Mamazina Blog

Toads, Turtles, & Tales

     My trip to the Hawaiian Islands was cut short because my traveling companion turned out to be an ill-mannered toad, instead of Prince Charming; nevertheless, I did come away with some delightful observations.

      First off, I discovered that dark boulders floating in the blue Pacific waters off Maui are really sea turtles swimming towards the black lava strewn shore. If you watch long enough you will notice every few minutes their little heads pop-up gasping for a deep breath, or are they looking around to make sure that they’re swimming in the right direction?

 

     The second day as I buried my feet deep in the brown-sugar sands looking at the horizon, I spotted a dazzling white ship in the distance. Then in a flash, it was gone. Is this a trick of the sun? No. Much to my enchantment, it was a pod of free spirited humpback whales flipping their tails high in the air, and then slapping them down with all their might sending plumes of icy-salt-spray towards the sky. I would sit patiently waiting for them to flaunt with grace their ability to do another awe-inspiring high-flying belly flop or a front pike half-twist dive.

 

     On the third day, I stand high on a cliff in Lahaina above the ocean. This is where the local big boys surf…very cool!  I hear the rhythmic accents and Jamaican music floating in the air. The surfers look more like nimble skateboarders. I watch a zig-zag-tuck and the rider is airborne…then suddenly freefalling out of sight. The audience releases a breath in unison when the surfer swims to the surface.  Oh my gawd, I notice another agile surfer catching a wave and he’s headed under the frothy white curl of a 15-footer. I gasp and stare along with the other spectators.

 

      I confess I tend to be a worrywart. Let’s put it this way, when my kids were young I was that mom who watched all of the kids on the playground. I was ever ready to bolt into action if anyone got hurt or when another child was about to hurt my baby, I would get in their face. Needless to say, years later, I’ve not changed much.

 

     Therefore, taking advantage of my excellent observation spot on the cliff, I watch each surfer as if I birthed them myself. I count each head as they come up; grab their board attached to their ankle, and start paddling out to catch yet another perfect wave.

 

     However, after one monstrous crushing wave swallowed several riders, I saw this surfer go under and never come back up.  The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. My stomach does a flip-flop.  Franticly I scan the beach below. Where are the lifeguards?  Am I the only one that sees this drowning?  The surfboard is missing. I think he lost it or is the board caught under rocks and he is held under the water by that stupid-strap around his ankle? I know I’m right when I see another quick glimpse of his dark head. I don’t know what to do. Please Lord, I do not want to see a dead body.

 

     Alarmed I shriek to the stranger standing next to me. “See that spot?” My arms are flailing; my hands are flying as I point toward the bubbling foam, close to shore. “I keep seeing a head float up to the surface. And now that guy is going to be slammed into the rocks!”

 

     “Ya he’ll be okay,” the Maui native says. Then taking a double look at my pale face and the wild look in my eyes, he slowly flashes his pearly whites. “It’s a turtle.”

 

 

Pamela Vanden Bos

Visit my website  http://pvbos.com

View my fashion tips: http://avenue22.tumblr.com/

Shenandoah Sunrise

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I was in “the zone”, a very pleasant place in which the brain is undecided between either sleep or wakefulness. The previous day I had gone swimming in the rolling waves of Cupsogue Beach in Westhampton. Every time I tried to go to sleep, I would picture myself floating on those waves, and I could feel the beta waves switching on. Even though I could not fall into a deep sleep, I would open my eyes feeling more wakeful.

I opened my eyes and the previously black sky had turned dark blue. It was 5:45 AM and my travel companion informed me that we were passing through the Shenandoah Valley. Straight ahead of us the morning star was visible. As I looked around, I could faintly see the darker outline of the mountains all around me.

“Oh wow, this is definitely worth staying awake for,” I said, and watched in awe over the next fifteen minutes as the sun rose over the mountain range. First the sky turned lighter and lighter shades of blue. Then the pink started to tinge the edges of the peaks. Various shades of rose came and went until the entire sky was light blue, and the moment was gone.

I finally felt safe to go to sleep, and got a power nap for a half hour; it was the only sleep I had gotten in the past two days. I woke up with an amazing second wind and took over the driving for the second half of the 900-mile drive from Eastern Long Island to Western Tennessee.

“Are you okay? Do you know where you are?” my friend asked me.

“No, I don’t know where I am, but this does,” I said, gesturing to the GPS, my Valentine’s Day present last year.

“And you’re fine with that?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

That image would hold me out for the rest of the day. As I felt the monotony of the GPS’ telling me to stay on I-81-S for another several hundred miles; of being in Virginia for several hundred miles; and of driving through endless hills and trees and cows for several hundred miles, I would bring forth that image of the sun breaking the day over the mountain range.

Elizabeth Kathryn Gerold-Miller

The Divine Gift of Motherhood
http://elizabeth-kathryn-gerold-miller.blogspot.com/

Long Island Motherhood Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-15548-Long-Island-Motherhood-Examiner

RE-CYCLING MYSELF

Squealing, "Yes-Yes-Yes," I toss the phone on the bed and dance a little boogie around my room. My son just invited me to ride with his cycling team at the LiveStrong Challenge in Austin, Texas. The team's captain, Zang Toi is a friend of Cory, and just so happens to be a New York Fashion Designer. How cool is that?

Before long, I began to panic. Why did I say yes? Have I lost my ever-loving mind? Then my mocking inner-voice gets down and dirty. "How can a big-boned Baby Boomer living quietly in the deep-south get into shape for a 40 mile bike ride?"

Sick to my stomach I phone Cory to back-out. However, all I get out of him is, "Relax Mom. It's not that hard of a ride." Yeah, that's easy for him to say, he's a male model who stays in shape by walking all over New York City. Moreover, it's my rear-end that will  be grossly plopped over a tiny bike seat for all to see.

Without further ado, I find an official training schedule on the internet. I have a game plan. I will be in tip-top shape for this forty-mile challenge. I'm ready to start. Well almost, I need to buy a bike.

Picking out a brightly colored ride is easy however, getting the matching accessories and flattering clothing options prove to be a problem. In addition, I must have music, a mileage meter, a pair of gel-padded gloves, a water bottle, and a mini backpack to hold my new-fangled emergency cell phone.

I  start out gradually riding around the block staying on flat paved roads. By the end of the second week, I'm feeling good and zip down the narrow asphalt road on my new fire-engine-red Mongoose bike. I round a corner spotting a young boy wearing a metallic black helmet. Whoa, it's just like mine. This kid is wildly jumping ditches on his posh BMX bike. I turn onto the gravel road. I want to enjoy this talented demonstration up close and personal. I'm comfortable trekking up the rocky incline because I have on a pair of color coordinated strategically padded bike shorts. (Oh yeah, I'm lookin ' hot.) The rough terrain requires that I gear down, or is it gear up? Sweat drips and burns my eyes. My jiggling legs seem to be spinning rapidly without any progress. Sticking out a shaky foot to keep from falling, I use my tippy -toes to make small tapping movements to turn around. The bewildered daredevil is now watching me slowly roll back down the shallow incline. Man-alive I've got to be stuck-on-stupid.

On the contrary, I am able to lift my leg up and over the seat to dismount, and I swear my butt is getting tighter. I can do this!exercise

By the ninth week, I'm able to zoom ten miles up and down the back roads. I ride in a racing position, bottom up, and off that impolite bike seat. I bounce through potholes and over fallen branches. Just for fun.

The Austin trip is off! Cory split up with his girlfriend. Consequently, do I have the courage to drive twelve hours to Austin and then stay in a hotel...alone? Oh-Hell-No.

Instead, I fly to New York for some mother-son bonding. After five jam-packed days, my sagging knees will never forget that we trudged up and down a million subway stairs, snaked through Central Park and marched over the Brooklyn Bridge.

When I  re-cycled myself, I also reclaimed my youthful effervescent personality. I say this because at the end of my visit I noticed that Cory shoved me into an airport bound cab and crawled back into bed because he's dead dog-tired. And I, with a grin on my face and a spring in my step trot down LaGuardia 's corridor to catch a plane. I may be an older modern culture Baby-Boomer living in the deep-south but this re-cycled momma just wore her pretty-sons' skinny-butt out!

Visit my website  http://pvbos.com
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Pamela Vanden Bos,  Managing Editor

Bitchin' 'bout Stitchin'

So I took my oldest child to the emergency room last weekend. I wish I could say it was the first time I had to take a child to the ER. But at least it was the first time in Texas. And I can now check “stitches” off the childhood trauma box.

It was a classic childhood injury. A thwackety-thwack chin smack on the edge of the swimming pool. Yowtch!

The cut itself looked icky (I could see the fatty tissue underneath her still adorably chubby 6-year-old chin) but nothing for mama to panic over. However, the gaping quality of the wound led us to believe that the lesion required more than the simple Scooby Doo band-aid.

In truth, the initial panic lay far from the location or severity of the physical injury but in the resources (or lack thereof) found in the small town where my family vacations in central Texas lake country.

No fracking hospital.

“Where do people have babies around here?”  I muttered as my family hurtled about the small town, jamming our fingers across our iPhones in a frantic quest for a nearby emergent care center. Marble Falls, Texas doesn’t exactly seem like a bastion of homebirth midwife activism so I knew the mamas had to go somewhere nearby to push those little Texans out.

We quickly found out where the locals release their spawn when the jerkoff minor emergency clinic declined our HMO. The good folks of Marble Falls have babies, treat broken bones, and stitch up swimming pool-busted chins by hauling a few miles over to an actual hospital in Burnet.

They treated my little patient very well in Burnet. The nurses were kind, sweet, and patient. They told her she was a big girl and doing a good job and very brave. The physician’s assistant who did the actual sewing up of the cut was obviously not used to kids, especially precocious redhead kids with lots of questions. By the time a certain precocious redhead dared to ask him how long the whole thing would take, he looked genuinely baffled and lost, like no patient had ever dared to ask him such a preposterous inquiry. And this time the precocious redhead was me.

And I did fine with the whole thing. Until I saw the fear in my baby’s face. I could hear the dryness in her mouth, and her breath had the funk of that cotton-mouth terror where all saliva goes into reverse in some sort of fight or flight panic to reserve bodily fluids for maximum utility at a later date. Her voice quivered as she sucked back tears. Her hands shook each time she yanked a nervous tug of hair behind her pale little ear, and her normally porcelain face took on the shade of the Latoya Jackson statue at the wax museum. I worried she was going to pass out.

The sight of that small round face making a go at Big Girl Heroics very nearly pushed out my own tears, but I sucked it up too. Someone needs to be the grownup in these sorts of situations.

We ended the big day with a trip into south Austin for old friends, pizza, and snowcones.  I bribed the patient with a Homeslice Pizza t-shirt in atonement for the Texas-sized bummer that she would now have to spend 25% of our Tour of Texas Grandparents trip out of the lake and swimming pool while the stitches healed.

It was the least I could do for my brave girl.

Postscript by the patient:  "I know it seems like the stitches were the worstest part. It actually was the medicine. Because they stuck it inside of my cut. But when we were done with it I still couldn’t open my mouth too wide. Before I had the stitches and just a cut I didn’t open my mouth wide because it made me feel hurtful."

--Robin Dutton-Cookston is senior editor at Mom Writer's Literary Magazine and lots of other good stuff too. Check out her blog at The Foggiest Idea.

You Break It ~ You Bought It by Maureen Locher

I have been writing several stories about my family's recent vacation to Michigan. For the full effect of funny visit my Web site, listed below. Here is my most recent offering:

Years ago when my boys were small we would eagerly await the dancing demonstration every Thursday by the local Indians. We'd huddle outside on the rickety bleachers listening to the locals spin their tales, watching them dance. We'd take video of my boys huddled in a tepee pretending to be Indians. And of course we visited all three of the city's Indian shops. The above shot is my little Indian's first trip to Houghton Lake 20 years ago. Feather headdresses, coon skin caps, tom toms, rubber javelins and tomahawks all made their way back home. My boys simply loved wandering around the gift shops. They had their souvenir money, and not one penny of that ever made it home!

So there we were this year wandering around the very same gift shops offering much the same merchandise, when I picked up a small plastic hammer that looked like it was supposed to squeak when hit. So I hit it on the counter. And it broke right in two! I did not bang it down hard. Next, I did what any kid would do - I put it down...fast.

Hmmm...a dilemma. I actually was quite mad that the stupid thing broke. What to do? I walked over to someone who shall remain nameless, therefore blameless, and confessed. Nameless said, "Just leave it. Don't worry about it."

Hmmm...Didn't set well with me. What would Jesus do? Jesus would have had a nice sturdy toy hammer made out of wood. It wouldn't have broken. But I was stuck with a cheapy plastic piece of...well, you get the idea.

 

It cost $1.59 but it was the principle of the thing. I did not want to pay for a defective toy. I couldn't leave it in the bin for some poor unsuspecting child to cut herself on. No one but Nameless knew what happened - or so I thought. I grabbed the stupid hammer, marched up to the cashier, laid the hammer down and said, "This broke." Not too much information. Just enough. It did break.

 

The cashier said, "Oh." I walked away acting nonchalant. Of course I spent a fair amount on other souvenirs I'd collected, and then went out to the car to my waiting family.

 

The instant the car door opened in rapid-fire succession:

 

"Did you really break it?"

 

"Did you tell them?"

 

"Did you buy it?"

 

To which I replied, "Yes, yes, and no."

 

Obviously, Nameless blabbed. Awfully glad I did the right thing. I always knew I would - it was just a matter of how.

 

Lesson taught - lesson learned. This mom thing is never really over, is it, no matter how big they are?

 

  ~ Maureen :)

 

      Speaking of big!

 

 

 

Maureen Locher is copy editor and columnist of Just Another Manic Momday at Mom Writer's Literary Magazine. Read her vacation stories and more  at www.MaureenLocher.com. Maureen has finished her book, Slippers of Sand, and is preparing to pitch it face-to-face to a real live publisher in August. Prayers, good wishes, fingers crossed all would be much appreciated.

 

Getting Ready for Summer in San Francisco (And, yes, we all know that Mark Twain quote)

I recently read a blog with a hilarious (and true) list of 5 signs it’s spring in San Francisco:

I read this particular article (and I’m writing my own blog entry) while sitting in my iceberg-ish office, wrapped in a cardigan and scarf on a San Francisco Memorial Day weekend. The temp hovers in the mid-50s, the skies are gray, and the wind is tearing off the Pacific Ocean like an arctic fart.

Yes, indeed, it must be springtime in San Francisco!

The funny blog list led me to come up with a few more signs we know it’s spring in the City by the Bay, and I can’t help it if my list offers a parent’s perspective. Here are a few ways we know that San Francisco families are gearing up for summer:

1. A rush on off-season fleece sales. San Francisco parents have been known to swarm the sale racks at Old Navy and Nordstrom in a shark-like frenzy each spring as they search for the perfect bargain on winter clothes. Since San Francisco summers usually top off at an average temperature that is ten degrees less than January in Arizona (see #4) moms and dads of quick-growing kids like to load up on cheapie NorCal “summer” wear.  I have yet to witness a savvy retailer catch on to this phenomenon.  They still mostly stock tank tops and sundresses. I assume this is for the shopping tourist or the SF folks who need to buy true summer wear to take with them on their vacation to somewhere warm.

2. Public school fundraisers. I work for a non-profit website (Plug! Plug!) with a mission to serve as a resource guide for SF families, and every year around this time we get bombarded with requests to help publicize Spring Flings, Kiddie Carnivals, Big Bashes, Movie Nights, and of course my personal favorite, DogFest. My colleagues and I are more than happy to post tons of info on these ubiquitous school events, but along with spring fever comes a bit of a spring bummer that the District provides so little funding that parents have to hold a friggin’ dog show to pay for things like art.

3. Summer camp fisticuffs. And I’m just talking about the parents trying to get their kids in. If you have kids in SF, you may have heard the buzz in the school yard, on the playground, or at Acrosports lessons. Perhaps the messages are flying back and forth on the neighborhood list serve. Second only to preschool panic and public school application mayhem is the summer camp melee. San Francisco parents who work both inside and outside the home tend to bum rush the (thankfully many) summer camps starting early spring, hoping to land a coveted spot at one of the Rec and Parks programs. Some of them are incidentally harder to get into than Harvard University or Rooftop Elementary.

4. Transplants going home. In anticipation of a summer full of cold and fog, many parents who are non-natives of San Francisco (especially those who couldn’t land a decent day camp) pack the hell up and hightail it out to Delaware or Texas or London or Arizona to have a “real” summer with swimming pools and popsicles and sunburns. A real summer does not involve wearing fleece. Even in London, I’m told.

5. Festivals, fairs and parades. For those who choose to stick around and brave the cold, there is no shortage of free or cheap family entertainment. San Francisco families have the good fortune to take part in everything from county fairs to the Stern Grove Music Festival to San Francisco’s crowning glory, (second only to Halloween) the Pride Parade.

6. An odd burst of summer. For an occasional 48 hours parents get to rejoice in 90 degree temperatures. Everyone hurls their kids in the car or onto the N-Judah line to rush to the beach, the white mommies blinding each other with radioactively luminescent legs. The farmers markets overflow with mommies and daddies stocking up on fresh blueberries in their shorts and flipflops. Windows are cast open (as no one has AC here) and all manner of odd bugs make new homes in children’s beds and fruit bowls across the City. Parents scramble to find the window screens that were hidden away in the garage or attic or back closet after last heat wave in February. And then, as quickly as it arrives, the warm weather beats a hasty retreat, smothered by a white pillow of fog.  And out come the fleece jackets again. Purchased on sale at Old Navy.

--Robin Dutton-Cookston is senior editor at Mom Writer's Literary Magazine and she's freezing her heinie off. Visit her blog at The Foggiest Idea