Salon.com > Laurie Wagner

Letting my kids go crazy

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 15:33:00 +0000

The first thing you need to know about the rice fight was that the margaritas were strong and my husband Mark was out of town, which was nice because he doesn't drink. I had invited two adorable 20-somethings, Sabrina and her boyfriend Alex, over for dinner. It was the end of one of those perfect fall days in the San Francisco Bay Area; hot and breezy, and at 6 p.m. the front door was still open. I'd had the kids by myself for weeks and I was ready to have a little blowout. And maybe I was showing off a little on account of Sabrina who is young and cool and who inspires me to unleash myself from the post of motherhood, let the dog out a little. And as I said, we'd been drinking.

We were sitting around the table, adults yapping and ignoring the kids and out of the corner of my eye I see Zoe, my 4-year-old,take a handful of hot rice from her plate and, in slow motion, throw it at her 6-year-old sister Ruby. But instead of jumping up to squash the thing, I sat there mesmerized, watching. "She's never thrown food before," I thought to myself. "This is a rite of passage, the primal launch."

The rice ball hit Ruby and exploded in her face. She immediately responded on-fire, and grabbed a handful of rice and threw it back at Zoe.

How racquetball saved my marriage

Fri, 13 Oct 2000 21:25:00 +0000

My husband and I used to wrestle. We were younger then, more nimble, more sassy, more agile and a lot more fun. We'd wrestle when we were mad -- not big-time mad, just frustrated, "you're driving me crazy" kind of mad. It would start with a growl, then a yelp, and the next thing you know we'd be on the floor of our loft, tumbling and twisting, one under the other, relieving pent-up frustration and laughing maniacally until one of us would shout, "Uncle!" That would usually be moi, not because my husband is bigger than me -- he isn't, we're about the same size -- but because he was a wrestler in high school and knows all the sexy moves. Anyway, we would usually end up in some loving embrace and then calmly resume whatever we'd been doing before -- bills, dinner, washing our socks or having a conversation about houseplants.

But those days are gone. We traded the loft for a house, had a couple of kids, got some life insurance, made a will and started the slow climb toward 40. Needless to say, we don't wrestle anymore. I'm sure if we did, we'd be spending a lot more time with our chiropractor, Jay, and we can't afford that with all the other domestic expenses we've incurred.

Oxymorvan

Wed, 09 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

I really want this pair of motorcycle boots.

I saw them on a Victoria's Secret model. She's in the catalog.
She looks so great. She's lying on her tummy in a meadow wearing
these cool carpenter jeans, her booted feet up in the air,
careless, kicked back and sassy.

It's all in the boots.

I know that wearing them will be like taking an overdose of St.
John's Wort or being 22 again and falling in love for the first
time. Those boots will take me back to a time when life was
simple and free, when having $200 in my bank account was plenty
and ramen was the noodle and nothing really mattered because I
wasn't an adult yet and I had no idea what was coming.

I definitely need the boots.

My husband wants a minivan. He wants us to drive around town
with the kids, the bikes and the dog, with room left over for the
in-laws. He thinks our growing family needs more space, more
comfort, more car.

My friend Betsy's husband wants a minivan too, now that the
twins have arrived. "Do you think the double stroller is going to
fit into your Honda?" he asks her sarcastically.

"Well, I ... I dunno," she says, flustered, with both boys at her
breast. "I hope so."

Boy no do that!

Mon, 18 Aug 1997 11:37:00 +0000

my father-in-law is a pincher. He pinches his wife, his nieces, assorted
lady friends and me. Been pinching me for years. Never on the
butt, always on the arm or on the waist. He'll come up from behind and
take a big thumbful of whatever I've got there and just tweak it.
It's not an easy pinch. It hurts and reeks of something
this side of sexual, with a twist of anger thrown in. But in the nine
years I've known him, I've never said one word, not one ouch or one quit
it. I just grimace and squirm away.

I'll spare you the story about being raised a nice girl. We all were.
Taught to laugh things off, brush someone away without offending them,
walk past the catcalls and endure the poking. Nice girls know how to do
that, enduring the intrusion while remaining beautiful and desirable at
the same time. It's an art really, and the more you're able to integrate
it into the way things are, the less sensitive you'll be to the
intrusion. Even to the point of not recognizing it -- even if it is a fierce
pinch to the flesh that rides your middle. And although I'd grown
plenty in 37 years and learned to take care of myself and tell
the truth more often than not, I still couldn't get myself to tell this fine,
Christ-loving man to stop pinching me. I didn't want to hurt his
feelings because I knew it was a pinch in the name of some kind of love, which
I felt obligated to for some creepy reason.