It’s been a weird one so far. Fun, yes, but I still haven’t unwound from Maycember, or June-a-palooza, and now we’ve had a July that turned out to be intense and logistics-heavy in ways I didn’t love.

I keep telling myself August will be different, carrying on the grand tradition/delusion of moms everywhere who still hold on to the fantasy that when school lets out, life’s stressors magically evaporate and our little families will settle into a quiet, slow routine where no one fights and everyone reads voluntarily. I’m glad that some people are succeeding at going unplugged and lightly scheduled with this ‘90’s summer’ trend I’ve been hearing about — but not us, not yet.

The flip side of this, of course, is that a lot of our current busy-ness comes from the kids doing stuff they legitimately love, with friends they adore. What’s better than that? I couldn’t ask for anything more. Except maybe a nap. I’d love a nap.

My plan for a lower-key August also includes writing more, or at least more consistently. The creative juices haven’t exactly been flowing. But do you want to know what has been in a near-constant state of flow? Tears. From my eyeballs. Down my face.

Has anything “happened”? No. And also, all the things are happening, all the time. Throw in an especially hellacious Mercury retrograde (my algorithm is like 70% astrology right now), and what I can only assume is my own personal starter pack of perimenopause symptoms, and there you have it. Or maybe “it” is just life and my tear ducts are acting appropriately — taking the advice I give my kids on everything from farts to feelings: better out than in.

So in case this is happening to you, too — or if you’re now curious about the inner workings of my heart and brain — here are some things I’ve cried about over the past few months:

Cancer, in all its awful forms

My daughter’s flip turn

Noah Kahan’s “Downfall”

My husband, who got me a new laptop for my birthday (my last one was eleven years old!) — “For your writing,” he said

How beautiful our town is in the summer

Parkinson’s Disease

The Camp Mystic girls

Both my parents turning 75 within the next two months, and I know that what they want most is not something I can find in a store

Our friends who moved away

My oldest, looking like a full-fledged teen dude in his baseball uniform, in his golf outfit, in the way he wears a watch now

My oldest, still asking me to lay at the foot of his bed when he’s falling asleep

This line from the book “The Burning Side,” which I haven’t read yet – We can only return to a place, not a time

Our place: Avalon, New Jersey

Any montage of the Knicks’ Championship run

He should be here

“The Black Dog” by Taylor Swift

My daughter getting her ears pierced

My youngest figuring out friendship with kids his own age via the illicit, high-stakes trade of Pokemon cards

The name Mairéad. Reminds me of Maureen

This article

When my youngest does something ridiculous and my dad calls him a “comODDian” in the accent of Martin Short’s Franck from Father of the Bride (takes one to know one)

“Free Bird,” The Lynyrd Skynyrd song. I know the remix had a moment during the USA men’s hockey Olympic win, but the original came up in my Spotify shuffle when I was walking the dog the other day — and wow. You know when you have a moment with some form of art, and it’s like holy shit, someone just… made that? Like, they were just sitting there one day and created this cacophony of genius out of nothing?? My first thought was of their mothers. How proud they must’ve been. Did they go to their sons’ concerts and lose their ever-loving minds? Have I lost mine?

College was so fun

I don’t see my college friends enough

The way my daughter has replayed the bridge in Olivia Rodrigo’s “stupid song” eight million times so she could learn the words and notes exactly right. Apple doesn’t fall far…

This freaking dog of ours

When we were at the beach and my youngest walked away for a few minutes too long, and just as I started to get panicky, he reappeared holding two ice cream cones. “I thought you might want this, Mom”

The way he has to contort his entire mouth and face to pronounce the letter “r” correctly

We are so lucky

Have I been as good to people in their grief as they’ve been in mine? I don’t think so

When it’s humid and the leaves flip upside down — years ago, my grandmother told me this means a thunderstorm is coming

To August we go…

Dear Knicks,

You guys. (YOU GUYS!!!)

You have just won THE MOTHER F-ING NBA FINALS. We, your fans and your city, are out of our collective mind. If this season and the earlier playoff rounds arrived as waves of hope and excitement, then Games 4 and 5 were a euphoric tsunami — and I’m not sure any of us, ever, want to come up for air.

Remember when Taylor and Travis first got together and the Internet literally caught on fire every time they were spotted somewhere? I was hook, line and sinker for that whole crazy thing, and not because I cared about the Chiefs or was that much of a Swiftie. What I fell for was the intoxicating feeling of witnessing a fairytale in real time. This Knicks run has been like that, but better. So much better.

I’ve watched you all in a million interviews — pre-game, post-game, GQ, GMA — and after each one, I come away thinking the same thing: I love these freakin’ guys. How could you not? Obviously I’m a biased fan, but who isn’t moved by a group of grown men who are as comfortable busting on each other in front of the press corps as you are talking about grief and gratitude, perspective and regret? You all are a funny, interesting bunch, and (at least from where I sit) the connection between you seems as real as if you were actual brothers. Like goofy, prankster brothers who just happened to inherit the keys to their family’s famed, long-running business. The expectations are high, but so is your confidence; you know you were born to lead this thing, but still some little part of you is looking around the place with kid-like wonder thinking, “Wow. Me?” — not quite believing it’s your turn to be in charge.

When you’re talking about basketball, most of the interviews follow a similar format: first, a ping-pong of discussion about specific plays, calls, and shots made or missed, then a zoom-out to the broader notions of your habits and beliefs, maybe even your legacy. The reporters try to come up with new and creative ways to ask the same essential questions: What does this mean to you? And conversely, do you know how much this means to all of us?

On that last one, I imagine the answer is yes. I hope it is, at least. Your names and faces may be immortalized on screens and structures all over town, but you are human beings with hearts and families and friends. You’ve worked hard as hell to get here as people and as players, you know the history, you know what community and sport and fandom and success can do for a person.

You’ve also just spent the past month / season / several years of your lives locked in on a level us common folk couldn’t fathom. You keep it all pretty close to the vest, and I realize even now that the season is over, it’s gonna take a minute to process what the hell just happened. So when it all catches up with you next week or over the summer or ten years from now, I hope this note finds you.

Before I get into exactly how much this team and this season have meant to my family and me, I have to get one thing out of the way: technically, I’m a bandwagon fan. In fact, up until a few years ago, I had no interest in the NBA at all. My memories of the Knicks growing up in 90’s suburban New Jersey are of OJ’s Bronco chase, Jeff Van Gundy’s baggy suits, and Patrick Ewing, who for reasons I’ll get into in a minute, I simply could not get behind. I do remember having a soft spot for John Starks, and vaguely recall wearing his jersey to some sort of theme day in middle school — but by that point, my sights were set on #2 in pinstripes, not #3 in blue. Derek Jeter had my heart, and the NBA was just a bunch of showboats who didn’t hustle back on D.

The backdrop to all of my early sports curiosities, though — and ultimately, the pipeline to my Knicks fandom — was Villanova basketball. I was raised on the stuff: my dad is a proud ‘73 alum and my mom graduated the same year from Rosemont, the Catholic women’s college long considered Nova’s sister school. From Rollie and Lappas to Jerold Wright himself, Villanova basketball has been our family’s organizing principle. Over the years, we’ve traveled all over the country to watch them play, follow news of their recruiting gets like parents waiting for word of their kid’s engagement, and have spent a small fortune on all manner of gear displaying the iconic “V.” We kept my dad’s VHS recording of the Wildcats’ 1985 National Championship win over Georgetown (see earlier comment about Patrick Ewing) until it almost disintegrated from overuse and had to be transferred to DVD; the security code and password to every system / voicemail / device we had growing up was 6664, the score of that game. My husband, also a Villanova grad (go figure!), is the only guy I know who roots harder for the ‘Cats than my dad. In our house, March Madness is better than Christmas.

So when a certain set of former Nova players started to make their way to the Knicks in 2022, our loyalty followed.

I know people attach a lot of stuff to professional athletes, stuff that has nothing to do with them personally, or with sports. Jalen, Josh and Mikal, you don’t know this, but you carry a heavy bit of ours. Villanova’s National Championship teams of 2016 and 2018 occupy a tender space in our family’s timeline — during the 2016 run, we were in the early, excited stages of planning my older sister’s wedding. By the time you won again in 2018, we were deeply mourning her unexpected death, and still processing all the what-ifs of my dad’s Parkinson’s diagnosis — both of which came in 2017.

You’d think that reminders of those years would only amplify our sadness, but you guys seem to have the opposite effect. Now, as we watch you play as Knicks, we feel close to my sister, and as connected as ever to the place that holds decades worth of our family’s oldest, fondest memories (don’t get me started on Pope Leo!).

Where my dad is concerned, please know there is no greater joy for him than rooting for you. Yes, it started with the “Nova Knicks,” but he’s come to adore you all. More than that, he relies on you. The way his Parkinson’s is going, it’s hard to find things to be excited about — but you guys have been a lifeline. Any day the Knicks are on is a good one. Yesterday morning, after a few minutes of SportsCenter, he turned to me and asked, “Well what are we going to do now?” Watch re-runs of the game like he’s been doing since 1985, I guess!?

And then there are my kids, each of whom have mined different gems and jewels from this miraculous season. There’s our youngest, who was born with the same underdog spirit that characterizes this era of Knicks basketball. He’s some combination of KAT, Mitch and Josh — at times thoughtful, graceful, playful, and awe-filled, at others, a freight train who enjoys talking shit. He’s six years old, so it’s unclear how his athletic capabilities will progress, but I can assure you: the mentality is there. During Game 4, (rightly) unimpressed by both the conduct and officiating, he said to us matter-of-factly, “Do I need to fight Wemby?” (Um, yes.)

Our daughter, almost ten, is happiest at dance class. It’s been that way since she was little, despite my insistence that she keep trying sports. To her credit, she’s stuck with a few (lacrosse and basketball) and hangs in there (I think) not because she loves it all that much, but because she’s felt the magic of what it’s like to be part of a team.

Where she’s struggled historically is in lacking the innate game sense that some of her peers possess. It’s a hard one to explain. The best I’ve been able to do is point to a few kids on her teams and say, “Hey, try to notice so-and-so. Do you see how she always seems to know where to be?”

Fast forward to this season. Our girl has made big strides! I’ve given a lot of thought to what might’ve changed all of a sudden, and aside from having some pretty kick ass coaches (thank you coaches!), I think we can pin a good chunk of her growth on watching Knicks games. I see her out on the field and court weaving in ways she never used to and I have to ask, is there anything better than watching your kid make a killer cut? This team has captivated her, and that is our receipt!

What a thrill to watch her learn through watching you guys. Her commentary and questions have become sharper and more informed with each passing week. By the time we reached the Finals, she was pointing out the subtleties of Mike Brown’s subbing strategies and correctly identified a charge before it was called. In a recent school assignment, each student was asked to write an essay about where they see themselves in thirty years — I was delighted to find out that part of her vision includes a Goldendoodle named “Shammie,” short for Landry Shamet. Who knew?

And finally, our oldest, who at eleven years old is starting to feel his way through life’s meatiest lessons. The big kahunas for which there are no single or final answers, that are impossible to “teach” and can only be grasped and contemplated by trying and failing and trying again. Quandaries like: what does it mean to show up? Not just once but repeatedly, and not only for yourself but for those who depend on you?

How does it feel to commit yourself to something, to work towards a goal? How do you figure out what the goal should be in the first place?

What happens if you try, and then you reach it? What happens if you try and don’t?

What sort of actions help you build trust with yourself and with others? What wears it away? What qualities make a leader?

The list goes on: what does it mean to lose (and win) graciously? How do you hold the dual responsibilities of respecting authority and (respectfully) advocating for yourself? For your teammate? For what’s right?

Where does one have to get to mentally and emotionally to admit: I could’ve done better. I see where I went wrong.

What does it mean to persevere?

He’s also now considering the off-season, the dynamics of which present an uncanny parallel to the real-life concerns of a rising middle schooler. These next few months will bring a lot of change: a dear friend is moving away at the end of this school year, and come September, he’ll be starting a new school for the first time since Kindergarten. There’s no doubt in my mind that his concerns about all of this were the subtext when he asked me last night, “So what do you think is going to happen next season? Do you think all the guys are going to stay? I mean, they just won a championship. I bet they want to. But what if some of them go?”

So much of this is learned through being a fan. Triumphs, heartbreak, trades. These are real things that happen. And through it all, there’s a never too high / never too low / keep-your-head-down-and-do-the-work steadiness modeled by this team that he’s noticing, which is huge — and deeply resonant for the actions-not-words guy I know him to be. (Shout out OG: I don’t know if he was more excited by your INSANE, historic, game-winning, series-shifting, put-it-in-the-MOMA tip-in or the fact that his minimalist communications style was validated in your post game remark that indeed, “It feels cool.”)

Is there more skin on this bone? Of course. None of us become GOATed by osmosis; it’s easy to idolize the all-stars we see on TV and only consider their most impressive qualities. But as parents, it sure helps to have a group of solid dudes that our kids can to look to and learn from, whose actions and aspirations become a jumping off point for some of the most important conversations we will ever have. Thanks for being Them.

I could go on (and on… and on…) but I guess I’ll stop it here with one last message: Congratulations! You’re officially CHAMPIONS.

Thanks for all the fun this season, it means the world.

To the good guys!

LGK

I know this sounds weird, but I used to have imaginary confrontations with the designers of the iPhone’s photo app. I envisioned them sitting around a sleek table debating the usability of its features — how to make editing more intuitive but more artistic, geo-tagging more precise, facial recognition more searchable. Then I’d think of the person who at some point must’ve said, with a hand raised Eureka!-style to the group, “Oh, I know! Let’s make an algorithm that gathers up random collections of pictures from the user’s library and loads them onto the home screen each morning. Like a daily flashback, you know?”

In my mind, the person who suggests this is the youngest on the team. He’s smart and eager but woefully naive, with little life experience in the realms of nostalgia and loss and the concept of something being bittersweet. In my mind, the people around him nod approvingly. They might know a bit more about the realms of nostalgia and loss and the concept of something being bittersweet, but they also know that the flashback is a cool idea, and it’s easy enough to execute. “Done!” they say in unison. This is where, in my mind, I burst into the room.

“But shouldn’t there be a warning? Just a quick head’s up – like, “Hey! Today’s photos include ____” — an old friend, an ex, your childhood pet, someone you knew and loved who died. It can be a bit jarring, you know?” They stare back at me blankly. The same young guy croaks out, “Well ma’am, you can always just… disable the feature.”

Right.

Disable the feature.

It’s funny, the weird little things we do to process the big, heavy things that happen in our lives. I’ve learned that when major traumas or tragedies occur, it’s physiologically impossible for our bodies, brains and hearts to absorb the impact of the event all at once. That’s why we go into shock, and why, consciously or not, many of us come up with coping mechanisms — those weird little things — that allow us to bump up against our new reality from some distance before taking it in, bit by bit.

Apparently, making up fantasy plot lines is one of mine. The particular tale of a fictional mini-drama with *checks notes* software engineers, sounds ridiculous to me now, but in the early days of living alongside my biggest, heaviest thing, it didn’t used to.

In the months after my older sister Maureen’s unexpected death in 2017, it felt like pictures were all we had. I needed them desperately. I wanted them all. They didn’t even have to be good — I’d take random candids, bad angles, repeats of ones someone else had already sent me — it didn’t matter. I was so sure that the next picture to land in my inbox would fix everything. Surely, someone would have proof that this was all a terrible mixup; that in fact she was fine, and look, here she is now!

But by nature of the fact that photographs can and will only ever only capture the past, these snapshots of my sister’s life — of our life — started to make me furious. And the Apple people needed to know.

By some miracle, through many ups, downs and zigzags, I’ve come through that phase of my grief. I can no longer fathom the time when I needed a picture to remember my sister, or that I’d ever be anything but pleasantly surprised to see her face on my screen. I’m fortunate that she exists now in my mind’s eye — permanently. Constantly.

Like she was a few weeks ago in the card aisle at CVS. I went there to get First Communion money holders. I am always “there to get First Communion money holders” in early May — another half-truth I tell myself each year. The whole story is that I know I can’t reach the money holders without passing the massive Mother’s Day display — rows and rows of every kind of card one might need to celebrate their wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend. I recall those words from another place, and let them steamroll me for a minute as I scan the racks. I leave knowing which ones I would’ve sent her, and which she probably would’ve picked for me.

In 2010, Maureen decamped to graduate school in Dublin, Ireland after a decade on the hamster wheel of investment banking in New York City. She was accepted into a twelve-month Masters in Business Administration program, the outline of which seemed to make sense for someone like her who valued efficiency but was due for some adventure and fun. As she and I walked towards airport security on the day she left for orientation, I presented her with a going away gift. It was a glass block with two clock faces embedded — one was set to the time in Ireland, the other to the time here in New York. We’d lived our entire lives in EST. This was home.

Around the midpoint of that year, it became apparent that she didn’t intend to move back to the United States. “Home” became London, where she went on to live and work for several years before first crossing paths with the man who would become her husband, a Frenchman. His life to that point was the flip of Maureen’s: born, raised, and undergrad in Europe, MBA in the US. Their fateful meeting took place at an alumni gathering for their shared American alma mater, held over a winter weekend at the slopeside chalet of an older alum. Anyone who had graduated from their college and was living in Europe was invited to attend.

She returned from the trip with a twinkle that I recognized immediately: she’d met someone. It had been a minute since her last relationship, a fact by which, at least outwardly, she was unbothered. She seemed to revel in her singledom and the freedom it gave her to bring to her many friendships, professional pursuits, and other social endeavors the energy of someone who had just napped for a week. Her life was full.

Still, I wondered if the big, life-shifting kind of romance would end up finding her, armored as she was by past heartbreak, workaholism, and a grab bag of mild neuroses that could come off either cute or fantastically annoying, depending on the day. So when this someone’s name kept finding its way into our conversations the way it always seems to when a person is falling in love, I thought, Could it be? Brilliant, quirky-but-lovable expat girl meets kind and handsome foreigner in Alpian paradise. They slurp raclette Lady and the Tramp-style in front of a crackling fire, bonding over their mutual interests in lake swimming, baguettes and Hanover, New Hampshire. It was out of a friggin’ rom-com. The meet-cute wrote itself.

To everyone’s delight, a beautiful and loving partnership indeed emerged. They dated for a while before getting engaged and soon after that, Maureen determined three foundational details of her bridal vision: 1) the wedding would take place in late May, 2) in France, and 3) she wanted my children to attend and participate in the ceremony. Our oldest would be two-and-a-half on the big day; our daughter, barely one. Maureen shared these intentions with me casually one day, more as a recap of what she already considered as given than an open question to be discussed.

I’ll note that by the time my kids came along, Maureen had years of ‘Auntie Mo’ experience under her belt. She was a diligent and doting presence in the lives of her friends and their babies. She never missed a birthday, never came without a gift, planned entire vacations around whom she might be able to spend a few hours on her way to here or there. She was the ultimate cheerleader, regularly heaping praise on the women in her life who had children. When I became one of them, I felt this support in the extreme. In every card she sent, on texts and FaceTimes, she marveled, “Cath, you’re doing it!”

Maureen adored my kids, and I knew it was from that place that the wedding request originated: if this was going to be her special day, she wanted to be surrounded by the people she loved the most. But surely she had spent enough time around little ones to know what she was asking of me? If hauling two squirmy, nap-dependent toddlers down to our local passport center to sit for photos felt hard, flying five time zones away would be Everest. Layer in some jet lag, my matron of honor responsibilities, and whatever other unofficial duties would come with corralling our merry band of American wedding guests around a French beach town, and there was no debate. The kids had to stay home in New York.

It took me months to work up the courage to tell her. I dreaded her reaction. I dreaded even more what her disappointment would confirm about the state and possibly the future of our relationship: that we were actually very different people. For me, this was a fresh revelation — that as two women in our mid-30s, what made Maureen, Maureen and me, Catherine, were no longer surface-level descriptors of two close-in-age siblings. They were the value systems that had started to define how we would do this whole sister and mom thing into adulthood.

As the wedding planning continued, it became clear that our systems were not aligned. The priority she held up as a non-negotiable—show up, show up, no matter what, show up—cast my decision as inflexible, unadventurous, and unsympathetic to the wishes of my bride-in-chief. Likewise, Maureen’s expectation that my kids attend her destination wedding struck me as self-absorbed and out of touch with the limits of parenting young children.

If our capacities for pushing through inconvenience in the name of family memory-making were same–sized, they had evolved in opposite directions. To her, anything was possible because she made it so. Maureen rarely said “no,” and not for fear of letting people down. What she loved, actually, was the thrill of pulling something off, of staring down complicated logistics and finding a way to make it work anyway, her own and others’ discomfort notwithstanding. I also excelled in finding ways to make things work, so long as the only person inconvenienced was me.

But I was no longer just me. With kids, I was learning that it’s rarely wise to push it. I had to push back on her instead.

The conversation, when it finally happened, didn’t go well. I told Maureen that she deserved the most special and memorable weekend, and, importantly, one unmarred by logistical snafus. I said that I wanted to be as present and helpful at the wedding as I could, and that to do or be any of this for her, I had to be kid-free. I even joked, “Actually, I’m just not ready to put Bringing Up Bébé to the test in front of real, live French people.” She’d bought me that book. She didn’t laugh.

All I could say then was, “Someday, maybe you will understand.”

That someday came quicker than I anticipated, and then not at all.

A few months after their gorgeous, (mostly) off-without-a-hitch wedding-palooza in the most stunning seaside city I have ever visited, Maureen called to share that they were expecting. The feelings that came to me were a familiar combo, reminiscent of the first conversation we had after that ski trip. There was joy, excitement, and a healthy bit of huh, I wonder how this is going to work?

With Maureen, love would never be the issue. As I knew it would, her affection for this tiny being came immediately and in abundance, as did her enthusiasm for researching — from the very latest in baby gadgetry to Switzerland’s preschool curricula (they moved to Zurich right after the honeymoon). But there was also the way her brain worked. It was busy, ambitious, and accustomed to doing things a certain way — her way. How would a baby fit in?

I still hadn’t reconciled this question when the unthinkable happened: Maureen was hit by a car and gravely injured while riding her bike in her new neighborhood. She and her unborn son died after a surreal, harrowing three days in a Swiss ICU.

I hadn’t even gotten them a wedding gift yet.

Unbelievably, it’s been nine years since Maureen’s wedding and almost fifteen since she left New York. The clock I gave her now sits on a high shelf in our family room, presiding over my kids’ daily comings and goings.

Within a year of her passing, her business school classmates installed a bench overlooking the campus green. Along the top is carved a tender capture of how they remember her: Graduate, Adventurer, Friend.

Back home, there’s another inscription that sits heavier on my heart — especially this time of year. On her gravestone, below her name and dates—she has dates—is the epitaph, at once accurate and devastating: “Beloved Wife, Mother, Daughter, Sister, Friend.” It’s true, she was all of those things. CVS has the cards to prove it. But she didn’t really get the chance to be the first two.

Which has made me wonder: if our grief is just “love with no place to go,” what happened to all the love she had left to give? Where does that end up? The love she had for us who experienced her as Daughter, Sister, Friend. The love I couldn’t wait to see her share as Wife and, especially, Mother.

Not that she needed the role of mom or “Mrs.’ to legitimize who she was, but of all the things I grieve about Maureen, missing the chance to see her become a parent might be the hardest. I want to know everything. How would she have done it? What would she have taught me? Would her endless energy supply have held up against the physical and emotional demands of motherhood? Would she have gone back to work? Stayed home? How would she have handled sleep training? Food prep? Discipline? Screens?

If parenting is an opportunity to come home to oneself, would we have come home to each other, too? Would we have found a way to give each other grace as we grew into ourselves as mothers, as sisters, as aunts?

How can it be that my kids are growing up without their aunt? And how am I just carrying on, never having known my nephew? What gifts would he have brought to his parents, to his cousins, to this world?

This was the terrible reality that for a long while after she died, I couldn’t touch with a ten foot pole: the fact that I will never know these answers for sure. There will be no more new pictures, no new stories to tell. I will always have to wonder.

If the word “wonder” strikes you as hopeful — even romantic — in the context of grief, I get it. But back then, I couldn’t believe that wondering was going to be the only way to access my own sister. It was cruel. Also, it didn’t even work. For months I felt that I had not only lost Maureen and what the future held for us, but the feeling of having known her at all. When people said, “I can’t imagine…!” I had to stop myself from responding, “Same!” I literally could not imagine her if I tried. And I tried!

Somewhere along the way, her voice and face returned to me. Bit by bit, in a million tiny ways and moments — through discussions with my kids, when songs came on the radio, in random things of hers I’d find amongst my own, when pictures popped up and I didn’t have the sudden urge to throw my phone into the ocean — I started to feel her presence again. The cold, sad wondering became warmer and more curious. Slowly a new understanding emerged — one I hadn’t considered: that not having the answers to all those questions meant that actually, I could make up as many answers and stories and plot lines as I wanted. Which means I can think about Maureen all the time, which I do. The pictures I conjure of how we could be now are fuzzy, but fine; the wondering less still-frame flashback of what no longer is, more daydream dialogue about how it might’ve been.

I feel close to Maureen this way — and grateful for these weird little things of mine that have become ours to share.

Boy, do I wish I was Erin O. White.

Who is Erin O. White, you ask? Why, she’s a writer and mom whose Op-Ed in The New York Times caught my attention last fall — an essay in which she bravely declared, after nearly two decades in the role of meal planner and preparer for her family, I’m done!

I do not know Erin, but I salute her. And thank her. And: I’m jealous of her. I envy the sunny curiosity she described feeling in her early cooking endeavors as a young mom, her commitment to the cause as time wore on, and mostly, the fact that her family has now reached the point where everyone can fend for themselves at dinnertime. This is a future state I can’t currently fathom.

At present, I find myself the era of motherhood most accurately described by Caitlin Murray, the hysterical, give-it-to-ya straight mom behind @bigtimeadulting. Her post on Threads has lived rent-free in my mind since it appeared there last winter: “Can I just say, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart,” Caitlin said — I can just hear her famous deadpan — “Fuck dinner.”

Fuck. Dinner. If we were all given those Miss America-style sashes and told to write on them the aspect of life/motherhood that has us most on our heels, mine would say that, hands down.

A quick Google search of “What’s for dinner?” returned an article on the evolution of cookbooks from the Heinz History Center — fitting; ketchup is life — that framed this question as the “eternal lament of housewives and working people.” I could do without the term housewives, but I agree: I’m eleven years into this whole parenting experiment and am no closer to an answer than I was as a single city gal with an office job and no dependents.

Over my kids’ winter break a few weeks ago, I used our time away from the daily school-dance-sports-homework grind to more consciously consider why. Would I feel “F dinner” so deeply if I wasn’t also legitimately, by my own admission, getting an F in dinner? Why can’t I crack this thing?

On its face, droning on about meals and meal prep is one of the most tired complaints out there — not to mention a privileged one. The most recent data available on food security in the United States, reflecting studies completed for the year 2024, recorded 18.3 million U.S. households (or 13.7%) as food insecure — meaning they were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of its members. The factors and policies that have led us here are varied, and despite campaign promises to the contrary, the diabolical first year of Trump 2.0 hasn’t pointed us towards any meaningful solution.

While my issues with dinner are more on the execution side of things, these troubling statistics underscore a much deeper point. Dismissing “What’s for dinner?” as an uncreative bit of small talk is, actually, quite a gaslight-y way to regard this inherently complex tradition. It’s not “just” dinner. It’s the Grand Central Station of every concern we have about every major life and parenting matter: our health and our bodies, family roles and schedules, manners, habits, finances, and waste. These both ladder to and are informed by societal trends and pressures, and directly challenge our personal relationship with control — and freedom.

Let’s start with the nearest frontier, our bodies. Specifically, two important “T’s,” tummies and taste buds. One night during our break week visit with my in-laws, we decided to order out. As I walked around the house with notepad in hand asking everyone what they’d like, I witnessed their reflexive bodily check-in: How do I feel? What am I in the mood for? What sounds good?

How many times have I taken down a dinner order? Why was this very ordinary moment suddenly striking me as so profound? Perhaps because the people I was polling — my kids and their grandparents — are, at their ages, mercifully unencumbered by appearance and body issues. A generation apart, but together conducting a masterclass in that thing we’re hearing a lot about these days — being in your body. After a moment of stillness and consideration, they chose what they wanted, and ate what they chose.

Now I know that’s not what the inimitable Barefoot Contessa has in mind when she crows, “How easy is that?” Offering each member of my family a twenty-dollar entree prepared to their liking does not and cannot happen on a normal weeknight, for many reasons. First, the cost. Second, that’s not how “family dinner” is supposed to work, right? For centuries now, the whole point has been for the family unit to gather around a single meal option, with nourishment to be drawn from both the food and the conversation that ensues.

This is, of course, a lovely ideal — and one I assumed I’d find my way into automatically once I became a mother. Nevermind that the entire decade’s worth of dinners BK (before kids) was all late nights at the office eating takeout around conference room tables, run-throughs of Citarella’s prepared foods section, and spontaneous nights out at whatever new restaurant New York Magazine told me was cool. Surely, all I needed to spark my culinary transition from regular person to “Mom!” was access to a nice, spacious suburban grocery store and frequent exposure to Daniel Tiger’s snappy jingle, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset!” Check, check.

A big part of me subscribes to this mindset — that with food, with life, not everything can be just so. Which explains why my resolve on Daniel’s strategy continues to replenish. Every Monday I wake up feeling determined to do it differently in the week ahead. To finally commit to a sensible, healthy, budget-friendly shopping list that yields meals everyone in my family will consume without complaint; to kindly redirect them back to their plates when they cry “Ew!” after taking half a bite; to keep introducing new foods that will expand their eleven, nine and six-year-old palates.

The problem is, I can’t hold the line. I have indeed become a short-order cook, and another big part of me understands this way, too. I see a tyranny in the expectations around dinner and consumption that feel out of alignment with important values I hope my children grow to possess: discernment, self-trust, and permission to acknowledge one’s own preferences — and advocate for them. If those qualities are only coming for the kids of parents who successfully figured out baby-led weaning, then mine might be of luck. I’m out here still looking for that line between fostering the noble goal of intuitive eating, and being steamrolled by picky eaters whose tastes, as their mother, I’ve had a regrettable hand in cultivating.

Which begs the question, what am I modeling? That dinner is a hell — largely of my own creation — that I don’t enjoy participating in nor preparing? What was modeled for me?

For one, my mom had a solid repertoire of classic 90s fare: there was a pork chop, a meatloaf, spaghetti, various chicken dishes, tacos, baked ziti. There were sides, too, like rice pilaf, noodles, green beans, a tossed salad, and garlic bread. I don’t remember takeout being a thing, except for our Friday night Domino’s order.

My mom’s dinners weren’t the most daring back then, but they were complete. Warm out of the oven, with multiple food groups represented. Every night around 6:30 p.m., she would call us in to set the table right as our little kitchen television trumpeted the beginning of Tom Brokaw’s Nightly News broadcast. She’d keep it on only long enough to hear the rundown of headlines, then shoo us over to sit down. My dad usually got home from work right around then, though some nights he worked later, and my mom would keep his plate warming until he arrived.

Things got more complicated as we got older, of course — after school sports and clubs impacted our ability to all sit down together at the same time. (The “when” of dinner could be its own essay entirely...) But what endured was my mom’s consistency. Whether we were free to eat at 5 p.m. or 9, there was always something prepared. By contrast, I regularly reach the 4 o’clock hour and think, oh, shit! What’s for dinner?

If I could point to anything that connects my childhood with my current attitude around dinner prep, it’s that growing up, the process was wholly owned and operated by my mom. I only saw the end result. I understand this: cooking with kids is messy and annoying and takes, like, six times longer than it needs to. I can appreciate the value in making it a shared activity between parent and child now, and who knows? Maybe I would be less intimidated by dinner if I spent more time in the kitchen as a kid. But how many life lessons and skills can we realistically cram into the dinner experience? For busy families on busy weeknights, can’t it be enough just to get it on the table?

This idea of ease at dinnertime is where the odd trio of Erin O. White, my husband, and social media’s meal planning, make-ahead mavens find common ground: where I feel angst and dread about cooking, they seem able to access some level of joy and fun. My husband is the guy who can walk into a grocery store — no list, no specific recipe in mind — and come out with a bagful of random goodies that he whips into something divine. We’ve kept the Friday Night Pizza Night tradition from both of our youths, except these days it’s pizza from ingredients he makes himself — dough, sauce, the whole nine yards.

Of course, pizza night is fun. No one has to be coaxed into one more bite of pizza, for God’s sake. It’s good vibes only. The threshold to weekend’s sacred ground; a weightless meal that stands in direct opposition to the pressure placed on school night dinners, which — and there was no missing this memo — are Important and Serious.

To be fair, he cooks a lot more than pizza. He’s a grillmaster who can claim almost full credit for our children’s protein intake, and enjoys saying “ahhh, soup season” at the first hint of chilly weather. He gets less ruffled than I do when the kids reject a meal he prepared, perhaps because he (gasp!) enjoyed preparing it. He meets their complaints with louder chewing and the gesture of a chef’s kiss — “You’re missing out!” he’ll tell them — more invitation than admonition.

It’s taken me well into our kids’ elementary school careers to admit: I love that for him. And for our family. We all have our strengths, right? He’s an excellent cook, a recipe research enthusiast, a regular at both Costco and our local farmer’s market. I, on the other hand, love to set a pretty table, am decent at breakfast stuff, load the dishwasher with knife-edge (lol) precision, and actively chase the endorphin rush that comes with wiping down a countertop after a messy meal. I also pride myself on knowing things, like how buying bulk amounts of salmon at Costco will only result in our son never wanting to eat salmon ever again.

Still, it’s hard to shake that feeling that’s stuck with me since my earliest, foggiest postpartum days — a profound, bone-deep disbelief that as a mom, I am in charge of multiple tiny humans and the meals they need to eat all day, every single day. Do you know how many food-related conversations I’ve already had with everyone by the time the thought of dinner comes through my head? Cross that with the pressure to mastermind a tasty, wholesome evening meal that is, oh by the way, wholly indicative of our family’s health and future success — and is it any wonder I haven’t found joy here? It’s like booking a first time piano player a gig at Carnegie Hall.

When I told my mom I was writing this, she reminded me that the kitchen where those earlier dinner memories took place was in the house we moved to when I was in fourth grade. She attests to the years of mealtime frustration that came before, which I realize is more the phase of parenting I’m in right now. It’s also true that her cooking tastes and talents have only improved over time. Her signature dishes have gone on to involve new methods and ingredients, which we’ve all embraced. So maybe there’s hope for me yet?

Until then, I suppose my only real option is to lie in the bed I’ve made and accept that every dinner will be different. Sometimes it will work for our whole family to sit down and share the exact same meal — and I’ll be the first to admit, I love the feeling of success that comes on those nights. “Look at us!” I think, patting myself on the back for parenting and providing and running a household at mealtime like a proper adult.

On most other nights, it will be what I’ve lovingly rebranded as not a shitshow, but a potluck. A little something for everyone. And honestly? I’ve decided that for us, that’s going to be just fine. No more forcing my grocery list into a square when its actual shape is a Venn diagram of three circles, one for each kid.

The overlapping place is maybe where I can claim victory. Foundational stuff like grilled chicken or tortillas or waffle mix or couscous that hang together as a set of shared go-to’s, and have the potential to transform into something altogether new.

Not a bad metaphor for family, now that I think about it.

It took until we were teenagers, but the dog finally arrived — a yellow lab. His name was Cody, and he was the best: playful, cuddly, a bit mischievous, and universally recognized as the goodest and most handsome boy. Most days started with my dad taking him down to the soccer field that neighbored our property. He’d run the little guy ragged, launching tennis ball after tennis ball into the air as Cody, showing no signs of fatigue, chased each one down at top speed. Sometimes Cody would gain on the ball so quickly that the only way he could slow down was to throw himself into a summersault-like roll, an intentional wipeout. He’d rise quickly in the vicinity of his neon treasure, pick it up, and trot proudly back to my dad. He was a retriever, after all.

Satisfied with his efforts at the field, Cody would cruise in through the back door just as I was packing up for school. After several dramatic slugs from his water dish, he’d saunter over to the sunny spot on the floor under the big bay window in our kitchen and settle in for his morning snooze. “What a life!” I’d whisper down to him, the contrast between my self-conscious high school self and Cody’s unburdened canine existence epitomized in his splayed-out ease, happy as ever to lounge in whatever position he found most comfortable. One more nuzzle under his chin and off I went.

Fast forward a decade. My older sister, younger brother and I had long since left the grey house with green shutters for college, and then our first jobs in New York City. Cody was the only thing standing between my parents and a truly empty nest. He was their best bud, more loyal and lovable with each passing year. They saw him through dog cancer and dog chemo, a skin thing we never quite figured out, and dozens of pairs of gnawed-on shoes.

One afternoon, I got a concerned call to my desk at work. “Something’s up with Cody” my mom said. She went on to describe how his energy was off, how he hadn’t finished his last few meals (he was normally ravenous), how he was lingering outside, walking the perimeter of our yard. “I think he’s looking for his spot,” she reasoned sadly, referring to the death ritual dogs apparently do when they’re nearing the end. The next morning my parents took Cody to the vet for a full exam and x-ray of his midsection. No visible growth or blockage appeared on the scan. They were stumped.

A second trip to the doctor a few days later yielded no answers. Cody was growing gaunt and miserable. He could barely get himself outside, instead settling on that same sunny patch of hardwood under the kitchen window. In the evenings, my mom would reposition him near the heating vent that came up through the floor and cover him with blankets. Still, he shivered.

One night after about a week of this ordeal, my parents tucked him in and retreated to the den to watch the late news. Soon after, my dad came back through the kitchen to check on Cody, when — “Holy shit! He’s… — what IS this?” My mom came running, just barely avoiding the steaming pile of you know what as she entered the room.

“Oh my GOD!” She couldn’t make sense of it. The quantity was staggering. “Has he… lost an organ?”

Then, in a scene that lives in my head with the ridiculousness of an SNL skit, she reached for the salad tongs and scooped up as much of the mess as she could fit into a gallon Ziploc. It was a brilliant move. My parents rushed him into the car and took off for the veterinary hospital. By the time they got there, Cody was all but healed. As my dad tells it, in his best Rodney Dangerfield twang, “The poor guy was like ‘Hey! Yo! What was that?!” mimicking the motion of wiping sweat from his brow.

The vet only needed a few minutes to figure things out once my mom handed over the Ziploc. “Well, there’s good news and bad news,” he said. “The good news is he’s no longer in danger. He ate a sock. A large man’s athletic sock. It didn’t show up on the scans because it’s fabric, not solid. But it looks like he’s passed it entirely. He’ll be ok.”

“And the bad news?”

He looked down at Cody for a beat, then back at my parents.

“Well, unfortunately, he’ll learn nothing from this.”

And there you have it, folks. Confirmed fifteen years ago by a kindly veterinarian in suburban New Jersey. Indeed: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Cody went on to live a few more years, ultimately succumbing to a second bout of cancer at the ancient age (for a lab) of thirteen. And still, after all the joy and companionship he brought us, it’s Sock-gate we recall more than any other moment in Cody lore. Why is that?

If it wasn’t clear to me at first, each telling of his gastrointestinal escapade crystalizes the metaphor. Sorry (not sorry) for all the poop references but, jeez, talk about gut health: how many of life’s problems are, in essence, an accidentally ingested tube sock that lingers in our systems for far too long, clogging our insides while remaining indecipherable under the light of external analysis? If/once that problem, dare I say, passes, who among us is rushing to reach for the proverbial salad tongs, eager to examine the source of our strife? And should we be lucky enough to arrive at a conclusion about how and why and where it all went wrong, what comes next? Sure, there are some life lessons that break through immediately, like a hand yanked back from a hot stove — nope, I’ll never do that again. But in more complex matters of the heart and mind, the whole know better/do better construct is a tough nut to crack.

Probably because it’s just that: a construct. A noble, spacious goal that (hopefully) inspires a continual move towards improvement, but only does so by remaining perpetually, annoyingly, just out of reach.

I often come back to this point with a friend of mine who, like me (like many of us?), manages a robust collection of long-simmering, wake-you-up-out-of-a-dead-sleep-at-3 A.M. concerns.

On our weekly walk-n-chats, we worry aloud about all aspects of our lives: family, kids, our bodies, our communities, the world. Depending on the day and issue at hand, we could fall anywhere on the know/do spectrum.

For example, we know it is wise to schedule and attend regular dental exams.

We know mornings would be easier if we laid our kids’ clothes out the night before.

We know evenings would be less of a headache if we had dinner figured out by 10am.

We know protein is good. Sugar bad. Sleep good. Scrolling bad.

We know the text… the e-mail… the essay… won’t write itself.

We know what we bring to the table (we are the table!) but…

We don’t like how that person said that thing.

We should probably say something.

Shoot, we said too much. Spent too much. Ate too much.

We know this isn’t fair.

We know this will take time.

We know our child… our parent… our friend… needs help.

We don’t know how to help.

We were just trying to help!

Where do we start?

Will this ever end?

How could we have missed that? Forgotten that? Ignored that?

Something’s not right.

I knew it.

Oh my God, I had no idea.

Long on patience and understanding for the other person’s problem but short on both for our own selves, we inevitably arrive at a familiar refrain. “We will learn nothing from this!” — Cody’s story now shorthand for our exasperation at and surrender to and occasional grace towards the feeling that very little of “this” is new or novel — that we’d have it all sorted if we just listened better or planned better or acted the way we promised ourselves we would the last time this happened. Ugh, whatever.

And! Per a recent breakthrough:

We seem to be getting better at knowing? Or, maybe more accurately, letting ourselves know? It’s a subtle shift, but one I’ve been noticing — within myself, among my friends, and, if I’m to believe certain news reports, across our complex, deeply flawed but beautiful country. Not that any one of us has all the answers (we will never have all the answers), more that we’re starting to get a better handle on acknowledging what’s working, not working, what’s hurting, bringing relief, what’s helpful, damaging, worth our time, or honestly, not that big of a deal. I’ve heard many smart and wonderful people talk about this phenomenon of self-(re)discovery as an upside of aging, so if that’s what this is, I’ll take it. Isn’t knowing half the battle?

—

I’m embarrassed to admit how long I’ve been thinking about starting this Substack. It’s a classic case of knowing and not doing, of letting the current of busy days with kids and carpools and a new puppy (hasn’t swallowed a sock yet!) pull me away from writing, the very thing that has proven to make my life/brain/soul feel better, over and over again.

The fact is, I’ve got some material. Thoughts for days on the very complex matters of the heart and mind referenced above, as well as other “simpler” topics like, Why are little piles of random crap taking over my house? (piles of things, not dog poop, to be clear) and Why can’t I figure out dinner?

The dinner one got me thinking about how pediatricians say it can take up to 20 (!) exposures for babies to develop a taste for new foods. This rings a bell: We will learn nothing from this! Until one day — like suddenly having a preference for strawberries or sweet potatoes — we do. And then, just maybe, we will do.

Here’s hoping!