Mommy Gossip

I am participating in Wordful and Wordless Wednesday. Click on the links to join in the fun!


Brooke is my baby sis. She Photoshopped this pic, so that tells you right there how awesome she is! And, irreverent, considering we were at the cemetery. My grandma is busting a gut in heaven as she looks down on this :). Anyway... although Brooke and I are 20 years apart, we are the most alike of any of the rest of our Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant—ies. And just as it so happens, the main thing we have in common is our love of writing. So, when she signed up for a writing class this semester—her first semester as a freshman in college, no less—I agreed wholeheartedly to help her. After all, I worked more than 10 years as a writer or in the writing industry. How hard could editing freshman papers be?

The first paper was pretty cut and dried. Nothing too complicated. A reader-response essay. The next just happened to be on Gladwell's book The Tipping Point, which I loved. When I saw the required reading and accompanying homework, I literally said: "This one is in the bag." I edited the paper four times. Can you tell which one of us really wants to be in school? And then one little letter makes me take a walk down memory lane. She got a C! WHAT? I am a professional writer. I recognize I haven't won any nobel prizes in literature, but still. How could she get a C? I got Cs when I skipped class, not when I turned my homework in. What is wrong with this picture?

This is when I remembered exactly why I hated school. Teachers and their love of marking you down but not giving you any feedback, leaving you to wonder what in the h.e. double toothpicks you did wrong and could improve. Lazy is what that teacher was. A couple of brief comments in the margin to let my baby sister—first-time college student that she is—guess what she means by "unclear." Unclear? Unclear to who, you subjective little don't-know-a-good-paper-when-you-see-one biotch (Yep! I just called her that.) That's for all the teachers that were too lazy to properly edit my papers and for the ones who are attempting to squash baby Spice's educational excitement right out of her.

To Brooke I say one thing and one thing alone: Blog! Blog where you can be you and people write sweet comments. And where if they don't, you can delete them and not get a bad grade.

You know when you are putting together a puzzle and the pieces don’t seem to fit? It can be so frustrating! You force them. You rearrange them. You go for the obvious all to no avail. Then suddenly, the parts groove and pictures start to appear, making sense of the odd-shaped pieces. It’s a beautiful sensation, making the effort so worthwhile.


This describes a recent trip I took with my sisters—four very different women, spanning twenty years in age—38, 34, 28, 18. From religious and political beliefs and fashion sense to education and motherhood responsibilities and desires, we are as different as like-colored puzzle pieces with only their color—and in our case, our last name—to bring us together.
But, what better than a sister’s vacation to bridge the age gaps and build some common bonds? And better yet, three days without kids or spouses, an agenda, or internet access. Nothing, as it turns out!


We laughed our way to and from Arizona (sorry for any of you who may have been on our flights). We lounged by the pool. We visited relatives. We ate at Ned’s Krazy Subs twice and had Mexican food three times. We went to the movies. We went to a dinner theatre. We cried at Grandma’s grave. We went down memory lane in the old hood. We took a picture in front of our favorite pomegranate tree. We got pedicures. We ate frozen yoghurt at the same place we used to go to after school more than 20 years ago. Yep! It is still open. We stayed up until 2 a.m. talking and slept in until noon. We got ready in the same bathroom. We took more than 500 pictures and studied them on the flight home to see in what ways we looked alike and different. We were sad to say goodbye.


Growing up and even into my adulthood, I felt so lucky for my wonderful friends. Whenever I found a kindred spirit, I considered myself the most fortunate of all people. But, my Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant—ies made me realize and appreciate the strength in sisterhood and where my real fortune lies.