, the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine has an article about a TV presenter I don’t know. I’ll read this story so I won’t think about the monster in the closet.  It says here Simon Barnett and his lovely wife have four daughters. They’ve been married twenty years… Is the monster coming? Is the monster going to eat me? AND GNASHED THEIR TERRIBLE TEETH… Simon says (hey, that’s like the children’s game…) there’s no manual for the two most important things you can do in life – get married and have children. Oh, that’s true. He reads books about relationships. Really? A guy does that? I just finished reading the Five Love Languages and thought its ideas were logical and doable. We invest more hours researching houses or cars than we do before supercolliding our life with someone else’s. Or procreating…

Free Salmon and Hairy Legs I’m scared to write this blog post. Scared to write about cancer.  Scared I’ll say the wrong thing, say too much, or fail to paint the picture of my week with my sister-in-law, Stephanie. Mostly, our time in Olympia, Washington was ordinary. Feed-the-dog, load-the-dishwasher and cajole- the-nine-year-old-to-bed ordinary. Watch ‘Impractical Jokers’ on TV ordinary (though some of those jokes are seventh-grade genius – salami down the pants, then back to the customer? Ha!) Mostly, our minutes and hours consisted of gloriously ordinary family routines. Diagnosis  Here’s what’s not ordinary: Steph, who just turned 47, was diagnosed in late May with grade IV glioblastoma. Three malignant tumors have infiltrated the right side of her brain, compressing and pushing healthy tissue to the left side of her head. According to Wikipedia, glioblastoma "is the most common and most aggressive malignant primary brain tumor in humans...Median surviva

Just Go July 15, 2013 I’m sitting in the international departures area at the Auckland airport, on my way back to the States. It’s not that I’m homesick –  in fact, I need more time to settle into the new country before returning to the old. But life splats across our windshields in strange, messy ways, leaving trails of moth wings and smudges of mosquito blood on a surface that grows grottier each day. Somehow, through the mess, you see the sign pointing home.   The reason for the return this time is family.  Sean’s sister, Stephanie –a major support for me while Sean was sick – is herself experiencing crisis. In late May, after crushing headaches and an episode where she didn’t recognize her hand as her own, she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Glioblastoma, stage three or four. Her husband, John, set up a Facebook page called Steph’s Army and suggested we google the diagnosis to read the average prognosis. Anything measuring average life expectancy in months

Teacher Conference Fake it 'Til you Feel it It started with mid-year school reports. One of my children’s Discussion Guides describes ‘a capable and confident class member’ who completes class work with speed, reads and performs math at the top of the national standards graph, whose writing lands squarely in the middle of the gray shaded box. The other report shows a child reading near the bottom of the standards; writing below the standard and performing math well below the national standard. This child, according to the teacher, ‘often needs to be encouraged to contribute.’ If you know anything about my kids, you might think the first report is Fiona’s and the second is Finley’s. Nope.  For the first time, my first-born - my compliant, book-loving daughter, is pegged as struggling student.  Finley, however, is excelling in his Year Three class, although his teacher says he needs to pay closer attention to instructions and listen, instead of figuring he