Maybe it all started with the couscous. It was a more acceptable story: to think my cat, which we’ve had for nine years, would suddenly start chewing through bags of food in the pantry. For a moment I had known what it really was, but the truth, never loud on its first arrival, had landed softly on my consciousness, creating a tickle in my brain. The tickle made me shiver, causing the truth to fall quietly from my shoulders and land on the floor under the dryer, keeping me in that familiar damp space of denial. I’ll figure it out later, I thought. Or maybe it all started with the musty …

50 Shades of Green Have you ever had one of those days where you ask one of your friends how their week was and they say, “fine”? And then they ask how your week was and you say, “Holy crap, I met this billionaire and he really liked me but then he made me sign this DNR contract, which I thought meant do not resuscitate, but really it meant I couldn’t talk about him. So I really shouldn’t be talking to you about him, but seriously it was so exciting and a little scary, but then we broke up.” And then, after you’re all out of breath from telling your friend about your thrilling week, you …

When I was pregnant with my firstborn, my husband, my mother and I came to the decision that instead of the home birth that I desired, I would have the baby at a birth center. It was an agreeable compromise. They were both nervous about a home birth, and I was nervous about a hospital one. My husband and I were not sure if our insurance company was going to pay for the birth center, even though it was about $6,000 less than an uncomplicated hospital birth. I procrastinated doing the paperwork because I didn’t want to find out that it wasn't covered. Instead, I preferred to have anxiety …

In case you missed my last article, let me fill you in: I have been falling behind in teaching my children how to do things for themselves, so last week I gave myself three goals to improve. TOWEL GOAL: Both kids need to get their own bath towel every night and then hang them up themselves. TOAST GOAL: My 5-year-old should start making his own breakfast in the morning. NO NUDE TODDLERS GOAL: My 3-year-old needs to learn where his clothes are and to put them on himself. Shoes too. I also gave myself three guidelines to follow: Train Them Correctly the First Time, Walk Away, Trust That They Can…

“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 …

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 really 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 …

Editor's note: The original photograph that accompanied this column was removed. 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,” …