Yesterday Luke did cartwheels on my mother’s grave. The weirdest thing about it was that the grass hadn’t fully grown back yet, so we could see the rectangle traced like a shadow. We let Luke do cartwheels, but scolded him when he started climbing on the headstones, so he ran off to climb a nearby tree while Megan, Tom, and I said a prayer for my mom.Afterwards, at the Chinese restaurant where they took me for Mother’s Day, I asked the children if they thought of my mom much. Megan said, “Sometimes. It’s weird to wonder where she is. Is she just hanging out with God and all the other dead people? Or maybe she’s right behind me, or right in front of my face?” [...]

We were driving up Germantown Avenue when Luke asked if Halloween was a long way away because he was hoping his hair would be long enough to have a thin pony tail in back like the jedis in training because next Halloween Luke wants to be a spy/jedi (a combination Luke says no one has ever been for Halloween before). Luke’s hair is already pretty shaggy, so I said if he lets me cut most of it for summer, he can keep a thin pony tail in back.It’s not that often that Megan sweetly offers to help her younger brother, so there was something touching about it when she said, “Luke, if you’re ever going out and don’t want people to see your pony tail [...]

I’m reading an amazing book at the moment called Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery. After 155 pages of terrible stories that none of us learned in school, I finally got to the chapter called “Hated Heros,” which included two stories that jumped out at me.First was the tale of Prudence Crandall who started a Connecticut school for girls (white girls, it went without saying) in 1831. When a free black woman asked to attend, Prudence consulted her Bible and landed on a passage that talked about comforting the oppressed. She admitted the young woman and, after most of the white students withdrew in protest, decided to specialize in educating “young ladies and little misses of color.” After multiple threats of [...]

Yesterday on the playground after school, a girl in Luke’s First Grade came up to me and said, “Luke’s so silly. He’s like my personal entertainment.” A nearby girl concurred, and Luke responded by falling to the ground and rolling in the wood chips. The girls laughed, but I was annoyed because I was trying to get him off the playground and into the car. Later Megan told me that I have no sense of humor.Her comment brought me back to last Sunday when we had a lovely dinner with a family from Tom’s church. The mother told me that when her three children are misbehaving she often tells them, “I want to be a fun mom. And I’m not getting to be a fun [...]

Today is Luke’s birthday, finally. After weeks of anticipation, he is seven. His ambivalence about it continued right up to last night. After Megan asked me to buy her deodorant and sunscreen—so she can “feel older”—Luke observed, “Megan wants to get older, but I don’t.”I can’t say I blame him. Two weeks ago I had a doctor’s visit and walked out with four referrals and two prescriptions. I don’t have anything tragic or life threatening, except aging, which come to think of it will eventually become life threatening. For the time being, aging just means a growing list of inconveniences: bad knees, a heel spur, heart burn, trouble losing weight, that sort of thing. I tried to explain to Luke that I like being in [...]

This morning I noticed Megan scratching her head at the breakfast table. Those of you who have dealt with head lice won’t judge me for sighing in relief when I heard that Luke had banged her in the head.It’s one of those good-news-bad-news days. I finally finished our taxes last night, and the good news is that we’re getting money back. The bad news is that I absolutely can not find my W-2, which I had as of 10:30pm last night. My theory that it had fallen behind the desk was not born out this morning when I tore the whole desk and filing cabinet apart looking for it and only found mounds of dust. I finally stopped looking to bring the kids to school, [...]

I’m going to do my taxes today. Or at least I’ll start them. I’ve been meaning to all week. Usually I have them done by now, but there has been too much going on this year—Mom’s taxes, among other things.One of the first questions I need to answer for my own taxes is whether or not to file as a business in 2005. I have taken deductions as a writer for at least a decade. But since the sale of my first book in 1998, most of my income has come from teaching and leading workshops. If you add up the cost of my printer ink and paper (not to mention all the other things you can deduct) my writing has been a money-losing proposition. [...]

Softball started on Saturday. Since Luke will be seven in less than two weeks, he’s now in the older group of players. This apparently means they get more expensive uniforms and play something more like real games, as opposed to last year in the Instructional League, where kids hit the ball off a T, and parents hoped they ran in the right direction.The parents in our neighborhood Instructional League are not too intense, at least not compared to stories you hear of crazy shouting sports parents. We have a friend who is a well respected soccer coach, and his wife says it’s all true, those stories about competitive parents screaming at the top of their lungs. Last year her husband the coach had to sit [...]

My nine-year-old daughter likes to listen to B101, the soft rock station that advertises “five songs in a row.” Of course, whenever you turn the station on, they always seem to be on a commercial, a point I made this morning on the car ride to school. Megan defended the station and said you only get two or three commercials in a row, but her brother Luke disagreed. “Whenever they say, ‘Five songs in a row,’ or ‘Fewer commercials’ that’s actually a commercial because they are advertising themselves. So they have a commercial saying they don’t have many commercials,” he noted triumphantly.That’s pretty astute for a six-year-old, if I must say so myself. For all I complain about Luke’s obsession with all things Star Wars, [...]