Author Archives: Andrea Goto

About Andrea Goto

A transplant from the land of microbrews and dark roast (Washington State) I temporarily moved to Savannah, Georgia with my husband and cat eleven years ago. Since then, I've earned a master of arts degree, taught college composition, bought a house, had a baby, returned back to school to earn another degree, back to teaching and have launched my career as a writer. But I'll be home soon. After all, this is just temporary.

The Reader

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My sister taught me how to read.  Sure, there were a long line of teacher lessons, flash cards and episodes of “Sesame Street” that primed me for the big moment, but those memories are vague and faded—mere baby steps on the grand journey to literacy.  But I distinctly remember the day it “clicked.”  I was sitting next to my sister on Mom’s beloved crescent-shaped sofa upholstered in “disco gold.”  Jessica had checked out a book from the school library called The Monkey and the Bee and she announced that she could teach me how to read it.

At first, reading was like trying to push a baby stroller across dry sand. I’d get pissed, stop, rub my forehand and then start again.  Meanwhile, Jessica looked patiently over my shoulder, helping only when I asked her to.  Incessantly struggling to position herself as the “big sister”—a role I tried to deny her because of my sheer sibling orneriness—I could see she was giddy with excitement at my progress.  I was excited, too—so much, that I was willing to let her have this big sister moment.  About halfway through the book, I picked up speed, and by the end I was sailing with the ease of a little literati.

Years later, I would compare learning to read with learning to ride my bike.  Dad was cool with Santa and the Easter Bunny, but he didn’t “believe in” God or training wheels.  Consequently, I was a late bike bloomer.  There came a point when it was more difficult to pretend not to know how to ride.  All of the faculties where there—balance, strength, two legs—I just had to be brave enough to get on the dang thing.  When I finally did, I struggled for a few blocks, and then I took off like a bat outta hell.  I rode so fast and happy, gnats lodged in the corners of my eyes and the wind dried out my toothy grin.

It didn’t matter that other people had been riding for centuries.  All that mattered was that I had finally joined the ranks, opening up a whole new world.  The same applied to reading.

I was reminded of that pure, unadulterated feeling of complete accomplishment yesterday when Ava read her first book.

At bedtime, she abruptly snatched her new Tangled book from my hands and announced, “I want to read it.”

“Dude, we are reading it,” I said.

“No, I want to read it to you.”

Because I’m not one to encourage my child to spread her wings and fly, I hadn’t ever considered this possibility.  (Likewise, my child didn’t crawl until 11 months old, something I may have to take some responsibility for.)

“Uh, okay.”

I put my inner overbearing teacher on hold and channeled my sister, sitting back and letting Ava work through every syllable.  In the half hour it took her to get through 15 pages, she never got frustrated.  She never gave up.  At the end, she smiled widely at me, her eyes sparkling—I imagined I saw little gnats gathered in the corners.

“Let’s read it again!” she said.

She hasn’t stopped since.  This afternoon she lounged on the sofa reading with a stack of books next to her.  At dinner, she read two more books out loud as my husband and I ate.  It’s incredible to watch.  It’s exciting.

 

It’s something most of us take for granted.  And, like most milestones, it’s a little bittersweet.

Off she goes, riding headfirst into the world with a big, semi-toothy grin.

When Selfishness Pays Off

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Atlanta Publix Marathon

So, I’ve been a little busy lately (again). The spring quarter at SCAD finds me teaching two writing classes and I just started a fabulous job as associate editor of Savannah magazine. And I also squeezed in my first, and maybe last, marathon. Unfortunately, all of these very fortunate events means that I’ve been MIA in blogville. But I have been writing!

I blogged about my marathon experience on Paula Deen’s site. If you’d like to see how it all went down (and up and then down again–apparently, Atlanta is very hilly!) I’ll direct you to there. Just be warned that it’s about running, but not really. Mostly, it’s about doing something very underrated in parenthood: something for yourself.

Please click HERE to check it out!

Run a marathon: check.

Flashbacks from a “Gifted Program” Dropout

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So this sealed envelope was sent home from Ava’s school the other day. When you get such a letter it usually means that your child has contracted lice, is the source of the lice, or has pretended to be lice by inappropriately latching onto other children on the play yard. To my surprise, it was none of the above. Instead, the letter asked for my approval to have my daughter tested for the “Gifted Program.”

Tested? Why does she need to be tested? She is gifted.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Andrea is simply using this blog post as a platform to broadcast to the world that her child is the next Bill Gates (with better hair—much better hair).” But, lest you forget, I too am gifted. Therefore, I would never make such an egregious error as pronouncing giftedness before the gifted status has been gifted by the giftee. (I can’t even stop the cleverness.)

Okay, truth be told, I’m not gifted (please gasp in surprise out of courtesy). At least I was never enrolled in a gifted program. I was, however, tested many times. Many, many, many times. But without fail, the administrators would look over my test scores and say, “Huh. Guess we were wrong.” And back I went to my remedial math class where I was at least gifted with comfort and happiness.

“It’s far better to have love and lost, then to never have loved at all.” I suppose the same thing applies to the relentless attempt to uncover my giftedness. It is better to have been briefly considered gifted and proven otherwise, then to never have been considered at all. Maybe. But it got a little silly.

Once, in middle school, they altogether ignored the test results and elevated me to an advanced math class. Mom was so proud. I was terrified. They handed me a ruler on my first day. Up until that point I had used a ruler for two things: to construct a perfect diving board for Barbie, and as a means to deploy welts on my sister’s bum. But to measure? Please. That’s what dads are for.

As the kids around me happily measured and recorded their findings like busy little bees on speed, I felt my cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. No one would help me. The teacher couldn’t understand my hesitation—after all, I was “gifted,” right? I tried to look studious holding the ruler up to random items around the room, including the globe, which apparently isn’t a good way to measure circumference, but I never recorded a single thing. Regardless, I could barely see though the tears puddling in my eyes.

That night I told my mom that I didn’t want to be in the “smart class” anymore and she withdrew me without hesitation. Then I was the kid who couldn’t cut it, but I think I at least scored some points with the “average kids”—like I was a little bit badass for ditching “math with rulers.” Yeah, that’s me. I define subversive.

I know why they tested me. I followed the rules. I was polite. I was motivated to please. Socially, I was a Rhodes Scholar, but intellectually I hovered somewhere between Beavis and Doogie Howser.

So, knowing all that, you may wonder why I was so giddy about Ava’s letter. Quite simply, because I’m hoping that the times have changed. From what I can tell, they now measure aptitude in areas beyond I.Q.—areas that include “creativity” and “motivation” (see, I knew I was gifted!).

When Ava asked what all this testing meant, I had to restrain myself from over-exaggerating its importance, because she gets a little anxious about tests and, well, that would rank right up there with pageant moms who dress their daughters in tube tops and thigh-high boots.

"Gifted" or "tortured artist?" The jury's still out.

“It’s just a way to make sure that everyone gets put into a class that best suits their needs and abilities,” I said, channeling the inner politician I didn’t know I had residing in me. “So don’t worry about getting the answers ‘right’, just do your best and that way you’ll get put into the right class for you. Does that make sense?”

I held my breath.

“Yes.”

Exhale. Pat on the back. And then, Did I just hear what I said?

That’s right, wherever Ava finds herself next year I need to trust that it’s the right place for her. And while it’s secretly validating to have a “gifted” kid, it’s even better if they can grow up having a healthy relationship with rulers.

Mommy: The Bedtime Story

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A few days after Valentine’s Day, I told Ava about my childhood valentine. I imagine every girl must remember her first—that moment when the holiday evolved from the pleasure of eating stale, molar-cracking SweetTarts to something closer to love.

I was in the fifth grade. Ryan was “dating” my best friend, which really meant she had exclusive rights to chase him around the playground, corner him in the oversized tractor-tire lying on its side, and swiftly kick him in the balls.

I guess he got tired of the ball beating because on Valentine’s Day he gave her a run-of-the mill valentine punched from a sheet of 12 others with equally lame and somewhat insulting sayings (“You are DOG-gone cute”). But in my paper sack decorated with cut-out hearts and glitter, he dropped a delicate, heart-shaped chocolate. Not the waxy, hollowed-out Palmer’s chocolate that morphed into a pooey glob when it got too warm in your hands. This was an individually, hermetically sealed chocolate he had handpicked just for me. Ryan signed my valentine “your secret admirer,” but I recognized his distinct handwriting because I had been admiring it for some time. It was tiny, precise and full of what I imagined to be his heart’s intent.

After telling her this, Ava looked up at me wide-eyed and giddy as if I had just let her in on the most scandalous secret of my life.

“Did he become your boyfriend?”

He didn’t, but I’m not sure why. He moved away one summer and showed up years later in high school. I always meant to ask him about the chocolate, but I never took the chance. One day I’ll tell Ava that Ryan died shortly after graduation, fleecing my childhood of its already thinning innocence. But not today.

“Tell me another story, Mommy. I beg of you!”

I told her about John Brown, the boy who proposed to me with a turquoise ring in the first grade. Unaware of engagement protocol, I informed him that I was too young for marriage, but kept the ring. He moved away the following summer without ever saying goodbye.

“Were you sad?”

Again, I wasn’t entirely sure.

I told her about the girls I played “kitties” with during recess—one of whom I was profoundly jealous because she had a pet rabbit, a tree house and she could do the splits both ways. I told Ava about the time Jeff Doyle snatched a pink crayon from me, and how I cried when my favorite teacher blamed me for the disruption that ensued.

“Just one more,” she pleaded when I told her it was time for bed. It was—but I also couldn’t think of any more stories to share and the details were getting as blurry as her tired eyes. Thirty-four years and all I could muster were a turquoise ring and a pink crayon?

Since that evening, more memories have surfaced—the coloring contest I won, the time I pretended to live in my closet, the “smoothies” my sister and I used to concoct from toast crumbs and mustard and serve to our babysitters—stories that I file away to share with Ava when she asks to hear another.

She asks every night. I don’t know why she’s so genuinely interested in my childhood, but I’m surprised at how good it feels to have a captive audience in your child—how good it feels to tell your story and have someone listen and learn a little more about the person they thought they knew. To have someone look me in the eyes when I talk instead of into an iPhone.

At the same time, realizing how few things I actually remember depresses me. There are a seemingly infinite numbers of days in my past but only a sprinkling of half-remembered moments. I’m trying harder to find them. Ava tells me to “get them out of my head.” I’d like to. Sometimes she will say or do something that feels vaguely familiar, and I will desperately try to excavate that story from the corners of my memory.

I find myself doing this as much for Ava as for me.

I need to get this off my chest (Debbie Downer alert)

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It’s hard to watch the news when you have kids. When Ava was first born, I made a habit of avoiding the television altogether because between post-partum depression, sleep deprivation and a love for my child so big that my heart almost burst, even “America’s Funniest Home Videos” had me reaching for tissues (I have a special place in my heart for old people falling).

During my media blackout there were days when Ray would come into the kitchen, and wait for me to look up from the dishes. He wouldn’t say anything; he’d just stand there soberly until he caught my eye. I’ve come to know that look well—it’s a sickening combination of heartbreak and anger over what someone had done to a child. It happens when he can’t bear the burden of knowing something so terrible that it couldn’t have been imagined, let alone actually happen. But it does. And it happens a lot.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

I listened as he told me that a man had put his baby in a microwave and turned it on.

“I didn’t need to know that,” I said, choking on tears.

“I didn’t either.”

Such events would horrify anyone, but having a child makes them more poignant, and perhaps even harder to understand. “Why would someone do that?” I find myself saying to the TV time and time again, as it broadcasts stories about children being abused, kidnapped and murdered by their own parents. It’s a stupid, pointless question.

The latest story is about Josh Powell, the man in Tacoma, WA, who blew up his house, with him and his two boys, 5 and 7, inside. A day later, we learn that he hit his children with a hatchet before the house exploded. As the news anchors and experts try to piece together the puzzle to explain why Powell did this, I find myself less and less interested in the answer.

I’m tired of the “reasons.” I’m tired of hearing that some parents are too tired, overworked, emotionally unstable, poor, uneducated, etc. to properly love and care for their children. When I had Ava and first discovered how hard parenting could be, I needed to believe that most parents, like me, were doing the “best they could”—good or bad. But six years later, I know better. I’ve seen parents scream at, bully, humiliate, and hit their children. I’ve seen kids left in parked cars and lost in grocery stores because their parents were “too busy to bother.”

So yeah, I’m angry. I’m angry that people like Powell exist. And I’m angry that thoughts of him invade my home and my heart, and most importantly, that people like him influence the world in which my child will grow up.

Ava is the single most precious thing to me in the world. If she gets a hangnail, I feel as if I lose a year off my life; when she skins her knee, I lose 5. I don’t understand how people can look in their children’s eyes and willingly harm them, but if I think about it too long, I fear I may go mad. The most frustrating things in life are the things we can’t make sense of. They’re also the most frightening.

Mommy’s Healing Touch, Daddy’s Big, Fat Fail

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I stopped “growing up” years ago. Now I’m in the process of shrinking toward my 40s. However, I still remember growing pains. Not the emotional pain of growing up—the BFFs who barely lasted a week or the boy who didn’t like you back because you were too tall. I’m talking about the real, physical pain of cells reproducing so fast that you outgrew your beloved pink jelly shoes even before the snow melted.

“Momma, my legs hurt,” Ava said to me sometime after midnight, blurry-eyed and disheveled from sleep.

I got her some ibuprofen (a bad habit I started back when she was teething in lieu of sleeping), and then I rubbed her legs. I massaged her little calves, her quads, her knees and even her feet, reveling at how big my baby had grown in almost six years. I felt the muscles that gymnastics, tennis and wrestling with Dad had formed. I felt the tiny calluses on her big toes she acquired from ill-fitting shoes, a testament to her emerging womanliness. She was so quiet for those few minutes, I didn’t know if she liked it or not. Then, she tooted.

“That’s my toot saying how much I like this,” she explained.

Whatever. I’ll take the compliment regardless of who—or what—said it.

When I was growing up, my mom spent hours rubbing my aching legs. I can remember peeling off my sweaty cotton socks after tennis practice, my skin hot and stingy where blisters were beginning to form. My legs throbbed from pounding on pavement (yes, our courts were blacktop and the school was public). And to make matters worse, I was growing “like a weed” as Mom would say. But Mom loved me so much she didn’t care about my “weediness.” She didn’t care that I stunk to high Heaven. She let me lay my ripe, sweaty, pre-teen body on her bed as she lovingly rubbed the aches away.

At the time I didn’t understand why Mom seemed to enjoy this so much. It took years to realize that few people would ever provide a massage without payment and even fewer would enjoy doing it. My husband, for example, thinks a neck massage means scraping the back of my spine with his index finger until he falls asleep or I begin bleed, whichever comes first. Worse yet, this sad attempt at massage only happens if my request coincides with an episode of some geeked-out television show. (He actually refers to massage as the “Star Trek rubs.”)

Or he thinks that my request for a massage is actually code for something more. It is not. Ever.

The problem is that Ray hates massage, which is a sure sign of an antisocial disorder. He would rather be doused with gasoline and set on fire than doused with lotion and touched lovingly. He thinks a back scratch feels like “dead bird feet” scraping across his flesh. I do not understand this, nor do I accept it. I’ve repeatedly tried to ambush him, but it always ends the same: he curls up his nose and squirms out of my grasp asking, “Why would you do that?” Because it feels good, you freak.

I want to prevent Ava from going down Ray’s pathological path. In addition to rubbing her, I’m trying to get Ava to massage my back in mom’s absence. There is nothing like her sweet, pudgy hands drifting over my tired spine like she’s delicately painting a fence. It instantly puts me to sleep. However, two minutes later she wakes me with a frantic, double-handed percussion, as if she’s trying to revive a heart attack victim.

“Mommy?!”

“I just fell asleep, Honey.”

She breaks into relieved laughter, but continues the beating because now she thinks it’s funny. My husband encourages her. (They have other gifts, I swear.) As I lay there getting pummeled, I try to image that I’m receiving a massage and not abuse.

Mom’s rubs were as much for herself as they were for me. Like her and so many other moms, I have become a giver of rubs, and less likely to ever get them in return. Which makes me think one thing: I want my mommy.

Totally what my foot looks like. No, really.

 

The Resolution I’m NOT Making this Year

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Most people I know make fitness resolutions and vow to hit the gym. My husband has his gym code taped to the fridge “just in case” he gets the urge. It has hung there like an albatross around his neck for six years. Thankfully the gym resolution isn’t one I have to make because I’m already committed. Why? Because I need that time to myself? Because I’m deeply vain? Well, yes, but more importantly, because there’s a woman with a six-pack of muscle and enthusiasm that even Tony Horton would envy. Her name is Jodie Kofod and she kicks my ass every Tuesday and Thursday morning. I don’t know what would happen if I don’t show up (beyond transforming into a manatee). But one thing is for sure, I don’t want to disappoint her.

Would you risk disappointing her? No, I think not.

My Trainer, My Love

To call her my trainer is a little like referring to the woman at the Wendy’s drive-thru as my personal chef. I have no ownership over Jodie; she belongs to anyone willing to step foot into her class at the YMCA, aptly titled “Iron Bodies.” I do not have an iron body, but for the past six years I’ve been steadily developing an aluminum body—a measurement determined by the fact that my inner thighs no longer touch (by a hair’s width, but I swear I see daylight).

Over the years, Iron Bodies has become a permanent fixture in my life. It’s a non-negotiable 75-minute appointment between my metabolism and me. I run on the other days, fueled by the fact that I’m going to spend two and a half hours a week standing in front of a wall of mirrors, lunging, squatting and planking my well to a buildup of lactic acid.

It’s Not (Entirely) About the Burn—or the Buns

The workout is kind of beside the point. I truly enjoy the gym goers in the class—mostly stay-at-home moms working to elevate the muffin top into a MILF top. They accept me in my sleep-deprived, pre-concealer state. We’ve seen each other at our worst—post-baby, divorce, illness and loss—and at our best—albeit sometimes post surgery. No one is too cool for fitness school. I’ve seen shorts rip, thongs exposed and bands snapped. If I don’t show up for class without excusing myself on Facebook the night before, my phone blows up with texts. I attend to my backside, but these girls got my back. Even the ladies in the childcare still ask about my daughter’s stuffed monkey “Muh,” as if calling on a sick uncle. Most family isn’t this nice.

A typical Tuesday

But the true source of inspiration to get up twice a week and look like a dying cockroach while performing R-rated inner thigh moves, is Jodie herself. Coffee and Red Bull course through her veins. She shouts when she talks and shakes when she tries to stand still, her body unsure of why she’s resting between sets. She has never had an off day, or maybe her off days look a lot better than mine. She gives 110% to a roomful of half-asleep, middle-aged women (and one token male). As she screams “Wooooooo!” and explodes into a series of one-armed pushups, we stare at her in vacant wonder; we’re just trying to keep our faces from colliding with the floor.

Jodie is one of the most intimidating and inspiring people I’ve ever met. She’s intimidating because her small frame can barely contain her super-sized personality and because she could crack walnuts between her butt cheeks. She’s inspiring because she cares so much for the health and wellbeing of everyone around her. She gives so much of herself to her work, son, husband, church and even her St. Bernard. Spend just a couple of minutes getting to know her and you’ll discover that her iron body is really just the exoskeleton to a very soft and sensitive center. (Me, on the other hand, I’m all endoskeleton.)

Good trainers, like good schoolteachers, don’t get enough credit. They endure our sudden water breaks (always during pushups) and our complaints about how we aren’t losing weight (as we wield 2-pound weights and gnaw on 750-calorie energy bars). And here we are getting so much in return from their commitment to us. If you have a Jodie in your life, be sure to thank her for making fitness one less thing to commit to in 2012, ‘cause you’re already there.

As for me, I’ll again refocus on eating healthier. Now, about that lady at Wendy’s . . .

"My" Jodie and me

So That was Christmas?

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The day after Christmas, I was reading my daughter a bedtime story. It was Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth, a book about three siblings who each learn a Zen principle in an encounter with a giant panda named Stillwater. One such lesson was “misfortune becomes good luck.”

It was not my daughter’s book. It wasn’t her bedroom. In fact, we weren’t even in our own house.

Ava and I were staying for an uncertain length of time at our friends’ Michael and Nicole’s home just 10 minutes away. Earlier that day they had traveled with their children, 9 and 14, to Atlanta when Michael passed out at the American Girl store. (It’s okay, you can laugh; he’s all right now, we just weren’t sure at the time.) He was rushed to the ER. Our friends are transplants to the South and don’t have family to call on, but they do have us. And having fixed us a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner, I guess we owed them. So when Nicole asked if Ray could drive to Atlanta to get the kids and bring them home so she could focus on the situation at hand, he hopped in the car without a second thought (I mean, it was a really good dinner).

But let’s rewind to Christmas morning.

It was our second Christmas alone. Ever. We didn’t have the money to fly home to our families so we raked up our sorry-for-ourselves feelings and tried to make the best of it. It was working, right up until the wee hours of Christmas morning when I suddenly woke to my throbbing upper lip, or what used to be my upper lip and was now a suitable perch for a barn owl. By sunrise, it had grown so large it could sustain a flock of seagulls. Better yet, the Flock of Seagulls, their groupies and a touring bus.

I lay in bed considering the possibilities. On Christmas Eve, I thought I might be getting a cold sore, but this was clearly so much more. Flesh-eating virus came to mind. How inconvenient.

I woke my husband and told him that we might as well enjoy our last Christmas together, or at the very least, my last Christmas with this particular lip.

“What are you talk—” he rolled toward me and opened his eyes, “Whoa!”

Yeah. About that.

As our daughter merrily tore through her Christmas stocking, I drank my coffee through a straw and felt bitterly sorry for myself quarantined and alone on Christmas Day. I dodged Ray’s picture taking even as he tried to convince me that the size of my lip “didn’t translate two-dimensionally.” Apparently he was lying because when I Skyped my mother she shielded her face with her hands and yelled, “Oh my God! Dad, come here! Quick! Look at Andrea’s face!” Dad and Mom gawked and pointed in horror like I was a legless giraffe at the zoo.

“It’s spreading up the side of your face!”

It wasn’t; makeup just wasn’t a priority that morning. But thanks.

Clearly, it was bad. But it was going to have to wait. It was Christmas, after all. And more than that, even my dermatologist couldn’t see me like this.

Things improved moderately overnight. I went from circus freak to Botox gone horribly wrong. We had just gotten the call from Nicole, so I knew I would have to venture outside sooner or later. There I encountered my neighbors and quickly acknowledged the elephant woman in the room.

“Ray got me lip injections for Christmas.” Cue the recoil.

“Just kidding. I have a lip funk.” They laughed, somehow comforted with the thought of a communicable disease over restylane. Clearly I played this right.

Sure, they dispersed moments later, citing a variety of made-up errands. I couldn’t blame them. Survival of the fittest. And I was not fit for public consumption.

All the same, I had things to do. I had our friends’ children to care for. When they arrived, they kindly averted their eyes and never mentioned my lip until two days later when the swelling mercifully subsided.

“What happened anyway?” the 14-year-old asked.

Christmas happened. Somewhere between my over-inflated lip and the rush to our friends in need, the holiday spirit swept through virtually unnoticed.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I need to heed Stillwater’s Zen wisdom. All this bad luck was actually good luck in disguise. I didn’t spend Christmas “alone.” I spent it with a husband willing to drive ten hours to help our friends, friends willing to trust us with their children and home, and my daughter willing to believe the whole thing was one big adventure.

And the lip? Well, if I had gone home for Christmas I inevitably would’ve run into 50 people I went to high school with who would then permanently fix the vision of my lip into their collective memory and forever refer to me as the girl who “used to be pretty.”

Thank you, giant panda, for a memorable Christmas.

Yeah, I BET you wanted to see a picture of my lip.

Bumper Stumpers

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Bumper stickers are like tattoos for cars. They seem like a good idea at first, but are never as cool the next day. Decorating your car with slogans and images is a lot like decorating your middle school locker. It’s not a reflection of who you are as much as it is a reflection of who you wish you were. I, for instance, wanted to be a professional volleyball player and River Phoenix’s lover. Each time I opened my locker, River would stare back at me amidst a collage of “Maui and Sons” and “Gnu” stickers (the Hurley of their time). I don’t understand the appeal of those stickers or the brands they represented. I didn’t surf, ski or skate, but nonetheless me and every kid in the early 90s put them on our lockers and binders, and dreamed one day they’d be on the back windows of our VW Bugs.

Luckily, I outgrew my counter-culture, wannabe-punk phase by the time I actually got my first car. It was then that I embraced my true self (or at least the next person I wanted to be): A young scholar. My sticker of choice said “WWU”, indicating where I’d be attending college. It made me feel grown up and unique. I stuck it on my back window, top and center—the same place every other person at the college put it.

Two used Honda hatchbacks later, my husband bought me a brand new, grown-up hatchback: a gray Toyota Matrix. As soon as I drove it off the lot, it occurred to me that everything about my Matrix said “cat lady” or, more accurately, “recent-graduate-student-entering-the-workforce-with-plans-to-start-a-family.” When I expressed my interest in sporting up my car by adding a cycling, running or Obama sticker, my husband responded, “A car without stickers says ‘adult.’ And don’t put an Obama sticker on it unless you want your car keyed.” (I think he meant by him.)

So I’ve left my car sticker-free for seven years, and now that I spend 45 minutes waiting in a line of cars to pick up my daughter from kindergarten, I’m glad I have.

Don’t get me wrong, some make me laugh. But do you really want to be known as the mom with the “Gun Control Means Using Both Hands” sticker? Not if you want to head up this year’s bake sale.

The worst offenders are the ones that rob us of our sexy, such as “Mom’s Taxi.” You might as well slap on a pair of high-waisted Lee jeans and give me a frosted perm.

Lately, I’ve been most annoyed by those stick figure families. I’m sorry if you think they’re cute. In an attempt to accurately depict your particular family unit, these stickers get it all wrong, like a department store family portrait that puts you in front of a leafy background and commands you to smile like you just got poked in the rear because, dammit, you’re happy even though everyone knows you spent the previous hour trying to keep little Johnny from smearing boogers on the faux-bear rug and little Janey from eating them. It’s too cookie cutter for my taste. The daughter rendered as a princess and the dad as a briefcase-toting salesman is a pigeonhole I don’t want my family to step in.

And what happens when the family unit changes? I recently saw a stick figure family comprised of a mom and two kids. The only evidence of “Dad” was the sticky outline where he’d been picked off. How do you breach the  “Where did stick Daddy go” discussion anyway? Or when a dog passes? Or when little Janey turns in her tiara for a football helmet?

Families are always in flux. People are always changing. So for now, I’m keeping the canvas clean. My gray Matrix can just speak for herself–even if she doesn’t say much.