Adventures In Motherhood

The anticipation has been killing me. My husband's been oversharing all summer.  First, the appointment was scheduled in June. Then it was abruptly moved to August. Then, just this week, I spotted it on the wall calendar. As if he'd forget! It's been the subject of dinner table conversations all month.  The dreaded colonoscopy. You'd think my husband was preparing to give birth.  To triplets.  Which is exactly why men do not birth children. Quite frankly, if that were the case, we'd only have one daughter. If he actually went through with the labor.  "I don't think you should schedule anything all weekend," he said, as I penciled in a brewery date with friends this Saturday. "I'll still be recovering." "Are you serious?" I couldn't tell if he was joking. "Bruh, it's a 5-minute nap—the best nap you'll ever have—and you'll be biking to work that afternoon."  He winced. Honest to God, pain seared into his ...

  I wrote a travel memoir and have landed a Pacific Northwest publisher! Happy tears. I did it.    Quite possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done—besides parenting four children and getting that job at the CIA. I’m living proof that lifelong dreams do come true when you refuse to give up and never stop believing in yourself! Thank you to everyone who has shared in this journey, cheered me on, read my words, and believed in this book. Now, let’s make it a bestseller.  Grief, Grace, and Garlic Naan is coming to a bookstore near you this spring

The anniversary of my late father’s death hit me differently this year. I credit Ali and a sound bath in India two years ago for rewriting the grief narrative in my head that played on repeat year after year. ****** I spotted the shop’s wooden sign: Alibaba Arts , tucked just around the corner from our hotel, and found myself barefoot, stepping into a large metal bowl as if this were the most natural thing a 51-year-old mother of four could do halfway around the world with a total stranger. I had to trust the moment, and the odd, magnetic force that pulled me into Ali’s shop. I stood still, eyes closed, as Ali banged the brass-looking bowl with a cloth-covered mallet—ten, twenty times, without pause. I could sense him moving around me as the vibrations rose from my feet, up through my legs, my chest, my teeth. In his other hand, he held a smaller bowl, which he tapped as he circled it around my head. Tapping alternated between the bowl beneath me and the one above, the sound shifting f...

It happened, and I couldn’t stop it. That sinking feeling that drops your heart into your stomach. I knew it was coming, and I thought I was better prepared this time. C’mon, he’s kid number four, and I should be rejoicing. This time he didn’t screw up. He passed with better scores than any of the other five of us. Or at least that’s what he claimed, and I believed him. For once. He drives safer than any of my other three kids, one of whom landed a $200 speeding ticket in March. Natural consequences for the win. Our first backed into a Prius at 5 mph on Father’s Day and totaled it. But I digress...#adventuresinmotherhood. This newly minted driver has now tasted freedom. “You just earned some control and freedom,” I reminded him on the way home after passing his driving test. As the last of four children, he’s been begging for control since he was 6 or 7. (Inserted in case any of them read this. 6-7 😂) He was only docked three points on the driving exam. To think they allow up to twent...