Aod‡n’s Poem

Proof that summer vacation is not just watching television and playing video games…. I loved this poem and wanted Aodán to illustrate it or perhaps write another, but he told me that writing that much caused his hand to hurt, and maybe if he had a typewriter… don’t know the significance of the boxed words. If it’s hard to read it’s:I’ve watched a silver sharkGlide across the seaBut I’ve been kinda wonderingwill it actually harm me? after drawing this picture Aodán expressed some reservations that perhaps he was “too much like a girl” because he liked some things girls are supposed to like, like beautiful flowers. Being very secure in my son’s masculinity, I was actually grateful for...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jun 29, 2003 | 0 comments

Feminist Mama

I am a liberated stay-at-home, not some sort of June Cleaver throwback! Among all of the difficult adjustments that accompanied Aodán’s birth six and a half years ago, one of the most frightening was becoming dependent on my husband in a way I had never been before. I wanted to be at home with my baby, but had been used to working and being a student, getting feedback on the work I was doing, managing my own money, being appreciated for my intelligence and skills. And all of the sudden I was doing utterly exhausting work that didn’t feel like any work I’d ever done before and that I would have been pining for if someone were paying me to be somewhere else, only they weren’t because we’d just moved to Prague. I...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jun 19, 2003 | 3 comments

Memory Supplements

An excuse to put up a bunch of photos. The joys of having a six month old baby do compensate me for the hormonal loss of hair, the weight still to be lost, and the fact that I have broken seven of my fingernails in the last week and a half, but I’m not sure about the losing of my mind. I have to be very rigid about hanging my keys up in the same place because I find myself searching for them for 20 minutes when I am trying to leave the house, only to find them under a pile of cloth diapers because somebody needed an emergency change on the way out the door. I tucked some cash into my overalls chest pocket before walking into a restaurant, but then strapped Søren in the Baby Bjorn to my chest, got to the counter to pay and had to run back out to the...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jun 13, 2003 | 0 comments

Always On My Mind

What if we have nothing to regret but regret itself? One of my favorite things to ask people that I am trying to get to know better is what things they fear the most. It is a sure sign that I read too much of a certain tragic genre or have too big a soft spot for that Willie Nelson song, that one of my biggest fears is regret. The flip side of being very grateful for the blessings in my life is that I am aware of how much I have to lose. Aside from the mommy superpower of being able to walk into a room and see every possible, attractive danger lurking for my children (PLEASE don’t climb those bookshelves, sweetheart!) the everpresent awareness of the potential for loss is manifested in my life as a weird guilt every time I yell at my kids. I fear this...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jun 13, 2003 | 0 comments

Parenting as Triage

It is almost too late for me to put one word after another, but Raven is doing some updating for the La Quinta website that has to be done at an hour when not so many people would be accessing the website, and I’m showing solidarity or something… Søren had his six month check up, he continues to struggle with a diaper rash and may be one of those children who gets an ear infection every time he is in a room that has germs in it, but otherwise, at 21 lbs 9 oz and 28 inches, he is a healthy, thriving kid. I get made fun of in our postnatal yoga class because I can nurse while attempting such postures as the tree… I’ve tried explaining that a lot of mothering three kids is being able to do several things at once. My friend Lillian...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jun 6, 2003 | 0 comments