The little angel's betta fish, Simon, went down the toilet, where all streams go to the ocean, last week. I bought Simon on a whim as a surprise one day, because I had fond memories of my own betta fish in college and because I think every child needs a fish. My daughter hadn't even asked for one; it was just one of those impulse things I do as a mother because I can. When she came home from school that day, I showed her Simon, and I think I was more excited than she was, but she grew to love him and shed a tear when we made the decision that anyone who has fungus growing on his side and who has eaten part of his own tail is probably on the shady side of the tree now. RIP, Simon.

We made a trip to the pet store and came home with a new tank and a new betta fish, which the little angel named Serendipity without really knowing what that name meant. I promised to buy more distilled water so we could take better care of the tank, even though Simon did actually live for three years through his murk and that is pretty good for a betta fish. It's been a week and it's time to start switching out half the water like the man at the pet shop told us to do. The man who also looked at us with his jaw dropped when we admitted we never turned out the light on Simon's tank and said, "You know they don't have eyelids, right?" and made me feel as though we had strapped Simon to a chair and played The Cure and showed him non-stop video of the bombing of Hiroshima. So now we turn out the light for Serendipity at night. 

That fish is so spoiled.

---

New on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews -- Time, Inc.'s Big Book of When

I've caught up with a few friends with kids lately, and the conversation inevitably turns to what activities our kids are participating in during [insert season]. As usual, my kid isn't doing shit.

We started out strong. We put her in Twinkle Toes ballet class starting at two, and she followed it through up until last December, when she hung up her leotard after class went to twice a week with an hour-long round-trip commute. She took gymnastics for a year, long enough to convince me to buy the expensive leotard she ended  up wearing maybe five times. It was easier when she was wee -- all I had to do was drive her to wherever and we'd sit through an hour of music class or tumbling or what have you. Now she's older and opinions, she's got them. 

She just doesn't care.

We've lined up another mom to watch her while I work for the majority of summer vacation. She'll be with two of her best friends doing whatever it is kids do when their moms are off during the summer. There will be gaps, and I tried to interest her in drama camp or robot camp or basketball camp, but she had zero interest in any of them, and at the end of the day, paying hundreds of dollars and driving halfway across the city when I'm supposed to be working for something she'll protest seems ridiculous.

I dangled swimming in front of her yesterday, but she flipped over in the pool and demonstrated that she already knows how to swim with non-race-worthy proficiency, point taken. 

And then I asked myself for the hundredth time why I care. 

It's probably because I shit you not every single other mother I know has her kids in at least one sport or lesson each, usually multiple leagues of multiple sports all happening at the same time. When I was growing up, I myself took dance lessons and drama lessons and drum lessons and any camp I could get my hands on. I was spending a week at sleepaway horse camp once a summer by the time I was her age.

My daughter doesn't care.

On the flip side, her complete and total lack of involvement in any extracurricular activities has left her available to go visit her friend Ka'Vyea in the hospital. She's played quite a bit of pick-up cul-de-sac kickball. Her dolls are all currently in the doll hospital for various broken bones she lovingly wrapped with gauze and signed like casts. We spent all day this past Sunday and Monday at the swimming pool, floating lazily on our backs and eating Starburst. She made paper lanterns for our Memorial Day cookout of her own volition.

I'm ambivalent. I spent my whole life ambitious, and sometimes I feel like I've lost my ambition when it comes to trying to get my daughter to participate in things. I worry I've been worn down by this working-mama gig to the point where I'm taking the unnecessarily easy way out, that I should force her to get more involved.

I absolutely insist that she behave and wear age-appropriate clothing and her seatbelt and eat her vegetables. But I've been letting her completely self-direct on most activities. Beloved and I agree we'll make her take band or strings for at least a year, because MATH and ART and CULTURE, but if after that year she wants to chuck it, I'd let her.

But then I find myself justifying it. It's not like she's sitting around cooking meth while she's home. And when I start talking to the other mothers I question whether I shouldn't be pushing her harder to do something that requires sign-ups and special shoes and schedules. People say over and over they think it's so great she's all Free-to-Be-You-and-Me, but then I look at their kids and see eight different uniforms and a piano practice book and a calendar full to popping and I think they would never ever let their kid opt out of all competition.

I hope I'm doing this right. The sad thing is, at ten, she's already past the point of no return for a lot of sports. Fifth grade is too old to start anything that could be played as league starting at age four in a suburb my size. 

Sometimes it feels like there's no which way but loose when it comes to modern parenting.

Y'all, I'm having a blogiversary this year, the big ten. I even started this blog in May 2004. I got all sappy and made a big slideshow of ten years of my daughter and me and this blog over on BlogHer today. Please check it out!

My heart has been hurting for the past week or so. Two Fridays ago, my daughter's friend Ka'Vyea Tyson-Curry was shot in the parking lot of a gas station. So was his dad. His dad died. Someone walked up to their car and unloaded eight rounds, killing Ka'Vyea's dad and paralyzing Ka'Vyea. The bullet hit his hand, lungs and spine. He's in the pediatric ICU. He's having trouble breathing. He has a breathing tube and a feeding tube. He's sedated. I've said just a little bit about it because it isn't my story to tell, but now there's a website and a way to help, so I'm asking for help. 

The mountain for Ka'Vyea and his mom, Tanesha, just seems so high to climb. Rehabilitation, a wheelchair, a wheelchair van, the hospital bills (she has insurance, but, yeah), the emotional and physical and mental energy needed to just deal with the reality of what has happened. Two weeks ago, Ka'Vyea was playing with my girl and their group at recess. Now he can't walk or breathe. I just can't even.

If you'd like to contribute to Ka'Vyea's fund (from the website) (Ka'Vyea's family nickname is "Buddha"):

We've been swarmed with inquiries of how to contribute to his recovery care, so an account has been setup in his name at Bank of America. You can go to any branch just tell them you want to contribute to the Kavyea Buddha Tyson-Curry Fund.

Ka'Vyea also loves to read. He's a very smart kid and likes facts, history and science. If you'd like to send books for him to read during his recovery, here is an address: 

Ka'vyea 'Buddha' Tyson-Curry Foundation

4435 Prospect Avenue

Kansas City, Missouri 64130

email: buddhatysoncurry@gmail.com

 

If you can't contribute financially, please just send up a prayer or good mojo or however you communicate with your maker/the universe/God. We can hold up Ka'Vyea and pray his lungs heal and he is able to wake up from his heavy sedation and feel the love we are all sending him. 

UPDATE: Congratulations to Jennifer Smith! You won the pair of LTYM tickets. I'll be emailing you shortly.

Last year, I had the huge honor of being part of the inaugural Kansas City cast of Ann Imig's national Listen to Your Mother Show. Reading my piece in front of an audience was incredible, but the life-changing part of the experience? The friendships branded the minute I met these women in Erin Margolin's basement for a read-through. 

You call me up, because you know I'll be there.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyyx9Bv2PUM] 

This year, I'm excited to sit in the audience with my girlfriends and let the experience wash over me. And I'm giving away a pair of tickets! Here are the details about the show:

 

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER is a live show of readings by individuals that celebrate the guts and gore and glory of motherhood.

Each production is directed, produced and performed by local communities. In 2014, 32 cities will host a LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER show. The show is co-produced and co-directed by Erin Margolin, Sarah Guthrie, Leslie Kohlmeyer and Lisa Allen.

The show will be at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 3, 2014 at Unity Temple on The Plaza. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 on the day of the show. Ten percent of ticket proceeds will benefit Women’s Employment Network.

Here are the women reading this year:

Lisa Allen

Katherine Bontrager

Amy Carlson

Debra Carter

Mary Carver

Natasha Ria El-Scari

Kathleen Fisher

Sarah Guthrie

Debi Jackson

Mary Katherine Kerbs

Renee Lawrence

Stacey Lukas

Amy Zoe Schonhoff

Liz Tascio

So .. you gotta go, right? To be entered to win, comment below. You can comment as many times as you like. I'll close comments at 5 pm CT on Friday, May 2 and email the winner (so make sure when you fill out the comment thing, you include your email). Tickets will be fulfilled at the door. Your name will be on a secret list, which makes you EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Go!

Beloved informed me this past week that he will only be gone three of the four weeks in May. 

He is home for one week and two weekdays in April. He was home for two weeks in March, one of which was our vacation and the other of which his father died. He was home for no weeks in February. I wrote about it on BlogHer when I was really in the abyss, then the sun came out, and the time changed, and the days got longer, and the little angel started to play with the neighbor kids after school again and it seemed a little better. 

It is better, but it's not. Yes, he's home on weekends, but when half the family unit is gone five out of seven days, the two days he's home becomes crammed with yard work and housecleaning and laundry and errands and thinking gosh, I really like this person and everything is better when he's home and oh, shit, he's leaving again tomorrow. It's nice to see him, but it doesn't make it all better to have him home on the weekends. And the worst part is that I don't really know when this will end. The little angel doesn't have childcare the week of BlogHer, and he doesn't know if he will be home or not. I throw my hands in the air like I don't care because I am so tired of thinking through all the scenarios and how I will address them on my own. (He would say it's not on my own, and he would sometimes be right, but sometimes he would be wrong, because only the person in the situation knows the myriad things that come up and must be dealt with over the course of the week, most of which I don't even tell him about because pfffft.)

My friends ask if this is normal for his job, but he's only had it for a little over a year. The first project only had him gone for one month, not this never-ending cycle of early Monday flights and late Thursday or Friday flights, of trying to squeeze in Facetime twenty minutes after I wished the little angel had already gone to bed, of trying to explain why he's gone again and remembering to do everything that needs to be done to keep the house running after a full day of my own job and sitting down with my novel at 10 pm and crying because I don't have the mental energy to do anything I want to do by 10 pm and there is no other time in my day because all the things take twice as long when there is one person doing them and that person doing them is also the person explaining to the ten-year-old why she can't have four desserts and how to convert things to the metric system.

I try to do little things to make up for him being gone on these weeks alone with my daughter. It sucks most for her. She adores her father and by the third night is always in tears over why he can't be there to put her to bed instead of me. So I try.

Yesterday, for instance, she asked me to make her pancakes. Wednesdays are late-start days at her school, so the bus comes an hour later than usual. I didn't know where the pancake mix was, so she showed it to me. I added the water. I found the skillet. I greased the skillet. I tried to remember what temperature the skillet should be at. Super hot sounded good to me. (queue ominous music)

The first pancake ended up in the sink after I couldn't flip it at all. I remembered you are supposed to flip them when they bubble, but my pancakes bubbled instantly. I ended up scorching a spatula trying to flip my bubbling masses of chocolate-chipped destruction. 

On the third pancake, I turned down the temperature, but it was too late. I started using the scorched flipper plus a second flipper to try to get the burning even on both sides of the pancakes, adding extra chocolate chips because, you know, as long as there is enough chocolate involved, my kid will eat anything. I flung the unsalvagable pancakes in the sink or really just anywhere on the stove that was not white-hot because time was of essence. I could melt polar icecaps with these pancakes, but at least they weren't burning. At last I had a plate of four kind of normal-looking pancakes, which I served my daughter.

"Um, Mama? These aren't cooked in the middle."

"Well, yeah. Maybe I should microwave them."

"Maybe."

*ding*

"Better?"

"Yeah."

(chewing)

"I'm not very good at pancakes, am I?"

"Maybe we should leave that to Daddy."

Oh, well. I'm trying.

My daughter steals my iPhone when she's bored. I keep taking all the games off, and she keeps putting them back on. I don't like to play video games, and they suck a ton of space. 

Every time she grabs it, I think about how much she could learn about me if she wanted to. 

How much of ourselves we carry around on these little machines. Not only whom we call but how we choose to name those people in our contact lists. I actually labeled Beloved as "husband" in my contact list because I am a paranoid worrier and I thought it would be handy for someone searching through my phone to figure out whom to call when they found my mangled body by the side of the road.

(those are called "instrusive thoughts," but at least I have my husband labeled in my phone)

I have receipts for all her birthday presents in my gmail, as well as long conversations I've had with friends about different aspects of parenting her. My banking app tells how much money we do or don't have. My pedometer shows how far I ran last, how long it took me to do it and what the altitude of my climb amounted to before I was done. And that's not even touching Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.

I wonder if she realizes all this information about her mother is in her hands when she opens the Games folder and chooses between Monster Hair, Crazy Facts or Subway Surf. I don't ask, because I don't want to plant that suggestion. And yes, I often think about whether or not I want to give voice to something I don't want someone to do because I'm afraid the mere mention of that thing will make them stop at nothing to achieve it.

So I do what I usually do when I'm having intrusive thoughts, which is to tell myself thinking that thing is completely ridiculous and nobody else would even have that thought. And I hand over the phone and hope she doesn't realize how much of our personalities we store in those little glass rectangles.

My girl and two of her besties are trying out for the school talent show tonight. They're singing Let It Go from Frozen -- the anthem of tween girls everywhere. They sound really good, and their routine rocks. I have no doubt they'll get in.

That doesn't mean there's no stage fright.

This morning, she asked me if I ever have stage fright. I told her of course, and we talked about the wonders of deep breathing.

After she got on the bus, I realized my worst stage fright these days no longer involves a physical stage. I really don't get on physical stages much any more. Every once in a while, I'll speak at a conference, but that's not really a performance, at least not in the way acting or singing or playing an instrument is.

My stage is a page, and I get nervous every time I work on a novel. Last night, I found myself in the grips of intense page fright while typing up my handwritten draft three revisions for PARKER CLEAVES. Sometimes the deep breathing works and sometimes it doesn't, and the anxiety threatens to spill over. Or it does, and I have to do my own deep breathing and I wait to feel better. Last night I had to walk away from the revisions because it was just too much.

And the thing about stage fright? No one can get rid of it for you. It's as intensely personal as the performance itself.

Good luck tonight, baby duck.

A week ago, my fourth-grader asked me about getting an Instagram account. I demanded she produce other fourth-graders who had one so I could ask their mothers about it. That ended the conversation.

Today, school was cancelled due to ice. She mused as I ignored her while working that she wished she could text with her friends.

I told her she's too young then went back to ignoring her while working. 

Then I sort of felt bad, so I started to suggest she call them and had to hold my tongue. Of course the friends she wants to talk to moved here from Iowa and their mother has a long-distance cell phone number, and our home phone doesn't get long distance, and I refuse to let her use my cell because I need it for work. So she can't call them. They live within walking distance and she can't call them. She could probably Skype with them, but that is now making my head hurt.

The world of 2013 is so complicated. 

She's not getting a cell phone. Not yet. She's not. 

Or Instagram. 

Or, OMG, SnapChat, that devil's tool all the kids like.

So far I've muddled along whistling in the dark about my daughter and technology. She has an iPod Touch and has had one for about a year now, but so far she only uses it to play games and FaceTime with relatives.

She's not getting a phone.

She's not texting.

She's going to talk. Or for God's sake, pass a note. Or be bored.

*headdesk*

(I just peeked. She found a new app and is now writing a story. THANK YOU, JESUS. Back to work.)