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O’s second birthday is coming up. We decided to forego the traditional birthday party this year. I know soon he will have many opinions about it, so I’m not in a hurry to go overboard about birthday parties. And let’s be honest, O would be just as happy if I gave him a bowl of prunes, sang “All The Single Ladies” to him, and let him watch the Cars movie. So this year, family only, a cake with a car or a truck on it, and we’re done. I felt at peace with my decision, barely gave it much thought.

Then we went to a birthday party for a 2 year old a few weekends ago. The mom held it at the neighborhood pool and reserved the picnic tables under the trees. The kids swam and then headed over for snacks and cupcakes. I talked to the mom for a few minutes and she said in passing that she hadn’t gone all out this year. The place looked like it could be on the cover of Pottery Barn Kids. She had huge orange and pink and yellow balloons tied together in groups of 3 so that they floated above and looked almost like lanterns. In between the balloons were vintage flags cut into triangles, in perfect pastel colors, that exactly matched the 3 page fold out invitations. The tables had adorable pink and green polka-dotted table cloths. She had sandwiches and healthy snacks arranged perfectly, plus kid sized waters and colorful Izze fruit drinks in cans. The water bottles had labels with her daughter’s name on them. Lined up around the perimeter of the party sat dozens of pale blue, green, yellow and pink sand buckets filled with a few treats and personalized with each child’s name. There were large buckets filled with trucks and trains and bubbles and toys. She made the cupcakes herself- and they were delicious. I don’t like cupcakes and I ate two. Did I mention that this Wonder Mom is also 9 months pregnant and due in the next few weeks?

This is not a post about the ridiculousness of the party or a judgment on the mom. She’s lovely and a great mom and the party was a blast. She also designs stationary for a living, so this is her thing. This post is about my utter deflation in the face of such super mom-dom. Even if I had the time and energy to try and have such a cute party, I know it wouldn’t turn out as cute. I don’t have that knack for decorating. I don’t bake. But I want to be that mom. I want to be able to throw things together so it looks like I should work at a magazine. I want other people to oooh and aaah over my efforts. But more than that, I feel bad for O that I don’t have that Wonder Mom knack. I don’t know why, but I think that a woman who can wrangle a toddler and work part time and be nine months pregnant and still put together an effortlessly chic birthday party for her kid must be a great mom, the kind of mom I secretly want to be.

The thing is, of course this stuff has nothing to do with raising a child. I also am pretty sure that every single mom, even the Wonder Moms out there, at times feel insufficient and hopeless at being a mom. I know that I am good at many other things that count in O’s world, and he could care less if his birthday party was properly decorated. But still.

What is it about us that thinks that these things signal being a Wonder Mom? Why do we all stress about the perfect cupcakes, or the perfect outfit that will get destroyed the minute the toddler walks out of his own room? It seems to start with decorating the perfect nursery in a way that will set little Aidan or Abigail in the right direction. Then comes the pressure to kill ourselves to exclusively breast-feed until the kid is a year old and not a day longer. Heaven forbid you keep nursing your toddler- then you are that weird mom who can’t let go. And if you get your kid to sleep through the night, then you move to the head of the Wonder Mom pack. After that, it’s cooking and pureeing and preserving organic only food to ensure that your toddler becomes a foodie later in life. Now it’s preschools and birthday parties and whose kid is going to read first.

I’m not Wonder Mom. Honestly, just typing out all of the above makes me exhausted. I work. I make time for my husband. I write. I play with my kid and read to him, and marvel at every little thing he does. I feed him and bathe him and clean up his poop and monitor his poop and help him poop if he can’t. I hold his hand when he lets me. I let him walk in front of me when he needs me to. I also scoop him up and carry him home when he’s screaming his head off because I dared to say “no”. I adore everything about him, and my heart hurts watching him grow into this little amazing creature. I let him figure things out on his own, but help him when he turns to me and asks. He is bright and funny and curious and dirty and thinks “toot” is hysterical, and adores his dad and all things car related. Basically he is exactly what he should be, a little boy who is loved too much.

So really, if I added “and I make him the perfect cupcakes and throw him the perfect birthday parties” to that list you’d think I was insane. I know this does not make me or anyone a Wonder Mom. So why do we think that if we look perfect and we make our kids childhood’s look perfect, then they will be? Why do we feel that tug that whispers “you’re not good enough” when confronted with a Wonder Mom, even though we know better?

Well. clearly, I don’t know. If I did, my name would be Oprah and I’d be a billionaire and I would be too busy spending my money and saving humanity to bother writing this post. But as mothers, let’s all agree to give ourselves a break. Let’s stop comparing ourselves and thinking that irrelevant  things like perfect birthday parties actually make a statement about what kind of mothers we are.

Because we are ALL Wonder Moms. Because we are doing it all, and surviving. Because our kids are healthy and thriving and messy and complicated and growing up happy.

And if your thing is throwing perfect birthday parties, then keep on doing it. And keep inviting me and O so we can eat your perfect cupcakes.

The side of the restaurant that is partitioned off held a small wooden patio, big enough for about twelve small tables. The French doors between the patio and the bar portion of the restaurant were always open, the noises of the bar spilling out onto the warmth and the hum of the patio. Pink bouganvilla climbed the walls and encircled the faded white welcoming letters that spelled out “BAREFOOT”.

I lived on this patio. For almost 10 years it was a gathering spot for me and my best friends. Like homing pigeons, no matter where we were in our lives (employed, not employed, dating, dumped, looking, happy, miserable) no matter where we lived (Brentwood, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu, New York, Austin, London), we returned home to this patio. This patio is where we caught up on each other’s lives. This patio is where we shared bottle after bottle after bottle of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio (something I rarely order since, and cannot drink without thinking of those lost days). We celebrated our college graduation together, up in that glass room. For awhile we lived right around the corner and went there weekly for dinner. We went there when we couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. We went there because it had a great patio, or great salads, or because it was half-way in between our respective apartments. We went there because we had always gone there.

I’m not sure it was the best restaurant. I only remember the wine, and the patio, and the talks.  We rehashed break-ups and make-ups, we celebrated birthdays and promotions and new acting roles, we plotted and planned and dreamed. We went there because we were happy and the night was beautiful. We went there because we were unhappy or bored or lonely. We went there because the possibilities of life were spilling out of us and we needed somewhere to discuss and contemplate what they meant. We went there because we were defeated and sure that life had gotten away from us. We went there to be reminded that we were young, and beautiful, and could waste an entire moon-lit evening on a patio with our best friends, just because.

Place is a funny thing. This is just a restaurant, a building, with walls and pipes and concrete. Take away the sign and the patio and the flowers, the menus and the food and the chairs, and it’s just an empty shell. It just is, until it will become something else. We haven’t been to Barefoot in years. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I spent an evening there. But in my mind, it is always there, waiting for us, the four of us, to pull up a chair, and order a bottle of wine, to start a story with “So, listen to this”. In my mind, we aren’t that far removed from those girls. We could still pull out our jeans and stilettos and flimsy gossamer tank tops and put on our lip gloss and so easily slide back onto that patio, into who we once were.

The reality is that was probably 10 years ago. I never wear lip gloss anymore (too sticky with a baby). The tank tops are buried in the back of our closets. When I do visit my friends, our talk is of babies and balancing career and life, of next steps and what is worth it. We still drink bottles of wine together, but now we are much more content to do it in a cozy living room, in our sweat pants, with our sleeping babies in the next room. The point isn’t that we even want to go back to Barefoot. But I always assumed we still could.

There is another place that is filled with memories for us, a zany bar/restaurant, tucked away on a cobblestone street near Saint-Germain-des-Prés. We spent a few hilariously drunken nights there while students in Paris, the kind of nights that happen spontaneously. Before you know it, you are drinking something called “Scorpion’s Top Secret” out of a steaming punch bowl that is filled with candy-colored twisting straws. Drinking out of punch bowls leads to befriending other drunk tourists and somehow falling down some steps and finding a basement room of French karaoke. (Note, the French take their karoke very seriously.) The nights we spent in this pub were legendary, and it became the code word that encapsulated our entire experience in France together.

Exactly ten years after our brief sojourn in Paris, my best friends and I found ourselves back in Paris together for a weekend. I was in law school, A was living in New York City, M still in California, and we would all be married within the next two years. But there we were, in Paris again. We wandered the streets and tried to remember what it felt like to be those girls again, young and raw, with bad haircuts and chubby faces. On the last night, we decided to find the pub for one last “Scorpion’s Top Secret”. We got off at the metro stop and instinctively wound our way through the back streets, silently following, one behind the other. M got there first and stopped. She said nothing and just pointed. We looked up, and in my memory the building that housed the pub was literally falling down. The front walls had been removed and the floors were collapsing on top of each other. It was being torn down and nothing familiar remained. Though we were disappointed, I think we all felt some relief. We couldn’t recreate our 20 year old selves, and no night would ever live up to those in our memory. It seemed appropriate, that the past should stay wrapped up in our pink hazy memory.

But the closing of Barefoot seems different. It feels like a flashing sign in front of my face telling me the obvious: You can’t go back. That old life isn’t just on pause, waiting for you to come back and press play and fall back into that world for an evening. Everyone has moved on. Everyone is married and becoming successful and having babies and living the next part of their lives. As am I. And I love this new part of my life, love the grown up I have become. But I still feel like that California girl and I suspect I always will.

Still, I can’t help but be sad at this physical reminder that a life I once had has been shut down and dismantled. I’ve put a lot of work into this new life, but I am nostalgic for that old one. It didn’t fit quite as well as this one, but it was the life that bears the scars of my growing up. Like your childhood bedroom, the one that is too small and too turquoise and filled with things that you no longer need, you still want it to remain the way it was, just in case you need to go home again.

What I am ever so grateful for, and am reminded of in writing this post, is that, of course, nothing has been lost. What made Barefoot so memorable in my mind is that it was a place that bore witness to the greatest friendships of my life. The things I remember so wistfully, are in fact things that I can pick up the phone and remember with the ones that were there with me. The memories and the friendships aren’t beholden to something as limiting as a building. They live within us, and can never be torn down or demolished.

*Soundtrack: I’ll Be Seeing You, Music by Sammy Fain, Lyrics by Irving Kahal, as sung by Billie Holiday

June 9, 2007. Austin, Texas. Sunset. On the lawn outside the Four Seasons Hotel, in front of a lake. Behind us, the family and friends that love us most. Before us, an enormous oak tree, sprinkled with twirling flowers and candles. Being led by a very nervous pastor with shaking hands, but a clear and steady voice. In front of us, our future. In front of us, the last four years.

To my partner, my husband, my best friend, on our anniversary. It’s about to get sappy in here.

For 4 years of marriage, here are 4 random things I love about you.

1. I love the way you hold my hand, wherever we go, even when you are annoyed with me.

2. I love the way we separate at parties and dinners. I get to watch you from afar, watch you laughing and telling stories, marvel at how easily you get people to like you.  I love smiling at you from across the room, as if we share a secret, and knowing that I get to go home with you.  I love the after-party discussions, where we share our stories of the evening.

3. I love that you watch So You Think You Can Dance with me, and that contemporary is your favorite type of dance.

4. I love that you read as much as I do, that you read physics books for fun and that you read things I have never heard of. And I love that you try to get me to read the things you love.

And one more, for good luck:

5. I love that I can count on you, that if there was a natural disaster and we had to go live “off-grid”, you are the one person I would want to have with me. I love that I trust you completely. If we were truly “LOST” on an island, you are the one person I would most want to crash with.

Marrying you is still the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

It’s been a happy, laugh-saturated, wondrous four years. Looking forward to the rest of our lives together.

I’ve been on a budget lately, or at least trying to be. That’s what happens when you quit your job and have no money coming in; you start only buying essentials. Books are essentials, of course. But I have a book problem: I can’t walk into a bookstore without buying at least $100 worth of books. I’ve tried to make lists and only buy one book at a time. I’ve made a decision not to buy hard covers anymore. I have a Kindle, but I have this thing about owning books. I want to touch them, stack them up, possess them. I want all of the books on my list Right Now. I don’t want to wait till I need a new book.

I’m a bit of a book flirt. I go on lots of first dates with books. I read many books at once, refusing to commit until I’m sure I want to go down that road. I don’t promise them anything, just that I will give them a chance. I don’t discriminate. I read all kinds of books: lit fiction to chick lit, mysteries to fantasy, short stories to poetry. If I like the way your cover looks, I’ll buy you. If a friend confides that you’re really really good, I’ll give it a go. If Oprah likes you, I’ll at least put you on my list. If I read your author’s blog, or a good review, or someone leaves you behind in a vacation cabin, I’ll probably pick you up.

Eleanor Brown wrote about this on her blog, about whether you are a book quitter or finisher. I’m a quitter; my husband is a finisher. My general theory is that you can’t force yourself to love a book. If I’m not loving it, I put it down. Usually I’ll come back to it and see if the spark is there yet. One of my all-time favorites is The Sun Also Rises. I tried to read it at least 5 times over 10 years and was bored. Then, the 6th time, picked it up and magic! Couldn’t put it down. If I had forced myself to read it, I would have missed out on one of my favorites. Hence, I’ve always got a few books going at once, waiting to see which one is going to be tucking in with me at night.

Last night I decided to make a list of all of the books that I own, but haven’t read yet. I’ve decided to make it a goal to read each and every one of these books. I got as far as my BEDSIDE TABLE. On/in my bedside table, I keep the books I am wanting to read soon. On the bookshelves is where I keep the other books, the ones I want to re-read or get to someday or the books that never quite kept my attention. The list of books below is only those on my bedside table. (Note that I did no editing for embarrassment.)

51 books! On just my bedside table. Which isn’t really that large to begin with (see picture above). This is just downright embarrassing. Looking at all of these books I’ve picked up, flirted with, and left sitting there, waiting their turn, I feel a bit wanton and blowsy. Faced with this evidence, I must face the fact that perhaps I’m not a harmless book flirt, but a full-blown book slut.

So. I’m going to add a reading tab on my blog (once I figure out how to do so). I WILL read these books. I will try my very hardest not to buy anymore books until I finish all of these books. Well, maybe at least a good portion, say 20%. I can’t promise anything, I mean, I still need to read Bossypants, and I heard about this fabulous new book on NPR yesterday that I’m dying to read, and I can’t leave out Dani Shapiro’s Devotion, which was just recommended to me. See my problem? Ok, how about this: I’ll also start a list of all of the books I am coveting, and will try to refrain from purchasing anymore until I’ve crossed one off the list. You know, a one-in, one-out policy. If you’ve read anything on either list, let me know if you liked it.

Fess up people. Are you a book flirt or a book slut? What’s on your bedside table RIGHT NOW?

P.S. Forgot about my Kindle. Darn it. Ok, here’s what’s on my Kindle:

52. The Weird Sisters- Eleanor Brown*

53. This Is Where We Live- Janelle Brown

54. A Drink Before The War- Dennis Lehane

People sure do some strange things. As a writer, I love this as it makes my job so easy. I simply have to sit around and watch people and am often given a gift such as Dee and Dum in the waiting room, or the lady with the bible and the dog and the hat in my Starbucks. A friend recently remarked that I seem to have weird people enter my life to an unusual degree. I don’t think so, I just happen to notice the weirdness, and then stare and fixate on what would make someone do such a thing, and then go home and write about them.

A few weekends ago, I took O and met my parents and other family at their little place by the river. O had the best time- he clomped along the shore, throwing rocks, digging, and running around. He fed a duck and saw mountain goats and just had the kind of giggling time that only a 2o month old can have. Saturday night we got a sitter and the adults went and saw Willie Nelson.

Willie is a hero of mine, and of pretty much anyone that has ever lived in Texas or has ever had the chance to see one of his legendary shows. The man is old, and seems to have more energy than I do. His show didn’t even start till 10 pm, my normal bed-time. He doesn’t have the same vocal range as he once did, and I will admit that he speaks the lyrics more than actually sings them, but his shows are something everyone should see once in their lifetime.

So we’re hanging out, at a special VIP table that is really just a metal picnic table, but hey, it’s private, it’s roped off, and we have our own bar. People are milling about, enjoying the perfect spring night. You’ve got yuppies and hippies, old people and and young people and kids and married couples and girls looking for trouble, and boys looking for girls dressed in miniskirts and cowboy boots. And then you’ve got the Siamese twins.

We walk in and I immediately notice two women that are wearing one large Willie Nelson t-shirt. On further inspection, it was actually two Willie t-shirts sewn together to form one large shirt. They each are wearing their own long jean skirts underneath and seem to be shuffling along in great tandem. They are laughing and having a great time. My first thought is that they are in costume and trying to get noticed by Willie. I laugh in amusement and point them out to my friend. Yes, I actually pointed and said something like, “Look, isn’t that clever!”

And then I realize that they are actual conjoined twins and I feel sick. I don’t think they noticed me pointing at them, but really, I have better manners than that. I am embarrassed and sad, that I contributed to a world that stares and points at those that are different than us. My friend and I are appropriately chagrined and move quickly off.

The twins of course are seated at a VIP table right behind us. I sneak peeks occasionally during the show and feel little bursts of happiness at how well they seem to be managing their condition. Yes, I am aware that this is condescending, but it made me feel better. The twins are clapping! Each lady puts up her one good arm and they meet perfectly in the middle, clearly in synch with one another. They twins are socially charming! They laugh and chat and flirt with men. The twins drink from a flask! Watching them pass it back and forth, I feel a bit better, because I see that these women have got it together and regardless of how insensitive I or any others in the world might be, these two are having the time of their lives. They are just like any two other people, kicking back and enjoying the experience that is a Willie show.

And then. The show is over, we are all tired and smiling, and we begin to pack up. I turn and see them. One twin is sitting on one side of the table, while the other is sitting clear on the other other side. Unattached. Each using both of their intact arms and hands quite well. Now I notice that each one is sporting a rather unattractive mullet. Damn it. The long jean skirts and the mullets should have tipped me off, but I was distracted.

They were faking it. The entire evening. And even though I originally thought it was a joke, to realize that they were pretending was not even close to funny. It felt dirty and more than mean. Why would someone do that? A bet? A lark? To see how people reacted? A social experiment? A new reality show for CBS? What the hell, frankly?

As writers, we are trained to take weird situations such as the above, and wonder, and write, and come up with our own answers to why. I still haven’t managed to find my way into that one, though the Flannery O’ Conner story “Good Country People” keeps coming to mind for some reason. Whatever I come up, I’m pretty sure I will most likely never see fake conjoined twins at a Willie Nelson concert again. That’s just once in a lifetime weird.