Timeless Choices
Christmas was just a couple of weeks ago, right? I remember thinking that I needed to write a post on books I’d loved in 2012, set some creative goals for 2013, and find a great birthday present for Mike to make up for the fact that my Christmas presents consisted of some basil seeds, my old broken kindle, and a child’s toy with a bite taken out it. But now it’s April. I still need to do all of that, and Mike’s birthday was in the beginning of March. I’m taking a deep, soothing breath and telling myself that this is to be expected when you live in a small town whose slogan is...
Read MoreRewired: Mama brain
It’s baby bath time. I’m sitting on the toilet lid. Mike is perched on a small stool. Dominic is sitting in his little plastic tub, playing. As Mike and I are chatting, Dominic tries to squeeze water out of his toy duck, fails, and lets out a sudden, shrill screech of rage and frustration that is loud enough to be heard in China. Me: “Dominic!! Really! Totally unnecessary.” Mike: “Dominic, every time you make that sound you take ten minutes off your mama’s life because she thinks you’re being eaten by vultures. You’re right here, she can see you, and it still makes her think...
Read More“This is completely my fault” and other things I’ve said this morning
I drifted off close to midnight last night and woke up in a panic at 3:45AM, remembering that I had not informed the taxi that was picking me up for the airport at 4:30 that I needed a car seat for Dominic. I spent at least three minutes frantically trying to figure out how I was going to rectify this mistake, before remembering that Dominic was in Washington DC and would not be in this taxi with me. All that flustered worry, wasted, when what I should have been worrying about was the fact that I’d booked my return flights to Washington DC for Sunday April 29th instead of Sunday April 22nd....
Read MoreIn which I say I’m a good mother
“I’m a bad mother.” Even as I heard myself say those words to Mike last week on the phone, I cringed. Mike was away for most of the week, so I was parenting solo, and Dominic had a wracking, chesty cough that started up whenever I put him down to sleep. At first we thought the cough was due to the shocking air quality in Luang Prabang at present – it’s grey and smoky and ash is falling from the sky because everyone’s burning their rice fields in preparation for planting. But after the cough had hung around for ten days, I enlisted the help of a Lao-speaking friend and went in...
Read MoreFifteen years of longsuffering
It has been the month of patience. Or, maybe more appropriately, it has been the month of patience being tested. The last six weeks has held one broken leg (Dominic), two courses of antibiotics for intestinal infections (Mike and me), three trips to Thailand (all of us), and five colds. It’s been more than a month since Dominic broke his leg and I still don’t want to write about it. Truth be told, I don’t even want to think about it. Because every time I remember hearing the crash after Mike’s mother slipped and landed on the stairs, then the long pause, then that awful, piercing...
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