Can I tell you something embarrassing? …I’ve been working up to this.
When I was a super-young mom, I was thinking about writing a novel. (I have a different one on my hard drive that will likely never see the light of day.)
Can I tell you something embarrassing? …I’ve been working up to this.
When I was a super-young mom, I was thinking about writing a novel. (I have a different one on my hard drive that will likely never see the light of day.)
My daughter was 14 months old when she got glasses and began to wear the felt purple eye patch I’d stitched for her. Coincidentally, it was the same month, she started walking at last and pushed through her first tooth. We’d noticed she frequently went cross-eyed.
It wasn’t until she could talk that the opthalmologist was able to understand she didn’t have a muscle problem. She had a genetic condition from my side called Dewayne’s Syndrome, from a missing cranial nerve.
When my kids were younger, I tried my hand at writing a children’s book.
It was the story of a boy in a small town whose grandpa had a magical house: The House of Broken and Beautiful. His grandpa was beloved, though some who didn’t know him suspected him of evil.
It’s become legend in my family–the night I went to see Hedda Gabler at my university as a freshman.
Somewhere in Act II, I think, my friend Paul came on stage wearing a painted-on black eye. And that’s when I promptly began to feel lightheaded. I was thinking, Janel. It’s makeup.
I’ve been feeling an unexpected, if not undesired, kinship with my man Moses lately.
Remember when Moses comes down the mountain to the all-out idol-worshipping party of 2 million people (who God just brought out of Egypt and is about to give the Ten Commandments)? Moses loses it and breaks the stone tablets in half.
So there’s this chance raising teenagers could kill me.
I’m (again) in one of these parenting seasons where hope feels like a mind game. There is indeed a battlefield in my brain, in my soul.
When my son was seven, I’d ask him to clean his room.
Unfortunately, I could come in half an hour later and the place still looked like someone had turned the place upside down and shook it, then sprayed cheese-in-a-can on top.
Months ago, I stumbled upon what I thought was an epiphany: silicone scar strips…which promised, with 4.5 stars on Amazon, to fade stretch marks, people.
My heart lifted. My first child ballooned my belly like a watermelon, complete with stripes. When another mother asked to glimpse my stretch marks after I mentioned their severity, she gasped aloud with some equivalent of Good golly.
That day, in the whirlwind of working with kids at home, I received the kind of email I felt in my chest. Bad news.
I heard my respiration accelerate as my fingers curled the counter’s edge. My daughter watched my face, then looked at the screen.
So yeah. That happened.
I won’t tell you which one. It doesn’t matter. And I have this phobia my kids will need to be in therapy because their mother is a writer.
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