It’s three o’clock in the morning and you are rudely awakened by the phone. Your heart lurches into overdrive, and you scramble to answer the call. It’s the police department in Spring Break Town or Beach Week City, USA, calling…
About halfway through my freshman year of high school, I took on a babysitting job that was way over my head. A friendly mom asked if I would watch her 15-month-old for a few hours so she and her husband…
A friend of mine did an amazing thing. At the age of 42, she agreed to be a surrogate for her sister, who was unable to get pregnant. The sister had her eggs harvested, fertilized by her husband’s sperm, and…
One of my best mom friends, Brooke, is a mompreneur. She might not think of it that way, because the bulk of her time is focused on caring for her family, but she is. Before getting married and having a…
About a year ago, a friend came over to our house with an iPad, and our daughter found a new obsession. She oohed and aahed at the African safari photos; she furrowed her brow in concentration while playing the ABC…
On the third night after Hurricane Irene, I went to bed feeling a little bit dramatic. We still had no power, and the neighbor with the really, really loud generator prevented sound sleep. Our 3-year-old had reverted to waking two…
In the last few weeks, five of my mom friends have welcomed new babies into their families, and two more are expecting this fall. Visiting them reminds me of how precious newborns are – and just how much time they…
In 1966, when my sister was two, she was diagnosed with a severe hearing impairment. Her pediatrician told my mom that she should be institutionalized and that she would not likely complete more than an eighth-grade education. Fast forward four-and-a-half…
When my husband was seventeen, he spent a summer working construction with a bunch of men twice his age. Making much more than minimum wage, he kept his mouth shut when he was charged with tasks far beyond his strength…
When my daughter was four months old, my mother asked when I would turn her rear-facing car seat around so she could be “more entertained and less prone to suffer from motion sickness.” Tiny from the get-go, my daughter was…
