This Mother's Day, Celebrate Somebody Else
By Janelle Hanchett I am the mother who missed your kindergarten graduation. I am the mother who was drunk the morning of the first birthday party you were invited to, when you were four years old, the one who made you wrap up a toy from your own room (apologizing and promising another, though I never did a thing), because we had nothing. I dropped you off wearing my sunglasses so nobody would ....
Read MoreMy Son's Dress
By Jocelyn Wiener The gender stuff I breezed through with my daughter feels surprisingly fraught with my son. “I want the yellow dress,” begs the weeping, shrieking pile of two-year-old boy that lies crumpled at my bare feet. Still in my pajamas, I dig through my son’s overstuffed dresser, scrambling to locate the pale cotton frock he has appropriated from his 4-year-old sister. “How a....
Read MoreThe Seder
I rang the doorbell of my ex-husband Larry's house, a jar of gefilte fish in one hand, boxed coconut cake in the other. To date, I'd been to the house on Thunder Lake only to drop off the kids. But today I was here with my husband, Eric, and two stepchildren, Luke and Jamie, for Seder dinner. Given the circumstances, this was miraculous: I'd last seen Larry three weeks ago at the tria....
Read MoreStand Up Mom
By Carla Sameth “So my son’s an addict. I guess at this point you might wonder what the hell his mom did to make him that way. Actually, I had to put him in a twelve-step program at three years old. NA—Nursing Anonymous.” My first standup set ever; I had performed at the Comedy Store in Hollywood. Lots of laughs. Asked back by the host to perform another set. My son, Raphael was 18 ye....
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Essays
The Promise of Maybes

By Audrey Hines McGill We walk into my two boys’ new school and check out their new classrooms. We meet their new teachers; I say hello, and then introduce the boys. I explain how we’ve recently moved cross country for my husband’s new job. But what I don’t tell these new teachers is that I’m secretly hoping for a new start, a reprieve from judging eyes and ignorant staring that made up much of my previous interactions with teachers and other parents at my children’s prior school. I wish my boys have more play dates and birthday party invitations. I dream of neighborhood friends and for my children to feel like they belong. At this very moment, I also secretly hope my children’s telltale eye rolling tics don’t happen as we make our introductions. Just for a little while, I hope for a break from the explanations and the reciting of diagnoses. For just a few minutes, I want my children to safely blend into
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From The Archive
Womanhood

By Stephanie Andersen “It’s still snowing out there,” she said. Mom and I were tucked under her blue comforter on her bed late one afternoon, staring out the window into the backyard. The snow had settled on the pine branches, and the windows shook a little in the November wind. I pushed my head into the space between her arm and breast, tracing the hardness of the catheter buried under her skin. She was holding a tiny portrait of a young Victorian woman with big brown eyes, soft curly hair, and pursed lips. “This is how I imagine you’ll look when you grow up,” she told me. I stared at the face of the woman and tried to imagine myself as her. She seemed gentle, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her eyes shy and hopeful, her breasts round and high. I was only nine years old, and it was the first time in my life I ever seriously