Women's Circle

Hi Mom,

It's Jennifer, again. I went to a women's circle last night. This was the first time I've ever been to a women's circle. We all got to speak about ourselves and I talked about how sad I am that you're not here.

I'm sad that we didn't really know each other and couldn't be friends. I wanted to talk to you Mom, but I don't think you really understood me. Maybe you thought I was a weak person, not fierce like you. I think it takes a strong person to be vulnerable in front of other people, and I can do that, Mom. I cried in front of a group of women I didn't know, and we all held hands and supported each other. I don't think you could have done that, Mom. I'm stronger than you think.

I wish you were at the women's circle with me, Mom. I guess you were there, in spirit. The leader said your name when we joined hands, to honor you. I hope you were listening. Just know that I want to be your friend.

Love,

Jennifer

Letter to my Dead Mother

Dear Mom,

I'm making cranberry sauce today. It's Sunday morning, and I also made pumpkin muffins with Dylan. It's November, it's getting close to Thanksgiving. Remember, we used to make cranberry sauce together? I loved sipping the hot, sweet cranberries, mixed with water and sugar, as it was cooking. I tasted the hot cranberry juice today, and I was thinking about you. I'm going to make pumpkin pie this year with Dylan. I've never made pumpkin pie before. I hope it comes out okay.

We're going to have a quiet Thanksgiving this year, just the four of us. Remember how much fun we used to have on Thanksgiving? We used to help you make the apple pie and the stuffing, and always pick at the stuffing. You made the best Thanksgiving food, Mom.

I started a new job this year. It's really busy. I wish I could talk to you about it. I'm sure you would be proud of me, being a working mom, just like you were. I don't know how you juggled raising the three of us, and working full time. I'm having a hard time, Mom. But don't worry, Wendy is helping me, she's giving me advice.

It was Halloween Friday night. The kids had fun. Dylan dressed as the man with three arms, he had a fake arm in his pocket and his real arm went through the middle of his jacket. Summer was a furry gray mouse, and she was really cute. She loved trick-or-treating this year. Remember we used to hide the candy in the sideboard in our hallway, and secretly start eating the candy out of the bag before Halloween?

I miss you, Mom. I hope you're not too cold out there. I wish I could bring you a nice warm blanket. I love you, Mom.

Love,

Jennifer

Confessions of a Secret Sprinkle Eater

My sister Wendy and I have food allergies. We are both allergic to wheat, dairy and sugar. It's difficult to avoid these foods, so of course, we cheat sometimes.

Last night on the telephone, Wendy and I admitted we fell off the wagon. "I ate sprinkles for dinner the other night," I said. Wendy had never eaten sprinkles for dinner, but she encouraged me to continue my confession. "I drank a whole bottle of maple syrup once, and I felt stoned. I had to immediately go to bed."

Wendy admitted to drinking the same fluid, straight from a maple leave-shaped metal tin. A few days later when her husband was looking for it, Wendy pretended not to know what happened to the decorative container.

"I ate a whole bag of marshmallows the other night, and I toasted them over the stove and got melted marshmallows in my hair," I boasted. Now we were proud of our sins, like two bragging drug addicts.

"I squirted a whole tube of icing in my mouth," Wendy said gleefully. "Me, too," I said.

But the ultimate, most delicious and sinful item we'd both eaten within the last seven days was cookie dough. Our bodies react so violently to this perfect food, that we can only eat the very smallest amounts of the heavenly nectar.

I wish all food didn't exist and I could just live on cookie dough. In my dreams.

Pot Mitzvah

I'm at my niece's bat mitzvah in Portland, Oregon. She is a poised, popular, giggly girl. My sister and brother-in-law said she was born laughing, and that's true. Her mission in life is to have fun.

I remember my bat mitzvah in 1977. I wasn't as confident as my niece Samantha. I was shy, a little bit awkward, and just becoming interested in boys. I had braces, just like Samantha, or Sam, as her friends call her. I loved studying Hebrew with the cantor, a chubby man with swollen fingers resembling sausages.

My mother had a nervous breakdown right before my bat mitzvah. She was briefly hospitalized at Morristown Memorial Hospital's psychiatric unit. This wouldn't be the first time a family member stayed there. She was spouting jibberish, and couldn't take care of herself or her kids. My sister Wanda and Lolli ended up doing a lot of the bat mitzvah planning.

Wanda had a little business going at the time as a pot dealer. She gave me a half ounce for a bat mitzvah gift. It was the best gift I received, and I proclaimed this to some friends one day in a marijuana-induced stupor. "Hey, my sister got me a half ounce for my pot mitzvah." I thought this was hysterically funny, but my friends just stared at me. They didn't get it.

Well, times have changed. There was no pot smoking going on at Sam's bat mitzvah, although there was definitely some dry humping happening on the dance floor. Wanda and Mark are involved parents and fully aware of the trouble teenage girls can get into. They open Sam's e-mail, and follow her around when she hangs out with her friends. I used to think they were over protective, but now I know they have their eyes open to what's really going on - girls creating fake My Space pages for parents to read, and another one with body part photos; Halloween parties where girls show up as Victoria Secret models.

Maybe times haven't changed that much after all.

The Nose Knows

My nose has caused trouble for me my entire life. As a young Jewish girl growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, I was teased for having a big nose. John Cepparulo used to ask me, "Is that your nose or are you eating a banana?" I never did answer his question, but it occurs to me now, that as a young Italian boy, he also had a big nose. Perhaps that's why he noticed my prominent shnozz.

As I got older, my nose developed a large bump and wide nostrils. Not too attractive. I decided to forgo a high school trip to Israel in favor of a nose job. A great gift for a nice Jewish girl. I flaunted my bandages and black eyes and even have a picture of my bruised face, flipping the finger to the camera.

After getting a nose job, you never quite regain feeling inside your nose. I have to do booger checks quite often with a tiny hand mirror I keep in my purse.

As I get older the pores on my nose are getting large and dark. Gross. I didn't really notice this until I was on T.V. Kevin was working for The Geraldo Rivera Show and I was in a reenactment about a woman who allegedly killed her boyfriend, and then called a radio station to brag about it. There were a few close ups of my face talking on my cell phone and I was horrified to see my disgusting pores magnified on television!

I had also developed a small red spot right on the end of my nose after years of sun exposure. It looked like a zit, but it wasn't. I used to cover it with makeup, but decided after years of carrying around this tiny dot, to have a dermatologist look at it. On the day Kevin planned to have a release party for his new book, the doctor sliced off the end of my nose and put a circular band-aid on the end of it. I was horrified! I had to go to a party with all of Kevin's friends with a band-aid on the end of my nose? I tried about five different shapes and sizes of band-aids, and finally settled on a flesh colored rectangular bandage. Luckily, my sister-in-law Lola photo shopped it out of the pictures from that night.

Now I have an infection in my nose. My entire nose is swollen, red and painful. It's bleeding and oozing and even my doctor doesn't really know what's wrong with me. My nose is a pain in the ass! Some days I wish my most prominent feature would just disappear.

Cruise to Nowhere

I went to a 50th birthday party on a boat yesterday. Kevin's cousin Andrea turned 50, and her husband Gerry threw her a surprise party on a small cruising boat. It was a chilly, gray day and the boat was covered in red and white striped plastic sheeting. It didn't protect the passengers much from the wind, but despite the fact that everyone was freezing, we all had a good time.

We don't see Andrea and Gerry much, probably once every few years. They haven't even met my daughter Esther. Kevin and Andrea were very close growing up, so we show up to their parties when we're invited.

Andrea and Gerry's old friends were there - girls from the neighborhood, old work friends, cousins and sisters. They were all outer boroughs people, mostly from Whitestone, Queens, where Kevin and Andrea grew up.

I opened a bottle of white wine, and sipped from a pink plastic cup. I was getting a nice buzz and joking around with one guy who worked in the garment center in Manhattan. He is selling Yo Gabba Gabba clothing for children, from a kid's TV show featuring a green striped creature that looks like a hairy pickle, according to my three-year-old daughter Esther. His wife, Dana, laughed about one creature that looked like a "nubby dildo."

One passenger on the boat had on a CBGB's shirt, and we reminisced about downtown Manhattan in the early 80's, and about all of the long gone bands and clubs from that time.

Everyone was balancing paper plates of baked clams and ziti on their laps, trying not to spill their drinks on the rocky boat. The food was heating in metal tins over cans of sterno. Carol Moscowitz and her husband, a pair of dentists from Kevin's neighborhood, were warming their hands over two cans of the purple sterno, like they were having a campfire.

By now, I was on my second cup of white wine, and Kevin and Andrea were talking about Andrea's mentally ill father, Mel. He sent some pornographic images to Andrea, with captions about her mother and aunt. He expected some return comments from his daughter, but Andrea was horrified and vows never to talk to him again.

Andrea and Gerry and their friends love to smoke pot. With Jimmy Buffet playing on the stereo, joints were passed around, and then cigars. The red and white plastic sheeting covering the boat started to fill with smoke.

Suddenly, I looked around at everyone's faces on the boat, and they all seemed old and wrinkled. I felt the passage of time , surrounded by a bunch of ex-hippies, reminiscing about the good old days. I started to feel depressed, and then suffocated.

The cigar and pot smoke was mixing into a rancid smell and I had to get some air. Bruce Springsteen was singing on the sound system now, about being young and racing cars on the highways of New Jersey. I was one of those young Jersey girls once, riding in cars and feeling free.

Now, I'm just a middle aged mom, trapped on a boat. I stared at the water and wanted to go home.

Instant Chazerai

I was shopping at Key Food one afternoon with my three-year-old daughter Esther, and I saw Archway cashew cookies. My mother used to buy these when she had parties at our house. She never bought sweets unless she was entertaining, so every time I tasted a cashew cookie, it was usually bridge night. My father would take out the card tables and set them up in our living room. The scrumptious spread of goodies was laid out on our dining room table. My mother Ruth always cooked the same menu - Swedish meatballs, stuffed mushrooms, and crab dip with tiny pieces of rye bread.

For dessert, Ruth made her specialty, apple cobbler. It was my grandmother's recipe, and it was delicious. She used only Granny Smith apples, so it was tart, not sweet. Ruth brushed the crust with milk and sprinkled sugar on top, and the sugar would caramelize when the crust was baked. She used Betty Crocker crust mix from a box. It wasn't homemade crust, but it tasted great - a perfect combination of moist, sweet and salty.

It was such a treat to have delicious food in our house because my father Phil was always on a diet. He was thin as a young man, but was a heavy smoker. When he was in his thirties, he contracted walking pneumonia and almost died. Phil had to quit smoking after he was sick. His new addiction was to eclairs, mallowmars and ice cream. Year after year, he put on weight, until he became obese.

So instead of the usual junk food that all kids ate in the 1970's, we had diet food in our house. Our snacks consisted of Jello, Rice Krispies and American cheese slices on melba toast. I craved the delicacies my friends had in their lunch boxes: Twinkies, Yodels and Snack Pack pudding. I begged my mother to buy me a box of Twinkies once, and my father ate the whole box in one day. I later hid food in my closet, so my father wouldn't eat it.

My mother Ruth was the queen of convenience food. She went back to work full time when I was in second grade, so she had no time to cook savory meals for us. Our typical meal was Jennie-O turkey roast, which was so salty, it was barely edible. My lunches included instant Giggle Noodle soup, which was basically yellow powder until you added hot water. Other lunches were frozen pot pies and macaroni and cheese. I actually liked the macaroni and cheese, it had a nice brown crust on the top and was creamy and cheesy.

One particular dinner was so disgusting, I can't believe I actually ate it. She made porcupines, which were meatballs mixed with tomato paste, and rolled in uncooked rice. The rice was supposed to be cooked first, but my mother didn't have time for such preparations. The porcupines where crunchy on the outside with pieces of burnt rice stuck to them.

Ruth hated cooking and periodically she announced, "If you had to cook meals for twenty years, you would hate it, too." I never learned how to cook, and I still don't cook much. My husband Kevin doesn't like my cooking, and neither do my kids.

That suits me fine. I think I'll just open a box of chicken nuggets or fish sticks for dinner tonight.

Lady in Waiting

My mother lives in a place called Renaissance Gardens. When I think of Renaissance Gardens, I think of proper ladies in powdered wigs and fancy dresses fanning themselves, surrounded by exotic flowers and spouting fountains.

The Renaissance Gardens where my mother lives does not have such upper crust inhabitants. Instead, there is a woman in a wheelchair shouting, "Help! Help me!!" to no one in particular, and a man who repeats "Awesome!" and seeks a high five from everyone he sees. Some people are slumped over and staring at the floor.

This is a nursing home for people with Alzheimer's and other disorders, who require 24 hour care. There are gardens at Renaissance Gardens, but the residents rarely go outside to see them.

The patients here participate in activities like a virtual visit of Paris or Touring the Louvre. They play Jeopardy and have sing-a-longs of Broadway show tunes.

Most times when I visit Renaissance Gardens, my mother and the other residents are in their wheelchairs in front of the television. Their eyes are not looking at the screen, but at some random spot on the rug or the arm of their wheelchairs.

Today when I walked into the activity room next to the dining room, I scanned the back of the heads of the patients to find my mother. One woman looked like her and I had to stare at her a few times to make sure that my mother's appearance hadn't changed drastically. No, that wasn't my mother, just someone who resembled her.

I walked to her room, and she was laying in her bed. I thought she was asleep, but she wasn't.

"Hi Mom! Happy Birthday!" I said. "Happy Birthday!" my mother repeated. She often mimics what is said to her and doesn't initiate much conversation.

I showed her the flowers I brought for the occasion. "Beautiful!" she exclaimed.

For the next two hours I held her hand, rubbed her back and told her she was the best mother. I tried to choke back tears. It's difficult to see your mother making raspberry sounds and repeating, "Da, da, da, da, da, da," periodically grimacing and growling.

When I held her hand, she scratched me with her fingernail. I pulled my hand away for the moment, but then held her hand again.

I sang to my mother. Usually we sing in the activity room with the piano, but today there was no musical accompaniment. I sang, "Lullaby of Broadway" and my mother's favorite, "New York, New York." She hummed some of the tunes and sometimes she sang along. I can always get her to sing a few words of "42nd Street". I sang one last song, "Happiness" from the show "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". I started to cry, and I had to stop singing. This song always makes me sad because I remember my mother taking me to see that show when I was a little girl.

My son Trevor has a hard time visiting his grandmother. He is a sensitive boy, and he often tears up when he sees her. Today he was strong and kissed her and wished her a happy birthday. I felt proud of Trevor because he helped some of the other residents and visitors in the nursing home.

My daughter Esther doesn't really know that my mother is sick, and she likes to make silly noises with her. They like to make each other laugh and they both give each other air kisses. Esther doesn't feel sad when she sees her grandmother.

When it was time to go Esther said, "I want to stay!" She was having a good time joking with the nurses and waving to the patients.

I felt suffocated by the stale smell of feces and I had to leave. I was relieved when I got outside and breathed the fresh air.

The Safety Dance

I was just reading an article in the New York Times about a woman who was visiting her family in Karachi, Pakistan during the time that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. She writes about a friend she had known all her life who was arrested at a protest. The only reason that the author was not arrested as well, was that she had been at the beach that day.

The article really made me think about what we take for granted in the United States. I can't stand our materialistic, celebrity-driven, intellectually-deprived culture, but there are times when I appreciate living here.

As an undergraduate at Penn State University in the mid-80's, I lived with Nooshin, an Iranian girl who was getting a degree in Architectural Engineering. Nooshin and her friends seemed so exotic to me, a suburban girl from New Jersey. I loved hanging out with them. I always felt different, like a third wheel, but I liked her friends, and they didn't mind my company.

Not everyone at Penn State enjoyed the presence of the foreign students. Many students made racist remarks about the Iranians, and called the local Iranian run convenience store Irani-Mart instead of Uni-Mart. Those remarks made me angry and I would try to think of something smart or clever to refute these comments. I never had a quick comeback, but I did tell some people that they were being small-minded and racist.

Nooshin's parents were wealthy Iranians, and they had sent her to boarding school when she was about 13 years old. She hadn't seen her parents or her brother since she left Iran.

At the time, I thought about how difficult it must have been to be away from her family for so long. She didn't have anyone helping her through life; she had to figure things out for herself. She seemed older and more mature then I did. I still depended on my parents and older sister to help me find my way in the world.

Nooshin was afraid for her family's safety, as they were wealthy and educated, and now that the Ayatollah had taken over after the fall of the Shah, they were in danger.

Nooshin showed me her passport picture, in which she was wearing a chodor. She was embarrassed by the picture, and she told me that she dressed differently when she was growing up. She said that now, you could be arrested for wearing lipstick. I couldn't imagine that. Nooshin was always so stylish, and always wearing lipstick.

She also said that there were spies at Penn State who listened to what the Iranian students were saying about the government. I couldn't believe what she was saying. There were spies here? In the middle of white bread Pennsylvania?

Nooshin met another Iranian student, Shariar, and they started dating. He seemed very sexist and demanding compared to American boys. Nooshin fell in love with him, and I later heard that they got married. Nooshin and Shariar were both on student visas, so they continued to get advanced degrees so they wouldn't be sent back to Iran.

When I saw the movie "Persepolis," about a young girl growing up during the Iranian revolution, I thought about Nooshin and her family.

I hope that they are safe and, hopefully, still wearing lipstick.

Vagina World

As I walked into the feminist art exhibit last week, there was a painting of people entering an art show through a giant psychedelic vagina. As you walked further down the hall, there was a huge piece of red fabric resembling the vulva and clitoris. This was Vagina World.

My son Trevor and husband Kevin were not really digging the exhibit. "I guess I can't really relate to it," they both chimed in together. Well, they could still support female power even if they weren't female.

My parents Ruth and Phil considered themselves liberated feminists. They had a couples women's lib party. They thumbtacked slogans written on cardboard on the groovy corkboard wall in our living room. The only saying I recall was, "Herstory not History." I remember my mother wearing a purple psychedelic dress and holding a gin and tonic.

My mother Ruth was a feminist and a rebel. In the 1950's, when most married women were home raising their children, Ruth was a police reporter, covering the notorious Sam Sheppard trial. Sheppard was a doctor accused of murdering his wife near Cleveland, Ohio. My mother interviewed him in prison when she was pregnant with my sister Wanda.

Ruth covered politics and crime, and hung around with scrappy hard drinking men. She married one of these men, a fellow reporter in Cleveland. He turned out to be an alcoholic and he left her with a two-year-old daughter to raise alone. Ruth was a working single mother before it was fashionable, and her parents helped raise her daughter Lolli.

Ruth then met another reporter, my father Phil. He was five years younger than this strong feisty woman and fell madly in love. She continued to work as a journalist, but eventually stayed home for a time to raise her three daughters. She resented being home with her children, and always talked about her glory days of police reporting and running into burning buildings.

She was a fiercely intelligent woman, but, at home, she waited on my father hand and foot. He would sit in his Lazy Boy pleather recliner and clink his glass of ice for a refill and expect dinner on the table every night when he got home from work. I never quite understood her resentment and their fighting and stress until recently, when I realized what she gave up to marry my father and raise her children. She left Ohio, where she had a flourishing career. In New Jersey, she worked briefly for a newspaper and later, in marketing, which she hated.

Do I have a liberated marriage? Hardly. My husband Kevin and I have fallen into traditional roles, with Kevin working full time as a television producer and writer while I have stayed home to raise our two children. That arrangement was fine for a while, but for the past few years, I have been bored and would welcome a more intellectually challenging career. I have thought about going to medical school, but know it would be difficult with a small child at home. I'm about to go back to work as an early childhood teacher, a traditional career that I chose after leaving public relations and advertising.

Now that I have a daughter, I think more about my role as a woman and how my daughter will see me as a role model. Three-year-old Esther has just started saying, "I want to be a mommy when I grow up." I hope that she pursues a challenging and creative career, and can move beyond what I've chosen. She is strong and feisty, just like my mother Ruth. I have the utmost faith that she'll go out into the world as a strong female, maybe even stronger than myself.

Mystery Child

I thought I was pregnant this week. I wasn't celebrating, I don't want to be pregnant. I'm 43 years old and have two kids already. Two's enough for me, thank you. My uterus is closed for business.

Kevin's train doesn't usually unload it's cargo in the tunnel, if you know what I mean. Well, it did a few weeks ago, and I was worried. My period seemed to be on it's way, I was getting zits and cramps, and then it mysteriously stopped. "Hmmmmm.......that usually doesn't happen," I thought.

"Oh god, I cannot be pregnant."

Kevin was bugging me, "Did you get your period yet?" he asked me a few times a day. His constant pestering was annoying me, I was trying not to think about it, and I was sure the stress could throw my period off.

What if I really was pregnant? What would I do? I looked at my three-and-a-half year old daughter Esther playing happily with her ten-year-old brother Trevor. After a rough few years, they are both finally at a good place in their lives. Esther is loving school, making friends, becoming more independent. Trevor is in fifth grade and about to start middle school in the fall. He is feeling confident and happy now. This would be a terrible time for us to have a new baby thrust into the equation.

Kevin and I are people who can't handle a lot on our plates. Three kids would put us over the edge.

Besides, I don't want a baby, my husband doesn't want a baby. Nooooo baby.

Okay, so what if I was pregnant? I guess I would have to terminate. But I do not want to put my body through that. Well, I wouldn't have a choice. I'm sure I'm probably not pregnant, I told myself. Okay, maybe not SOOO sure....I counted my period cycles for the last six months. I had one 34 day cycle. This month had been 30 days so far. I usually get my period after about 25 days, but could I possibly be having one of those long cycles?

I fell asleep last night thinking about what my life would be like with three children. My dreams were a surreal montage including this mystery child that would probably never exist.

I woke up this morning with cramps, and I knew that my dream would never be a reality. I was so relieved.

Slobberino

I'm a slob. Everyone in my family is a slob, even my three-year-old daughter Esther. "I like messes," she proclaims and then dumps buckets of toys on the floor.

I wasn't the neatest person when I met my husband, Kevin, but he was the king of all slobs, and he sucked me into his world of extreme sloppiness. When we first started going out, Kevin was living in an attic bachelor pad carpeted with a three-inch layer of dust bunnies. His apartment hadn't been vacuumed in three years. If you put something on the floor and then picked it up, it was covered in dirt. It was kind of like the Munsters.

His toilet was coated with three years worth of shit. It was black inside. I'm not kidding.

His sheets were brown, although, I don't think they were meant to be.

This was even too messy for my taste.

I borrowed a vacuum from the Wongs, the family downstairs. I actually scrubbed three years worth of shit from his toilet. Now that is true love. I threw out the neglected can of Progresso soup that sat on his stove for years, covered in a layer of gray fluff.

I bought new sheets.

Wow, what a palace. Actually, it was still a dump. Since then, we've lived in a series of dumps, including our current apartment.

Kevin's home office (which he won't let me vacuum) is still covered in a layer of dust bunnies and when Kevin comes home, he throws his pocket change in the piles of dust bunnies. It's like those restaurants with sawdust and peanut shells on the floor.

My son Trevor picks quarters out of the piles of dirt to buy candy and I pick quarters out for the parking meter. It's a festive family activity.

Okay, so it's not so bad a slob. It's actually kind of fun.

Birth of a Blog

Push.............................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Puuuuuuuuuuuuuushhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!Just one more big push and she's out!!! Congratulations, you've just given birth to your first blog. Oh, my god, now what do I do? Do I have to take care of it? Feed it? Pay attention to it when I'm tired and just want to space out?

Why do people write blogs anyway? As soon as I made the decision to write this blog it started freaking everyone out. My 10-year-old son Trevor was stressing out, "Are you going to write negative things about me? If I get in trouble are you going to post it on your blog?" Trevor asked in a worried voice. I think he's scared that the whole frigging world is going to know about his self conscious prepubescent life.

When I told my sister Wanda I was writing a blog, she felt threatened. "That's so selfish, why do people write blogs? They should spend more time outside getting some exercise. You're just going to sit inside and be a shut in? What are you going to write about? You want everyone to read about your life, your private business? I hope this isn't going to cut into our chatting time."

I have to write. I have to live up to my family legacy. Both my parents are journalists and they both wanted their three daughters to be writers. They coerced me into majoring in journalism in college, certainly not a great major for someone shy like me. I did what I was told,, and majored in journalism, hating every minute of it. I even worked in public relations and advertising for a few years out of college. It sucked, big time.

I needed to break free, do what I wanted to do. I became an elementary school teacher. Exactly what my mother Ruth didn't want for me. A traditional woman's career? Ruth was no traditional woman, and her daughters wouldn't be either. But she couldn't hold me back forever.

But then, I married a writer, a guy just like my father. Loud. Larger than life. Big ego. I tried to run away from that family expectation, but that's hard when you're married to someone just like your father.

Okay, so fast forward about 20 years. I was a teacher for five years and a stay-at-home mom for 11 years. My brain is fried!!!! I need to express myself!!!! I need to write!!!!!!!

I guess I have to resign myself to my family history. Maybe I was meant to be a writer after all.

Mabel, Mabel