Joys of Single Motherhood

I have a fabulous new job that I love. So fabulous that I feel as though I have been reborn. Or at least my career has been reborn. I get to do all the things I love and they pay me well. This was the life I had up until 2001, when I suppose things changed for the worse for many of us. Earlier this week I had the chance to visit the home office and "roost" for a few days. The purpose was to meet my co-workers in person and to get a better handle on a new process. Suddenly not only do I have a great job but I work for a great company and there are 15 different kinds of freshly ground coffee in the breakroom. I don't even drink coffee and I'm impressed. What's even better is the huge wall-sized cooler filled with chilled Diet Coke. I saw old-timers I'd worked with at other companies years before. They told me about their grown children and they politely held in check their Schadenfreude upon learning of my relative newborns--ages 8 and 11. Sometimes I swear

My mastectomy was performed on Friday, April 25 th . I got to Greenwich Hospital early for my 0700 curtain call so I sat for 15 minutes in the lobby marveling at how uncomfortable those lovely pale green love seats are. The first doctor I saw was my plastic surgeon "Keith". He used a purple Sharpie to draw guidelines for both breasts and some sort of midline . I think I remember both he and the "breast surgeon" initializing these markings but that might just be a weird hallucination. I did stress to him that lingerie is important to me and that any change in size that meant replacing my collection would be a big bummer. I came out of surgery in the late afternoon. I steadfastly avoided looking at any spot even near the site of the surgery. Anesthesia is a strange beast. For days I had flashes of memories--being fed soup, being fed some sort of strange frozen peach dessert, sipping ginger ale, and generally being out of it. On Sunday, I left the hospital

Spring is almost sprung and it struck me yesterday that as I get older the decision to have kids late in life has more apparent consequences. For instance, I am just about to the point where I will need reading glasses to cut Kid 2's fingernails. Also, I keep meeting my kids' friends' mothers and they look younger and younger. And blonder and blonder. Cest la vie. I just received a six page document via email outlining the remaining activities etc. planned for the 5th grade...the class going into Junior High. Boy, it's going to be a tough season for keeping tongue in cheek and dismay disguised. There are parties, trips, rehearsals, days off, half days, beach outings, free jewelry from Tiffany's (I made that one up)--all in all--an appalling display of much ado about not much. You'd think they'd all attained early admission to an Ivy League school upon graduation from high school. Instead, they're going to junior high. That's some achievement--they ma

My baby boy just turned 8. He still likes stuffed animals and Ben 10 but there are definitely more utterances and mannerisms that I associate with "real boys". For his recent birthday, he received "Destroy All Humans II" from his favorite uncle, a set of Doctor Who DVDs, some nice books and a so-called "Ugly Doll" which he immediately started taking to bed with him. But the "real boy" makes his presence known unexpectedly sometimes. The other day I asked him to do some small task. He replied "I have to do it a little bit later, I've got a date with a poop." I furrowed my brow and looked both shocked and puzzled simultaneously. "WHAT?" I asked. "I gotta go poop and it's going to take a while". "Gross! shrieked my daughter. I tended to agree with her. He seemed to think such a comment SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). I thought "TMI". Like a boy, he showers as infrequently as he can. He only

Balance, what's that? I believe that several months ago I was confused or happily unaware of the "balance" issues that overtake most women of a certain age. Well, I'm no longer confused. Now I'm in the thick of it. Most days I feel like either peanut butter or jelly oozing out of a sandwich with my mother on one side and my kids/day job/small business/ passive-aggressive ex-husband on the other. That's why they call it the "Sandwich Generation", one is squished between two sets of interests needing nearly constant attention. On a good day, the sandwich filling holds. These are the days when my mother does not call five or six times--usually just when the Boss is about to ask me for something--to say that she is lost-- again . The babysitter does not call at 3:15 to say that one kid or the other has not turned up at home and is there something I forgot to mention? Oops, there is often something I forgot to mention. This year my son has the same te

Like the male officemates that populate Cathy's workplace, I hate Valentine's Day. Doesn't every single woman over the age of 35? The best Valentine's dinner I ever had was with two female pals. We ate in a cozy vegetarian restaurant run by a lesbian couple and there wasn't one straight couple in the place that evening. It was a Hallmark holiday that we joyfully turned on its head. From my ten year marriage there is no memorable Valentine's Day dinner or gift. I do remember one dinner where we sat in silence as usual. Me hoping that perhaps he would say something--anything--even "pass the salt, please" . Meanwhile he thought about work--what he would say on Monday, how he would solve this problem or that, etc. Or at least I think that's what was going through his brain. Maybe he was lusting after the waiter but even that would have taken an imagination that he just doesn't have. I realized the other day as I was racing past a huge display of V

When I was pregnant with my son, people often exclaimed "oh, a boy and a girl-you're so lucky". Our daughter was two then and I hadn't really thought at all about how having a boy might be different. The "you're so lucky" comments rolled off my back. I knew that having a boy would be nice and perhaps different in some ways but of course with kids you never know until you're in the thick of it. My 7 year-old boy is headstrong. For example, the other morning at 3:05 I was awakened by a cat that wanted to take a bladder break outside. I got up and found most of the lights in the house on. Then I heard the television. I hurried down the stairs with the cat and found my son watching television--at 3 AM. "What are you doing? It's the middle of the night." I asked. "I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd watch cartoons." I said "Children don't watch TV in the middle of the night." And in reply he said "well, I

or Things Could Certainly Be Worse In my household, we have what we laughingly refer to as "the worst mother of the day/week/month". I guess we all feel like screw-ups in the Department of Mothering sometimes, but there are the occasional doozies that make one cringe. At least a little. For example, a week ago I received a new bottle of perfume in the mail that I'd ordered online. I was with my son when I opened it and he asked to smell the scent. I took off the cover and pushed the pump on the bottle and sprayed it right in his eyes. I was horrified and he was in pain. Fortunately, he was also laughing at the same time his eyes were tearing up. His eyes are fine and he likes the scent but I'm still shaking my head at my own carelessness. I forget to check the sprayer to see where the little hole was before I sprayed it. Duh. I gave myself the "Worst Mother of the Day" award for that one. There are always smaller lapses. We all have them. I'll forget the

I am about to become a member of the "sandwich generation"--women (usually daughters) who end up helping to care for elderly parents while still parenting their own kids. This brings me to the issue of balance. I used to be puzzled at magazine articles that talked about "achieving balance" with work, kids, and marriage. In retrospect the fact that my marriage seemed to need nothing at all indicated that it was worth nothing, but at the time it seemed a bonus. I had work and the kids and they didn't seem to need balancing. I was pretty much free to do as I pleased during the day. I had my small business, a great friend who loves retail as much as I do, and even a part-time pal who took care of all home repairs. Now that I work full-time, I get the whole "balance" issue. Trying to juggle my morning sciatica, my kids' daily adventure as they do or don't get ready for school, the cats, the lunches and now this new project with my mother is definite