Yesterday while I was at work, I saw a woman struggling under the weight of two boxes of men’s shoes. She was rail thin, with a gaunt face and chin length hair, the roots of which betrayed the fact that she was not born blonde with three inches of new growth. Her eyes darted around […]
I have (half) joked about how I can’t wait for my kids to grow up and start living independent lives. These people are now 3,4, 7 and 8, so their days of true independence are indeed quite, quite, quite far away. In my imaginations, they are all well-adjusted, successful people, enjoying whatever occupation or profession […]
I grew up poor although, I didn’t know it. Not in the sense that one knows they are female or knows that you can’t spend a day without air. I didn’t have certain knowledge of my poverty; just a peculiar inclination that my family was not rich. My mother used to drop hints like “we […]
Four kids. Nine years of motherhood. (Yes, I count those seven months I incubated Nadjah as part of my motherhood experience.) Almost a decade of pain, ushered in by one, whiney, obstinate, self-centered little brat: Caillou. I’ve talked about Caillou on M.O.M. on more than one occasion, I’m sure. I’ve told you how much I […]
Julia is a woman and mother I have long admired and striven to emulate since we first met in 1997. She is one of those mothers who has it “all together”. You know the ones: Great husband; a genius mind; well-mannered, good looking and accomplished children and a house that probably smells like mint chocolate […]
Dear Stone, If by chance there is such a thing as WordPress when you turn 15, and this blog is still live and accessible, I hope you will forgive your old mother for this post. It was written with love and the utmost respect for the man that I believe you will one day become. […]
I try to be a good mom. I swear; I really do. There isn’t much I could choose about my kids. I didn’t choose the date of their conception. I couldn’t choose whose features they’d more strongly favor between Marshall and I. I could never have imagined what day and time they’d spring up from […]
You can all thank Mrs. L for forcing me out of blogging hibernation. I swore that I would not be enticed to pecking out any ideas or epiphanies until the summer had ended, but she gave me a carrot and I lunged for it. Mrs. L sent me this image via text last night. I […]
Greetings. This is just a quick note to inform everyone that I’ll be on summer vacation (read: slaving away to feed and entertain my small tribe) until the end of August. I’ll have about as much time to write as I suspect the other mothers I write for will have to read. Look. Even […]
Is it too late to talk about Mother’s Day? Is there a threshold after which the topic becomes banal? I don’t know… so I’m going to tell you about my Mother’s Day weekend anyway. Plus, I want to hear about some of the Mother’s Day adventures of the moms in the M.O.M. Squad in the […]
There is a mountain of paperwork that perpetually rests on the desk in our office/dining room. This mountain never gets any smaller – it is merely divided, sorted, and reassembled over time. I got tired of looking at it this Monday. Monday’s are days when people resolve to do things – like start that new […]
Just in time for Mother’s Day, the BBC released a report on maternal health touting Finland as the best place on earth to be a mother and disparaging the DR of Congo as the worst. The report looks as if it was recycled from last year. Again, the United Sates came in dead last on […]
A guy walks into an interview dressed in a fancy suit and shiny shoes. He’s just graduated from college with decent grades. His father is in the construction industry, and he’s made the decision to immolate his career. He tells the interviewer, a seasoned gent in his late 50’s, that he’s a self-starter, self-motivated, and […]
I realized just last night that I have come to a point in my motherhood journey where I no longer have funny little anecdotes about lack of sleep, getting peed and pooped on, or spending innumerable hours trying to decipher baby babel. “What comes next for me?” I’ve begun to wonder.Serendipitously, my wonderful friend, writer/expert […]
I’ve written frequently about my fears about raising a Black boy in America. I read somewhere that there is nothing quite so loathsome as an 8 year old Black boy. They travel in packs, they get into stuff, and they’re no longer considered as “cute” and “harmless” as they previously may have been before they […]
It’s easy to tell what my 8 year old is thinking. She’s talkative, and will generally tell you what she’s pondering without prompting or solicitation. “Do sloths wear pajamas to sleep, Mommy?” “Oh Lord, I pray that we get home in time to eat those delicious noodles that Daddy was making; In Jesus’ name, amen.” […]
I was watching What Not to Wear when Aya burst into the room with a scowl on her face. Clinton Kelly was telling a woman how her ill-fitting trousers made her crotch look a rectangle. My daughter cut short my contained chuckles with a question I knew I was going to have to answer, but […]
Yesterday I received a series of terse tweets from my “namesake”, Abena. “How come you have not blogged abt the #steubenville rape? Why the silence? Don’t u feel sense of outrage? What if it was (one) of ur *girls*?” Ah. I don’t like to be attacked like that. I asked her why she was being […]
If you didn’t catch this Wednesday’s episode of Law & Order: SVU (entitled Funny Valentine), it’s definitely worth checking out online. Like the entire Law & Order franchise, the episode was “ripped from the headlines.” The segment dealt with the issue of domestic violence, using Rhianna and Chris Brown’s tumultuous (and vicious) relationship for fodder. […]
I am amazed by how my two youngest children have learned to negotiate their world. Although it may not be with immediacy, they have perfected the art of getting what they want with incredible efficiency. Stone and Liya are now 3 and 2 years old respectively, and even at this tender age have unwittingly taught […]
Nine years ago I went with a friend to Akropong to visit his family house. It was an impressive building that towered over all the other single story slate-roofed houses in the area. It was his grandmother’s residence and was a queen mother to the town. She had passed away earlier in the year. He […]