MOXIE MOM on Life & Kids
Mother’s Day Thoughts
Mother’s Day is looming. Did I say looming? That sounds ominous. But at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I have to admit, I kinda do feel that way. It feels like yet another responsibility in my already harried life of running my kids to sports and music lessons and other random activities (I did not think this would be my life but oh, it is!).
It doesn’t help that Mother’s Day falls during the busiest month of the school year. March would be so much better. Or September, when the kids have gone back to school, and the house rings with silence.
Here’s the thing: my mom, who lives nearby, is out of town for Mother’s Day, which brings a measure of simplicity to the day. Slap myself with a wet noodle! How did I get to this place where doing something nice for my mother has become a burden? (It hasn’t, really, it’s just the prescription that feels burdensome.) My mother would not want me to feel this way. I know that. But I can’t help it. Maybe that’s the curse of being a mom — always feeling in charge and responsible. Or maybe that’s just me and my ultra organized calendar-brain that lives in fear in of forgetting someone somewhere or unwittingly missing a practice of some kind or, worse, getting a call from someone saying, “Where are you?” “Where am I supposed to be?” was something I said to a caller somewhat recently, my brain a complete blank.
The idea, of course, is that I am also to be the honored one, and that’s supposed to be nice, relaxing — to be honored and thanked by my loving children (feel the Hallmark coming through?) — and we’re supposed to spend some happy family time together (and we do), and yes, most years, somewhere in there, I’d like to spend time with my own mother, but honestly the whole affair just feels like one more thing on my to-do list. A calendar holiday. I can’t believe I just said that.
It’s a beautiful idea, and it was when it first started centuries ago. But now it feels like another over-marketed holiday and a way to spend money, although the marketing isn’t new. Apparently, the American version of it went commercial almost immediately (leave it to us Yanks).
Don’t get me wrong. I love the sentiment behind the day and I love the hanging basket that seems to be a tradition in our household (the basket I will buy for myself the following weekend if it falls through for Mother’s Day). Not that I expect it or anything, but when my family asks if I’d like something, well, yeah, sure. They can save me the drive to Joe’s Gardens. One less thing on my to-do list.
If we think we’re busy now, the first English Settlers discontinued Mother’s Day when they first arrived in the new land because they flat out didn’t have time to celebrate. Personally I think that’s less about time and more about their attitude. Uh. Note to self.
But I can sort of relate. Right now, I’m all for celebrating Mother’s Day Off — from everything, including being a mom, as well as from that looping list in my overstuffed female brain.
Anyone with me?
5 commentsEaster
The other day Ty asked me if we are going to have an Easter egg hunt on Sunday. 
Leah asked, too — both of them with an air of concern, as if expecting to hear I will be making them hunt for eggs just to please me.
“Do you want to?” I asked. We are waaayyy beyond the Easter bunny and have been for a long time, ever since Leah looked out her bedroom window early one rainy Easter morning and saw Dad hiding eggs.
“Uh, no, I don’t want an egg hunt.”
But I could feel a pause in the air, a little waft of something — nostalgia or regret or yearning for bygone days. Christmas is still Christmas even when kids no longer believe in Santa, but when they don’t buy into the Easter bunny, and they feel silly hunting for eggs in the yard just for fun, well, your family can’t avoid giving up past practices.
“But you’d like something, wouldn’t you?” I said. “You’d like a basket?” I recall going through this conversation last year, and since we’re not big on Easter family traditions like dinner with relatives — and we’re not a religious family — Easter is kind of a funny holiday for us, especially as the kids get older.
“Yes,” he said. “A basket would be nice.”
So we’ll be having baskets. And we’ll be silently acknowledging an era well over. Sigh.
leave a comment!Portland’s Food Carts
We headed to Portland over spring break to get out of Dodge for free (my mother-in-law lives there). We always head to the City of Roses for Thanksgiving, so it was fun to visit at another time of year and eat something besides turkey. In short, food carts. Love them! And kids love them!
If you haven’t checked out Portland’s street food, be sure to try some next time you go (I think it’s worth a special trip). So, so delicious, and kids love the idea they’re not eating your food of choice. We went to two locations, one downtown at 10th and Yamhill, where the food carts occupy a full city block (Korean, Thai, Bosnian, Greek, Japanese, the list goes on), and one in north Portland at Mississippi and Skidmore, where we got vegan rice bowl things with fresh veggies that the kids wolfed down (note to self: kids do eat raw spinach if it’s presented well).
Here’s a Bosnian dish of pork wrapped in pastry, popular with the whole family.
The best part of lunch was topping off with frozen yogurt (whose cart has an ATM conveniently built in so you’re never short on cash).
leave a comment!Chicken, Chicken, Duck
I 
had the pleasure of hearing local children’s author Nadia Krilanovich present her new children’s book, Chicken, Chicken, Duck, on Sunday out on Lummi Island. It was not a reading per se (although the audience talked her into it), but a presentation on the publication process, from concept to final printing of the book, which was released on March 22.
Let’s just say, children’s book publishing is not for the faint of heart. And you need to be willing to stick with it for years. Like half a dozen at least.
We’re lucky Nadia chose to stick with it. She both wrote and illustrated Chicken, Chicken, Duck, a beautiful book of barnyard animal illustrations with simple text aimed at the 3 and under set. Truly, youngsters (and their parents) will love the animals, the details of the pictures (look for the mouse), and their intrepid leader, bigger-than-life Duck, who of course… well, I won’t give anything away.
Nadia will be presenting the book at Village Books on May 8 (Mother’s Day). She is also the author of Moon Child, illustrated by Ellizabeth Sayles, which came out last year, and she’s already at work on something new. Stay tuned. I predict we will be hearing a lot more about this young author.
leave a comment!Our New Rig
I have been driving around in a new (to us) vehicle that we purchased in a flurry three days before Christmas — action required when our trusty Honda Odyssey was totaled in that accident I referenced a couple posts ago.
So now I am an SUV mom, graduated from a minivan mom, because we bought a 2004 Honda Pilot. It’s the cushiest car we’ve ever owned, and we’re still in a bit of shock.
Here’s why we bought a Pilot. We test drove newer Odysseys and Siennas, and a Pilot just for kicks. The new vans, we agreed, felt like boats. Nice, fun, and long. But an Outback was out of the question for me — too small. Our little Odyssey was a 1997 model, the smallest van on the road with a 4-cylinder engine and decent mileage but also seven seats. Decidedly smaller than the post-1999 models, it did not have sliding doors, and it functioned more like a large wagon than a van, but I could still haul four kids in the back. We had planned to drive it into the ground, to Leah’s embarrassment, and upgrade to a smaller vehicle when the kids moved out. So much for plans.
At one point, when I was talking to another (new-ish) parent about our back-and-forth process on a minivan versus a Pilot, she said she’d rather die than drive a minivan. Really? Her comment made me realize I have grown into parenthood and hauling kids and driving minivans. In fact, I am struggling mightily with the SUV image. I feel so… yuppie (does anyone use that word anymore?). Also like a piggy American who is hogging resources, at least until China takes the oil for its own middle class. And yet, it didn’t make sense for us to buy a last-century car. We had just put a couple thousand dollars into repairs, and we’d purchased two new tires just three days prior to the accident.
The long and the short of it is this: if you want more than five seats, and I did, you have to go to a 6-cylinder engine, whether a van or an SUV. So we decided to change things up and get that all-wheel drive action for snow (it’s been nice) and the higher suspension for squirrely trail heads. We’re kinda thinking with the state’s proposed budget cuts to the state parks that the roads will be deteriorating so we’re preparing just in case (or so we tell ourselves).
Here’s what we’ve concluded along the way: we know we’re not the only parents out there who haul lots of kids at times and also don’t need a V-6 engine to do it. We know if smaller vans with 4-cylinder engines came back on the market, people would buy them — we discovered a crowd of small Odyssey lovers online. So why can’t the car makers design a car that carries more than five people but gets better mileage?
We know it can be done. We were driving it. We miss it.
leave a comment!