Last night I was getting ready to go out with friends — it was the end of a really long weekend filled with friends and family and fun. I was in the bathroom putting on my face and fretting over a necklace choice.
"Mama?" said my youngest daughter, who is newly nine. "Don't spend too much time picking a necklace or makeup. You are so beautiful even when you just wear your jammies and no makeup at all."
Family life sure has changed since the Leave It To Beaver days. The days where Dad kissed his family on his way to the office while Mom stayed at home, cleaned, helped the children with homework, and had a full home-cooked meal ready for when Dad walked through the door (and probably a pipe and a paper in the drawing room before bed!). I bet you Ward Cleaver never once changed The Beaver's diapers.
When I went to overnight camp, we wrote letters home three times a week. For my parents, this was their only form of communication with me. I was gone for four weeks each summer (sometimes eight!) and my mom would have to sit and wait by the mailbox for any hints, signs, news from camp. She didn’t know what my friends looked like, if I was wearing clean clothes, or if I was even wearing a smile.
Now, it’s much easier to {stalk your kids and} get a sense of what your kids are doing at camp.
There is a photo hanging in my mother’s house. It was the very last photo taken on May 13th, 1990, the day I was Bat Mitzvah-ed in an old once-Church of Scientology in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
I was tired, irritated, annoyed, done.
I loathe this photo. Every time I pass it in the hallway, I cluck my tongue and utter an under-my-breath comment.
I don't know about you, but I find buying gifts for men to be a wee bit stressful. If the dad in your life is anything like the one in mine, he tends to buy the things he really wants — just last week he went out and bought himself a beer-making kit. No really. He did.
