One

by Patti


2 weeks after S was born, I was ready for another baby.

Yes, I was one of those freaks that had the (almost) perfect pregnancy, and (totally) perfect labor and delivery.

So having had that utopia of an experience, and now having this glorious creature in my arms, I was totally ready for another one. Immediately.

But M? Notsomuch. Ever, even.

He was 100% satisfied with what we had (how could it get better, really?), and besides, the whole pregnancy had been scary for him: The world of what-ifs and worry that came along with it was too much for him to even think about going through again.

Plus, and most importantly! Babies cost money! And they grow up to be kids that cost money! He grew up poor, so he carries that Poverty Trauma that leads him to believe we will be destitute with the slightest tip of the security scale. And babies are a total tip of the security scale.

We probably should have had The Talk about babies before we decided to get married, but we met when we were both young, in total Woo-Hoo Party Mode, and marriage and babies did not even exist anywhere in the planes of our brains. And then time got away from us and suddenly we were in our 30’s and still not married, but totally together and with no intention of ever breaking up, so we made it official.

Without having The Talk.

1.5 years later, along came S.

The story that led up to her arrival is another story altogether, and one I will someday tell, but I can say that her happening wasn’t a neat and tidy decision. In short: S was the best Surprise Party I ever got.

So here I was, S in my arms, already dreaming of the next incarnation. When I was pregnant, we opted not to find out the sex, so we had 2 names picked out, one for a girl and one for a boy. Already, the name we didn’t use for a little boy felt like it needed to be filled out by a person. It somehow felt like it was floating in the Universe, empty and waiting.

But M didn’t want any more. He had his reasons, and they made sense to him, but not to my heart. “He’ll change his mind,” I thought.

But he didn’t, and we fought about it. A lot. We even talked to a therapist to see if we could find some middle ground.

But we couldn’t. Because it is kind of hard to compromise on something so definite. It’s either yes or no. Not maybe.

In the meantime, S continued to grow up, faster and faster. She was now 4 and my hopes of giving her a sibling were dwindling. Every time a friend had a second, third baby, my heart fell a little further into my body, and I felt more and more desperate. It’s not going to happen. What I am going to do?

I had choices, sure: some friends told me to trick him; he would forgive me and would love the baby. He even told the therapist, when asked what he would do if I happened to get pregnant again, that he could never leave his family. Others told me to leave him and find somebody who wanted the same things I did.

But neither choice felt right. I couldn’t make a family borne of deception, and…. I loved my husband, the father of our daughter. To leave him for somebody who wasn’t felt wrong.

So, slowly, painfully, I let go.

And now, 10 years after that day that I sat with my newborn in my arms, already dreaming of another, I am officially the Mother of an Only Child. There are days it pisses me off; I have flashes of deep regret and anger at having that decision made for me, especially when S feels lonely and complains that she has nobody to play with. I throw it into M’s face, the choice I felt forced to make, hoping to somehow wound him back.

But then I remind myself that, in the end, I could have used up another one of my “options”. But I didn’t, and by not doing so, I made my choice, and I can either choose to be okay with it, or regret it the rest of my life. Which makes for a happier existence?

And then there are days I feel it was my destiny, however painful the path to get there, to be the mother to one. Some days I am driven to the absolute very brink; I am all impatience and intolerance. And I am selfish, this I know and have proven to myself time and again, and I wonder how the even further lowering of my reserves by having had another child would affect my ability to be a good mother.

Funny, I have had people with more than one child tell me that if they could do it again, they would have stayed with one. I don’t know if it’s an attempt at helping me feel “better”, but they seem to admire the intimate little circle that M, S and I have formed. The 3 of us are a family, and we are very close. We do everything together. We have not given her the gift of a sibling, but we are giving her different gifts that continue to shape and define who she is becoming and who she will be. And I pray every day that she will cherish these gifts, and Please God not someday hate us for making her an only child – a lonely only.

It’s a lot of work, raising a person, and I only get one chance to do it right. And on the days I may feel regret or sadness over only having one chance, I remind myself: I am blessed beyond belief I got a chance at all.

Mom Guilt

We've all experienced mom guilt:

When you should be getting your floor time in with your little ones and you really want to see today's Oprah show, so you play from afar by offering an occasional "That's great!" or "Wow!" while your eyes are still pinned to the TV.

Or when you just plop them in front of the TV/DS/Wii/ipod/DVD player so you can get your work done/exercise in/phone call made/take a shower. We have ALL done it and if you say you haven't, well then you're a liar.

For the most part I always TRY to participate in something. I make a mental tally of how much time I have dedicated to spending with the girls - especially the little one because she is still home a lot with preschool. So after being asked to play Lalaloopsy, or dollhouse, or puzzles, or painting, or any other given game for the umpteenth time, I experience major mom guilt.

Why does my kid have to ask/beg me to play something with her 3,573 times before I DO it? Even I get sick of hearing my own excuses: "OK honey, I'll be there in a minute," or "Go get started and I'll be right there," or "Let me just do this one last thing and I'll play with you."
The thing is that most times, I AM really busy, but there are some times when I could totally do it but am being completely selfish because, God bless it, I just sat down and want some time for ME. Am I building up the mom guilt in my own head? Or am I expecting too much of my kids to be resourceful and creative and play on their own?

A funny thing happened this afternoon, which prompted this posting. My girls were zombied out in my room watching TV on my bed this afternoon after school, the house was completely quiet. I got a call from my neighbor upstairs requesting that her daughter come downstairs for a playdate with my girls. I hung up, opened the bedroom door and nonchalantly announced: "Girls, Ava is coming downstairs for a playdate."

The reaction was as if someone just lit an M80 under their butts. They physically FLEW about two feet off the bed, turned off the TV and zoomed past me all in a matter of milliseconds and proceeded to scream wildly up and down the hallway asking which door she will be coming down from. "Front or back mom?!?!?" Isabella went sliding into the living room, catching herself from falling by holding on to the doorknob while opening the door.

Nevermind the closets full of toys, the electronic gadgets, the playing amongst themselves, the conversations or the TV. You would think they had been locked away in an empty concrete room, in straightjackets, and they had just been released. Can it possibly be that bad or is the mom guilt complex rearing its ugly head in MY head...yet again?

~Cathy

Stumped, Part 2

I'll see your stumped, and raise you a stump.

Is there some invisible procreational force in this house that makes every object MULTIPLY?

It doesn't matter if I've spent the WHOLE day cleaning, washing, cavemanning, vacuuming, doing laundry, folding, dusting...every time I turn around, there is/are:

- Dishes piled sky-high in the sink
- Scraps of paper, school papers, work papers, catalogs, envelopes, newspapers, post-its, construction paper, printer paper, toilet paper on every surface of the house.
- Shit ALL over the floor - even two minutes after I just cavemanned my ass off
- Clothes, jackets, belts, towels, shirts, socks, bags of toys, blankets, hanging from every existing doorknob and chair in the house
- Laundry hamper busting at the seams and spilling over onto the floor
- Cheerios and other sticky foods and liquids stuck to the kitchen floor, which end up on my socks, or worse on my bare feet
- Crumbs all over the carpets and dust on every inch of every shelf
- The contents of cabinets, the refrigerator and drawers strewn about and covering almost every inch of kitchen counter space
- And let's not even talk about the bathrooms, okaaaayy??


-Cathy

Stumped

by Patti


Tell me this:

How is it that I can wake up my kid, take a shower, get dressed, put on makeup, and blow dry and style my hair, only to walk back into my kid’s room to find that she is still in the exact same position I left her in ½ hour ago: one leg shoved into her pants with the other leg dangling in mid-air, her mouth hanging open in a morning stupor.

ARE WE ON DIFFERENT SPACE-TIME CONTINUUMS?

Boys vs. Girls

Point Guard.
Defense strategies.
Offensive plays.
Pressing.
In other words, gibberish. I'm GREEK and these terms are Greek to me.

But to my husband, they are words in the lexicon of his passion: basketball.

He always tells me that he could have been a pro basketball player but other things got in the way. So he put his hopes in his kids. That was also thwarted when we ended up with two GIRLS.

For the past couple of years now, my husband has been hinting for a third child. I think he really thinks the third time will be the (boy) charm. Quasi-statistically speaking, the odds are stacked against him. For the most part, two girls in a row, means yet a third girl. We've known many families where this is true, and they had to get to numbers four and five to get the boy. Okaaaay??

All of his close friends have boys except him. (Cry me a river.) He wants another little man around the house. To play sports with. To watch sports with. Baseball. Basketball. Football. Even soccer. Who will do all of these things with him?? Who can HE bond with?

So Joe urged Isabella to try out for sports in school, all the while crossing his fingers and toes that she would LIKE sports and be interested in something besides...ballet. And wouldn't you know it. Isabella made point guard (I NOW know what that is) on her school team! Joe was a very loud presence at every game - you know, the sidelines coach, much like a backseat driver. He was thrilled to be on this ride...even gently coaxing Isabella into going to 'shoot some hoops' and 'get some pointers.' Isabella at times seemed disinterested, and other times she went begrudgingly. She got annoyed when Joe tried to point out a play or a slick maneuver while watching games on television. Then the season was over. And that was the end of that.

Here I sit, three months later, writing this as I listen to Isabella shouting at the TV. Bulls are in the NBA playoffs and Joe is still at work. She RACED to finish her homework so she can watch this critical game - if the Bulls lose tonight, 'it's over mommy!"

Whaaaat?

"Where's papi?" she chirped. "Doesn't he know the game starts at 7:30??" So I texted Joe and told him that he needs to come home to see this: Isabella has taken his place on the couch, relaying his comments, mimicking his body language and really, truly interested in basketball. Every commercial break she is running into the kitchen to grab a snack and alerting me of the latest score.

I've never seen Joe get home as fast as he did tonight. And although he hasn't said anything, I know, deep down, he is as content as any father with a son. And he would have been even if our girls showed no interest in sports - it's just that this makes it all the more sweeter for him.

-Cathy

Memory Loss

by Patti

My head is a magical Rolodex.

Okay, maybe I’m dating myself.

My head is a magical Palm Pilot.

Whoa. Still dating myself.

My head is a magical Blackberry! (Better?)

In my magical Blackberry head I have stored my doctor’s name and number, my husband’s doctor’s name and number, my daughter’s doctor’s name and number, my mother’s doctor’s name and number, my work number, my husband’s work number, my daughter’s school’s number, her teachers’ names, her classmates’ names, her classmates’ MOTHERS’ names, my daughter’s ½ days at school; her play dates; my social security number, my husband’s social security number, my daughter’s social security number; my mother’s/brother’s/husband’s/daughter’s/aunts’/uncles’/cousins’/neighbors’/friends’ birthdays; the dosage of medicine my daughter needs, the last time she had a check-up/fever/cold, my anniversary, my parents’ anniversary………..

I could go on, but my magical Blackberry head might explode.

My husband?

Hold on.

I’m laughing too hard to type right now.

There. Okay.

Phew.

So anyway….I’m wondering… when a man gets married, does his wife somehow suck all the memory cells out of his head and keep them for herself so that she can become a Magical Blackberry Head and keep everyone’s life from falling a-freakin’-part?

Or were they just really never there to begin with and that is the purpose of a wife? To serve as little pop-up reminders?

“M, today is your mom’s birthday. Don’t forget to call her.”

“It is?”
…..

“M, don’t forget the school meeting tonite.”

“You never told me about it! I have tennis!”
….

“M, it’s me, Patti.”

“Who?”

“YOUR WIFE.”

Slowing Down

So here we are, in the midst of Easter and spring break schedules.

It was Tuesday morning, and my oldest daughter (Isabella) was due back in school after a week-long spring break. My youngest daughter (Arianna) had a few days off for Easter last week as well, so we were good to go.

We had just been through our usual morning routine:

Waking up late and exhausted because we all went to bed too late the night before - kids included; Rushing to make lunches, cook breakfast, pulling out every possible skirt, legging, tights and shirt to appease Arianna's choice of outfit for the day, putting on my makeup, getting MYSELF dressed, braiding Isabella's hair, making sure Arianna used the bathroom so as to avoid an unpleasant experience during the drive to school, checking my morning email, all while taking in a few gulps of desperately needed coffee. Oh and did I mention all of the above was set against my neverending stressed out hollerings of "Hurry UP, we're gonna be late!!" and "Let's GOOOO!!" and "Just PICK something!"

Yeah. So we all manage to get in the car, we drop off Isabella at school and hightail it to Arianna's preschool. As we were coming in for a landing, whizzing by the front entrance before coming to a screeching halt, tires smoking, I noticed that the blinds at the glass door entrance were pulled down. 'Strange,' I thought. 'Must be too much sun coming in.' (Realizing full well that it was a cloudy day.)

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon sweety," I urged as I flew out of the car and opened up the back door, unbuckling her car seat belt. We jog over to the door. As I started to ring the doorbell, I tried peeking in between the slits of the blinds. 'Looks kinda dark,' I thought to myself as I repeatedly rang the bell. Arianna stood next to me, quiet and holding some random toys she picked up as we were racing out of the house that morning, dressed in the most ridiculously cute and unmatched outfit, as only she could choose in her sweet and quirky way.

I desperately look back at Joe in the car, as he's looking at me in disbelief and shaking his head, not scoldingly, but more in shock.

So there we stood. Me pinned up with my nose against the glass door of the preschool, thumb still on the doorbell, other hand cupped around my eyes peering in as if it would make someone inside the school materialize and graciously open the door to accept my child for the day so I can head off to work, which I was already late for. Arianna held her empty gaze at me; a combination of confusion and tiredness, eyelocked and waiting.

I exhaled a long, destressing sigh, scooped her up and gave her a big hug. I didn't know if I wanted to scream or cry. How could I forget that she still was on spring break? How could I not KNOW my child's schedule??

I gave her a big kiss and leisurely strolled back to the car with her in my arms, just holding her tight.

We'd have to resort to plan B and figure out where to take her for the day. But seriously, most importantly, we have to s-l-o-w down and step outside of our crazy ass schedules before we encounter a situation where a plan B is not an option.

~Cathy

The Cord

by Patti

I just gave permission to my husband to kidnap our daughter.

To another country.

It was even notarized!

I have to make jokes, you see.

They mask the severe separation anxiety that I have been feeling since my husband asked me if he could take an overseas trip alone with our daughter to visit his family.

We have been going to Argentina together nearly every year since we met 22 years ago, and normally, I would go this time, too. But money has been tight and we have had to guard our spending this year. Since it’s his family, and they would much rather fawn over their granddaughter than me, I’m the obvious leave-behind.

This will be the first time ever since our daughter was born TEN YEARS ago that she goes away on a plane without me. Anywhere. And for her inaugural ‘without a mother’ trip, she is going OVERSEAS. 6,000 miles away for TEN DAYS.

Logically, I know she will be fine. After all, she will be with her father, who happens to be a good father. And that father is my husband, and we are all good and happy on the marriage front so there is no reason why he shouldn’t come back on his own free will.

I put the “kid” in kidnapping because my silly little jokes help suppress my darkest fear: that something will happen and I won’t be there. Be there for what, I don’t know. Will I be able to stop the fever from forming with my mere presence? Will I be able to stop the plane from crashing? Will I be able to stop anything other than her simply daily complaints of “I’m Hungry” or “I’m Bored”? And my husband, her father, can certainly do that.

When my husband first brought up the idea, I instantly squashed it. I didn’t even allow the thought to enter my head for one single second. He backed off.

A couple of months later, he brought it up again, this time more emphatically. He wants to bond with her. He wants to share the experience with her. He wants to give his mother, who aches to be with her grandchildren (all 3 live in the U.S.) more than distance allows, the gift of our daughter for so many glorious days in a row. He said, “It’s not about you, or me, or even S… I want to do this for my MOM.”

I thought about it – pushing away my own fears – and wondered to myself: Would he stop me? Would he even question me?

No. He wouldn’t. He never has when it comes to our daughter.

Didn’t I owe him the same thing?

And so, through stomach-dropping fear, I told him I would support it, but that he had to understand and respect that I was going to be freaking the fuck out pretty much the whole entire time – before and during - and that it had nothing to do with how I felt about him as a father. It was a motherly pull I couldn’t possibly explain to him, and even if I could, I didn’t expect for him to fathom it.

In return, he asked me to be supportive out loud with our daughter regarding the trip, because she, too, still has separation anxiety when it comes to being away from me. I warned him that she might cry, that she might protest, and that I would do my best to make it sound fun for her, but that he had to respect the feelings that happen around it, whatever they may be.

The day he told her, she immediately burst into tears. She said she refused to go without “mommy”, which of course fed into my mother-lion instincts to protect her from any kind of pain or suffering. But I lied my ass off, telling her how much FUN! they were going to have, how cool it would be to make the trip on the plane with just her Papi.

“But you always cuddle with me on planes, mom!”

I do. I do cuddle with her on planes.

“Papi will cuddle with you, too”, I assured her. “It will be different, but it will be great!” I promised. To myself, as much as to her.

It has been more than a month since the decision was made, and now the tickets are officially purchased, the seats selected, the “Travel Authorization” forms signed and notarized. The plans are being made.

S has gotten more and more excited about the whole thing, sharing in the thrill that their appearance on her abuela’s doorstep will be a surprise. And I am getting used to the idea, too. My husband told me to take the time to work out, hang out with friends, to not worry about coming home from work at a certain time on the dot…. And you know what? There is a little thrill in that.

I have this vision in my head of the day they fly away: I will have one end of a very long cord tied to my wrist, and the other end will be looped around her wrist. The cord will stretch across the sky – all 6,000 miles of it - and it will pull and tug at our wrists at times, but it will just keep stretching and stretching, giving us both the freedom to wander, but allowing us to stay connected at the same time.

That cord may only be imaginary, but for me, it is very, very real.

Flash Mob

by Patti

S was 3, and had awaited her first bottle of Gymboree Bubbles (which, really? How are they different from “regular” bubbles?) like she might wait now for a kiss from Justin Bieber.

So I plunked down the TEN dollars for said bubbles and began the walk through the mall back to the car. As we walked, S circled my feet like a hyper puppy, jumping over them, around them, ON them, begging me to PLEASE let her open the bubbles now right now now right now, and I patiently told her over (and over) again to wait until we got outside. The walk really wasn’t that long, and I didn’t think I was abusing my child any more than usual by making her wait.

The NOW! Hysteria grew with each step, and by the time we got to Nordstrom, and began to pass the “accost you with perfume” ladies in their white “lab” coats, S had reached her peak levels of frustration. At that very moment, I don’t think her 3-year old body knew what to do with the sheer helplessness she felt at not being able to purse her lips to that overpriced plastic pink wand and blow out the joyous rainbow of bubbles that would no doubt come out when she did, so she did what she had to do: She yanked down my skirt. Hard.

The Perfume Lady’s bottle stopped mid-air. Even the bottle was afraid of what it was seeing. S knew something Bad had happened, and her cry stopped mid-yelp.

I was in the middle of Nordstrom. My skirt was halfway down my legs. I was wearing a thong. My hadn’t-seen-the-sun since that-unfortunate-day-at-the-nude-beach ass was hanging out. I had only a sheer lil’ triangle “covering” my lady parts. This translated to practically NAKED.

My hands flew to the elastic waist of my skirt, which was now in a rather humiliated heap around my ankle, and pulled it up with lightning speed. However, not before I managed to put on a sweet little afternoon show for Nordstrom shoppers. And the Perfume Ladies. And the Cosmetic Counter Girls.

I bravely pretended like this was something I did all the time what is the big deal, and kept walking to the car, this time yanking S behind me in a manner you see mothers do at WalMart all the time. This was not a Nordstrom way to handle your child, but did I care? DID I CARE?

Once we got outside, I knelt down to eye level with S, and said, “Do you understand what you did in there?” Her big brown eyes searched my face, giving nothing away. “What do you SAY?”She looked down at the ground, shuffled her feet modestly, and looked back at me, her eyes wide, “NOW can I have the bubbles?"

The Uncorking of a Friendship

CATHY'S SIP: The skinny bitch.

How did this friendship begin?

Let’s just say it was a HATE-LOVE relationship.

It was 2005, and my four-year old daughter Isabella and I had just returned from a five week stay in Greece with my parents. My husband Joe was unable to make the trip due to work obligations so needless to say, upon my return home, there was quite a bit of marathon “alone time” being had.

By Thanksgiving, I found out I was a few weeks pregnant.

Around the same time, Isabella had expressed interest in taking ballet lessons, and as luck would have it, a new studio opened up not too far from our house. Joe discovered it and began taking Isabella around the spring of 2006. I, at this point, was about five months pregnant, so I enjoyed my alone time while Joe took Isabella to her lessons. He would come back and say how great everybody was and about the new people he was meeting. “I met this really nice Argentinian woman there,” he would tell me. I didn’t think anything of it.

One Saturday, I decided I was feeling up to going to see my little girl take her ballet lesson. I grudgingly pulled on a pair of velour track pants – my go-to wardrobe as of late for its forgiving waistband and huggable comfort, with an equally expandable sweater – never mind that it was pilled; it was comfy and went with my arsenal of velour track pants.

As I sat crouched on the low window ledge of the noisy studio, half-asleep, grumpy, hormonal, and going through caffeine withdrawl, the door of the ballet studio swung open. In breezes this perky, fashionable woman with a harried child in tow, late for her lesson. “Hola!” she chirped, as she gave my husband a peck on the cheek and proceeded to take a swig of her Starbucks Venti skinny (of course) vanilla latte. She was tall and skinny, had an easy, happy attitude despite her tardiness, was wearing a beautiful, black, belted coat (which she just bought on a recent trip to Spain, as she matter-of-factly announced later) and she was talking to my husband.

Joe introduced us and told me that this was the woman he told me about. I reluctantly got up to kiss her hello. Damn. She smelled good, too. I was hating her more by the minute. Actually, she was really quite annoying me at this point. So I sat my pregnant ass back down on the window ledge and let them talk up a storm in Spanish. “I’m not coming back here any more,” I decided at that moment.

Well, not only did I GO back, I ended up becoming friends with that Argentinian woman (a.k.a. Patti) and came to look forward to our Saturday mornings together. There was no way you could NOT like her; she was hysterically funny and gave away a lot about herself through the uninhibited stories she would willingly share about her child, her husband and her marriage. She never came across as fake and I found that incredibly refreshing. We found we had a similar sense of humor, family life, culture, thoughts, opinions and love of fashion. We were both scatterbrained and we both loved our daughters to death. Oh, and about those daughters…they could pass for SISTERS. To this day, they are the best of friends. As are their mommies.

These are our stories. So grab a glass of wine, sit back and get ready to laugh, cry, sigh and experience them with us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


PATTI'S SIP: It’s kind of hard for me to begin at the beginning, because for me, there was no real beginning. Our friendship wasn’t one of those “just add water” friendships; it was a process – like a good wine that simply needed time to breathe and mature.

S had been in ballet for some time, and every Saturday I enjoyed the camaraderie that was forming between the other moms. As our little ones danced, we would sit on the other side of the heavy red curtain, talking about everything from preschool to sex.

I had been on a vacation – yes, in Spain – and was bringing S back to ballet classes after a 2-week absence. I was really excited to see my “ballet friends” again, and was surprised to find a couple of new people in the group, including one man. I learned his name was Joe, he spoke Spanish, and that he was the one bringing his daughter to class because his wife was pregnant and enjoyed the alone-time.

After a couple of weeks, Joe did bring his wife. That wife? Was Cathy. That morning I breezed in, late as usual, half-washed kid in tow, and after seeing S and her lopsided ballet bun off to her class, turned to greet all of the moms and Joe. “Hola Joe!” I sang, and gave him a small “Latin hello” peck on the cheek. Cathy was behind him, eyeing me with, I don’t know, curiosity? Joe introduced us and I’m sure I greeted her in my usual cheery manner. “I love your coat,” she said, “where did you get it?” I looked down at myself, as if I didn’t know what I was wearing. “Thank you! I got it in Spain…."

At that moment, I didn’t think much of it. It was just a compliment, right? I only found out much later, after our friendship had blossomed, that she kind of hated me at that moment. I had kissed her husband, I was “too perky”, I had a waist, and I had just jetted home from Spain(!). She, meanwhile, was in that stage of pregnancy where you’re not really showing yet, but your torso has turned into a puffy square and you walk around with your pants unbuttoned. She was wearing brown velour sweatpants and a shapeless, pilled sweater, and those flats that look like tennis shoes but aren’t really tennis shoes – an outfit that was to be her go-to getup for months to come. I’m sure, upon meeting me, she gave herself one of those instant mental self-once-overs and, when comparing that image to my jet-setting cinched waist, skinny jeans, and high heel leather boots, she instantly loathed me. Even I would have loathed me.

But time heals all wounds, and sometimes even first impressions. And I am thankful that as her waist expanded even more, so did our friendship -- and that of our daughters’. We found out over time that we have many things in common: we were both born to and raised by immigrants, we are both married to Latin men with minds of their own, we both have daughters the same age, we are both always late, always harried, always frazzled, we both have purses that swallow up cell phones and debit cards, yet manage to produce random objects (rubber insole, anyone?), and we are both totally nuts.

Five years and lots of laughter, tears and wine later, we are a collective walking library of drama, comedy and tragedy, and here, we share those stories.