D is for Depot

'meet you at the depot'

This sentence has been said and texted a zillion times in our family.  

The depot is the social core of our Northern California town, a former train station and then greyhound bus station tucked at the base of Mount Tamalpais. Now it is a red brick plaza anchored by the Depot Cafe and Bookstore, edged with wooden benches, permanent chess tables and mature trees skirted with concrete benches that house musicians and parents and dog walkers on any typical day.  The bus stops across the street now. 

In the twenty years that I have lived here, I have sat on those benches with coffee while my baby slept in a stroller; I have watched my kids climb the trees, make chalk drawings, play hop scotch, ride scooters, skateboards and bicycles.  I have brought my kids coffee while they played guitars, banjos and mandolins, busking (very successfully)for money. Sometimes I'd see them there playing when I drove by. 

I meet up with my kids there now, in town from college or traveling; it's our central meeting place to hang out or go for a meal. Recently I ran into my son there unexpectedly, not even knowing he was in town; Little kids were climbing trees, riding scooters (with helmets now), the hacky-sack kids, moms in lulu lemons pushing sleeping babies in strollers, and an old guy playing a sitar under the tree. 

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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Don't Like it......

So there's some unfortunate drama as the school year winds down.  Facebook is helping, in it's own weird way.  I hope things turn out for the best, that the bullies are properly dealt with. That the victims aren't terribly bitter and scarred.  

There have been some amazing parents and brave kids who were not bystanders and stood up to the bullies, so lessons are being learned.  

High school should be a breeze, right?

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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cold steel

We were driving through June fog to fulfill my firstborn’s destiny. He had waited until he was in high school before we’d let him get his ear pierced, which we felt was reasonable and it bought us some time.  Just a quick call to Dad to officially sign off and he was golden.  My husband was on a conference call and not in the mindset to deal with this life altering teen moment. 

Forget it.  You will regret it for the rest of your life.

We were nearing the last Marin exit before the bridge. I pulled off to mediate and call for backup: my younger sister and my husband’s younger stepbrother. Both weighed in heavily on my son’s side.  This being that not only was ear piercing OK, but also that getting both ears pierced was the norm. I got back on 101 and headed for the city in the hopes that my husband would see that this was going to happen eventually anyway, even if it wasn’t today.  I scored a George Costanza parking spot off Haight and my husband called back. 

Okay, one, but make sure he gets the right one, or the correct one, you know? 

Gender identity issues weren’t the problem; now my son was insisting that a single earring was for dorks and that we were dorks. 

Alright, get back in the car. Let’s go back home.

Fine!  

As I turned onto Masonic the phone rang again.

I took a poll in the office and the younger people say that getting just one ear done is a little dorky.  So, I guess two is fine.

Now I had to find another parking spot. 

At Anubis Warpus their piercer didn’t come in until 2. They recommended Mom’s down the street.  At Mom’s the Amazonian pink haired Betty Page wouldn’t do it because my 14 year old didn’t have a picture ID.  Soul Patch doesn’t pierce minors, period.  Who thought a suburban housewife would be the most permissive person on Haight Street?

Since I was with him and it was only lobes, the two men at Cold Steel were lenient. Both were ambitiously modified, each embellished with ink, facial piercings, and earplugs. Our piercer could have been plucked right off the Black Pearl, complete with limp. He was only lacking a monkey. Maybe this was for my benefit, but the pirate made a big point of how he always checks with his mom before he gets anything new done. Except the time he forgot when he got his tribal chin tattoo.

After ribbing my boy about becoming a man today – the other guy insisted ‘that costs extra’- the pirate was all business. Noting that his left lobe was thicker and slightly higher, he dotted his lobes with ink to check placement. The aesthetics were key.  All the while, the pirate was quick to dispense worldly sage advice: Girls have cooties.

Then it was done. With his red curls pulled back in a low ponytail, showcasing the new steel hoops of (young) manhood, my boy needed ‘za.  We celebrated with two slices.  Then he called his Dad.

2007

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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ring of fire

After nineteen loops around the sun, my parenting journey has included a lot of firsts.  Especially in these last few weeks, and while a better mother might never admit that she has a favorite child, an honest mother would snort at such bullshit, and top off my Pinot Noir.  For firsts like these they don’t make scrapbook pages. 

My daughter turned twelve.  She’s my youngest, so I have met twelve before. Twelve is heart breakingly tender and sweet and funny. Twelve has a foot in childhood and a foot in adolescence. Twelve is ready for anything.  Twelve thinks mom can’t possibly know or won’t check.  With a questionable ensemble stuffed in her backpack, she attended her first middle school dance last week. 

Seventeen moved into his college bound brother’s basement lair as soon as it was abandoned.  Seventeen is a militant locavore, unless he finds perfectly good bananas in the dumpster behind Mill Valley Market.  Seventeen is occasionally a vegan, or a vegetarian, depending upon whether rennet free parmesan is available. Seventeen cycles all over the Bay Area, not wanting to contribute to the burning of fossil fuels, and guerilla camps all over Mount Tam, not wanting to be associated with the family unit. Seventeen is a talented artist and musician and is currently in  his awkward social-protester-eco-terrorist phase. Seventeen is such an adorable age.  He stayed out all night last week for the first time, eventually texting at 1:43 AM to say where he was sleeping. 

Nineteen is currently my least favorite. Nineteen leapt from the nest and was insulted that I had bought a desk lamp, sheets & towels for his dorm room. We don’t have a shared world view. Nineteen rode his bicycle 960 miles up to Olympia to start college, which made me crazy but proud when he successfully arrived.  When I heard Nineteen’s recorded voice saying his name after the King County Jail collect call prompt, my chest compressed like Scarlet O’Hara’s when Mammy cinches her corset.  I now know what it feels like when your heart stops.  Two weeks ago Nineteen spent his first night in jail.

In just a few weeks I’ve navigated middle school dress code, eleven o’clock curfew and posting bail.  Just in time for Mother’s Day.  I never got around to doing a birthday cake for twelve, so a nice thick layer of guilt to pair with the Pinot Noir. 

Twelve was at band practice, Seventeen on a ridge near Fairfax and Nineteen under a blanket of clouds in Olympia during the annular Solar Eclipse.  I sat on our deck and stared at the eclipsed sun through a double layer of  Twelve’s shoulder x-rays from years ago.  There’s a juicy metaphor in there somewhere, weighting the branch like a ripe plum.  If I weren’t so singed by my maternal ring of fire, I’d easily see it.

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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