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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

First crush
When you're a girl, a grown man's attention can make a woman out of you.
By Maurine Shores
[08/18/99]

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take my tv
The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under 2 should not watch TV. Why would any parent disagree?
By Jacques Leslie
[08/17/99]

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TV can be a good parent
The American Academy of Pediatrics says television watching is harmful to babies and toddlers. This mama says: I don't think so.
By Ariel Gore
[08/16/99]

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Wake up to Furrow's wake-up call
When my son was young, we went to the JCC to learn Jewish songs, finger-paint and be part of a community -- one that included Jews, Catholics and agnostics too.
By Mona Gable
[08/14/99]

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Buford Furrow's worst nightmare
It's not just the Jews at the JCC who got to him -- it's the way they mix up the American melting pot.
By Joan Walsh
[08/14/99]

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My anxiety was not relieved when I paid her a visit at her new downtown apartment. Her boyfriend, whom I shall call Ted, a National Merit scholar with a full academic scholarship, was taping "The Simpsons." For the two years I'd known him, he'd never made direct eye contact with me or uttered a complete sentence. This is who my daughter had chosen.

I gave the arrangement six months. On a cold February day she appeared at my office door moments before a staff meeting: "Ted and I broke up. But I moved in with Anna. Don't worry. Everything's OK." Best of all, she told me, Ted and she were still friends.

Within hours, she had moved her stuff and had begun to date a 23-year-old cook who had no prospects but could prepare a mean pasta Alfredo. She was so happy she spent $40 to get her tongue pierced. "You'll like him," she said, "but he's afraid to meet you." When she said this I knew I would never meet him. I was right.

Within two months, my daughter has lost her phone service, then her power. "Anna's a little spacey," my daughter explains. "She forgot to pay the bills. She's manic-depressive and she can't afford her medicine." Power and phone service are restored after a week. Bill collectors housed in cubicles in Wilmington, Del., call constantly, but all calls are screened with caller I.D. If no power and no phone aren't bad enough, imagine this: Anna has five cats; my daughter has one. This makes a total of six cats using one litter box. Of course, the lease has a no-pet clause. We will get to that later.

Her midterm grades in the spring are horrid. She says, "It will be fine. Don't worry." She reminds me of the midterm F in biology she somehow turned into a C last semester, a miracle on the order of turning water into wine, if you buy the analogy of a C representing wine. Let's say it's cheap wine.

Around this time I notice I'm putting on weight and my writerly slouch seems to be folding into an elderly hump. I stop stepping on scales. I begin to avoid large plate glass windows where, in my virile past, I would steal a glance at my slender profile and think, "Looking good!"

I sleep progressively less. Sharp pains pelt me in unlikely parts of my body, like behind my eyes. Much of my life, including some semblance of control over my 18-year-old, is slipping away.

The cook dumps my daughter. She stops attending classes, but I don't know this yet. "I threw a shampoo bottle at him when I went to pick up my things," she says.

"You had 'things' at his house? Had you moved in?"

"No, no. Just some CDs and videos." And shampoo.

Something in the image of that shampoo bottle flying across the room makes me realize that her final grades are not going to be of the dean's list variety. I am hoping for a 2.0 GPA.

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