“But, I NEED the red ones,” my son whines. As usual, as soon as we walk out of the house, one of my kids needs something from inside. This time my son decides that he must have his other pair of shoes. “OK. Hurry and go find them,” I say, annoyed about toddlers and their never-ending particularities. He runs back inside the house, and I head toward the car to strap my other son into his booster seat. I don’t get two steps before I hear the agonizing scream. “DON’T LEAVE ME!” My son has panicked, thinking I was going without him, and has thrown his body onto the floor, wailing with defeat. I …

Not too long ago, my co-columnist Chris Sansbury wrote in this space about how for the last year, she and my sister have been spending the late part of the day together — cooking dinners, feeding their kids, washing dishes and giving the kids baths. My sister and her husband are moving to Arizona soon, so the piece was a “bittersweet goodbye to (her) beloved co-wife.”I’ve heard my sister joke that Chris is interviewing for her replacement. And ever since Chris wrote the piece, I have been fantasizing about finding my very own co-wife. I also hate the witching hour — kids are cranky and hungry…

My sixth birthday party was high tea with fancy dresses, white gloves and plastic tea cups. I remember my few girlfriends sipping sweet tea with our pinkies extended. I remember placing pink candles into silver holders and eating white cake. Or do I? Do I remember the actual party, or have I created a memory from seeing the photographs and hearing my mother tell the story? Does it matter? *** I was tickling my two boys the other day, and they were laughing so hard that I wished someone could have been there to take a picture. Their laughter — either because I am inherently evil or because I …

I pass the dark mahogany table that stands in my family room, with its long leaves that fold down almost to the ground, every day. My mom brought it to me after my grandmother’s death — after she, her sister and her sister-in-law split up my grandmother’s belongings among the various members of the family, including the eight grandchildren. It is a gorgeous table, and I often admire its beauty.  But sometimes when I pass it, I also think of its origins and feel a pang of guilt.  Guilt? From a table? My mom tells me that the table came from her great-great-grandfather’s plantation, called …

Maybe I was watching too much Oprah, but it seemed like, over and over again, I kept hearing it: Obese people saying they became so large because they used food to comfort themselves. I felt like it was being chanted, by a very large chorus, “Food was my comfort. Food was my comfort.” But I use food to comfort myself. After my first child was born, I would survive until he went to bed. Then I would make my treat, my simple delicious treat: warm-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. It was an obsession. I would wait impatiently for them to cook. When my cookies were finally done, I would sit …

On Friday night, I begged my husband to take the kids somewhere fun for the holiday weekend — the Kennedy Space Center, I suggested, since he had always wanted to go. He knew that I hadn't slept all week (kids up a lot in the night for various reasons), and he worried that we would waste the long weekend doing chores, so I was really hoping he would do this for me.He came through.Yes, I was totally behind on sleep (I blacked out for three hours as soon as they left Saturday morning), but more than that, I was desperate for some time to myself. I have been on full-time kid duty since school …

I have some pretty nasty hereditary diseases hidden in my genetic code: Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, suicide, impatience, bad posture and nonexistent calves. Before I had kids, I would occasionally fret over the myriad of disasters that awaited my unborn children. (Another defect: worrying too much. Don't worry; I worry about that, too.) Should I get an egg donor with a “purty” resume so we can have it all be a surprise, like a genetic box of chocolates? Is it better to know what you might get or to have a whole world of possible catastrophes? I also wondered what my children would look like. I …

A child’s life is full of firsts. My son, who turns 10 this summer, is approaching one of these milestones: his first sleep-away camp. For the occasion, I have chosen Camp Wewa, a YMCA camp in Apopka, near Orlando. My nephew says being there is like being one of the Lost Boys from "Peter Pan." That was the clincher for me; I signed my son up the next day. That is pretty much my perfect image of what summer camp should be — running around and having fun, in a band of other kids without any overbearing adult in sight. I know there will be excellent supervision at this camp, but I also know that…

Please, whatever you do, do not make your kids buy their dad anything for Father’s Day (especially a tie). Fathers don’t want anything (unless it’s a black 1962 Lincoln Continental Convertible with suicide doors). They don’t want boxer shorts or a card. They don’t want cologne or new socks. Do NOT believe the commercials. No dad ever told you to buy him anything. It is the dad-like guy on TV who told you to buy him something. If you have to spend money, then just go ahead and hand him the cash (not in ones). Believe me, no man is sitting around dreaming of his new $19.99 cordless air …

When my beloved 90-something-year-old grandmother was in the end stages of Alzheimer’s, I visited her in the central Florida facility where she lived. Her hair had been cut into a stick-straight bob where once it had been a long silver mane, always coiled up with tons of pins at the back of her head. One of her front teeth had broken off halfway, giving her usually level-headed, no-bones-about-it persona a somewhat offbeat, comical air. I felt so sad when I saw her appearance, but somehow she maintained an aura of dignity, an almost regal, no-one-can-get-me-down attitude that made me glad, …

I am starting to believe house cleaning is as hard as rocket science. It’s just so easy for women to do, that we can’t comprehend how difficult it really is. Men, on the other hand, like to pretend they are above women’s work, or that they don’t care about any of it, masking their inability to grasp how all things domestic work. One time I asked my husband (since he was up and I was in the middle of dinner) if he would put the sheets in the dryer. “Sure,” he says.  Then he stood, staring at the washer and dryer, sort of pushing things around on the shelf above them. “I don’t see any sheets,” …

Ahhhh, polygamists: scary old white men marrying dozens and dozens of 13-year-old sisters or… Bin Laden. I’m starting to think we are brainwashed to believe polygamy is a creepy thing. (Not sure who is brainwashing us. Not men, I wouldn’t think, but who?) It has been practiced for millions of years and not just by sickos. I have the read the Bible, thank you very much, and quite a few of those revered guys had multiple wives. Still, my whole life it gave me the willies to even contemplate polygamy. Self-righteously, I’d declare, “I’d never share my man!” like sex is the only aspect to a …

There’s one universal truth most of us in this world can agree on. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than the death of a child.  Thinking about the death of any child makes me tear up immediately. Big droplets of water fill my eyes. It’s hard to see through them.  The news this week that a Dunedin mom killed her 10-year-old daughter and then herself makes our souls ache, mine and everyone else’s I’ve talked to. Once you understand the nature of a mother’s love yourself — as the one who loves with “fierceness,” whose protective instinct is compared to that of a mother bear ready to maul …

When I was about 11 years old, my mom took me to our hairdresser at a salon called something like Mane Stream or the Mane Event, a fixture on Bayshore Boulevard in Dunedin in the 1970s. Once I was ensconced in the black barber’s chair, my mom took Charlene aside and whispered something to her. I remember wondering why they were being secretive. And I remember Charlene’s husband, André, who was also a hairdresser, and possibly the salon owner, leaning against a door frame in tight brown polyester bell bottoms and a longish brown shag. His eyes darted back and forth across the room from the …

Conversationally, I am not witty. I am on the opposite side of the graph, an outlier of slow. Since I was not always this way, what I have found is that my new behavior comes across as irritable or angry. Last night, for instance, my husband asked me nicely where the cheese grater was. I was not ignoring him, but I did not answer. The second time he asked, it seemed a little hostile when I still did not respond and only pointed toward that big white thing that holds the perishable food. I knew where the cheese grater was, but the words “one piece is stuck under the left side of the back of …

Dear Tina Fey, I read your book. It was really funny. You really laid it all out there for everyone to see – hilarious but true stories from your childhood, formative years and work on "SNL" and "30 Rock." As a mom, I especially appreciated your honest tales of motherhood. Here’s the part where I get all stalker: I went to U.Va., too! My husband’s name is Jeff, too! I spent a lot of Xmases in my husband’s hometown of Weirton, W.V. – right near (sort of near) your husband’s of Youngstown, Ohio! Plus, I have a 5-year-old daughter who’s the boss of me, too. OK, I know there are other U.Va. grads…

My mother always says the “best” parents are people who do not have kids (or don’t have kids the same age as yours, or theirs are grown). In under five seconds, these people think they can accurately pinpoint and diagnose your parenting failures. Proud of their insight, they are usually more than willing to enlighten you. Their advice often comes, serendipitously, when you really need someone to express what a horrible parent you are, like on a day when your child was up sick allnight and you are rushing to the vet, smelling like baby vomit, because the dog went into anaphylactic shock after …