As a mom, especially a homeschool mom, some days are good – you get everything on your list crossed off and you feel like THE GODDAM QUEEN OF THE WORLD. Other days your child says NO to everyfuckingthing and you push and push and push until any possibility of enjoyment – much less learning – […]
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“Mommy, I’m a big boy now. I can take a bath by myself,” my eight-year-old son says as he slingshots his Batman underwear into the hamper and dumps a bin of Lego into the tub. I wish I could say out loud — explain to him like I would to a reasonable adult — why this is […]
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It’s mid-July and the thermostat in my teaching trailer reads 85 degrees. Everything I am wearing—skirt, summer camp t-shirt, faded red espadrilles hiding unpainted toenails—is sticking to me and I haven’t even started teaching yet. I need to make a playlist. One that says, “I’m the cool new music teacher.” I lean over to open iTunes […]
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Sometimes . . . I hate being a mother. And, I wonder if I am really cut out for it. What you just read—that confession—has been sitting in my drafts folder since March 2014. And now that I’ve said it, the urge to backspace and instead tell a fluffy little story about how much I […]
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Can we please STOP USING the words “gay lifestyle?”
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My Black son got a black hoodie for his birthday. When he took it out of the Batman gift bag, I felt a shiver creep up my spine. The white relative who gave it to him probably didn’t spend any time thinking about what it means to give a Black person a black hoodie. *** […]
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Dear Son, What I’m going to tell you is going to make you uncomfortable, but you’re a teenager now and I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. I have lain on my back staring at the swirls on a lampshade trying to figure out what I did to deserve being pinned down, sweated on, and […]
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Just as I began dragging the plastic razor up my left thigh, I felt the hot water turn from warm to cool to cold. Shaving with goosebumps is a form of torture no one should have to endure, but I had to get it done, because I was already late getting my kid to his […]
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“You better do your job, Timothy,” said Isabella. “The libarry looks fine to me,” he said, pushing his blonde bangs out of his face. “It’s library, not libarry,” said Isabella. “You have to put away all the books or you won’t get paid.” Timothy looked at the books scattered around the floor and then back at […]
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Dear Birth Father of my adopted son, You don’t know me and you don’t know you have a son, so this letter is the equivalent of a tree falling in an uninhabited forest. I can accept the law of physics that says the delicate ferns reclining in the shade, ripe huckleberries clustering indiscreetly, and hopeful seedlings […]
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Pryvate Parts 