Incompatible with Life

Why? For parents of pre-schoolers, it’s the most vexing of questions. For those in the throes of the mercurial challenges of life, it’s the most perplexing. There is no sufficient or reasonable rationale for why bad things happen to good people, or for why fate smiles upon those who seem to thrive on exploitation of others. There’s no rational explanation for why some moms and dads are blessed with copious numbers of healthy children, while other would-be parents are denied even one. Or why one person lives to be 100, outliving everyone they know by twenty years, while a young child dies in a tragic accident. Why does a tornado bear down on one block while leaving the next untouched? Why, for that matter, is one baby born into poverty and another into affluence? And why do the squeaky wheels always get the grease while the quiet ones—no less in need of lubrication—are totally ignored? It’s tempting to attribute another’s misfortune (or your own good fortune) to fat...

My grandma was the luckiest person I ever knew. Buy her a scratch-off lottery ticket and it was sure to be a winner. Take her to the horse races and, betting $2 to show each race, she always broke a little more than even. Bingo games, Superbowl pools, it didn’t matter what—if someone was going to walk away with money, it would turn out to be Grandma. She never abused her luck. She avoided casinos and saved her gambling for the church picnic. She also paid out her winnings to anyone who ended up to be traveling with her—usually her grandchildren and great-grandchildren—generosity being a hallmark of her spirit. I did not inherit her luck. I’ve had pockets of good fortune, but not usually of the monetary variety. I never win the football pool, I only break even at the horse races if I stop betting early, and the last batch of scratch-offs I bought paid out only to other people. Yet in the past year, I’ve found myself drawn to the lottery. Not the scratch-off kind, but the we...

On the day that I buried my infant daughter, I received a card from a distant relative on my husband’s side. I’d call it a sympathy card, but the hand-scrawled message from the sender negated any comfort it was meant to bring to us. “It’s so refreshing to hear of a couple choosing life over abortion.” Refreshing? That’s a word that wouldn’t make my top million descriptors of the experience. Was it excruciating, soul-crushing, and bone-wearying? Yes. Refreshing? Not in the least. I’ve tried, over and over again, to understand what would prompt someone to think such a thing, much less write it in a missive to the bereaved, but I can’t find a reasonable explanation, other than the fact that it’s easy to arm-chair quarterback the lives of people you’ve only met once. It’s easy to judge when you don’t have a vested interest in the case at hand. It was precisely that fact that led us to a private funeral for Anna. After months of being asked if I was going to terminate the...

Grief has a long shelf life. It lurks at the back of the mental pantry, pungent and putrid, flavoring everything around it. Years after a deep loss, it retains its potency and—at expected and unexpected moments—seeps out of its container in a toxic spill. I’ve learned to accept the grief I carry as part of who I am. I do not make a habit of wallowing in it, but when it leaks into my daily life, I’m forced to bring it to light and air it out before I can force it back into confinement. October is, for me, the month when the barrel of grief is tapped. Anna’s birthday is an expected catalyst. Every October, I cycle through the beautiful, terrible memories of birthing and burying my baby. My teen-aged daughter and I are at each other’s throats in the weeks leading up to October 10 th , bristling at real and imagined offenses and jabbing at each other in verbal sparring matches. Our tongues take leave of our brains in what can only be termed a temporary period of insanity. ...

Family portrait by six-year-old Sammy. Note that I take center stage in a larger-than-life role. Mothers are biologically hard-wired to ensure the survival of the species. They are charged with preparing their offspring to leave the nest by teaching them the skills they’ll need to navigate the world independently.      With reality television shows and women's magazines glorifying the exploits of pushy and meddlesome moms, controlling moms who demand that their children live up to unreasonably high standards, one gets the sense that modern mothers grade themselves on their children’s achievements. From the women who trundle their pre-schoolers from one resume-building activity to another, to those who spend the equivalent of college tuition on their kids’ elite sports leagues and dance teams, many moms seem to believe that it is their level of devotion that determines their child’s destiny. There was a brief spell, very early on in my parenting lif...

True gratitude is a fundamental appreciation for life that runs deeper than the "name one thing you're thankful for" discussion that occurs at the Thanksgiving table. Like optimism and pessimism, gratitude is a matter of perspective. We rarely recognize just how good we've got it until some of that good is taken from us. Loss makes us acutely aware of what we've previously taken for granted. I didn't appreciate the natural symmetry of my body until I surrendered a breast to cancer.  I didn't respect the functional utility of a full head of hair until I had to rely on substandard alternatives to sop up sweat, protect my tender scalp from sun, and keep me warm at night. I didn't understand how great a miracle it was to conceive and deliver a healthy baby until my unborn daughter was diagnosed with a fatal chromosome disorder. It's not uncommon to wallow a bit when we suffer a hardship. It's easy to slip into a puddle of s...

My name is Laura and I watch the Real Housewives more regularly than I'd like to admit. I’m a vicarious visitor to Orange County and New York, used to spend a lot of time in New Jersey, and occasionally duck into Atlanta and Beverly Hills, just to see what’s going on. It is a bit of an addiction, the Housewives series. I was a latecomer to its explosively entertaining parties. I’d never been big on binge watching television and, honestly, it wasn’t until I began treatment for a breast cancer recurrence that I had the capacity and desire to collapse onto the couch and seek mindless diversion. It didn’t take me long to find the Bravo network, and it was almost impossible not to develop an affinity for their alternate version of female reality. Perpetual reruns of previous episodes got me quickly up to speed on the characters and their almost comically surreal and wacky hi-jinks. I also didn’t have the energy to find the remote and change the channel. For those who aren...