The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

I put away my creative thoughts for a moment, about a week or so, to free flow, think, heal, reflect, and relax. When I received the news about my step-mother, all sorts of emotions cascaded on me like rocks falling from the East Tennessee mountains.  It was unexpected, I was unprepared, and the reaction was unknown. After I processed that bit of news and thought of all the things that could have led up to it, it was time for my family to go on a much needed vacation.  The respite was good in that my husband was not attending some conference, it was not some singing event, or family event, it was free-flowing, open agenda, just plain fun. We set out early on Friday, July 2nd for our roadtrip to Atlanta.  We stopped in Clarksville, Tennessee to eat like the natives.  We had good, old southern barbeque.  It was the kind of place that set rolls of paper towels on each table and eating with one's fingers was the norm.  Even the resident vegetarian had to ...

The other day, my daughter told me I was helping the environment. I did the usual mom thing, hmmm, ok honey, while I was busy hanging laundry.  She kept walking beside me, handing me clothes pins from the bag.  Merrily chatting away about this discovery. So I stopped.  "What do you mean, baby girl."  "Well, mama, you are conserving energy."  At this point, I looked at her because all I felt was completely exhausted and really, really tired of doing laundry "the old fashioned way."  I hung up another t-shirt.  She kept chatting. I learned from my eight-year-old daughter that it is a good thing the dryer stopped working because now I can save the environment.  It is better to hang up clothes on the line in the laundry room than to use up all that "energy."  I smiled.  Her argument made sense if you know me. This is the daughter who goes with me on the twice-monthly trek to the recycling center to deposit the pre-sorted paper, glass...

I never set out to go an entire month without putting pen to paper or fingers to keys.  Like life, it just happened, and before I knew it, a month went by.  Actually more than a month.  Some say it is like riding a bike, just get back at it. Well, let's see. There was also a reason I stepped back.  There was so much that happened that I would've written about, commented on, mused through, but some where just too much. School ended, that was a relief in some ways, all the driving back and forth and back and forth and back and forth in one day was making me a bit cranky.  There were just too many bad drivers for the trek through town to pick up all the kids at different times.  Then there was the whole surviving sophomore finals, thank God that is over! Just when I thought I could breathe, my summer program was kicking in full gear.  I had a few days before my assistant started and about one week to breathe after that before the kids started. ...

I was talking to a couple friends of mine last week about my son and his high school career. The first friend and I both have children in the class of 2012.  We often commiserate about their at-times lack of focus.  We share about the missed assignments, the triumphs of an accomplishment, and the overall trials and tribulations of high school.  And we reassure each other that they will be juniors next year and hopefully we won't have to feel like we are back in the hallowed halls of adolescent knowledge. My other friend hasn't even been to kindergarten yet with the kids.  They are still in the oooh and aaah stage of child rearing, the most stressful thing is getting them to daycare in time for their busy careers.  This friend told me that I shouldn't have to hourly monitor my son's studies because I'm not the one in high school.  I silently laughed and said, oh, just you wait, your time is coming. We, my other high school parents and I, monitor our ...

So I can probably say I am having one of those days that can be termed "free flowing." Well, not actually.  I mean, how free flowing can it be when your newly minted sixteen-year-old woke up at 4:30am literally spilling his dinner in the bathroom sink?  That was my Tuesday morning. Said kid cleaned it up (hey, if he can drive...NOT...he can clean up after himself), took a shower, and stumbled back to bed.  Only to get up an hour later and do it again...this time hugging the toilet bowl. This went on all day Tuesday. Then Wednesday, that is today...right...?  I spent most of it driving around picking up assignments for said kid who was still getting sick as late as 7:30pm Tuesday.  Oh, and did I mention that my husband was gone because Tuesday was the university's graduation and today he is gone on a one day (meaning, late, late tonight) trip for a professor to receive an award?  Yep, he missed out on all the excitement...and the mounting laundry. I v...

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I always have mixed feelings about that day. My mother died when I was four.   People may not realize the deep loss and impact that single event can have on one's life.  It certainly affected the lives of my younger brother and I.   Anchor-less.  That is probably the way most motherless kids have described it.   The mother is a certainty, you know you belong to her.  I do not have that knowing, she died before I could remember anything.  I was barely four, my younger brother was still a toddler and a newly minted three-year-old.  We were babies. When I was growing up on 311 Gordon Street, I felt the lost most keenly.  I had a step-mother who claimed to love me and my brother, and perhaps, in her way, she did, but we certainly were not recipients of unconditional love.  She kept me alive when asthma would cause body-jerking spasms in my pencil-thin frame.  She taught me how to keep a house and prepare ...

I am getting divorced. Divorced from unreasonable expectations. Divorced from yokes and chains. Divorced from societal demands. Divorced from past failures. Divorced from false thoughts. Divorced from shoulds. Why? Because I want to live. I thought this morning about all the time in my life I wasted trying to live up to expectations put on me by others. Then I wondered how many expectations, shoulds, oughts, and musts I am putting on my children and would they one day sit at a high powered device to write about it. In this society we think married people should stay married to honor the institution, even if the institution is damaging the soul, or keeps women in chains, or does not allow same sex unions, or is abusive. Images are placed on us, particularly Americans, to hold up to some false ideal of a perfect life.  I live in the suburbs and know that many of the carpool line moms are closeted prescription drug addicts, alcoholics trying to self-medicate fr...