J is for Java (by Mary Allison Tierney)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

It started in the early 80’s, in high school.  I was, from the very start, not a Mr. Coffee girl.  Pouring hot water over the grounds, watching the paper cone fill, saturate, the boiling bubbling cauldron settle then sink as  the brown elixir dripped into the glass. A science, a drug.  This is way before you could stand in line and order a skinny double nonfat and swipe your card.  A sincere coffee snob was born, complete with stomach cramps and grinding teeth.

San Francisco was the perfect environment to fuel my growing java snobbery.  Visiting foggy frozen North Beach, a typical Arizona college student wearing shorts in July, I delighted in my first cappuccino at Mario’s Cigar Store.  This was what adulthood feels like.  Sitting at a little café table across from the vanilla cake spires of Saint Peter & Paul’s, sipping my cappuccino, my goose bump covered knees notwithstanding, watching the old (to me) Tai Chi faithful in Washington Square Park.  I kept the New York Times on my lap for warmth.  The smell of ink on newsprint, the baking foccacia, the squeak of the electric bus, bag laden Chinese women duck walking by my table.  I sat until my cup was empty. I would have ordered a second if I’d had the money.
 

Mary Allison has been published in The Sun magazine and the Marin Independent Journal and is looking forward with dread and gusto to starting her fourth NaNoWriMo novel in November. Mary Allison is a novice surfer, a diligent trail runner, and a 4-time Dipsea Race finisher. She tries really hard to read one long New Yorker article each week, not just the cartoons.

I is for Inconsolable (by Mary Allison Tierney)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.



Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

I have him a quick hug. I couldn’t say a word or look at his face. After he pedaled down our driveway, I stepped into his abandoned basement dude lair/ recording studio and consoled myself by immediately attacking his room.  His mattress, which lay on the floor, was surrounded by balled up dirty socks, just stepped out of boxers, a wet towel, dirty coffee cups, plates, a spoon, a Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels bag, and all the boy-in-a-band detritus: guitar strings, picks, cords, loose change, a broken pencil, scraps of paper, and a receipt for a burrito.

His backpack and guitar in the baby blue gig bag sat next to the bed. I went to move the back pack and could hardly lift the thing.  It stood on the ground as high as my hip and I dragged it into the guest room.  I distracted myself by purging his room. He had attached most of the his pictures and posters with duct tape, so lots of plaster came off with them. After a full day of pulling it all off, vacuuming and moving out the furniture, his brother and I went to the paint store, excited to choose the color of his new room.

I was to fly up to Seattle in two weeks. He was pedaling 900 miles to college and was wildly unprepared for this, but there was no stopping him. I got Bike Tour updates almost daily, where he camped, what he was seeing. He was with a friend and sometimes my update came through her parents via ATM debits. I worked very slowly, patching and repainting each wall.

A few days before I was set to fly up to Seattle, I learn what was making the backpack so damned heavy: his beloved chrome studded black leather biker jacket, the leather hiking boots he wore on his NOLS Alaska trip, black jean cutoffs patched with black leather, a half dozen black metal band shirts, several missing sleeves, all reeking of BO as they had been pulled from the floor or hamper and stuffed into the backpack, Cannibis Corpse sweatpants, and seven mismatched wool socks (none clean) and four pair of boxers. And of course his laptop and charger, all the essentials to start college.

Appropriately, it was raining in Seattle, raining as we drove to Olympia, and raining the next morning. Having survived his Bike Tour, he insisted on riding his bike from the hotel to his dorm, but didn’t want me to come inside.  I insisted.  It resembled a luxury prison suite. I’ll never know if another mother was more successful making it cozier. I never saw that room again.  Or him, until Thanksgiving.

He stood me up for dinner, texting to say he ate with people he’d met, which was great, but I was disgusted. No teary hug goodbye, or final dinner and I never met his roommate. It was pouring rain the next morning as I drove to the airport and the radio was all Pearl Jam.  The Pacific Northwest feeds on itself.  Even though I was pissed at him, I was very much missing my son. I don’t know why now all of a sudden I expected some smarmy John Hughes scripted take-the-kid-to-college scenario, but I felt gypped.  Parenting sucks.

Mary Allison has been published in The Sun magazine and the Marin Independent Journal and is looking forward with dread and gusto to starting her fourth NaNoWriMo novel in November. Mary Allison is a novice surfer, a diligent trail runner, and a 4-time Dipsea Race finisher. She tries really hard to read one long New Yorker article each week, not just the cartoons.

H is for Hysterical Hypochondriac (by Pamela Alma Weymouth)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

This week my children's school sent home a little blue sheet warning that my sons may have been exposed to Slapped Cheek Syndrome. Symptoms include a ruddy cheek rash (thus the name) fever and typical flu-like symptoms. In rare cases, it leads to childhood arthritis or connective tissue auto-immune diseases; it is contagious to adults, in particular women, ie. mothers. (My children for some reason, always chose to only throw up on me—always sparing their dad, my ex.) If that’s not enough, there is no cure, no medicine, no vaccine—absolutely nothing to do but become hysterical. Because they are most contagious in the one to four days prior to symptoms manifesting, it’s probably too late for us already.

Last week when our neighbor’s grandson dropped by, I noticed his dirt smeared four-year-old hands were covered with small reddish pustules; I asked his grandmother if he had poison oak. “Oh no,” she said. “He’s just gotten over Hand, Foot and Mouth disease.” I rushed to sanitize my hands like someone who’s just invited over a leper. It’s not like my children haven’t already had Hand, Foot, Mouth (which I used to think only struck barn animals), it’s that I’ve been sick for the greater part of the last six years, since birthing twins. People tell you for the first three years that if your kids are sick a lot, “Don’t worry, it will make them healthier later!” Someone obviously made this up to keep people from sending their babies down the river in little woven baskets.

I spent the greater part of this winter carting around the most recent diseases my children had brought home: Strep throat, Bronchitis, The Plague. After nursing my boys back to health while I crawled across the living room, I thought, this is it: I’m almost forty-five, I’m single, and I’m going to have to write the Great American Novel from my bed like Proust, only without a nanny or a chambermaid.

Next week, I imagine the school will send home a paper that reads: Your child has been exposed to an ancient virus that will make their limbs fall off. After waking you up twenty-five times each night for the next fourteen days, you will be able to glue their limbs back on, but your own limbs will not be reparable. You might want to invest in a wheelchair or a spot at the closest cemetery.

Pamela Alma Weymouth writes a humor blog on parenting and divorce for The Huffington Post. She has won awards for her fiction and essays from Glimmer Train and Traveler’s Tales. Her writing has appeared in Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009, Marin Independent Journal, and Hot Flashes: Sexy Little Stories and Poems I & II. She earned her MFA at University of San Francisco. She has taught writing at The Writing Salon & Berkeley Extension. She is writing a book called “Surviving Twinland.” She lives in The Bay Area with her twin boys and three hens named Birthday Gang, Zeke and Tango.

G is for Garbage (by Janine Kovac)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

I never thought about garbage trucks before I had boys.

I never stopped to admire how the green trucks really do look like mechanical dinosaurs.

My heart never jumped to hear a double-axle vehicle backing up one block over.

I didn’t put the bins out the night before and think, “Tomorrow is trash day!”

I never woke up at 6 a.m. to draw the blinds and wonder which trash collector I’d see. Would it be the one who makes his baby food from scratch? (“I don’t know how long it’s been on that shelf,” he told me. “And besides, how hard is it to smash a banana?”)

I didn’t rearrange my day to make sure that I’d be home for the recycling truck at noon.

Or drive half a mile out of my way because I knew it was trash day in that neighborhood.

I certainly didn’t have a favorite kind of garbage truck (the ones that lift the garbage overhead and dump it in the back).

Or a second-favorite garbage truck (the ones that have little arms to pick up commercial dumpsters).

Or a third-favorite garbage truck (the ones that churn garbage in the back).

And since I never thought about garbage trucks, it never occurred to me that one day I’d draw the blinds on Wednesday morning and be the lone fan waving to the trash collector who makes apple-sauce from scratch because my sons—at the tender age of three—had moved on to jet airplanes.


Janine Kovac is the program coordinator for the Write On, Mamas and database architect for the literary festival Litquake. If she writes something she likes, she posts it here. And if she doesn't, it goes here.

F is for Doggy Does Facebook (by Marianne Lonsdale)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

 

 

Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

I’m not sure if my family’s Facebook habit is getting out of hand or if our doggy love has gone over the deep end. But Kashi, our oh-so-adorable white fluff ball of a dog, has more friends on Facebook than I do. He hit the 200 mark weeks ago. I don’t even look at the count anymore – why make myself feel like a reject? I’ve been on Facebook way longer than he has. His profile picture is awfully darn cute. He is irresistible while I, apparently, can be easily resisted.

Not only that, but his friends actually pay attention to what he’s doing and comment on it. I’ll post something that I think is sure to grab interest or be worth a chuckle and I get zip comments. Kashi posts something pithy like “Wish I had a chewy treat right now” and ten friends pipe in with what they’d like to give him.



Kashi

Don’t even get me started on how many girlfriends he has. “Wanna play with me this weekend?” his bud Indigo asks. And some cute little mutt who goes by the name Poppy Fluff Flower pretended they were married for awhile to keep other bitches away. His pleading dark eyes shine a light into the vulnerability behind his machismo. 

We left him with his sitter this weekend. We were barely out of town when on his page is posted “The family just left!  Time 2 party!” He was sacked out when we returned Sunday evening. He’d obviously seen plenty of action during our absence. Hardly glanced at the new winter sweater and anti-itch shampoo we brought home to him. And today his post says “So tired from the weekend. Just gonna sleep all day long.” Me too buddy, but I still made it into work. Get a grip, or a stick or a bone or something.


Marianne Lonsdale lives with her husband, Michael, and son, Nicholas, in Oakland, California. She writes personal essays and short stories, and is now focused on developing a novel. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Literary Mama, Fiction365, The Sun, and Pulse.

E is for Existence thru’ Exercise (by Cynthia Rovero)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

One day an image crosses the television screen of your dream body. You look at yourself in horror and wish for a miracle cure that can give you the same sexy allure. Having tried all kinds of touted miracle cures, I have decided to live with a much simpler solution, such as shutting my mouth when that extra helping is staring at me in the face. I also push myself out the door to join in with the many feel-good exercises. In doing so, I find myself losing weight, feeling sexier and, best of all, enjoying better health.


The epitome of learning to enjoy what I have is celebrated exponentially with every new step I take in this direction. Yes, there are pitfalls to trying to maintain a positive outlook within a mass media society. Still, for my health the choice to continue on this path of eating veggies more and junk food less works. Also, continuing to go out into the world, where I can enjoy the physical exertion of bike riding, swimming, and walking is a huge plus. Most of all I adore the look on my hubby’s face when my healthier attitude pays off in weight loss. Then, I too beam with pride at how far I have come from giving in to unhealthy temptations.

Cynthia has enjoyed creative writing for 30 years. Over the years she took writing classes to hone her skills. Sharing her thoughts has helped to keep her fulfilled in life.

D is for Dog (by Lorrie Goldin)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.



Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

My husband and I are cat people, but our daughters failed to get the memo. Despite a menagerie of two felines and an assortment of rodents, the lobbying for a dog began in earnest when Emma, our eldest, was in second grade. In between constant replays of "Homeward Bound" and "Milo and Otis," Emma vowed to take care of all things puppy if only we would grant her wish. She even promised to pick up poop.

We're bad parents: We said no. So Emma brought out the heavy artillery: Begging. Whining. Pitching fits. After a solid year of this, our firm "no" turned squishy. Not only did we fail to hold the canine line, we also failed Parenting 101 by caving in the face of her atrocious behavior (unsurprisingly, this soon became our m.o. for dog-rearing as well).

Of course, I was the weak link. If it had been up to my husband, we never would have accepted even one of those "free" goldfish foisted upon families at school carnivals. But after Emma went to work on me, I went to work on Jonathan. On a long, romantic hike I outlined why we should overthrow reason and do something crazy, like get Emma a dog for her ninth birthday. "Besides," I concluded my pitch, "Maybe we could surprise ourselves and let in new love."

Jonathan, who pays attention to research saying that marriages fare best when husbands agree with their wives, knew he was doomed. But at least the birthday girl was thrilled with the promise of a puppy as soon as we got back from our summer vacation.

Button

Upon our return, we headed straight to the Humane Society. Emma was in heaven when she saw their brand new litter. Who knew that Rottweiler-Pit Bull puppies could be so cute? Still, it was not the mix I had in mind, even though Emma saw no need to look any further. This time, I did not cave, resolutely removing my screaming, betrayed child from the premises while simultaneously saving my marriage.

Fortunately, the next day there was an ad in the IJ for a litter in Woodacre. We knew we'd found our puppy as the mellowest little black-and-white guy yawned and waggled his tail. Thus Button entered our lives and our hearts.

Emma and her younger sister, Ally, were enthralled as Button waddled up and down the stairs after them. They were less enchanted by his needle-like puppy teeth, and spent Day Two climbing into the lower branches of a tree to avoid his nipping enthusiasm. Many days thereafter they ignored him completely.

In his intemperate youth, Button chewed through one sofa, a set of seatbelts, and two pairs of Jonathan's glasses. Neither girl picked up any poop, either.

But one promise was kept: We could, after all, let in new love.

Lorrie Goldin is a closet dog lover and mother of two grown daughters. She is a psychotherapist in private practice in San Rafael and Berkeley. Lorrie's writing has appeared in the New York Times' "Motherlode" blog, skirt!, Underwired Magazine, the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Marin Independent Journal, and Harlots' Sauce.

C is for Cindy, my sister (by Teri Stevens)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.



Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

Adopted a son.

 

Benjamin.

 

Cindy is a first-time parent. 

 

Dad, John, her husband, is too.

 

Emotional rollercoaster is what they rode throughout his gestation, which ended with an emergency Caesarian. 

 

Fortunately Ben is a healthy, beautiful boy.

 

Grandparents met their new grandson in the hospital.

 

Holli is Ben’s birth mother. 

 

I met him when he was just eight days old.

 

Joseph is his middle name, in honor of our Stepfather who passed.

 

Kelly will host a shower now that Ben has arrived.

 

Low income housing is where Holli is living, made possible by Cindy and John who hope it will help her get back on our feet.

 

March 19, 2013 is Ben’s birthday. 

 

Nephew to hug, hold and watch grow and learn.

  

One-night encounter is how our family was blessed with Benjamin’s presence.

 

Patience was necessary throughout the 72 hour waiting period during which Holli had the option to change her mind.

 

Quite a relief when she signed the paperwork, finalizing the adoption.

 

Reno, Nevada, the city of Ben’s birth and where he lives with his new family. 

 

Social worker, Linda, calmly guided Cindy and John through the adoption process.

 

Three of his cousins also met him on his eighth day. 

 

Underdeveloped he was not, weighing in at 9 pounds, 20 inches.

 

Verbal commitment from Holli was all they had to go on while they waited for his birth, that and faith.

 

“Waiting is the hardest part,” chorus line from The Waiting by Tom Petty.

 

X , the twenty-fourth letter in the alphabet, which Ben will someday learn to recite.

 

Yellow congratulatory flowers were delivered to the happy parents.

 

Zoo animals from my son’s baby room decorate Ben’s nursery and watch him thrive in his new home with the parents who dreamed him there. 

 

Cindy with Benjamin

After receiving a BA in Journalism from the University of Nevada, Reno, Teri Stevens moved to northern California where she held numerous marketing director positions in the Shopping Center industry, most notably Ghirardelli Square. Amidst the joyful chaos of raising three five-year-olds, an adopted son and twin daughters, Teri makes time to write.

B is for Bug (by me!)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Today is my turn! I decided to write a limerick and I also recorded an audio too. Enjoy :)



Photography by Mary Allison Tierney

My recording of Bug Poem (download)

A British divorcee called Claire

Sent an email one night for a dare

To her first love at school

Who’d been horny and cool

And no man since then could compare.

~~~

When they first met he had a nickname

She wondered if it would be the same

He quickly replied

Bursting with pride

He was still known as Bug, he proclaimed.

~~~

The years apart had been more than thirty

But they found that they both were still flirty

She’d forgotten that Bug

Was not like a slug

Coz when it came to romance he was dirty.

~~~

Two years later in a town by the sea

He declared his love and proposed on one knee

She jumped up and down

With the ring he had found

And with no thought accepted with glee.

~~~

 From her family it was very hard to part

But she needed to follow her heart

To live in the sun

Sounded plenty of fun

Bug had always been Right From The Start.

~~~

A is for Antigua, Guatemala (by Jessica O'Dwyer)

For this year's A-Z Challenge, I am organising my writing group's participation for the first time. So I am posting each entry here as well as on the website, Write On, Mamas! who are a writing group based in the San Francisco North Bay area. We will have 25 Mamas and one Papa writing on a different letter of the alphabet during the A-Z Blog Challenge. Comments are always so appreciated, but would be lovely if you would comment on the Write On, Mamas! blog so the author will read your comment. Thanks and look forward to reading your blogs.

Photography by Mary Allison Tierney



A is for Antigua, Guatemala, by Jessica O'Dwyer

Jessica and Olivia at their front door in 2003

I’m writing this in Antigua, Guatemala, a UNESCO heritage site that’s considered by many to be Central America’s most beautiful and authentic colonial city. It’s insane how much I love this place—the cobblestone streets, the churches, the handicraft markets, the ring of volcanoes that define Antigua’s perimeter. Ten years ago, I lived in a small casita here with my then-15-month-old daughter, Olivia, a Guatemalan baby my husband and I were trying to adopt.

At that time, the adoption system teetered on the brink of implosion, and we didn’t know from one day to the next if the courts would grant us permission to bring Olivia home with us to California, or take her away forever, to be lost somewhere in the country’s labyrinthine orphanage system. The experience of fighting for Olivia during that emotional roller coaster ride affected me so deeply I wrote a memoir about it. The book’s title, Mamalita, refers to the name Olivia birth mother calls me: “Little Mommy.” Adoptions from Guatemala closed permanently in December 2007.





Jessica and Olivia March 2013

Olivia is now almost 11, and every year since our first one together, she and I return to Antigua. Our first stop, always, is to visit our former casita, and take a picture of ourselves at the front door. I cherish these pictures, proof of time’s passage and how much we have changed and grown, not only physically, but as mother and daughter.


Jessica O’Dwyer is the author of Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir (Seal Press). Her essays been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle magazine, Adoptive Families, Marin Independent Journal, and West Marin Review. She lives with her family in Northern California.