Farewell Minivan: Ch-ch-ch-changes
My first car was a dusty yellow 69 VW Bug, but it should’ve been a brilliant yellow 73 Super Beetle we’d named Herbie. That’s the car my parents bought for … Continue reading
New Year’s Eve and a Child’s Soft Foot
New Year’s Eve is supposed to be a time for big picture things, for the meta, the thoughts about the resolutions about thinking, if you follow me. Except I woke … Continue reading
Elf on the Shelf Gets the Last Word
Something you might not know about me is that I’m not so into magical creatures. I mean, the Tooth Fairy forgot my kid last year (what a jerk, right?) and … Continue reading
50 Happy Things for 2015: Bloggers Unite in Flood of Gratitude
My family is in town, my sister and her husband, my brother, my mother. Right now my children are running around outside playing with my sister’s dog (because I plan … Continue reading
The Big, Stupid Stuffed Panda
My seven-year-old daughter wants a stupid, stuffed panda for Christmas. Not just a stupid, stuffed panda, but a big, stupid stuffed panda, big enough to be bigger than her, for … Continue reading
Getting My NaNoWriMo On, One Bird At a Time
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, … Continue reading
A Dream About the Ocean
I had a dream about my brother, Butchie, on Friday night. We’d driven to the beach in my minivan. It was a place we’d never been before, the sort of … Continue reading
Just Five Things
Lately I’ve been remembering the words of a woman I used to work with. She’d been diagnosed with one of those illnesses that takes away your ability to do what … Continue reading
Twin Posts: Mirror in the Sky
I spent the morning at my daughter’s school celebrating her seventh birthday. We had planned for me to make crafts with her class, a collaged ocean seascape and some hot … Continue reading
Twin Posts: Transitioning to Seven
We’ve been talking a lot about transitions lately. My son is horrible at them. Like, he sucks at transitions. Let me clarify. He sucks my soul out and leaves it … Continue reading
I Have Conceived a Love
I have conceived such a love for my children that I love whoever loves them well, and most importantly, I love them no matter who they grow to be. There is no wavering on this. There must be no wavering on this.
Swooping Like Birds
Sunday morning started slowly. We were in recovery. Recovery from the first full week of school and a Saturday where the kids played four different soccer games on four different fields … Continue reading
Learning to Go It Alone
I just realized that I hate to be alone. I was standing and wiping the counter, putting dishes in the dishwasher, mindlessly eating granola off the kids’ plates, and I … Continue reading
Last First Day of School
I began to see my day and the things I would do. Then my week and the things I hoped to accomplish, then my month, and so on. As I told my son, I guess you need new beginnings for sentimental endings and sentimental endings for new beginnings. And now it’s time for the next new beginning.
The Last Last Time
I was wringing out wet bathing suits and hanging them over the deck railing. Our front porch is about fifteen feet from the road with a lively view of the … Continue reading
The Summer of Enough
Last week my email account resent a bunch of emails with photo attachments, emails I’d sent a year ago. And my sister replied to a very back-to-school looking picture as … Continue reading
August is the Cruelest Month
This morning, as my husband walked out the front door, he reminded me that the painters were coming tomorrow and that we needed to vacate the house. They would come … Continue reading
I Don’t Like Eight-Year-Old Boys, the Never Ending Sequel
I don’t like eight-year-old boys.You might remember that I didn’t like seven-year-old boys much either. It’s hard to describe what the actual thing is that he does that drives me … Continue reading
Recreating My Childhood, One Board Game At a Time
I’ve been recreating my childhood one board game at a time. Or actually, not my whole entire childhood. Were I to try to recreate my whole entire childhood I’d need … Continue reading
How You Measure Half a Life
It happened. The kind people at Mamalode published my essay on their August theme Optimism, How You Measure Half a Life. And ironically, it’s a meditation on whether there is … Continue reading
100 Rejections
My sister had a brilliant idea for my nieces’ thirteenth birthdays. What do you give young women who have pretty much everything they need? Words of wisdom. My sister asked … Continue reading
Summer Camp, All Alone
This week is camp week. You know the kind I mean. You slather four children in sunscreen, pack four bags with yesterday’s damp swimsuits and towels, and then send them … Continue reading
U2 Can Have Your Cake and Eat It… Too
In six degrees of separation how would we get from U2 to a Doc McStuffins cake? Doc McStuffins cake, inspired by the Doc McStuffins cartoon, for which China Anne McClain … Continue reading
The Fin Fell Off My Paddleboard and Other Metaphors For Our Thirteenth Anniversary
My fin fell off my paddleboard. There was a gentle breeze, an overcast sky, and right next to the rock where the cormorants pose, I dug my paddle in the … Continue reading
The Couple at Sunset
Tonight my two girls and I saw our neighbors walking down the road in front of our house. We hadn’t seen them for awhile, not since they found us trying … Continue reading
Father’s Day and the White Undershirt
I woke yesterday morning to the mystical, warm smell of my husband ‘s white undershirt. I was half-asleep and he was half-asleep, and I curled up against him, my head … Continue reading
Tomorrow She is Never Again Four Years Old (Not Even One Dot)
I look at the clock and it’s 11:34 pm. I picture my newly minted five-year-old, asleep in her bed, covered with the Hello Kitty blanket I stayed up until past … Continue reading
Leaving the Nest, an Ode to Pre-School
My youngest child is finishing her time at the most amazing school ever. She is graduating from pre-school. I know everyone thinks that their kids go to the most amazing schools. … Continue reading
The Tooth Fairy Forgot to Come Last Night
The tooth fairy forgot to come last night. Mica walked into my bedroom this morning, waking me with his sad, sweet little face and shuffling footy pajama’ed feet. He said with the … Continue reading
Little League, It Ain’t No Big Thing
I admit it. I was equipment-shamed by the guy at Modell’s. And Modell’s by the way? It sort of sucks. I’d much rather go to Dick’s. Especially with my mother … Continue reading
Two-Wheelers, Piano Recitals and Lost Teeth
I went for a run today. Just a week ago on my run there was still snow on the ground deep in the woods, tucked in the valleys, with a gray fog … Continue reading
Silent All These Years/ Fireworks Mash-Up (For My Daughter)
The other day I heard that Tori Amos song on the radio. I was driving in the minivan, picking the kids up from school. I was loaded… with carseats and … Continue reading
Going Back to Church on an Island (Easter 2015)
We went to church this weekend. On the one hand, it’s no shocker. It was Easter, and I get after it when it comes to Christian holidays. I was raised … Continue reading
Learning to Swim
I started swimming again, and it’s been a revelation. I grew up with a pool in the backyard. I have memories of swimming with my sisters at night while my … Continue reading
Spring is Here (Said No One in New England)
Spring is almost here. I can tell by the view out my back window. I also know spring is almost here because my kids are on spring break. I found … Continue reading
Who Are You Going to Be When You Grow Up?
I was driving to school to pick up the kids in my minivan. Like I do every day. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I pulled up behind this truck. WOOD PELLETS HOT … Continue reading
In Defense of Winter
My four-year-old daughter said it to me this morning. “What if this-” she gestured pathetically out the car window, “-is still here in June?” And I felt for her. She … Continue reading
Melancholic Birthday Girl, Carry On
I’m a melancholic birthday girl, and it shows. I think my kids picked up on the impending doom of my birthday and my sad-sack state, because they were straight up punks for the week … Continue reading
A Dream About Love
I had a dream about my brother Butchie last night. He was wearing footy pajamas, the kind that zip up the front, all fleecy and precious. The kind my children … Continue reading
Something About Now (Valentine’s Day 2015)
Tim found some old videos on his computer. What with hard-discs being full and switching from desktop dinosaurs to laptops and iPads and iPhones, we hadn’t seen these videos for awhile, … Continue reading
Going Home for the Funeral: The Reprise or The Rising
The smell of my uncle’s house. That was what first struck me. It smelled exactly the same as it had the last time I was there twenty-some years ago. Back … Continue reading
Going Home for the Funeral
I need to go home. There’s another funeral, and you always go to the funeral. In fact, funerals have become the only time I go home now, and it has … Continue reading
Reading (to My Children)
I love books. I love to read them. I dream about writing one someday. My shelves are covered, covered, covered with books. Because once one has acquired a book, whether … Continue reading
The Betta Fish, the Sugar, and the Fevers
I had a dream last night that I killed one of the betta fish. In the dream it was in the same glass bowl we had goldfish in as a … Continue reading
Taking Down the Tree
What is the soundtrack for taking down the Christmas tree? Is it my mother, almost into February, during stolen moments when we were all at school or a daycare center, … Continue reading
Ten Minutes of Thankful (and Then Some)
I was talking the other night with an old friend. She was feeling sad, and bad, and blue. The holidays, the dark winter days, family pressures and perceived failures seemed … Continue reading
The Twins Turn Six (from the Basement Tapes)
Again and again this year I found myself beginning posts I never finished or finishing posts I never polished enough to post. So they’ve sat half-lost in a virtual notepad, … Continue reading
Elf on the Shelf: A Re-Purposed Re-Poem
It’s the first day of December and what should appear? But Mr. Elf on the Shelf, the puppet so dear. He’s hiding in nooks, humping a small wooden lamb Frosty Bo … Continue reading
Sleeping Children, Peace, and Other Thankful Thoughts
Tim brought Mica to me last night. I was in bed. We were watching television, the president juxtaposed against Ferguson, burning cars and police in riot gear throwing tear gas, … Continue reading
Interview With My Mom, An Education
My Mom’s a talker. She can talk on and on and on. Which means I come by it honestly, anyway. And although I never expected it, I realize now that … Continue reading
jen groeber: mama art 