My daughter’s preschool teacher is talking about an incident at school. Eva might have ripped her twin sister, Rose’s, paper. It’s possible she lied about it. Her construction paper farm lacked detail, coherence. Like her letters. Like her stick figures. I’m fond of her stick figures. Their arms and legs come right out of their heads, like an M&M’s mascot. They’ve recently acquired hair that sticks straight up, giving them a punk rock element that tickles me. But I can feel where this conversation is going. I’ve been in the teacher’s position many times. I’ve gently given parents the evidence, the careful presentation of facts, followed by the recommendation. In this case an Occupational Therapy evaluation. … //READ MORE

I love having girls. The complexities of my twin daughters’ personalities confound and delight me daily. Next year they’ll go to kindergarten, taking one more step toward independence. But, while I love watching them mature into confident and capable girls, my fears about the world they’re growing up in can get the better of me. In the dark shadows of 4 a.m. I can get fixated on eating disorders, cyber bullying, and the violence against women that continues in our culture. I wonder, how can I prepare them for danger without contaminating them with fear? … //READ MORE

The first time my daughter, Eva, terrified me with her illness, she was only a few months old. She was a little stuffed up. It seemed like a mild cold. Then she spit up, just a little. Then she aspirated her vomit. Then she turned blue, her eyes bulged. Mute panic filled her small face. My husband was downstairs. I screamed for him, even as I turned her upside down and smacked her back as hard as I dared. Vomit flew from her mouth and she cried. I fell back on the pillows with Eva on my chest as my husband came in. For me, this moment marks the beginning. It was the first of many times that one, or, more often, both of my twin daughters would get seemingly every single illness out there and then take it to a frightening extreme. … //READ MORE

I am in Hawaii. Paradise on earth. I’m with my husband and my 3-year-old twin daughters. It’s our first real vacation in a long time. But where am I really? I’m trapped in a set of three-way mirrors shedding clothes, outfit after outfit,  immobilized by a black cloud in my head. In this room of mirrors I can see parts of my body that are easy to ignore in the only full length mirror in our dimly lit hallway at home. In summery clothes skimpier than I normally wear, lumps and bumps I don’t recognize seem to have appeared out of nowhere.

My husband comes in. “What the hell is going on?”

“I just can’t get comfortable.” I mumble miserably. He grasps the situation immediately, which may say something about his level of intimacy with my vanity. … //READ MORE

I know exactly the angle that my face looks best in photos. Or at least I thought I did. My chin is tilted slightly down and to the right. I smile, but not too big because my natural smile shows too-­big teeth and a lot of gum. I used to believe that this pose concealed, or at least mitigated, some of my flaws: the small  bump on my nose, my crooked right tooth, a narrow jaw. I feel badly that I know this. I wish I didn’t care. Funny enough, people often tell me I’m photogenic, which I take to mean prettier in photographs than I am in real life.

After the birth of my daughters I became concerned about how my history of self-consciousness might affect them. I considered how much time and energy I’d wasted over the years worrying about the way I look, wishing this or that thing were different. I wanted it to be better for my girls. I  want my girls to be soccer players, not beauty queens. If they must date, I hope they date boys or girls who love them for their minds and strongly held opinions. I hope they have friends with tangled hair, dirty jeans and make-­up free faces. I hope they discover beauty and fashion late enough that it amuses them, but doesn’t painfully impact their sense of self. In  short, I want them to be nothing like my teenage self. … //READ MORE

I am not a Disney person, but I finally caved and let my 3-year-old daughters watch Frozen. Rose intuitively grasped the deeper message of the film: “Wow, Elsa sure has super strong feelings that makes a lot of things frozened!” Later that night when I tucked her in, she told me, “Your love is sparkly everywhere like Elsa’s magic.” I thanked her and said, “That’s the thing about strong feelings—sometimes they’re so beautiful, and other times, they can be kind of rough.”

Rosie contemplated that for a minute. “You have strong feelings when you drive,” she said.

“I do,” I told her. “I’m working on it.”

“I’ll help you, mommy. I’ll remind you.”

“Thanks, baby,” I say and kiss her goodnight.

It’s true—my road rage is out of control. Though I’d like to think most people would describe me as sunny, when I drive I confront a deep well-spring of rage. … //READ MORE