On Friday night I dragged A & C to Target, bribing them with a “treat” if they cooperated.  We needed new socks and towels and some storage bins and god knows what else that added up to $200.

Cooperation indeed occurred, and C was rewarded with a yellow duck-shaped “pillow pet” to add to her duck collection.  A chose Applejack, the My Little Pony with the Southern drawl.

Fully caffeinated, I maneuvered the huge, red, double-kid-seat shopping cart like an 18-wheeler down those dizzying fluorescent aisles, grabbing items right and left, puzzling over colors, thinking of the Joni Mitchell song that goes:

“the kind of crazy you get from too much choice…”

I bought too much.  Then we went out for pizza.  A and C each ate a small pepperoni pie.

Saturday afternoon we headed to the Salon, where C was scheduled with our favorite stylist, Kimberly.  A young pretty blonde, herself a mom of two, Kim is a fabulous hair-cutter who has the magic touch with children.

How C loves to recline at the wash station and have her hair shampooed by Kimberly!  How I wish our weekly hair-washes were this calm and relaxing!  In our tub at home, there is screaming, cursing, thrashing, and physical restraint, often all at the same time.  Both C and I will do almost anything to avoid her hair-wash, which is why sometimes the weeks go by and her hair grows dark with grease.

I long ago gave up on cutting my daughters’ locks at home, after I almost nicked the nape of baby C’s neck with scissors.  Hair maintenance has been the bane of my mothering existence (until A turned six and grew into the responsibility of brushing her own hair).  I dread the morning routine of chasing C around the kitchen with a hairbrush, trying to un-snarl her matted birds’ nests of tangles.

Every morning, I threaten to give my child a pixie cut. She screams while I unsnarl, making the buzzing sound of barber clippers.  I sing the theme song to “Caillou”– that bald 4-year-old boy in the PBS cartoon– so C knows she will have a similar haircut if she can’t cooperate with the bare minimum of brushing.

Finally C called my bluff and said she wanted a pixie.  I found myself grieving the imminent loss of her thick shoulder-length hair, but nevertheless made the appointment.

Then, wise Kimberly suggested going with a short bob instead of a complete boy-cut.  She snipped and shaped while C sat there, stoic and perfectly still, looking at herself the mirror. For all C’s wild physical energy 12 hours a day, she can sit like a statue in the stylist’s chair.  For her, it is a very serious business.

The end result, of course, was adorable.   A bit mischievous and spunky, too.  C now brushes her short hair herself every morning.  I don’t know why we waited so long.

“My tooth is bleeding!” she wails.  She points gingerly to her bottom incisor, the one that’s been loose now for three months. I fetch a wet washcloth and press it to her gum, hold her while she sobs at the changes taking place inside her mouth.

This first loose tooth has A worked up into a state of anxiety.  If only it would fall out in a bite of apple.  Her Dad suggests tying a string around it and tying that to a doorknob and then slamming the door, as his older brothers did to him.  She recoils in horror.  She wants to let the process unfold in its own time, without human assistance.  As her mother, I am amazed at this restraint.  Her ability to not disturb the wiggly tooth seems an act of extreme patience (a quality of which I have little).

All humans have 20 baby teeth— or milk teeth— and 32 permanent teeth.  We need the starter set while our bodies are still young and growing, and our mouths are too small to house the big ones.  Once our jaws can accommodate them, the permanent teeth begin to come in and the baby set falls out.  It seems an improbable, complicated process requiring a great deal of energy.  A’s baby teeth look like tiny pearls in her big-girl face now.  She declares she will keep her tooth when it finally falls out

“What about the tooth fairy?” I ask.  “Don’t you want to put it under your pillow and get a dollar?” Thirty years ago, a tooth was worth a quarter, but this is the current rate of inflation.

“No,” she says. “I don’t care about money.  I want my tooth.  I want to keep all my teeth– forever.”

Her desire recalls sacred relics, the remains of the saints stored in shrines across Europe, the bones said to possess mystical potency.  A’s tooth attachment is a kind of nostalgia, a cherishing of objects.  She can’t bear to let go of some part of her body.

I already have practice with this, having been in the process of letting her go (in fits and starts) since they first cut her out of me six and a half years ago.

Later A has a nightmare and slides into our bed at 4 a.m.  A big snake was chasing people and it slithered down into our basement, where it turned into a crocodile and bit her Daddy’s hand off.  She woke from the dream, fell back asleep, only to dream it again.

“Shhhh, it’s over.  You’re safe now,” I whisper, holding her small body close.  Then I lie awake in the dark, worrying.  Where did the snake come from, sliding out of the depths of her first grade mind?  Is the tooth angst disturbing her sleep?

In Jungian psychology, snake dreams have a powerful archetypal quality.  They can represent a wise “otherness” or a dangerous enemy, but always connect us with the collective unconscious.  A’s nightmares originate from a source greater than her own experience, greater than her genetic predisposition to anxiety.

I remember my own childhood nightmares—the recurring horror of running from a volcano or being chased by a ghost.  In one bizarre dream I’d killed someone and stuffed the body parts in a black garbage bag.  All night long I dragged that heavy burden around, frantic, desperate, trying not to be found.

Eventually I learned to wake myself up from my nightmares as they rose to their crescendo of terror, chanting “Wake up, wake up, wake up” in the face of the dream.  My refusal to participate stopped the flood of images, and eventually I’d wake sweating in my bed.  I still have nightmares sometimes, but never as urgent or vivid as when I was little.  If I could, I’d spare A her frightening dreams, but I suspect they are a necessary rite of passage through childhood.  All I can do is offer comfort.

Meanwhile, she pokes her wiggly tooth tenderly with her tongue, still fretting.

“It’s a natural process, losing your baby teeth,” I tell her.

“YOU don’t lose your teeth!” she argues.

“I did when I was six,” I say.

“I just wish I was a grown-up so my body would stop changing.”

HA!  If only she knew…. I look at my lanky girl, already an inch taller since Christmas.  If only our bodies would stop changing.  If only we reached some still-point where the world stopped turning and we became the person we would always be, free from upheaval and pain.  But then we would inhuman— smooth, eternal creatures out of Middle Earth or the Twilight Saga.

I consider telling my child that I’m not done with my changes either, but I don’t want to cause her more worry. In her mouth, I see the white nub of the new tooth growing in behind the loose one, ready to fill in the empty space.

My children’s eating style is uncouth at best.  Like baby monkeys they scarf down their noodles, often without silverware, rarely with napkins. Buttery hands are wiped on sleeves, cushions, or parental laps.  Crumbs fly and ketchup drips.  On burrito night, I find a snowstorm of rice beneath the dinner table.

I think of the strict French mothers who inspired Pamela Druckerman to write her bestseller, Bringing Up Bebe:  One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. Apparently, French children never have tantrums in public and always eat what is offered them.  Their mothers wouldn’t tolerate the sloppy manners of my offspring, nor the refusal to eat anything but white foods and fruit.  The week after I heard Druckerman on the radio, I tried to assume a regal French authority while addressing my kids.  I used my lapsed college French for emphasis:  “Mes filles, il ne faut pas manger avec les mains!”

This phase lasted until Ava told me, firmly, “Mommy, stop pretending you’re French because you are just an American!”

American we were, and rural to boot, and we got lost driving into New York in the dark.  Once we’d navigated along parkways and thruways, across bridges and plazas, and located the tiny side-street of the studio apartment that would be our home for three days, we unloaded our motley collection of old duffle-bags.

Then, from the depths of the station wagon, we heaved our enormous, all-terrain, double baby jogger— a black, beat-up, and mud-spattered beast.The next day, we learned what a courageous move this was.

We pushed that huge jogger across the Brooklyn Bridge, amidst throngs of strolling tourists and wrathful bikers.  In Chinatown the jogger took up most of the sidewalk, and the crowds flowed around it like a rusty black engine stuck in a stream.  At the Brooklyn Heights playground, sleek New York parents pushed equally sleek strollers— with clean urban lines, titanium frames, black accented in bold reds and oranges.  Most people and possessions in New York appeared sleek, utterly free of mud.

I myself had tried to dress up for our trip.  I’d spent nearly an hour looking through my closet for outfits that might let me blend in as an urban dweller.  I shouldn’t have wasted my time.  What seemed chic in Vermont immediately felt shabby in Brooklyn.

New York women appeared effortlessly coiffed, sporting high leather boots, skinny jeans, designer handbags, and elegant black coats.  New York mothers had beautiful highlights, manicures and sunglasses while I schlepped around with an aqua wool hat pulled over my ears to keep out the bitter wind.  As far as I could tell, New Yorkers did not wear hats.  They certainly didn’t wear aqua.

Despite my self-consciousness, my children appeared at ease in the city.  They wore their stained parkas without a care and took in the array of constantly changing stimuli.  The success story of the trip was C (age 4), who hit the urban jungle on her scooter.  She’d received a silver Razor scooter for Christmas but had had to content herself all winter with laps on our front porch or around the living room.  In New York, she found her element.

C scooted off down the sidewalk on the night we arrived, light-up wheels flashing red and blue in the dark.  We were dazed from driving, hungry for a good meal, and gave her permission to zoom down the block ahead of us.  Pint-sized daredevil in pink sneakers, she ripped turns, hopped curbs, and whizzed along in tree-pose.  Pedestrians scattered at her approach, and I warned her to yield to those on foot.

The child had no fear—not even a touch of healthy concern for urban dangers.  In daylight we set limits for Scoot-a-loo.  She could scoot her heart out on the Brooklyn Promenade, where there was no traffic.  Off she zipped, one hundred, two hundred yards ahead, a flash of bright green jacket in the crowds.

“C!”  I yelled, running behind with A in the jogger.  She was almost out of sight, ripping a right-hand turn towards the park where the carousel awaited.

“C, WAIT!”  I was sprinting now, on alert but not yet panicking, strangely confident that my child would be safe.

“Does that kid have any parents?” asked one boy, open-mouthed.

Savvy New Yorkers keep their children on tight leashes.  I’ve always given C free reign to explore, not wanting to trap her free spirit, I guess, or trying to avoid a battle with her immense will.  This practice can be risky, like the time she disappeared off our porch at 15 months and I found her toddling on sock feet down the dirt road, where some guys were working on a truck, blasting dance hall reggae.  I reached her before she got to them, grabbed her up, heart pounding, face flushed, ashamed that these strangers had witnessed my maternal negligence.

But they didn’t care.  And my baby was fine. She was fine in Vermont and fine in New York, scooting back toward us on the boardwalk like a rocket, a huge grin illuminating her face.  We passed other kids on their scooters that weekend, but she was, bien sur, the fastest.

“I was up till midnight last night baking cupcakes for school,” grumbles Claire.  “Frosting, cherries on top, the works.”

And that’s not all.  On Saturday her two older daughters are having a joint jump-and-climb birthday party at a huge gymnastics arena, complete with 15 friends, DJ dance jam, favor bags, and ice cream. “And I’m throwing a family party with the grandparents too!” she adds.

Together we lament the insanity of overachieving super-moms who pay Martha-Stewart-like detail to every nuance of the birthday milestone, from favors to food to thank-you-cards.  And we admit we feel compelled to do the same, or at least try.

I myself was guilty of birthday madness last summer when I threw a double birthday bash for my girls.  My initial conception was a low-key backyard affair— grown-ups drinking wine, a few kids frolicking in the sprinkler.  But before I knew it, the plans escalated into handwritten invitations, face-painting, a scavenger hunt, a homemade ice cream cake (plus healthy snacks), and jello bars for the gluten-free, lactose intolerant guests.

Two trips to the dollar-store later, my arms full of junky plastic doodads for favor bags, I cursed myself for tackling the birthday party challenge.  Was this really how I wanted to commemorate my children’s arrival into the world?

I once spent a birthday (my 27^th… or was it 28^th?) lying in a hammock beside May Pond, up in Barton, VT.  I was house-sitting at a hilltop farm owned by a tall, dark, newly-divorced carpenter.  I lazed half the day away in that hammock beneath the maples, wearing a flimsy white sundress, reading Walt Whitman (who shares my birthday), writing in my journal.

I roused myself to go for a long run and swim naked in the cold pond, and eventually joined friends for an impromptu dinner picnic involving wine, crusty bread, soft cheese and tangy spring greens.  Late in the evening, we ate chocolate cake and danced to the Stones under the full moon.  That kind of effortless anniversary was possible only in another decade, in another era, before my energies were beholden to my offspring.

I know the efforts I put into orchestrating my girls’ birthdays are less elaborate than some mothers’.  But they still feel like the polar opposite of May Pond.

Let me clarify that this psycho-birthday-madness is not, on the whole, a father’s issue.  Yes, some dads may get involved baking a cake, planning a party, or shopping for presents, but mostly they are along for the maternal ride, a “cog in the domestic machine,” as Camille Paglia puts it.  My own husband managed to go out of town on a surf trip the day of our daughters’ double kid party, leaving me desperate for hostess back-up (which I found in the capable hands of my mother and a teenage babysitter).  For most fathers, creating a joyous birthday experience for their children is not a deep question of identity or self-worth.  It’s us moms who feel the need to go over-the-top baking beautiful treats to bring to school.

As I listened to Claire describe her midnight frosting job, a terrible thought crossed my mind.  Why had I never baked cupcakes for my daughters’ classrooms? How had I deprived them of the delight of celebrating their birthdays with classmates and teachers?  A lacerating pang of maternal guilt stung my heart, while my overworked brain tried to muddle out this puzzle.  Had I really made such an oversight all these years?

Five seconds later, I realized—   both my girls’ birthdays were in August!  Snorts of hysterical, relieved laughter burst from my mouth by the flour table.  A few powdery-faced kids turned to look at me, then returned to tunneling their monster trucks through mounds of flour.  Oh to be 4 and free of self-recrimination.

After last summer’s b-day extravaganza, I felt like I’d been hit by a 24-hour flu.  Had it been fun?  Sort of.  Were my girls happy?  Yes, but it could have been the sugar high.  I crawled into bed, put on my eye pillow, and resolved to take a year off from parties.  Could I actually do it?  Everywhere there are mothers throwing fabulous parties with homemade buffets, professional entertainment, and stimulating activities.  In every parenting magazine, on every parenting blog, there are dozens of perky articles on how to create themed birthdays, how to bake a tiered princess cake, how to turn your living room into a fairy-land.  The message:  more is always more.  A simple family gathering with a Betty Crocker mix is no longer good enough.

I’d love to lie in a hammock and read with A when she turns 7.  Isn’t her birthday an anniversary that belongs to me too, a day of giving birth?  Mothers, it’s time to stop the madness and honor ourselves as well as our kids.  Collectively, we can reclaim this ritual from social and media pressures and celebrate our children in ways that feel authentic to us.  The kids will survive with less hoopla  If we don’t want to be event planners, pastry chefs, or gracious hostesses, we can stop.  I’ll let you know in August whether I succeed.

It’s been a hard sell.

Without preparation, I find myself at the first Bill Koch youth ski race of the season, hoping to lay a healthy skiing foundation for my kids.  Thanks to the wonders of modern snowmaking, we drive north to an icy granular loop of white stuff.  My girls have only skied once since last February. Still, we gamely load the car with skis, boots, poles, snow-pants, hats, mittens, extra clothes and snacks, and make it to Grafton Ponds 20 minutes before the start of the Lollipop Race.

I’d been pushing the lollipops—hard—in hopes of raising the enthusiasm level.  But my girls are too old for that trick. They’ve enjoyed enough bank drive-thru lollipops in their day to get excited about one more.

“I don’t really want a lollipop today,” says A coolly.

“I think it’s going to be a BLOW-POP,” I say.  “You know, the kind with G-U-M inside!”

Gum is a rare and beloved delicacy in our household, and at its mention C’s ears perk up like a puppy hearing the word “treat!” At age 4, she is newly decked out in big-girl ski gear, and this will be her first Lollipop Race.

Ten minutes to the start and it’s time to divide and conquer.  My husband and I each take a child and zip up jackets, wrestle on snow-pants, retrieve hats and lace up ski boots.  My bare hands are raw and chapped, working in the cold.  The girls are whining about itchy socks and ill-fitting mittens.  I’m hustling to outfit my progeny for skiing, but my mind is flashing back to summer.  How I long for the ease of warm weather, the quick grab of bathing suits before a swim outing!

Sometimes I feel a quiet despair about all the GEAR.  Why am I pushing this dang sport, anyways?  Because I love it? Because I want to share it with my girls?  I wonder if this early effort will be worthwhile, or if they’ll harbor childhood memories of cold, grueling days of cross-country skiing, a forced Nordic death march orchestrated by Mom.

We clip their little boots into their bindings and watch as they shuffle off in the icy snow.   A immediately falls and gets her legs twisted under her.

“See!  I’m terrible at skiing,” she says to me, glaring.

“No, honey, it just takes practice,” I console, using a peppy tone of encouragement that disgusts even myself.

I ski alongside my oldest as she strides, glides, trips and falls.  The snow conditions are trick, at best.  She’s wearing new, longer skis.  But A’s biggest obstacle is her relentless perfectionist attitude– inherited, of course, from her mother.

“How come YOU don’t fall?” she demands, furious.  Then— “I HATE SKIING!”

Once these three words are uttered, my veneer of patience cracks imperceptibly.  I look around at the other happy ski families, the smiling moms who are content to be sherpas, coaches, and cheerleaders for their children.

C on skis, AGE 2

I, on the other hand, selfishly crave my own personal ski.  I’d love to leave my kids with a Ski Nanny and head off into the woods for an hour or two, gliding rather than trudging, stepping around corners, accelerating up hills, leaving the Bill Koch races far behind.  I want to get a workout rather than frozen fingers, experience the exhilaration of this incredible sport.

But then there’s C, trucking along in her bulky red snowsuit. She’s thrilled to be off her strap-on toddler skis.  This child, her father and I suspect, will take to racing like a duck to water, competitive animal that she is.  Sensitive A, on the other hand, hates competition and is astute enough to pick up my emotions about this sport, responding with her own complicated feelings.

Some kind volunteers are lining up little kids by a big START sign. My girls huddle in the back, looking confused.  One dad, who’s been warming up with his 6-year-old, pushes his daughter forward onto the front line, in prime position to take the lead.  I refrain from rolling my eyes and instead snap photos of my cute kids in their race bibs, ready for this new adventure.

Someone yells “GO!” and the mini-skiers are off!  Mercifully, A stays on her feet.  Some kids get tangled up but soon they spread out around the track, following the rainbow lollipop signs.  But where’s C?

Why is she still standing at the start? I watch two concerned moms go over to her and then launch into panic mode, sprinting to her side.  My child is having a tantrum at the Bill Koch Lollipop Race.

Her face is balled up red and screaming like her colicky infant days.  C’s shrieks are loud as an air raid siren, and she’s holding nothing back for the occasion.  Maybe she expected the other kids to wait for her to go first, as I do when we play “running race” around the driveway.  Maybe she was just taken by surprise.

“Carmen, honey, what’s wrong?” I kneel down beside her, despite my throbbing eardrums.

“Go AWAY Mommy!” she screams, louder.

“How about we ski together?” I suggest in a cheerful tone that belies my embarrassment.  Other parents are looking at us.  The rest of the Lollipoppers are ¾ of the way around the course.

“NO MOMMY!  GO A-WAY!” C is in full-on hysterics, and I have not a pea’s worth of patience left to coax her along.

“Fine,” I say. “You can scream there.  I’m going to cheer for Ava.”

At this, C bends down, unclips her bindings, picks up her skis, and throws them across the trail like two missiles.  They skitter over the icy granular and nearly trip some 10-year-olds warming up.

I retrieve the skis without any reaction.  Here I am, trying to walk the Middle Path between hard-core Tiger Mom and hands-off Laissez-Faire.  But what I really want is a Ski Nanny.

Almost immediately, A follows suit.

“Ugh— I had to leave,” she announces.  “There’s a song about… K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”  She carefully spells out the offending word.

I suppress a smile.  “Really? What?”

“It keeps going “I kissed a girl and I liked it”!” says A indignantly.  She makes the icky face she uses when coerced into sampling something green at dinner.

Oh dear.  My new Katy Perry craze may be fun for dancing, but is clearly inappropriate for the First Grade set.  Little ears have grown bigger of late, and now keenly hear every word sung, spoken or spelled aloud in our home.

“Yeah, I guess that’s not really a kid’s song,” I apologize.  “But— why don’t you like kissing?”

“Because it’s GROSS!”

“Even when Daddy or I kiss you?”

“ Well…” A considers this a moment.  “How about hugging?”

Later, at bedtime, I press further into the origins of her sudden disgust.  As I’d suspected, a boy in her class had teasingly sung the old classic: “X and Y, sitting in a tree…” Even though the song in question hadn’t (thankfully) referenced her, A had deduced that kissing was embarrassing, a bad word to be spelled aloud.  As with other recent dislikes that begin at school, she’s latched onto this one with the tenacity of a crab.

“MOMMY!” she warns, when I land a quick peck on her cheek.  After several such rejections, I re-train myself to hug her without making lip-contact.

At least C still relishes kissing with an enthusiasm that more than makes up for her sister’s denial.  My youngest has been known to plant huge, wet, French kisses on me and enjoys sucking on my cheek in a dangerously hickey-like fashion. I assume this behavior is a healthy manifestation of attachment and affection, a snuggly outgrowth of our 3 years spent nursing, rather than some expression of nascent sexuality.  But with C, anything is possible. And since children are sensual creatures, perhaps it’s a bit of both.

At what age does disgust merge with curiosity?  Or is curiosity already implicit in the disgust? I’ve talked (a few times) with the girls about the Birds and the Bees (“Facing The Facts of Life”).  I’m satisfied that A has positive regard for her body and a decent understanding of the mechanics of procreation. Sometime between age 6 and say, 10, I know her repulsion towards kissing will shift into genuine interest.  If I want to be a supportive mother during this transition, I need to remember my own conflicted history…

My first kiss was a brief, unremarkable peck during a game of fifth grade Truth or Dare.  Tucker Wentworth had pouty lips and an adorable mop of curly hair prompting the nickname “Brillo,” but I remained unmoved by the experience.  It didn’t change me.  I wasn’t even sure it had happened.

My second kiss—in sixth grade— was another story.   I’d moved to a new school in a new state, and managed to be invited to a popular-crowd, boy-girl dance party at The Little Red Schoolhouse.  Parent chaperones chatted in the foyer while boys in parachute pants jumped off the miniature desks to Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

In the midst of the chaos, Rick Tagliatelli maneuvered me into the bathroom.  There, by the preschool-sized sinks, with his best buddy Jason Shepherd as witness, Rick placed his hands on my hips, drew me close, and kissed me several times with warm lips.  He knew exactly what to do.  Rumor had it Rick was actually 13— not 11 or 12 like the rest of us.

Anticipation had been building for weeks, discussed in notes passed back and forth in Social Studies.  “Will you kiss Rick at the dance party?  Check one:

YES ___ NO____ MAYBE___ “

My answer had always been MAYBE, but after the party I crossed into new territory, the early wonderland of K-I-S-S-I-N-G.  I was a girl who’d said YES.  The once-hazy activity was now concrete— a meeting of flesh, a viable option.

That spring, Nat Grubner slow-danced me behind the boiler in Stephanie Richards’ basement and proceeded to grope my mouth with his tongue while Madonna crooned “Crazy For You.”  I loved that song, and I thought I loved Nat, but it was, to quote my daughter, kind of gross.

“Heard you got some tongue sushi at Stephanie’s party on Friday!” laughed Jay Wilder, the coolest boy in the sixth grade.  He was standing on the four-square court surrounded by his athletic gang of boys, all hooting and hollering as they spiked the red ball.  I hung my head and skulked away, trying to disappear into the blacktop.

Last night, A told me it was the tongue that bothered her most about kissing.  We figured out how to do a dry lip-press that avoided all wetness.  This, she said, would be tolerable.

Click HERE to read about life on magical Star Island.

I love turning the corner of the year and looking ahead to the wide expanse of a fresh calendar.  The promise that 2012 brings a new dawning of the Age of Aquarius has got me full of astrological hope.

And what relief to pass by the Winter Solstice and survive the accumulated pressure of the holidays.  However sweet, there are always pressures.

So on New Years Day I was bopping around the house, happy to be domestic while A & C were occupied by a playdate.  Sometimes the threesome dynamic is a disaster, but for some reason, these 3 girls (ages 4, 6, and 7) played beautifully.  I made a big pot of carrot-potato soup, singing along to my favorite 80s station on Pandora.  Here were some of my favorite, long-forgotten gems from adolescence:

Rick Springfield- Jesse’s Girl

Pat Benatar- Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Boston- More Than a Feeling

Tears for Fears- Don’t You Forget About Me

Yes, as a relatively new iPhone owner I am head over heels in love with Pandora.  I can get my dance groove on with Lady Gaga or punch in Hanukkah music and sing along to rockin’ Jewish tunes with the girls.  And there’s nothing like the classic 80s songs to bring back a flood of high school longings when I’m chopping onions…

Why do I forget how good music can make me feel?  What a simple way to uplift a low mood.

This year, my resolutions are to:

-DANCE and sing more

-keep a sense of HUMOR

-listen to my INTUITION

-express more GRATITUDE, and

-INVITE ABUNDANCE into my life in all ways

THANK YOU FOR BEARING WITNESS TO THESE RESOLUTIONS.  What are your intentions for 2012?

Episode 5 of The Desha Show: Wild Night on the Catwalk from Desha Peacock on Vimeo.

from Visipix.com

The moon rose huge and red over Searsburg Mountain as we drove home from my mother’s. I stopped the car to marvel at the impossible color, a glowing apple suspended in the winter sky.

“Look, girls, the moon is red!”

But the girls were absorbed in Judy Moody, MD and didn’t care about lunar phenomenon. I turned off their audiobook and they exploded in protest.

“Mommy, turn it ON!” shrieked C.

“And keep driving!” ordered A.

“Just look out at the moon, quick,” I pleaded.  “It’s enormous.  They call it the Long Nights Moon, because it’s full in December.”

“I know,” said A.  “Now turn on Judy Moody. PLEASE.”

There’s some inherent sadness in Sunday night, especially when you are driving back to a dark, empty house where the thermostat is turned low and no dinner is waiting.  Winter weekends when my man is away, I can’t bear to be home alone for long.  I take the girls out for pizza or Chinese or drive through the dark to visit family and friends, seeking out light and companionship, hot food and conversation.

But then there’s Ma Ingalls on the Minnesota prairie, alone with three girls during a raging, three-day blizzard.  Ma had no car, no neighbors, no take-out, no cell phone— no way to call or text Pa, who’d walked to town for tobacco and gotten caught in the storm.  Bravely, she lit the oil lamp for him and placed it at the window.

For three days and nights, Ma never cried or complained, not when she had to trek through blinding snow and screaming winds to feed the stock and milk the cow.   Not when icy snow blew in beneath the doors and windows, swirling on the floor of the little house while her girls huddled shivering at the stove and still Pa did not come home.

Ma’s situation puts my rare solo time in perspective.  How privileged I am with my oil furnace and all-wheel-drive wagon and two phones.  How mobile we all are in this high-tech modern world—and how restless.

I can’t imagine staying put for three days in a 20 x 20 house alone with my children.  Though I would do it if I had to, if it was a matter of survival.  And I suspect I would rise to the occasion, might even experience the relief of absolute commitment, the absence of nagging anxieties about health insurance, caffeine addiction, and what I should be doing with my one life.

If you have to milk the cow in a blizzard to feed your children, you milk the cow.  There is a kind of pure presence that comes with crisis, an intensity of focus that elevates the spirit.  As Anton Chekhov put it, “Any idiot can face a crisis—It’s this day to day living that wears you out.”

C with her Nonna, Christmas

That Sunday night driving home, I longed to share with my children the wordless magic of watching the moon.  Despite everything, there it was.

My heart trilled with the wonder of being a lonely human in the 21^st century— iPhone humming in my pocket, CD blasting on the car stereo, and the red moon rising like a portent just before the Winter Solstice.

Earlier that morning I’d visited my grandmother, Deedee, in the nursing home where she’s starting to die.  At 93, she sleeps most of the day.  When my mother woke her, her startled blue eyes searched our faces, then stared off unblinking into the middle distance.  I held her hand, stroked her silken white skin, kissed her papery-fine cheek.

The oxygen tank huffed in the background, rhythmic as a metronome. My mother sat with Deedee and rubbed her shoulders, told her she was beautiful.  Time kept churning on, the unstoppable cycle of generations.

It was impossible not to flash-forward two decades and imagine myself at my mom’s bedside, or double that time and imagine A sitting at mine.

When I bathed the girls that night, the moon had grown distant, a white disc poised above bare black trees.

“OW, Mommy!” A cried as she brushed her teeth, as usual directing anger at me when something hurt.  But the flinch of pain turned to delight when she discovered a wiggly tooth—her first.  At age six, she’d been waiting a year for this rite of passage.  The incisor looked tiny in her big-kid mouth, a pearly relic of babyhood.

“Honey, that’s wonderful!” I said, and A threw her skinny arms around my neck.

I felt a pang of loss, realizing this very same tooth—the lower left incisor– had been the first to cut through her 6-month-old gums.

One night she’d sat plump and naked in the tub, chomping madly on a frozen washcloth, growling like a baby tiger. Later I’d put my finger in her mouth and felt the sharp ridge of the new tooth, a nub arisen from the darkness of her jaw.

Maybe we love the moon because it cycles each month, while our changes are linear, never to repeat.

This season, at least, there are moments of pause. When I go to all-school sing with C, she burrows into my lap and we sing a round to welcome the Winter Solstice.

A- 6 months old

“Light is returning,” chant the cherubic preschoolers.“Even though this is the darkest hour… No one can hold back the dawn.”