Thursday, November 23, 2023
Thanksgiving for one
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Thanks, Mom, for teaching me to be "crunchy"

Tuesday, February 14, 2023
Disposing of the sharps
Monday, January 24, 2022
Frayed and coming apart at the seams
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Mothering never ends
"You don’t want it to end because the day it does, you’re underground,” is more wisdom from my mechanic (and former neighbor).
I was explaining why I was making the executive decision to go ahead and have some work done on my son's car (including a new starter) now rather than “roll the dice” and wait a year or two.
My son, aged
20, just embarked on his trip back to college, 1200 miles away, with his
youngest brother.
My older two
made the trip together last year and shared the driving. This year, my youngest
will make the trip to keep his brother company.
Because of
the travel restrictions and COVID testing required both for my oldest to go to
school and for anyone traveling back to our home state, things are complicated.
My middle son can’t afford the time away or a possible two-week quarantine upon
his return. He could get a COVID test, but by time it takes schedule it and then
get the results, could be almost as long as the quarantine.
My mechanic
said that the starter might last a year, but then again, “you wouldn’t want it
to give out when they’re halfway to Florida.”
And that was
when all the mothering kicked in and I said, “I know he’s 20, but I’m still his
mom and I can’t help but worry with the pandemic at all…”
I’m not only
worried about my son making the drive (his original plan was to drive straight
through, but now he’s got a stop planned), but I’m also worried about him
living off campus in an apartment with two grad students. (Will he get his
housing grant back when he returns to campus next year, which is a requirement
of his school, which was only relaxed this year because of the pandemic?). I worry
that COVID-19 will continue to run rampant in Florida. (What if he gets sick?)
I worry that his school will shut down again, which also means he’ll be out of
a job since he works on campus. (I already worry enough about financial matters
with two kids in college.)
Then I also
worry about my youngest, a rising sophomore, hanging around with much older
people for a week. (I’m not so worried about him flying back since I was able
to secure a direct flight.) Then he’ll have to either quarantine or get a COVID
test, which doesn’t seem to be that easy or affordable. If I am not careful, my
worrying snowballs until I feel like I am buried under an avalanche of it. I
have never worried so much in my life or had so much anxiety to the point of
breathing difficulties. My fitness tracker notifies me frequently that I am
stressed and asks, “Breathe with me?”
…I happen to
know that my mechanic’s mom is still very much involved with his day-to-day
life: she is responsible for the décor in the front office of his shop. She has
a candy dish and seasonal decorations and arranges the magazines artfully in
the waiting area. She does his bookkeeping.
I pointed
this out to him. “I guess you’re right, given how involved your mom is with
everything here…”
He said, “Yep,
that’s how I know!”
Mothering
apparently doesn’t end just because your kids have grown up.
I imagine I will
be mothering my kids in some way until the day I die, and maybe even beyond. Much
of my mother’s wisdom and guidance still guides me, though she passed away more
than a decade ago.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Glee club
Someone in my writer’s group suggested we listen to “Oh Happy Day” every day to keep things
in perspective; to keep a positive attitude.
Times are hard between the pandemic and the current political climate, but they could be worse. Things could always be worse.
I listened to the song that day and then remembered a three-CD gospel choir set I had, which I unearthed and put in the car. Not only did I listen to “Oh Happy Day” (uplifting), but also to “Nobody Knows, Nobody Cares” (same idea as “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” – and they don’t really need to), “His Eye is on the Sparrow” (I’m not alone), and “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” (obscure words but super-catchy song). These are the gospel versions of these songs, not the hymnal versions (if these songs even exist in the hymnals of any church I ever went to, and I am not sure that they do). It reminded me how much I LIKE gospel music, or “spirituals,” which have uplifting musical messages.
Then I remembered Glee Club.
When I was in second grade at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Providence, Rhode Island, one day I was plucked out of class and brought to the auditorium for Glee Club. I don’t remember signing up for this or why anyone thought I should sing. I guess it was a privilege? I was studious and an advanced reader so maybe I didn’t need to spend as much time in class? I don’t know. (I do remember taking extra workbooks home for my brother and me and writing potty words to fill in blanks, like nonsense mad-libs. We cracked ourselves up and no doubt drove our mother nuts, but that is a story for another day.)
We had moved to a first-floor apartment in a triple-decker in Providence after living in a 3,000-plus square foot single-family home in Newport, off Bellevue Avenue when my parents divorced (because my mom thought she needed to go back to college to finish her degree at University of Rhode Island and probably other reasons that I can only surmise because I was only just turning seven when we moved).
It was devastating, to say the least. We were plunged into poverty. I used to get free hot lunch back in the day when everyone knew you got free hot lunch because they’d call you to the office to get your free lunch token.
As I recall, Glee Club was a bunch of kids singing happy songs at the tops of their lungs – like loud and joyfully. It was not at all like the chorus that my kids experienced in elementary (and middle school, for the one who didn’t pick up an instrument to escape chorus) where many of the kids mumble or even mouth the words, and God forbid should they emote at all in any way, though there were the occasional outliers and the elementary school my kids attended had a pretty good music program.
It was Glee Club where I learned about spirituals. We sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Down by the Riverside” and something about Mary and Martha that I can’t remember.
I realize today that these are religious songs. I don’t think there’s any way these songs would fly in a public elementary school nowadays. (And because I grew up Unitarian, I likely would not have heard them.)
My kids said the Pledge of Allegiance and at least one of them stepped out into the hallway after morning message to sing patriotic songs, which included, “God Bless America” and yes, this was within the past 10 years. But blatantly religious songs like the ones we sang in Glee Club would not be politically correct today. I imagine perhaps they were touted as American folksongs, which they are. And if it weren’t for “Down by the Riverside,” I would not have a ready example to teach my sons about the correct use of “lay” vs. “lie.”
(“Basically, boys, it’s lie, lie, lie. Never say ‘lay’ unless you’re going to lay down your sword and shield. You can lie down to take a nap, and you lay your head on the pillow.”)
It has been during the pandemic and the current political climate that I have really been missing church.
There are many reasons we’re not currently going: our pastor retired and it’s just not the same, hockey and roller derby are on Sundays, and then there’s the pandemic itself. No one is congregating.
I’m thinking when it’s time to go back, I am going to find a church with a “glee club.”
Friday, April 10, 2020
Holing up

Thanksgiving for one
Thanksgiving hasn't been my favorite holiday since my mother passed away at this time of year 15 years ago. Although I tried to carry on...

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Here's a remember-when from four years ago when times were a little simpler. (Today, both of my boys are in college, but both have been...
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I wrote on social media that I would be honoring my late mother on her birthday by eating tofu and sprouts (that I had cooked and grown m...
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I finally got rid of the sharps that had been sitting in my garage for how long? Six years? I had them because I used to have a ...