Things my daughter says, Part 43

"Is it getting all woo-ey out there?"

Lately she's been laughing her dolphin laugh again, on purpose. Cak! Cak! Cak! Cak!

Fingers of Love? The long reach of the family tree

My family keeps coming back at me, one branch in particular. They do something that I don't agree with and ask me to get involved. I just had to back off. I'm OK with where I am, though. Yet they keep coming back and suggesting things that I don't feel good about. So I'm done for now. I'm not even going to answer the e-mails. I'm not in the game.

I just got another missive from my weird uncle J----. I had just been saying that I'm glad I know my mind when this came into my box: "Thanks for all the thoughts and outreach. Working with B---- is a novel approach; for me, personally, much easier doing things/talking about him behind his back. Pretty sure I'm kidding!"

About which part? What the ...? Talk about someone who does not know his own mind. He spends all his time disavowing insight and responsibility that it's creepy.

And everyone is so goshdarned principled, including me. In some ways we're all just a bunch of privileged, self-righteous know-it-alls who haven't had it rough for a long time. When poor B----'s just trying to eke out an existence.

So where do I begin? How can I help carry the water? Last night I sent him a piece I've been wanting editing help with, and I'd just been asking for an editor. I told him I am hearing his signals, for whatever that's worth (he might think I'm a complete nut but that's his prerogative).

But I don't want to pile more work on the guy, either. It occurs to me that I could get up early and go up there for a few days, to help out. My sweetie could get our daughter off to school and I could get a jump on the day and give my uncle a hand.

It's tempting to just go up there. Show up and offer to work.

Things my daughter says, Part 1

To me, my daughter said, "I am the pronouncer, you are the tomato, and Dad is the taco."

Mom and Dad: What's in a name?

During our recent trip to California, our daughter kept cracking us up by referring to our friends, her godsisters' parents, as "The Mom" or "The Dad."

This is reminding me of how weird it seems to me when the mother and father in a family with kids refer to each other as "Mom" and "Dad" the way my in-laws sometimes do (as in, "Dad washed the trailer yesterday."). I always want to say, "But he's not your dad!" I can see how that habit gets going, but I'm still very careful to refer to my husband as "your dad" when I refer to him in conversation with my daughter. Nor do I want my sweetheart calling me "Mom" -- that's a term reserved for his mother.

I have never been able to call my in-laws "Mom" and "Dad," either. Perhaps it's from having step-parents as a kid, but the words are just too loaded with meaning for me to toss them around so casually. I never once wanted to call my stepmother "Mom" -- she was always a stepmother and never let us forget it. Yet I have finally become comfortable with calling my stepfather my "Dad." (Language is powerful; every time I call my stepfather "Dad" it represents to me a jab at my father, whom I've taken to calling my "birthfather"). It is because my stepfather is a dad to me, so much more so than my father. And over the years we have stayed tight, even though my mother and stepfather divorced many years ago.

As for what my daughter calls me, I love it that she says, "Good morning, Mama." And it melts my heart every time she calls me "Mommy." When I was a kid, I used to call my mother and father by their first names, to the amusement and consternation of friends and family. When I was a teenager, my mother asked me to pick another way to refer to her. We finally settled on "Ma," which I like. And I still refer to her -- and no one else -- as my mom.