past issues
Our Bodies, Our Fallible Selves - Issue No. 19
Surviving a Trip to The Library, One Fired Mama, Birth Control and Sanity, A House of Bees, Keeping The Magic Alive
WELCOME BACK
It has been a year since my last newsletter, and as women often do, I find it necessary to defend myself, in this case by explaining where I’ve been. Even though, as a mother, I find that linearly tracing all that we’ve done and all that we’ve held may be an impossible task. So, here is a summary of the last year: I embodied the tooth fairy whom my daughter has carefully selected to be her pen pal. I worked through the trauma of experiencing a shooting at our neighborhood library with my son. I went on a writing retreat in France for a week and ended up running the chateau that I was staying in when the owner was hospitalized (essay forthcoming). I made roughly 100 pots of oatmeal and built innumerable “bad guy” towers with Legos. I weathered many tantrums and incessant sibling bickering, laughed deeply with friends, and blinded myself with my own sweat in hot yoga classes, a workout that I still can’t decide if I hate or love. I kept everyone fed and relatively clean. I fell in love with a Dyson vacuum, didn’t kill my houseplants, talked more about birds than I ever thought I would, and found an affinity for listening to audiobooks while doing puzzles. My husband and I worked through the hardest chapter of our marriage, and I’ve watched him with pride as he’s been promoted to partner, taken on additional responsibilities and travel, and received accolades for his performance. I’ve watched this while taking care of everything in the background, without a bonus, raise or evaluation. I have begun navigating the next steps of my career never having felt less charitable with my time and energy. Now, I am trying to finish the last year of my thirties with some semblance of grace and wisdom, while also feeling deeply resistant to the idea that I could be categorized as middle-aged. My twenties were the decade of discovery and ambition, my thirties felt like the decade of giving, and so my hope for my forties is that it will be the decade of rediscovering my fire. So, welcome back to Charmingly Chaotic, a newsletter about the chaotic reality of life while parenting two tiny (but quickly growing) humans. Thank you for being here. Thank you for understanding my long hiatus, that felt like anything but respite. It’s good to be back.
SURVIVING A TRIP TO THE LIBRARY
Our local library was the first indoor place my family went post-pandemic. After months of living an insular life with two kids under three, we masked up and unlocked the world from which my kids had been isolated. The library gave us a feeling of safety and community after months of quarantine. As time progressed, our weekly library trip has become a cornerstone of our family’s week and a much appreciated parenting crutch for me. If my daughter is losing sleep over her worries, we find a book about an elephant with anxiety. If I want to avoid violent television but my son has an insatiable appetite for superheroes, we turn to Dogman. Mondays are now for “books and bubbles,” an occasion in which we check out exactly 20 library books, stuff them into our “magical tote” which somehow always holds the load no matter the size, and then proceed down the street to read our newly acquired treasures over taro bubble teas.
It wasn’t until I had kids that I truly appreciated the sacred ground that is a library. Ours is subway accessible and offers wireless hotspots for checkout, which allows those who can’t afford internet to have it at their fingertips, and it is often a haven for the unhoused community in the area. Libraries are one of the last climate controlled public places that offer an equal opportunity to connect anyone who walks through the doors to the power of safe spaces, resources, and stories without a cost. At their best, libraries can serve as the hub for community.
This past February, there was a shooting at the library while my five year old son and I were checking out books. Every time I closed my eyes for weeks after, the refrain of Drop the bag, grab him, run - Drop the bag, grab him, run haunted me. The attendant was scanning our books, when someone screamed for security at the top of the staircase, then the gunshots began. I dropped our tote bag embroidered with my daughter’s name, picked up my son and ran as fast as I could, the popping sounds at my back. Please God, let my body be enough to keep him safe, I thought then, or maybe later, and for the rest of my life I hope or pray (or whatever verb you input for the highest level desperation) I am enough to keep my children safe.
I remember the front doors opening, no faces, just legs. I ran the entire length of the street, the same street that my dad’s office was on while I was growing up. I would go there sometimes after school and spend hours pretending to run a travel agency with his surplus of sticky notes and tape. This is the neighborhood in which we’ve sung carols, watched movies on the Green, eaten countless scoops of ice cream and done some of our best people watching.
I put my son behind the brick sign of the Presbyterian church where I thought he’d be safe and squatted in front of him to explain what had happened, as best I could. While we were running, he kept asking “what was that noise?”, “why are you running?”, “what are we doing?” So, I did my best to answer. I explained, “Mommy heard gunshots, and when you hear something and you feel scared in your body, you move yourself as quick as you can to somewhere safe. Mama’s job is to keep you safe, and that’s what I’m doing.” I wish I hadn’t called the noises gunshots and instead left it up to his interpretation. But now more than ever, a part of me wants my son to understand what gunshots are so he runs as fast as I did if there comes a time that he hears them and I cannot carry him. Every time I pick him up, I feel the weight of him more, how much he’s growing, the increasing distance from when he was small enough to fit within me.
When the police cars started to speed past us from what felt like every direction, I realized we still might not be safe. We were on a straight shot from the library, and if someone were to flee, the chances of them running in our direction were too high. “I’m going to pick you up again,” I said to my son, lifting him back onto my hip and continuing down the sidewalk where there was a man in baggy clothes walking towards us. What if he is the shooter? What if the gun is tucked into his clothes and I can’t see it? What if he pulls out the gun again and it is just us on the street facing him? The shock and fear must have consumed my face. “Were you in the library, Mama?” He asked and I nodded. “You’re safe now. You’re both safe now,” he said with steadfast calm. A gentle voice and demeanor that he has likely had to evoke an unfair number of times as a black man. I’ve thought about this man so many times in the last few weeks – how he cracked me open with his assurance. My eyes filled with tears as I thanked him and we crossed the street.
My son whispered in my ear that he had to pee. I realized I needed my dad to pick my daughter up from afterschool since my car was inaccessible in the library parking lot. The duality of life as a mother continued. An hour later, we all reconvened over cheese dip in a nearby restaurant. In the car after, still dazed and shaking, I fielded my daughter’s interrogation on whether or not I was the tooth fairy. Life goes on.
Statistically, it isn’t surprising that we had this experience, since our country is still prioritizing regulating women and terrorizing our immigrant communities over reforming gun control or expanding mental health resources. My son now sees the library as somewhere you should only go if “you can run very fast”, and I feel robbed of one of the most integral public places in our family’s life. Emerging from the daze of trauma, I still am uncertain of my conclusion. We didn’t choose this story, and in surviving it we are changed. I am left reassured by my own strength and shaken up by the fragility of this life.
ONE FIRED MAMA
In the Fall of 2024, I was fired for the first time from a job. This blow followed my reentry to the work force after quitting my job during COVID and subsequently spending three years as a stay at home mom. My first job back was to launch a high school outreach program at a large, prestigious theatre in Atlanta that I frequently visited while growing up. I had stressed in my interview with the CEO that I needed a “family-friendly” workplace, and he had emphasized that he and many other employees had kids, so that it absolutely would be. I never asked what his spouse did for a living and to what extent she was responsible for the heavy lift of childrearing, but given his response, I started my new job cautiously optimistic.
My reentry into the workforce was tumultuous from the start, but I hoped the challenges were just part of the readjustment process. My boss, a woman in her 50s with no kids, had seemed frustrated from the onset when I asked if I could leave at 4:30 instead of 5:00 everyday to pick up my kids on time from after school. She agreed under the condition that I sign onto my computer every night for an additional 30 minutes and email her at the beginning and end of my additional time. Despite having no extra work to complete each night, I adhered to her conditions. During my two months at this organization I hit every deadline, completed high quality projects, and never came late or called out sick. I was regularly told that everyone was happy with my performance and excited to have me onboard. However, a few weeks in, I requested some clarity about policies around using PTO if my kids, who would both regularly get very sick due to their asthma, were to get sick prior to me accruing enough time. Since my boss had made it very clear that our workplace was a butts in the seats, no excuses, kind of working environment, I wanted some clarity on how to meet these expectations. I wanted to know whether it would be possible for me to work remotely or leave the office for a few hours to take the kids to a doctor’s appointment. My boss’s response was that she would like me to consider losing my benefits and going part-time because my obligations at home seemed too demanding for me to be successful in the role. She explained that this had nothing to do with my performance. Simply, the demands of motherhood were “not accommodations I had earned.” She cited an example when she had had to put her dog down and then returned to work the same day because “no matter what is happening to you personally, the work still needs to get done.” Five weeks later, she fired me over the phone during a hurricane while I was at home without power with my children whose school had been canceled for the day. Thanks to Georgia being an “at-will” employment state, there did not have to be a cause for letting me go. My former boss was nominated for the prestigious "Women Making a Mark" award the following year. This award “honors the remarkable women who are shaping Atlanta’s business and nonprofit landscape and the lasting impact women can have on our city.”
Her impact on my reentry into the work force at an employer that had promised to be “family-friendly” has certainly stuck with me. My inability to check my formative identity as a caregiver at the door and to silently balance my responsibilities at home with those at work disqualified me from doing a job that I was excelling at. I have found great comfort in recognizing that I am not an anomaly. The inability to support the responsibilities of caregivers, including workplace flexibility and wages to cover the high cost of childcare “has made workforce participation untenable for many women across the United States.”
According to Forbes, from January to August of 2025 “more than 455,000 women exited the U.S. workforce…While 42% of the exits were due to layoffs, 58% of women leaving the workforce decided to give up their jobs.” Out of all women impacted, “women with young children have been the hardest hit. In just the first half of 2025, the labor force participation of women aged 25 to 44 with children under age five fell by 2.8%, marking the steepest mid-year decline in more than four decades.” While mothers have faced these issues for a very long time, many women got a taste of flexible hours and remote work during the pandemic and adjusted their family dynamics to work within this new reality. According to a 2024 survey conducted by Walr, “nearly two-thirds of C-suite executives said that return-to-work mandates caused a ‘disproportionate number’ of females to quit.”
Women are not leaving jobs because they lack ambition and drive, they are not leaving jobs because they can’t handle their responsibilities they are leaving jobs because workplaces are systematically disadvantageous for parents, and especially women, who often take on the brunt of caregiving responsibilities.
I had left my teaching job in August 2021 during the height of the Pandemic, when the school where I was working had asked that everyone return to teaching in person. My son was nine months old, and my daughter was two, and neither could be vaccinated yet for COVID. I was making $30k to work 60% time and be in my car for nearly two hours per day. I couldn’t make the numbers and the risk work. While I knew that my “break” from working would likely handicap me from being able to easily obtain a job at the salary I would want later, I also felt like given the circumstances, it was the right choice for my family. I made a choice, but it was a constrained one. According to Forbes, “Even before the pandemic, more than 2 million parents each year were left with little choice but to reduce their role in the labor force. This not only disproportionately impacts women but “these challenges [were also] exacerbated for Black and multiracial parents: they experience job disruptions related to child care problems at nearly double the rate of white parents.”
According to the US Chamber of Commerce, women who take time away from work to focus on childrearing upon returning to the workforce often “miss promotion or growth opportunities, further widening the wage gap.” But, even mothers who remain working out of the home after having kids are penalized when they become parents. The phenomenon of women being punished for becoming mothers is known as the “Motherhood Penalty.” Studies have found that “Mothers suffer a penalty relative to non-mothers and men in the form of lower perceived competence and commitment, higher professional expectations, lower likelihood of hiring and promotion, and lower recommended salaries.” Black and Latinx women are nearly twice as likely to experience the “motherhood penalty.” Men conversely often experience a “Fatherhood Bonus” upon having children in which they are perceived as more responsible and competent in the workplace after becoming fathers because of all their juggling. While women experience a per-child wage penalty of 5 to 20 percent, fathers experience an approximate 6 percent wage increase.
Being fired from the first job I got since becoming a mother was deeply discouraging both for my ego and my hope in finding a place to work in which I could be my full, dynamic self. Being a dedicated and present mother does not diminish my ambition, drive, or performance as a professional. Since the beginning, mothers can and do hard things everyday. But being a “family friendly workplace” is more than a tagline or a marketing scheme. What if our workplaces and our country made space for the women who made us? In creating workplaces that do not allow mothers to thrive, we are excluding the most resilient, capable, and strategic people from the jobs that need them most.
BIRTH CONTROL AND SANITY
On my way to my annual gynecology exam, I rehearsed what I would say to my OBGYN if she asked if I was done having babies. Similar to a container of yogurt, my IUD was coming up on its expiration date, and so the decision on whether to replace it or remove it felt pressing. I’m quickly approaching 40, which I’ve somewhat arbitrarily marked as my deadline for having another kid, and yet I am not ready for my husband to get a vasectomy because it feels too permanent. I planned on answering my gynecologist's question with, “While I would love another kid, it’s not the right thing for my family at this time.” But instead, in an exemplary display of word vomit, when asked, I answered, “I would love to, but my husband doesn’t want another one. And, it turns out, it takes two people to make that happen. So, not at this time. Or, at least not with him!” And then I immediately felt regret at unloading on a woman who, aside from performing my emergency c-section 7 years prior, was pretty much a complete stranger. She smiled at my unexpected response as she grabbed the forceps, and I wrongly assumed we had moved on. However, once she had pried me open and was performing a pelvic exam, she followed-up with: “do you feel safe and okay in your marriage?” I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, never having felt more exposed and answered, “it turns out, it’s just hard to raise two little kids.” “It is so fucking hard,” she responded, eyeballs inline with my vagina. “Sorry for dropping an f*bomb” she amended. “I think it deserves an f*bomb,” I explained. And together we laughed.
After solidifying an unexpected bond with my gynecologist, I went home and started researching my birth control options. The first time I got an IUD, I was in my 20s and the gynecologist told me that inserting the little device felt similar to one contraction of childbirth. After the procedure, I struggled to get off the table, and after hobbling to my car I immediately called my mom in tears from the pain and declared that if this was a taste of childbirth, then I had to regretfully inform her that she would never be a grandmother. I spent the rest of the day on my couch with a heating pad on my pelvis, so grateful to have a job where I was able to take a day off. While the first IUD was developed in 1909, and over 10% of American women currently are using an IUD, it wasn’t until May 2025 that The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, released new guidelines addressing the pain of IUD insertion. This new guidance “urged doctors to not underestimate the pain experienced by patients, marking a significant change for the organization.” In this case, taking women’s pain seriously only took 116 years. I have had a total of three IUDs inserted prior to this guidance being released.
Compared to the alternatives and despite the pain, I have found that IUDs are my best option. I don’t have to regularly think about birth control, and they are over 99% effective. The negatives are basically that I just have this weird foreign object bodyguarding my uterus, and I don’t have a period, which despite being a monthly annoyance, also feels like an important part of my natural biological process. The IUD also doesn’t stop me from having PMS, which means that once a month I feel completely unhinged without justification. Other downsides are highlighted by recent research, which has found that women using hormonal IUDs have a 40 percent higher chance of developing breast cancer. However, studies have also found that “rates of deadly ovarian cancer declined by up to 32% for women who used IUDs.” So, basically women have to pick their poison – increasing one risk to prevent another, which seems par for the course with women’s health.
My research on what non-permanent, non-condom birth control options my husband and I have, led me to the hormone-free pill for men called YCT-529, which could be released relatively soon. So, for men who aren’t ready to start contributing to their unborn offsprings’ 529 plans, YCT-529 could be for them. This potential future male contraceptive just completed its first safety trial, so there is quite a bit more testing to be done. Since the first oral contraceptive for women was introduced in 1950, we’re only looking at a roughly 75 year delay in finding a comparable solution for men to take responsibility for their fertility. While other male birth control methods have been tested, like a two-hormone injection that was commissioned by the World Health Organization in 2016 to lower sperm count, the trial was stopped because men experienced side effects. The multitude of side effects women have faced apparently pales in comparison to men grappling with increased acne and mood swings. There is also some concern that men would not be as consistent with taking a birth control pill as women since the fear of getting pregnant holds a different kind of weight (literally) than a man getting a woman pregnant. All things considered, I decided to get my fourth IUD a couple of weeks ago on my daughter’s first day at a new school. I woke up early, made cinnamon rolls and smoothies, got lunches packed, and backpacks ready before anyone was up. After delivering my daughter to school and attending a parent coffee with twenty minutes to spare before my appointment, I remembered that I was supposed to insert a pill to help soften and dilate my cervix and ease the insertion process four hours prior to my appointment. And so it goes that I hadn’t thought about my own body or needs until it was far too late to do anything about it. Like my previous insertions, when this pill hadn’t been made available to me, the process of getting my IUD was painful and I was out of commission for the rest of the day.
After being on multiple forms of birth control, having two children, and feeling the looming threat of perimenopause, I continue to be deeply disappointed in the patriarchal nature of our health care system and the constrained choices women continue to have to make amid so many inadequacies in addressing our wellness and wellbeing. In the wise words of my gynecologist, “it’s so f***ing hard.”
SOMETHING THAT
DIDN’T WORK
My son just started Kindergarten, and while I could unload about how emotional it is for my baby to cross this milestone, instead this piece is about the beehive we discovered in his wall after his first day at school. Because, this is how life works, pairing an exciting milestone with an actual nightmare. My son came home excited, energized, and exhausted, and so after debriefing over dinner, we entered his bedroom to promptly start his bedtime routine. We were surprised to find ten dead yellow jackets on his windowsill, and, upon moving the bed away from the wall, another twenty scattered across his floor. I ushered my son and daughter out of the bedroom, and my husband closed the door to investigate. He moved our son’s dresser away from an exterior facing wall and discovered a softball-size hole with a beehive behind it. The next thing I knew, my husband had suited up as if he was auditioning for the cast of Breaking Bad with a can of bug poison in one hand and our Shop-Vac in the other. His face was one of apprehension and perhaps a tinge of excitement. While he shop-vaced a swarm of bees, I tried to calm our crying and screaming daughter, who had just recently developed a phobia after having been stung by a yellow jacket in her room the week prior. At the time we thought this was an anomaly, but in retrospect, this was an indicator of a much bigger issue. My son seemed stunned by the whole thing as we deemed his room restricted. After sucking up the swarm, my husband filled the hole with poison and plastic bags and stuffed pillows to block the gap under our son’s door. We drove my daughter over to Nana and Baba’s house, deciding that her anxiety about sleeping in our home that night was the issue that was easiest to remedy. Here are things that I learned that day: bees can make hives in walls; bees in walls eat through your drywall; hives in walls require a hive removal company which takes a lot longer to schedule than a pest control company. Unrelated to the hive in his bedroom, on my son’s third day of school, he was stung by something on the playground, and his ankle and foot swelled up so that it was hard for him to walk. It is weeks like this that inspired the expression when it rains, it pours. After a weeklong slumber party in our room, the beehive was removed. Apparently, the hive was likely constructed this summer on an older hive that was built the summer before. So, we had a two-hive stack for the better part of a year in the room where my son sleeps. It could have been way worse and I’m grateful that no one was seriously harmed in the making of this bizarre situation. Bee bygones were definitely not on my Bingo card for the beginning of the school year.
SOMETHING THAT
DID WORK
My son recently decided that he has a superpower – he can change the brightness of lights. It’s not flying or mind-reading, but he thinks it’s pretty extraordinary, all the same. He’ll ask tenderly, “Mama, are those lights bothering you” about the headlights of a car or the sun blazing down, and if I say “yes,” he’ll squint his little eyes towards the light and then ask “is that better?” I always reply with a sincere “yes” and thank him profusely. Because, it does help. It helps to be taken out of the anxiety I’m feeling about the state of the world and to just see my beautiful boy who believes with every fiber of his body that he is magical, which I know to be true too. Keeping the magic alive with little ones can be a challenge. I was prepared for Santa. However, I did not consider all of the other mystical characters that my children would expect to interact with and thus have me embody. Last St. Patrick’s Day Eve, my daughter went to bed full of giddiness at the idea of what a mischievous leprechaun might do while she was sleeping. I wracked my brain for what magic I could deliver on a holiday that I had associated as a child with just being pinched if you hadn’t worn green. Heavy with exhaustion, as my children slept, I applied temporary clover tattoos to the top of each of their feet. I taped a piece of paper to their floor that asked them to step on it and look down, so that when they did so, they would see their St. Patrick’s Day tattoos on their feet. This year, thanks to Amazon and China, I was prepared with green gear that they would wake up to on their stuffies. Surprisingly, the tooth fairy has been the most demanding of my magical identities, perhaps because my daughter’s mouth is looking more and more like the split I so often get while bowling. My daughter has not wanted just cash and coins from her last teeth, instead she’s seen each wiggly tooth as an opportunity to continue cultivating a relationship with her newfound penpal, the Tooth Fairy. Her tooth fairy’s name is “Sparkle Starlight,” which could easily also be the name of a stripper. Her favorite color is rainbow. She is 137 years old. And she even provided a self-portrait per my daughter’s request at the loss of her most recent tooth. At the risk of tooting my own horn, or tooting my own butthole as my daughter would say, I am good at creating magic. While there are many nights that I would prefer to be horizontal watching Off Campus or Outlander and briefly existing in a fantasy that is so different from my reality, I also deeply love conjuring magic for two tiny humans who live in a world that could use so much more of it.
SUSTENANCE SUGGESTIONS
While it is hard to imagine, I’m hoping some cool weather might give us a reprieve from the heat soon. Then before we know it, there will be Halloween inflatables littering yards and pumpkin spice wafting through the air of your local Starbucks. While what my kids will eat remains a wild card, this pumpkin bread recipe is a breakfast or snack slam dunk. While I love chocolate, I thought this recipe was rich and dynamic enough without the chocolate chips. We served the loaf warm and added a pat of butter to each slice, which is unnecessary if you prefer your food with less joy and deliciousness. Hope you enjoy this tasty Fall treat!
Enduring - Issue No. 18
If Trump Were A Mother, Existential Dilemma Of Why One Hikes, Living in the Reality of the “I Love Lucy” Chocolate Factory Scene
IF TRUMP WERE A MOTHER
2025 is here, and somehow it already feels like it has been 327 days long. Our country is on fire, and we’ve ushered in a President who seems to be working on burning it the rest of the way down. As we witness the end of democracy as we know it, I can’t help but think how different everything would be if Trump were a mother.
If Donald Trump were a mother, he wouldn’t have time for his spray tan. He’d pull up his yoga pants, put his hair in a messy bun, and clean up messes instead of making them. While he could find two pouches and a pack of wet wipes, he would be unable to locate his “executive order” pen to sign any more disasters into effect. And, nobody would take a pink marker signature seriously anyway. He would know that he couldn’t pick favorites, that it’s unwise to make big decisions when you’re in the middle of big feelings, and that you can’t cook a feast and only invite the fullest bellies. He would say things like “tell me more” and “how did that make you feel?” and “do you think maybe we should take a deep breath and have a snack before we figure out what we do next?”
If Trump were a mother, he would know that No means No the first time, and that no amount of litigating or money can change that. He would have practiced using his ignore muscle, and the lesson learned from January 6th would be that it is okay to be angry but it is not okay to hurt other people because you are angry. He would make it clear that his job is not providing tax breaks to billionaires, eliminating access to gender affirming care, or reducing grants for medical research, but rather doing everything in his power to keep everyone safe while creating a home in which each individual has the opportunity to thrive. He would understand that even if he deeply desires to take over Gaza or the Panama Canal or Greenland, just because you want something, doesn’t mean you can snatch it from someone else. If Trump were a mother, he would tell Elon that while he appreciates him being a helper, there is nothing efficient about shutting down USAID, overtaking Treasury, or wiping out DEI practices. Because, it is never okay to knock down someone’s block tower, or scribble over someone else’s picture, or put your butthole on your brother.
If Trump were a mother, he’d be more focused on happiness and less focused on pronouns. He’d know his job is to hold people up, not hold them back. He’d put less energy into securing borders and more into preserving our planet because, as a mother, he’d feel the weight of building the world our children deserve.
If Trump were a mother, he would know that a woman’s body was among the most powerful and capable things we will ever have contact with on this earth, and that it should be venerated and trusted. He would know that since the beginning of time women have been tasked with the godly gift of bringing life into the world, and that there is no one more qualified than them to make the right decisions for their bodies. If Trump were a mother, he would handle things with finesse instead of fists. He would bring a selfless resiliency to his work and he would prioritize compassion, community and care. He would know that the real problem for mothers is that the deck is stacked against them, and that until there are family-friendly workplaces, affordable childcare and healthcare, nationwide access to quality education, and trust in the capabilities of women, we will not be able to show how different this world could be. He would understand how scary it is to have someone like him in power. If Trump were a mother, he’d know that in order to really Make America Great Again, we need women at the helm.
THE EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA OF WHY ONE HIKES
When I was in my yoga teacher training program in my late 20s, my instructor asked all of us to go on a “mung bean fast.” He said that for a minimum of 24 hours and a maximum of a week he wanted us to eat nothing but mung beans. The absurdity of this didn’t land completely with me at the time, which is, in retrospect, why cults exist. Similar to agreeing to only wear orange or move to a compound in Waco, despite some apprehension, I complied and went 24 hours eating only mung beans. While smashing them up for breakfast on the second day, I had an existential “why am I eating mung beans?” moment, dropped the green mush into the trash, and grabbed some Cheerios. We all have these moments of pause in adulthood – from running marathons to writing dissertations, from working more while playing less to having children. Despite our beloved offspring, our medals, our pride and egos, there are moments when it feels like the question begging to be asked is “why are we all doing this to ourselves?” Which brings me to my honeymoon.
For our honeymoon, my husband and I, who had summited Mount Kilimanjaro one year prior, decided to go on a Peruvian hiking adventure to Machu Picchu. Here’s what we knew: we would hike along Ancascocha trail, which National Geographic had ranked as one of the world's best hikes. We would pass ancient Incan ruins, traditional Andean villages, and shepherds tending to their livestock. On paper, our trip sounded like a dream. But then, after a successful first day of hiking lush green hills in one of the most remote settings I had ever experienced, my husband started to suffer the effects of terrible altitude sickness. During a time that is otherwise known for uninterrupted, romantic togetherness, he spent the night pooping in his pants while vomiting - all in a tent next to his new wife. We woke up the next morning in a valley between two mountains, 8 miles and zero roads from civilization. We were fluctuating between worrying that my husband was dying and questioning why anyone ever hikes like this to begin with. Our guide explained that the options were to hike another 10 miles to the next spot where we could get picked up, to stop our journey and hike back 8 miles, to have my 6’4” husband mount one of their frail, underfed horses and attempt to ride it, or to get medevaced out.
It was then that I noticed that our horses were missing from our camp because they had run away in the night, likely back to their home near the start of our journey. The missing horses, in retrospect, clearly were a portent of the day that was to come. We layered on our ponchos and our packs, someone brought the horses back to carry our camping gear, and we all began trudging through weather that fluctuated between rain and snow. My husband was a shell of the man I had married one week prior. A few hours into our hike, our guide got word on a walkie talkie that there had been a landslide that rendered the trail in front of us unusable and had killed one of the horses in another group. He explained that we would have to take a detour off the trail. And those were the final moments before we got lost in the stunning landscape of the Andes.
Near nightfall, after a full day of hiking, we crossed a body of water and headed into a jungle landscape. Three women in traditional Peruvian outfits approached us with lanterns to find out why we were hiking after nightfall off of any tourist trail. After speaking to them, our guide told us he had found a place for us to stay the night. Soon after, we were in someone’s backyard, tents assembled, prying off our hiking boots that had been thoroughly caked with mud. Our phones told us we hiked 26 miles through the mountains that day. We arrived in Machu Picchu the following day, which did not disappoint in its majestic otherworldliness.
The nightmare honeymoon hike has become a flagship story in our arsenal of travel tales. It also has become a metaphor for the hard things we put ourselves through of our own volition. With no roadmap we proceed, even when the honeymoon of it all feels so far from reality. We endure, temper, assess, existentially theorize, and then find the next endeavor. It feels flawed, innately human, and baked into the role of parent to continue signing up for something that despite our devotion, at times begs the question “why are we putting ourselves through this?”
LIVING IN THE REALITY OF THE "I LOVE LUCY" chocolate factory scene
Recently, while out to dinner with a group of women from my kid’s school, someone asked if any of us, who have paused our careers to be at home with our children, relax during the day. It was as if a stranger had casually asked about our propensity towards masturbation. Most were quick to deny ever indulging in a moment of relaxing during “working” hours. We had changed out of our joggers, put on earrings, and had cocktails in hand. But, even as we settled into our humanness aside from our dominant role as mothers, the majority of us treated the concept of relaxing as foreign and strangely untenable. A few weeks later, I attended a yoga class, and the instructor, who was getting over a bad cold, explained that the hardest part of being sick was the realization that the idea of “rest” was a complicated one for her. She quoted Brené Brown who explained that it is important for our society to let go of “exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity [as a metric for] self-worth.”
This resonated with me as someone who often feels deeply connected to that scene in I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel try to manage the flood of chocolates coming down the belt in the factory. Seemingly out of options and unsure of what to do, they valiantly begin stuffing the candy down their dresses and into their mouths as the speed of the belt increases and chocolates rush in their direction. With or without a job out of the home, motherhood seems to inevitably entail trying to handle a loaded conveyor belt with no access to a lever to control the speed. There is hangryness and spills, meals to be made and refused, feet that keep growing, incessant questions, valentines and flamingo costumes and potlucks, lice and colds, herding of overstimulated children, a house that refuses to remain clean, and a neglected dog. There are lunches to be made and clothes to be folded, books to be read, and bedtimes to be fought with such fervent commitment. There is a feeling that being able to keep all the balls in the air somehow is a reflection of work ethic, self-worth, or resiliency.
But, even when I sink deeply into my mattresses to doom scroll or binge watch or read, after coming to what I’ve deemed a stopping place, the guilt and judgment sink in. There must be a way for us to recognize all we do and also make relaxing less taboo for a mother. There should be opportunities to not shove the chocolates desperately into our mouths, but leisurely eat them with a glass of wine and a deep sense that we all deserve a break.
SOMETHING THAT
DIDN’T WORK
My youngest child is 4 years old. And while his increasing independence is exciting, I also find myself often wishing I had a magic button to freeze time. This is likely my last baby, and with every milestone he crosses, I feel myself drifting further and further away from a phase in life that redefined me. While my kids’ growing independence opens the door for me to rediscover my autonomy, I also feel like I’m actively mourning the loss of the diaper years. I’m desperately grasping onto this time when my kids’ imaginations are untamed and they still want me to hold them close. My son is at an age right now in which he wears an imaginary watch on his wrist, and it’s always 10:40. He roars when he’s mad and feels with every fiber of his being like he is living within The Lion King. His absolute favorite activity is just tying things to other things. For a recent trip, the only toy I packed for him was a rope. He wants to be outside all of the time, and has recently spent hours stringing Mardi Gras beads and dead Camellia flowers wrapped in pipe cleaners to what he has deemed his “winter tree.” It is rare that he doesn’t have a stick in his hand, and he is enamored by his shadow. The other night he looked deeply into my eyes and said “Mommy, I feel very worried that if my penis gets any bigger, I will fall over and not be able to get up.” These are his biggest concerns for now. This morning, he climbed into my bed and asked me to tell him a story. I came up with one about a stinky bear who had woken from months of hibernating and neglected to bathe. Eventually, his forest friends drew him a bath and told him that after he enjoyed a relaxing scrub, they’d have a party. “Can you tell me a story?” I asked. “All I have in my body is a song, but it’s not ready to be sung” he said. “I’m here when you’re ready,” I replied, doing my absolute best to ignore the inevitability of time and just enjoy my sweet kid who still fits so completely in my arms.
SOMETHING THAT
DID WORK
The other day, while my dad and I were out to breakfast, we found a ten dollar bill on the ground. In the midst of what felt like an ethical dilemma, my dad picked up the cash, put it in his pocket, and told the hostess that if anyone asked about lost money, to let him know, and he would return it. He then nonchalantly said, “when I was in my 20’s, I found a $20 bill on the ground, and that was enough for me to decide to take a Greyhound from South Bend to New Orleans.” I regret not saying “tell me more.” I’m realizing that I should be asking for that of my parents as often as I can. At 38 years old, I’m finally realizing how important the stories are that I’ve been hearing about for as long as I can remember. Since the secret to adulthood seems to be that nobody knows entirely what they’re doing, listening to the wisdom of my parents based on their experiences feels like an overlooked puzzle piece in charting my path forward. My dad has recently felt inspired to chronicle the ten most consequential moments that he feels helped to carve his trajectory and values. None of the moments he’s written about are unfamiliar to me, but the details and the impact matter more. I am also just one part of his stories, which feels hard to imagine as a mother in the thick of it with raising children. Last fall, my mom and I traveled to New York City for the weekend. We did lots of the New York things: saw shows, walked all over Manhattan, and ate all the food. But my favorite moments of the trip were when we returned to our hotel room, paused our biological programming to “do” and sat on our bed to have totally uninterrupted and open dialogue with one another. While I’d like to believe in the invincibility of my parents, as more of my friends are experiencing the end of hearing the stories of their elders, I am feeling an increased urgency to finally start really listening to what they have to say.
SUSTENANCE SUGGESTIONS
THE BEST FARRO SALAD
This has been my go-to, hearty salad this winter. My kids want nothing to do with it, but it makes me happy and was a crowd-pleaser at Christmas dinner. The dressing is perfect. The apple, farro, and pecan mixture offers a great combination of flavors. And, while Arugula isn't a word I love to pronounce or a vegetable I love to eat, it totally works as a base for this salad. Pro tip: sauté the cooked farro for a few minutes in a cast iron skillet with olive oil and parmesan before adding it to the salad to give it a little more crunch and enhance its nuttiness. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I do!
Constrained Choices - Issue No. 17
I Am a Mother and I Am Worth Your Time, Tradwives and Penis Spoons, Succumbing to a Cult, Sickness Spiral, The Magic of Touch
I AM MOTHER AND I AM WORTH YOUR TIME
To potential employers, I know 2.5 years is a long time, and when you put my application next to one without holes in the employment history, perhaps there isn’t really even a choice to be made. However, in my time “off”, along with writing a collection of essays of which I am quite proud, I’ve been working hard to keep two children, whose prefrontal cortexes have yet to fully develop, alive and well. They are irrational, risk-taking little humans who have caused me to never surpass a sleep score beyond 70, or “fair”, on my Fitbit, and who make it nearly impossible for me to finish my own sentences, remember the days of bodily autonomy, or ever have clothes that are unstained and unpulled. I would argue that they’re thriving, and while they now wipe their own butts more often than not, I assure you that in these 2.5 years “off,” I have had nearly no breaks. Though I could tout innumerable qualifications I have gained from motherhood that would make me an excellent employee, I will leave it at this, there isn’t a moment I’m not multitasking, under pressure, being creative, thinking outside the box, showing resilience and patience, answering hard questions, being strategic, connecting, stretching outside of my comfort zone, and leading with compassion and altruism. I have done this job with zero performance reviews, bonuses, upward mobility, or days off, and with full understanding that it would widen my wage gap and make you view me as a lesser candidate than I was just a few years ago.
For my first two and half years as a mother, I continued teaching, and my mom left her prestigious executive director role at a counseling organization to help take care of my daughter. The sacrifices women make in their careers for their children and their children’s children continue. I was making thirty-thousand dollars per year teaching sixty-percent time at a prestigious private school in Atlanta. I was driving across the city and spending approximately two hours in my car each day to take care of kids that were not my own. Returning to teaching after maternity leave made me feel like a lesser mom and being a mom with a baby at home often made me feel like a mediocre teacher. In the Fall of 2021, like so many, coming off of insurmountable challenges with childcare, fear of COVID, and the long-term impacts of spending so much time in isolation, I became a part of the “Great Resignation.” I was one of the 47 million people who quit their jobs in 2021. An additional 50 million quit their jobs in 2022. This also meant I did my part in exacerbating a long-standing national shortage of teachers.
I never intended to stay at home with my kids. I had grown up with a mother who often surmised that remaining in the workforce and maintaining her own ambitions were integral parts of her success as a parent, so I had every intention of doing the same. I had big goals and dreams of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to make my impact in the world. But, despite the unmarketable pretext of rearing children, I do not regret the time I’ve been at home. It also gave my husband the opportunity to continue to climb the corporate ladder, thanks in large part to his hard work, smarts, and dedication, but also in part because having children didn’t derail his career like it did mine. Now, I am looking for a job, because it turns out having kids, on top of being incredibly time consuming, is also very expensive. In many ways, I find the idea of returning to work appealing: feeding my ego, earning my own income, being recognized for my worth, occasionally changing out of my joggers, and partaking in “adult talk” outside of school drop off and pick up times. But looking for a job has made me feel like I’m totally floundering. My priorities have shifted and I’m left trying to peel my own ambition apart from the consuming reality of parenting my children, all while justifying why the sacrifices I’ve made shouldn’t disqualify me as an applicant.
This brings me back to the purpose of this letter, an attempt to offer a modified lens with which to view me. We live in a country that is restricting our bodily autonomy and yet offering so little support and understanding for the mothers that are desperately trying to do it all. I get that my time away might cause me to be overlooked, but I assure you it does not make me a lesser candidate. I challenge you to break the cycle of devaluing women with children and overlooking the paradox of being a working mother. I am worth your time.
TRADWIVES AND PENIS SPOONS
Recently, while attempting to shower while solo-parenting, I heard my son screaming and proceeded to run out dripping wet and naked to find my daughter physically restraining her brother on the landing of our staircase. Water droplets still trickling off of my nipples, my feet making small puddles on our wooden floors, I imagined myself as them looking at my mom in a state of such exposure and likely wondering if she had become completely unhinged. After towling myself off and feeling utter regret for my retrospectively masochistic demonstration of freedom by staying up till midnight the night before, I couldn’t get either child dressed for the day. Then, at breakfast, my daughter looked me in the eye and said, “get me milk, old lady.” She called her brother “bad baby” about a dozen times, which at this juncture is her most severe insult. He responded with a desperate plea of “just call me by my name.” My son would not let me tame his Flock-of-Seagulls hairstyle with a brush. My daughter stuck her finger through the hole in her shoes and reminded me once again that I had forgotten to buy her a new pair. Her disappointed look somehow doubled when I told her that I had no way to fix her thumbnail that I had cut too short. I made our dog yelp when I pushed his humping pelvis off of my arm. I rushed everyone more than I wanted to and didn’t find a moment to pause and enjoy our time together. I dropped them off at school feeling utterly relieved to have a break and so guilty for being a subpar mom during the short time that they were in my care that morning.
After settling in at my desk, I found an article by Kathryn Jezer-Morton called Is Tradwife Content Dangerous, or Just Stupid? Not knowing anything about Tradwives at all, this sent me down a disturbing rabbit hole. Like a lot of nonsense, this movement has been propelled by social media and seems to be an attempt to garner nostalgia for traditional gender roles and women finding their joy through returning back to homesteading, homeschooling, and baking. These accounts are getting millions of views on TikTok. While not overtly proselytizing, Ballerina Farm is an Instagram account I’ve followed for quite some time that arguably falls under this regressive umbrella. Hannah of Ballerina Farms has 8.4 million followers and is currently representing the United States in the Mrs. World pageant. Just to clarify, the difference between Mrs. America and Ms. America is simply if you’re married or not. Because, I suppose it is empowering to divide married women from unmarried women to sexualize and objectify them equally albeit separately.
I’ve followed Ballerina Farm on Instagram for quite some time, and not exactly with judgment. More so, because there is something that feels very captivating and foreign about their country-french aesthetic and homesteading lifestyle. Their house isn’t a minefield of sharp toys, Hannah’s hair is always perfectly highlighted and effortlessly styled, she is constantly kneading bread, whipping cream with milk from her cows, and putting sausage stews in pumpkins. In one recent Instagram story, Hannah claimed that because of inclement weather, she was letting her 7 children skate around her kitchen on a thin sprinkling of flour. She said this with no sense of humor, blemishes on her skin, or notable concern for the cleanup or concussions that would most certainly ensue if I gave my children the same opportunity. This content is a ruse. Despite their seemingly unostentatious lifestyle, Hannah’s father-in-law is also the former CEO of JetBlue Airlines, so their homesteading storyline comes from lucrative beginnings. None of this should matter to me. However, similar to the new viral Tradwife ideology, which is perpetuating sexism and glorifying incredibly repressive times in American history, I, like millions of others, am still watching this propaganda and using these platforms to feel connected to the outside world while I am cloistered in my insulary mostly-at-home mom life.
The night after reading about Tradwives, I made tacos for dinner, a meal that we eat too often in our household. There was rice all over the table and black bean juice making five o’clock shadows on both of my kids’ faces. My son, who was inexplicably pantless, put his penis on a spoon at the table and served it to me while my daughter experimented with how many chickpeas she could grasp between her chin and chest. She then proceeded to stand on her chair, giggling, as she mooned us for the first time. By the end of the meal, they had both deemed it a “naked-baby dinner” and had removed all of their clothes entirely. This has nothing and everything to do with Ballerina Farm and Tradwife content. If I were to really capture our lives on social media, this revealing dinner, or disaster of a morning that came before it, would be what I’d have to show, the hard and the hilarious. When I knead bread, my kids ruthlessly poke it with their fingers. I desperately seek the moments of being an ambitious individual just as I embrace the messiness of motherhood. There’s room for my escapism through Instagram but the inevitability of it coloring my reality through comparison is such a waste of a life I wouldn’t want to change.
SUCCUMBING TO A CULT
When we moved into our home, we didn’t know anything about the private school that was essentially our neighbor. After a tour, we applied to their early childhood program for our daughter and, when asked what drew us to their methodology of education, we did our best to not answer, “the proximity to our front door.” I wanted her to feel nurtured, safe, and encouraged to stretch and grow in all of the creative and unique ways for which I knew she was ready. The little school tucked into the woods behind our home had everything we wanted.
My daughter has loved the school from her first moments there. She is immersed in nature. All of the toys are wooden, which is so different from the plastic dinosaur at home that relentlessly demands we feed him the apples that we have lost somewhere in the crevices of our playroom. Kids carry their lunches and water bottles to school in a basket instead of a backpack, which is a bit puzzling and inefficient but very fun to watch. On Tuesdays, the students bring vegetables that they then prepare themselves (picture three year olds with knives and peelers), for their vegetable soup snack, a dish which would quickly be deemed “yucky” at home and is gobbled up perfectly with a spoon at school, thanks to what I can only assume is some hippy hypnosis. The kids do “handwork” weekly and come home with acorn-felt-bead garlands and “water bottle satchels.” The classrooms are filled with tree branches suspended from the ceiling, colorful silks, candles, and glass jars of grains and oats, and, mysteriously, nothing seems to ever break or catch fire. The kids design their own lanterns in November for a ceremony in which they proceed through the woods with their families to a bonfire at dusk, singing songs about the lights that shine brightly within them. The teachers have all been there forever. They wear aprons over their bucolic aesthetic and put on puppet shows with needle-felted dolls. They command the classroom with ethereal charisma. “It’s like being in a watercolor world,” claimed a Times reporter. They focus on the whole child, “the head, the heart, and the hands” with a curriculum that emphasizes “arts, nature, and imagination.” The school fills so many of my own shortcomings as a parent. And if I’m being honest, witnessing the rituals and the incantations feels a bit like we’re on the verge of sorcery or perhaps like we’ve accidentally registered our children for an adolescent cult, which I suppose might be how all cults feel at the beginning. But, that being said, I can’t think of a more nurturing or magical place for them. In the ancient words of 90’s nostalgia, I drank the Kool-Aid.
My daughter will be eligible for Kindergarten in the fall, and I am feeling utterly heartbroken at the thought of pulling her out of what seems like the perfect place for who she is today to attend her local public school. She will be leaving her wonderful teacher, who she’d otherwise be with for another year; her dear friends; and an ethos that encourages her in the creative, mindful, holistic ways that I truly believe she needs. However, during the pandemic we outgrew our house and found our dream home, which is at the very tip top of our budget and is located in one of the best school districts in the city. We agreed to have a tight few years financially with the anticipation of promotions and public school. My kids were six months and two and half years old when we moved, and in the haze of nursing my son and potty training my daughter, kindergarten still felt far away. Their future education was something of which I had only a faint outline. We were half-dressed, exhausted, and regularly playing a game called what is this stain on my shirt? Though I’m honestly unsure how anyone ever knows in advance how to best support their children. Even though a part of me knows my daughter will likely adjust, find her groove and be okay, even though a part of me knows that if she’s not thriving, there will always be another way, still, today I’m giving myself the space to just be sad. As I clumsily answer my daughter’s questions about switching schools and listen to her articulate anxiety at the prospect, I feel disappointed by constrained choices. For the past five years, the focal point of my life has been predicting the needs of my children and ensuring they thrive; it is only getting harder as they unfold into these whole beautiful individuals in a world that just keeps on spinning.
SOMETHING THAT
DID WORK
While I maintain a healthy skepticism towards alternative medicine, I also believe that there is a lot about the human body that we don’t understand, and that at times it is important to think outside of our Westernized box. While I certainly don’t think health problems can all be solved with homeopathics and acupuncture, I do think that we are doing ourselves a disservice by overlooking these treatments entirely. There is value in considering the longevity of some of these forms of medicine. My 98 year old grandmother swore by apple cider vinegar in boosting her immune system and keeping her healthy. Does it work? Who’s to say? But, choking down a shot of it is the first thing I do when I begin to feel a scratchy throat.
Last spring, my then two-year-old son went through a very random bout of hitting his peers in class. He was never upset when he did it. Rather, it was as if he had energy in his hands and didn’t yet have a way of handling it. His teacher and I had a meeting to discuss this problematic new behavior, and during our meeting she suggested that I try “body mapping.” She explained that when her husband had become paralyzed after a stroke, she did this body-brain mapping, and truly believed it improved his quality of life for the time he had left. We had already tried all of the talk strategies we could come up with, so we decided to give it a shot. The handout she gave me, which I can’t find anywhere on the Internet, has a picture of a person, and instructions to basically move your hands from their navel to their feet, hands, and head while giving squeezes or pushes to those body parts. After three weeks, my son’s hitting disappeared entirely.
Then, a few months later, my daughter began having massive tantrums quite regularly. There was biting and throwing things, spitting, pinching and pulling hair. She seemed so dysregulated, and no matter what “gentle parenting” strategy I tried, it took time, resilience and patience for her to calm herself down, and it felt like the next tantrum wasn’t far behind. Eventually, I was referred to several forms of massage and passive rhythmic movement. I began rocking her back and forth, squeezing her arms and legs, rubbing her head, and pushing on her feet every night. I’ve watched the skepticism wash over people’s faces when I’ve told them this, which only grows when I tell them that the intensity of the tantrums faded substantially a couple of weeks later.
Here is what I know: Were there other factors at play? Absolutely. Time, illness, sleepiness, hangry-ness, and innate challenges of being growing little humans and learning to self-regulate could all be contributing factors. I am weary of endorsing something I don’t fully understand, but there is a lot to still be learned about the “magic of touch”, and, for us, magic is exactly what it felt like.
SOMETHING THAT
DIDN’T WORK
Over the last three months, my daughter, son and mom have all been diagnosed with pneumonia. It took us a shockingly long time to realize that this was likely bacterial pneumonia and that they had probably all passed it to one another. My mom was pretty much laid out for six weeks, and is still dealing with wheezing and a lessened lung capacity. Between my kids, there have been 8 visits to the doctor, one chest x-ray, daily Pulse Ox readings, an ear infection, a sinus infection, three rounds of antibiotics, heartbreaking nightly coughs, painfully little sleep, worrisomely low appetites, and irritability that makes it feel like every time they are in a room together, they think they’ve entered a “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robot” match.
Not coincidentally, I recently noticed increasingly deep wrinkles in my forehead. Studies show that aging comes with wrinkles but that doesn’t cushion the blow much. I have tried to cut and position my bangs to cover said wrinkles but it turns out, cutting your bangs on little sleep is not a good idea, and it seems that my brow might just be permanently positioned in a slight furrow or, as I like to think of it, a badge of honor for surviving the last couple of years.
At my kids’ first signs of illness, I feel a tightening in my chest at the thought of entering another sickness spiral: all that will not get done, the worry, the loneliness and boredom of being trapped inside for days, the capacity it takes to be a tireless caregiver without reprieve. At the risk of revealing what it feels like to exist in my head, here are the questions I confront approximately every two weeks as my kids succumb to yet another illness: Am I putting enough balanced foods in their meals? How many days of pasta in a row is too many days of pasta? Why isn’t my son eating? Do they need to be outside more, or is being outside perpetuating their symptoms? Should I be giving them vitamins? Should I be giving them elderberry syrup? A probiotic? A DHA supplement? Is any of this caused by allergies? Food intolerance? What am I missing? Should I be looking more at homeopathic treatment? Are they too cold while they’re sleeping? Are they getting enough sleep? Can I force them to sleep? Is our ventilation system insufficient? Did I waste $150 on air purifiers? Are their shoes too thin? Am I not washing their sheets and dusting enough? Is that why they’re snotty all of the time? How long should we keep them on their inhalers? What if it stunts their growth or is causing behavioral challenges? Is milk the problem? Is that why my son’s cough is so bad? Do we have black mold? Does their school have black mold? Am I not hugging them enough? Am I totally screwing this up?
In my more rational moments, I recognize that they are kids building their immune systems, but I had no idea how hard and worrisome that process would be. Though seldom, when they’re both well, I am shocked at how much easier it all can feel and then, one of them inevitably sneezes.
SUSTENANCE SUGGESTIONS
A few years ago, my husband mentioned, rather nonchalantly, that he had made chocolate mousse for a woman the had gone on a date with years before. I immediately felt pangs of jealousy, not so much at the woman, but at the fact that she had gotten homemade mousse from a man who is definitely not known for having an affinity for baking. He judiciously made homemade chocolate mousse for me soon after. Since then, it has become his specialty and a celebration-meal staple in our family. My kids have become dedicated mousse sous-chefs and taste testers and I have become a delighted regular recipient. This is an airy, silky, rich and deeply satisfying dessert. Top it with a few raspberries and enjoy.