(Published in the journal at the Ice Theatre of New York 2019 Gala honoring John and Amy Hughes)
“Do you all skate?” It is a question I get a lot as the oldest Hughes sibling. Put simply, we do – starting from my Canadian father right on down to the sixth and youngest sibling.
I know it’s Mother’s Day but I wanted to share this picture of my kids and their father because he does so much of what we see often think of as “mothering” – the care and feeding of others. In his case, it’s the lion’s share of the childcare, as it evolved from infant and toddler care to adolescent care and (the hardest) teenage care, all of the cooking and the laundry and most of the errands. I know he is not the only one.
Continue reading The Meaning of “Mother”
We lost our beloved Estelle Lana Pastarnack – Stelly or Nana to many – on July 6, 2016.
She was an outspoken and strong woman who loved red lipstick that left a telltale mark when she kissed your cheek. She loved designer shoes – especially if they were discounted at Loehmanns. She adored “making parties” and fur coats. She also could not resist a good hot dog, no matter what diet she was on.
Most of all she loved her four children, ten grandchildren, four great grandchildren, her nieces and nephews and her friends.
Continue reading Stelly
I wrote the below three Christmases ago for “Parentlode” at the Huffington Post. My twins were on the cusp of Kringledoubt. I expected, when I wrote this, that by now, at ten years old, the Santa expiration date I talk about would have long past. It has not. I post their Christmas lists at the end.
**
Santa Claus has an expiration date. Every parent who has introduced Santa Claus to their kids knows this. You get a few good years and then the doubts start creeping in. Other kids at school are usually the catalysts in this process, which seeps through school lunchrooms with the first signs of frost every year. Usually it’s the hand-me-down scoffings of older siblings. Sometimes, however, it’s an axiom discovered through a child’s deduction alone. Continue reading They Still Believe
I was going to write an essay about my mother, pinned to this greeting card and flower company holiday, Mother’s Day. It was going to be effusive but witty; long but concise. It would be featured on some popular website and be shared many times. It would explain how my mother, who birthed and raised six kids, gave us her unconditional love and devotion, yet somehow could never be accurately characterized as a Tiger Mom or a helicopter parent. How I grew up to look nothing like her on the outside but so much like her on the inside. How her parenting model is one to which I will always aspire and how, despite being so actively involved in my kids’ lives, the only parenting advice she ever gave me was, “Every child is different.”
And how the ultimate measure of her parenting success may not be the success of her six children measured in predictable ways, but that, as adults, we all want to live near her. And how each of us talks to her virtually every day – some of us multiple times – not because we think we have to, but because we want to.
But… when I sat down to write this essay a few times over the past few days before or after work, my youngest child would have none of it. “Read to me mommy.” And, “Can I have some milk?” And then one of the older ones. “I need new sandals. My old ones are too small.” And, “Should we give away some of the old stuff to make room?” And of course the ice skating – the freestyle session and the tots class. So the essay did not get written before Mother’s Day morning like I wanted because I poured the milk and I read ‘The Little Red Lighthouse” and got new sandals and filled up the charity bags and shivered in the rink while I waved to my kid skating by. And decided not to worry about it too much. That is how my mom would want it.
On my birthday last week, I was at Brain, Child Magazine’s Brain, Mother blog discussing two other birthdays – the day my twins were born and the day they came home. I talk about the scars my twins’ NICU stay has left on me, but not on them. It’s a piece I thought about writing for many years, but had not collected my thoughts. The essay is here.
