“A daughter is a mother’s gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self. And mothers are their daughters’ role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.” Victoria Secunda Ms. Secunda apparently understands these things. She wrote a book called When You and Your [...]
Archive for April, 2008
28 Apr
Inching toward normalcy
We’ve had a remarkably non-autistic week. The children have squabbled with each other and bossed each other just like everyone else’s kids. They’ve told endless jokes at the dinner table. It’s been maddening. But again, this must be progress. Captain Oblivious is recovering well and has discovered that he can, in fact, walk on his [...]
25 Apr
Reading the whole book
The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~St. Augustine It’s finally spring. I know this because we have tonight celebrated our annual spring ritual: setting the Christmas tree ablaze. For years now, we have stashed the Christmas tree to dry out through the winter, and then set [...]
23 Apr
The dream job
“Do you miss it?” I was sitting in court next to the legal advocate from our local women’s shelter this afternoon, as we supported a woman who’d been brutalized by her husband. The photos from the hospital showed ugly bruises inflicted by the man’s cane. Yes. Cane. The man had the temerity to beat her [...]
21 Apr
Just like peas and carrots
Kids and emergency rooms just seem to go together. All this hoopla over The Mysterious Ankle Injury of Captain Oblivious and the impending trip to the orthopedic folks has brought up flashbacks of horrendous emergency room episodes over the years: the time K, about 5 years old, picked up the grill bars with her bare [...]
19 Apr
Bad parents! No soup for you!
So the long-suffering Cabana Boy and myself conceived it would be a great idea to steal a date night for the two of us. What were we thinking? We left the children with my daughter, who has five kids of her own, knowing they were in good hands, and headed to Erie–I know, not the [...]
15 Apr
When a fix is not a cure
Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again –Tori Amos This morning at 4:40, I woke up from a sound sleep in the midst of the worst headache I’d experienced in 16 years. I knew it had been 16 years because the last time I had a headache that bad, I took my [...]
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