From the category archives:

sense of self

When the Glamour Is Gone: How a Pregnant Mother of a Toddler Watches the Oscars

February 24, 2009

Like Kate Winslet, I, too, used to practice my Oscar acceptance speech in front of the mirror when I was eight years old.
But I don’t any longer.  Instead, last night I propped my swollen ankles up on a few pillows, threw an old baby blue blanket over my wriggling belly, and polished off the organic [...]

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My Taxes Are Done, So I Guess I’m Ready to Have a Baby Now

February 22, 2009

I finished my taxes yesterday as Jake napped on the couch and the last hour of Waitress unwound on TiVo.
I say this not to brag but to point out that I am now ready to give birth.
I have repeated it many times over the past several weeks:  “No, I’m not ready.  I haven’t done my [...]

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Trusting the Nostalgia (Even When You Should Be Embarrassed by the Songs You Are Listening to on the Radio)

January 14, 2009

I am awash in nostalgia these days.
Certainly it has something to do with the impending transformation of my status into “mother of two.” One child, Mike and I agree, is an accessory. Two children is an adult family. Who can approach such a spectre without a slightly longing glance back at the [...]

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“Mommy, Go Work.”

January 2, 2009

“Mommy, go work.”
Jake said these words gently, with a firm hand on my knee as if to steady me for the blow of his very first (but, oh, I know, definitely not his last) leave-me-alone-already.
We were in his new classroom, on his first day at the “big kids” preschool across the street from his former [...]

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Why I Was Crying in the Target Parking Lot, and Why I Probably Will Again

December 18, 2008

I thought I was doing really well on Tuesday.  Last of the holiday packages mailed?  Check.  Requisite single container for the lunches Jake will take with him when he moves up to the big kids’ preschool after the holidays finally located and purchased?  Check.  Checks deposited?  Check, checks.
I was aware that in order to add [...]

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Can a Sense of Self Come with Pink Polka Dot Boots?

December 9, 2008

Jake has been wearing his beloved pink polka dot boots pretty much non-stop for over a week now.

We have engaged in successful negotiations about removing them for bed time and bath time (for which he even removed his swim diaper the other night, suggesting he is finally over the traumatic poop-in-the-tub incident).  But otherwise, on [...]

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Maternity Pants, Fatigue, and Never Look at Your Butt in Your Sister-in-Law’s Guest Room Mirror

October 27, 2008

Fatigue.
I’m not talking tired or exhausted or however I generally feel after carrying Jake up the stairs for the fifteenth time at the end of the day.  I am talking about bone-crushing, crying-because-I’m-so-tired, unable-to-think fatigue.  Have-your-thyroid-level-checked fatigue.
It is, perhaps, no coincidence that it hit me after an afternoon spent at a three-year-old’s birthday party last [...]

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Yom Kippur, Spirituality, and a Pair of Black Chuck Taylor Low-Tops

October 9, 2008

It occurred to me, as Jake ate his lunch at Green Sage today, that having your child drop pieces of pork sausage in your lap may not be the most appropriate way to honor Yom Kippur.
Normally, I would spend this day fasting, meditating, reflecting.  Not, I must explain, in any kind of religious service.  I [...]

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Could Yoga Really Have Led Me to the Americans with Disabilities Act?

September 18, 2008

Yoga, I have always thought, saved me from the law.
I became a lawyer, in the narrative I have set up of my life, because I was blind to my heart.  It was the path my mind led me down, the safe, manageable world of knowledge and surface communication and clear organizing principles.
Sure, I told myself [...]

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Twice Bitten: More of the Wisdom of Toddlers

September 4, 2008

Not long ago, I arrived to pick Jake up from school to find not one but two incident reports awaiting me.
“He got bitten,” one of Jake’s teachers said apologetically.  “Twice.”
From the deliberately pared-down details they provided — perpetrators’ names and identifying characteristics are omitted from incident reports to protect those too young to deserve the [...]

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Careful What You Google For

August 14, 2008

About a week ago I googled an old boyfriend. The one I thought I’d marry but didn’t.
It wasn’t a stalker sort of thing. It wasn’t, amazingly, a raging case of misplaced nostalgia brought about by panic over finding myself a work-at-home mom living on a neighborly street in Asheville, North Carolina. I [...]

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The Friendship That Doesn’t Change When You Do

August 12, 2008

I took my dearest friend — Kali I’ll call her and she knows why — to the airport this morning. And I started crying — again. Not just because “Carolina in My Mind” was playing on the radio. (That song makes me cry every time, dammit, and not because I live in [...]

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What Do I Really Wish For?

August 1, 2008

Jake and I spent the last week with his aunt and uncle and his three teenage cousins. Jake thinks teenagers are wonderful, especially 14-year-old Cousin Jeff who is as happy to throw a ball with him as to hold his hand, even if he draws the line at receiving a big mmmm-wah! kiss on [...]

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MIA Part Three: Not Doubting Your Path

July 11, 2008

Sometimes there are good reasons you don’t have time to, say, write a YogaMamaMe post for two weeks. And I don’t mean “good” in the “eat your spinach, it’s good for you” sense of good. I mean good, like good for my soul, happy, fun.
I mean, to get to the point, Coon Dog [...]

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MIA Part Two: Learning Who You Are

July 9, 2008

So another reason I was missing in action for two weeks (even though, I say again to the empty echo-chamber of a deserted readership, I don’t think anyone really noticed): a visit to Louisville for my grandfather’s funeral.
Sad as this sounds — and much as the past couple of posts might, um, bring the [...]

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I’m Really Here, Now (Even in Wal-Mart)

June 23, 2008

What surprised me as I stood in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina, was not so much that I was standing in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina. The exigencies of a Blankie left far behind at school can leave one in some pretty surprising places. What surprised me was [...]

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Mothers, Daughters, and “The Eye of the Tiger”: How a Bad Song from 1982 Moved Me Closer to Stillness

June 16, 2008

On Father’s Day morning, when I started the car in the parking lot of EarthFare (Asheville’s local Whole Foods-ish place I love to shop for groceries even though we really can’t afford it), I had one of those delicious moments that happens when I hear “Eye of the Tiger” on the radio.
Immediately, it was 1982. [...]

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Driving with the Brakes On

June 12, 2008

I had a Very Bad Moment walking Jake home from school yesterday.
We were strolling down a moderately trafficked street — the kind of residential road motorists use inappropriately as a through-way, inducing the residents to have cement traffic calmers installed which end up acting only as a challenge to the faster drivers but at least [...]

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Is There Such a Thing as a Graceful End to Vacation?

June 9, 2008

I can’t say I remember ever having had a graceful end to any vacation in my life.
I tend to be the type who gets stuck somewhere between the utter relaxation that is, to me, the whole point of a vacation (soldier on, you exploring, traveling, learn-something-on-vacation types, but do it without me) and the pressing [...]

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A Little Grey’s Anatomy, a Little Kindness

May 30, 2008

I know how this sounds, but I’m going to say it anyway. Yesterday I paid more attention to Grey’s Anatomy than to my child. Just a little bit more. And just for a little while. And only because I really, really needed to.
It had, you see, been a rough week. [...]

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