River has 100 dresses. That’s a lot. And they are currently dominating my feed. If you follow me on the social media, maybe yours too.

I always had more than one outfit to wear to school.  In fact, I had 5.  Every summer my mother would send me to my grandmother in DC with pretty much only the ill-fitting clothes on my back, knowing my grandmother wouldn’t allow me to go without.  Every summer my grandmother would buy my 5 outfits for the upcoming school year; one for every day of the week.  Unfortunately, seasons changed, I grew quickly, I played hard and I lived in an environment where things didn’t last well.  Within a few months I was looking pretty ragged. And children, doing what children do best, noticed.  I’ve said it before, the adage that material things do not matter is very privileged.  To a child with nothing, things matter very very much.

I remember the book, “The Hundred Dresses” from elementary school vividly. I have chills right now just recalling it.  In retrospect, I wonder if it had actually been a part of the prescribed curriculum, or if I’d just had a very, very good teacher that year. 

In the book, a poor immigrant girl named Wanda is taunted for the blue tattered dress she wears to school every single day.  One day, she stands up to the bullies by telling them about the beautiful one hundred dresses she has at home, hanging in her closet.  But her obvious and bold fabrication only result in more abuse – the tormenters ambushing Wanda every day before school, harassing her about her lie, forcing her to painstakingly describe the fictional dresses in her closet…

It is revealed at the end of the story that the dresses in her closet were real in a fashion, they were drawings, beautiful drawings that revealed creativity, talent, pain and longing, and determination to make what she desired real in any tiny way she could; a tragic, pitiful, and beautiful attempt by a little girl to improve her situation.  The children felt remorse, but Wanda was already gone and it was too late to make things right.    

I remember hiding in the bathroom to cry after reading it.  I remember throwing up.  

I remember how Wanda’s isolation resonated with me.  I remember believing in my heart that Wanda hadn’t really moved away like it said in the story, but had been taken into foster care – my biggest fear in third grade.  I remember reveling in her classmates’ guilt.  I remember that the story didn’t have a happy ending, only a lesson learned, and I already knew that that’s life. 

I also remember the word that Eli Pomerantz and Ramon Diaz used when I entered the room to protect themselves from me, to ward me away – “eek-ee-ock-uh-bee-kee.” The rest of the class picked up on that really quickly, and then the bus did too.  They whispered it amongst themselves any time I entered a room or approached on the playground so they wouldn’t “catch my disease.”  Poor.  That was my disease.  Poverty.  I guess it is a little contagious, but not in the way they thought.

I looked funny.  I probably smelled bad.  I was weird and too smart and neurodivergent. I had no money and no friends.  And I wasn’t just grossly unpopular, I was a leper, and the children loved the game they had created with my status.   

While those children almost certainly haven’t thought about that word in years, maybe decades, I have.  I’ll say that again. I have. 

River’s one hundred dresses is a symbol of how far I’ve come. It’s realized hopes and dreams and vanquished fears. The constant OOTD posts I’m sure annoy some, but they bring me joy. She is already confident and expressive and joyful and I can present that to the world. Sure, my own style and likes are still pretty prevalent but each day she makes herself known more and it amazes me what an almost 5-month-old can tell you – she likes bolder colors than I do, she especially loves rainbows. She loves ruffles, frills, and embellishments that she can pinch and pull. She prefers to sleep in bamboo or modal. Many of my dear maker friends, the kind of friends I wanted so badly as a child, have contributed in unique ways that remind me of the love I am surrounded by today.

I hope her pictures make you smile just because her personality is so clear on her face, if not reflected in the outfit I curate. If not, you can just scroll on by.

Each day when I dress her it’s a little reminder that sometimes there are happy endings to sad stories. And each day when I share her perfection with the world, I’m projecting success and keeping a promise that for my children, life will be far better.

You can follow River on IG at River.Kat to see her styling.

Tonight’s undertaking isn’t a funny anecdote about my children and their poop habits, so feel free to scroll on by if you are in the mood for something light. If you’ve lost a toxic parent, however, or if you’ve loved and lost an addict, this one’s for you.  Or maybe you just love someone who has, maybe you love someone like me, and hopefully here’s a pile of words that can help you understand a little better how very complicated it is to mourn the loss of Dr. Jekyll.

When my Daddy ODed two years ago no one was surprised except my mom.  She wasn’t even really surprised, she had just blamed everyone else for everything for so long that it had become knee-jerk.  Reflexive.  COVID, which would claim my mom just 6 months later was still a few weeks away, but in my mind and heart Daddy’s death was some kind of catalyst.  The first in a series of losses and sacrifices and changes and tragedies, the beginning of a chapter that hasn’t quite wrapped up yet.  I think in reality, when it came to Daddy’s death we were all kind of surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner, that’ he had made it to 71.

Every person on this earth has their little cartoon angel and their little cartoon devil on their shoulder, whispering in their ear.  We all get pulled in both directions and hope that we land somewhere on the good side.  Every choice we make nudges us one way or another.  But for Daddy it was never nudge – it was always more like a cannon blast and his little angel and devil didn’t whisper, they shrieked.  He spent very little time in the muted middle ground, just a bit over the neutral line into “good” where most adults hang out.  Instead, Dad yoyoed dramatically from superhero (he quite literally saved several lives) to monster, so quickly it left child-me dizzy, so violently that it left adult-me scarred.   

At the time of his death, I’d stopped talking to him maybe a decade before, and hadn’t seen him since he arrived late and probably drunk to my Grandmom’s funeral, literally driving up to her grave on the grass.  My Mother would sometimes message me over the years (I didn’t talk to her either, but she would track me down), to tell me how Daddy was old and sick and blind and didn’t have much time left, a bluff for attention or whatever.  She’s a whole ‘nother story that I don’t have the spoons or space for tonight.  When she would message me, I would sometimes consider the inevitable, what it would actually be like to lose them.  I knew it would be hard in a way very different than losing a normal parent but all that I imagined was just a hint at what it was actually like. Nothing can prepare you for the death of a toxic parent.  It is its own unique trauma.

There’s the relief and the guilt about the relief, which you expect.  And then you start to remember both of the people who are now gone.  All at once you have to confront and bury the monster that you know killed the superhero, and maybe that slaughter happened a long time ago leaving only the monster.  Maybe that parent was already “dead to you.” But even if you didn’t realize it, you still hoped the superhero was hanging on. So, with the monster, you bury the secret hope for reconciliation and catharsis and you open every old wound.  You bury the superhero with monster.  And then, because all little girls love their Daddies, you sit down and write a eulogy for JUST the superhero. 

So that’s what I did.  I wrote about the mythic, larger than life, wonderful man that was only about half of my father. And in doing so I mourned not only losing him, but the lost decade when he was alive but inaccessible because of the other half.  And here it is, the eulogy for half my dad. 

“Thank you all for being here today.  I wanted to start out with a small but important announcement.  That $20 dad was supposed to give you back next Thursday?  Well… I hate to tell you, but you’re probably not going to see it on this side of the River Styx. 

I’m going to ask you to do something for me.  I want you to close your eyes and imagine my dad about 30 years ago.  The soda bottle glasses, the big hair, and or course the thousand-watt smile.  That’s when we’re going to be today – circa 1990.  This pub is probably exactly where we’d be as a family too and the sandwiches and snapper soup haven’t changed a bit.

You know my 90’s dad as the life of the party – for better or worse.  The guy with a gift – when you were with my dad you were his best friend.  You were the most interesting person in the room.  You were his favorite kid.  You were special.  He had endless charisma.  And oh god, most of all, he was FUN!

When I’m done blathering on, I would love to hear some stories about this Steve – Steve-a-Reno.  But first I need to pull the curtain back on another part of dad.  My dad had something that not too many parents have.  He had the eyes of a child.  He played with reckless abandon.  He believed in magic – he made magic. I’m going to take you through a little bit of that right now.

My dad LOVED holidays.  This rooted itself in me hard and lives on with my kids.  I remember the fireworks on the 4rth of July.  Pulling up late, because we were always late, but still getting a great seat because we could squish in one of dad’s best friends.  He wasn’t taking the kids to the fireworks, he loved them just as much, if not more than we did.  And this made it a different experience for us, because we were all a part of it.  It wasn’t FOR us, it was WITH us.  And that year some idiot gave MY dad a bag of dynamite.   Half sticks or quarter sticks or some such nonsense.  Obviously, something Steve shouldn’t be trusted with.  Little Ryan had the great idea to blow the trash can lids into the air.  Most dads would have realized… what am I saying, most dads wouldn’t have been playing with dynamite with a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old.  But MY dad… well, this was the best idea he’d heard in months!  I think there’s still holes in the driveway.  Mom was pissed! But oh man how we laughed.  That was dad.  All the sense god gave a 7-year-old.  But all the wonder too.

And don’t get me started on trick-or-treating.  We needed pillow cases because anything else was just too flimsy.  I didn’t care that I was getting a little big for my dad to go to the door with me, because neither did anyone else.  Like I said, he was fun.  And my friends and I LOVED it, loved him.  And you KNOW it wasn’t just the treats.  He taught us the BEST tricks too. 

On Dad’s birthday we had to find the PERFECT Christmas tree. I feel like in retrospect his friends Chuck and Jeamie may have actually owned a tree farm, but at the time it felt like we had access to our own magical forest.  We’d trek out into the night and spend what felt like hours looking at every single tree before we’d cut one down – too big for our house.  Only a blue spruce, the only kind strong enough to hold up the antique bubble lights that somehow never caught our house on fire.  And sometime around then he transformed into Santa.  I’ll betcha didn’t know that.  That daddy dressed up as Santa for Coventry Manor – the “old folks home”.    I went with him one year.  I don’t think it was that year.  It was a couple years later, near the end of this chapter. Those old ladies… they loved my dad.  He flirted SHAMELESSLY.  He was downright lecherous.  “Come on Dorris, sit on my lap, and give Santa a little kiss.  You know you’re on the naughty list.”  He pinched 90-year-old butts and tucked candy canes in hospital gowns.  And I saw playfulness and joy.   They giggled like little girls- like kids. 

My dad never grew up.  I don’t know what happened.  Maybe the world expected him to grow up more than he could.  Maybe it erased the best parts of him.  But if we look back, we can look at this Steve who everyone loved.  I remember the Coventry fair, yard work that felt like play, tractor rides around the “neighborhood”, Sitting in his lap to steer the car, getting woken up in the middle of the night for milkshakes and donuts fried in butter.  I remember jumping waves at the beach. I remember.  I hope you to do to. 

Thank you for coming today.  May you live and remember him.”  

For a moment it felt like lies, though every word was true.  I felt cheated out of my pain to remember him this way.  To only address the good.  But I kept it, and I read it and people cried.  People who hadn’t spoken to him in years because he wasn’t that Steve anymore.  But that was the Steve they remembered, and that was the Steve we all needed to bury and all needed to mourn and all needed to remember.  In coming back to it two years later, without naming the monster, without sharing the other Steve, but acknowledging him, I’m making it ok. It’s ok to find some catharsis in the partial truth, and in a life so torn between yes and no, good and bad I’m burying him on the good side of the line. Now that he’s gone, the battle between the superhero and the monster can be over, and I can choose how to remember him and how the story ends.  I’m writing the eulogy for ONLY the superhero.  His life was an epic battle, and in my memory and in the memories of those who heard the words, the superhero won. 

I originally wrote this as a post in my very favorite “Moms’ group” nearly three years ago now where it was shared and eventually migrated to my Facebook page.  It came up in my memories and I figured I would polish it up a bit for your enjoyment and edification.  Important note to today’s reader: This was originally written well before COVID when kid-germ and plague jokes were still funny.

Smoothies and my boys generally result in catastrophe. Catastrophes complete with sticky, fruity mess; and poopsplosions.

If we are friends on Facebook, you may have shed tears of sympathy for me on the day when I posed this riddle: What happens when your 4YO drops a very large, very full, very red smoothie down the basement steps? And then your 2YO has an epic poosplosion while you are treating the basement carpet? One that simply cannot be contained by the measly pull up he is wearing? So he tries to clean it up by wiping it on your living room furniture? And then your four-year-old mooches YOUR smoothie that you REALLY wanted because his has repainted several walls in your home? AND THEN HE DROPS YOUR GODDAMN SMOOTHIE AND IT EXPLODES ALL OVER THE KITCHEN YOU JUST CLEANED THIS MORNING WHILE HIS LITTLE BUTT WAS SLEEPING? AnD ThEN hE ThRoWs a FiT BEcaUse YoU WonT MaKE hiM anOtheR SmooTHie?!?!

I’ll tell you the answer later. And if there are any survivors.

Later, Facebook Friend, you may have even laughed with me when the poopy two-year-old spilled both his and my smoothie, this time on the ground at strawberry square. Thank bob I had heeded the valuable lesson I had learned from our previous adventure: No smoothies in my home! Alas, in a moment of de ja vu both tragic and humorous that same day, the baby pooped in Ollie’s, all the way up to his very cute armpits. Another lesson learned: Smoothies = poop.

Well, my friends, sit back and while I will regale you with part three of the smoothie poop saga.

While we take a bath, because we all need one, pop some popcorn and pull up a comfy chair. 

I’m using voice to text, and have little regard for punctuation at the moment, so you may have to do some creative translating. Our tale starts this morning when little Baby Ridley wakes up from a particularly fussy night. Oh God, where is my precious baby and what is this changeling goblin that has been left in his crib? It has goo for eyes!

Poor darling Riddler has contracted double pink eye.

Do I squirt his eyes with booby juice? Remove the goo? Leave it? I’m a third timer, I should know this! But I call the pediatrician anyway. The doc calls us in the appropriate eye drops and tells me not to have to baby around other kids the rest of the day (by tomorrow he won’t be contagious but today he’s highly plague shedding).

Our plans were to hit up a hike-it-baby gathering, or if I wasn’t quite up to it, Little Learners at the local science museum (I’m still getting over my own case of the plague). But, those plans were now impossible, and I needed to come up with something quick to avoid unparalleled disappointment from Roland, whom I have not yet determined if is a 4 year old or 13 year old.

“What are we doing today, mommy? Is it Wednesday?”

“Yes my love, but honey sugarplum dear, we can’t go to Little learners today. But I have a surprise for you my darling! We need to pick up some medicine for sweet little Ridley, and afterwards we can go and get smoothies!”

“Yay! Mommy, can it be a pajama party?”

“Of course! What a wonderful idea!”

So I wait for the call that the rx is ready. And I wait. And finally, at 1:30, the rx is ready and the children are hangry. I’m loving Roland’s pj idea! Do I put on a bra? NO! I let the girls swing free. After all, both tropical smoothie and the pharmacy have drive-throughs. I do however put on a pad since I can no longer cough without peeing myself. So with my boobs resting peacefully in my depends cladded lap I set off on the adventure like an octogenarian departing the old folks home!

First stop, pharmacy. Uneventful. Although they did try to make me come in to update insurance cards, I wheedled my way out of that one like a pro.

Next stop, tropical smoothie.

So many questions. “Mommy, how do daddy seeds get into mommy eggs anyway? Do bees do it?” Yes. Yes they do. “Mommy, can we listen to pit bull?”

Finally, about halfway there, all three kids fall asleep. It’s beautiful. It’s so quiet, and as a bonus I can turn on my swearful audiobook.

I get to the smoothie place and somehow have to take out a second mortgage because for some stupid reason 2 kids-meals and an adult smoothie is $25 bucks. Then it takes like 20 minutes. Oh well. At least the kids are asleep. Tropical smoothie must be waiting on a shipment because the lids for the kid’s cups don’t fit quite right and the straws are way way WAY too long. No way they are getting these in the car. Thank goodness they are asleep and thank goodness gracious I am now an experienced smoothie catastrophe avoiding expert.

Both “big” kids wake up as we pull in the driveway and I pass out the goodies. “Mommy, why is my smoothie orange?” What? He takes a sip and gags. “This isn’t strawberry!” It sure isn’t. Sigh. Ok.

Not the end of the world. We don’t have anything else to do today. Will just go back. To Camp Hill. From Carlisle. I count backwards from ten and load them back up. I can’t take Rhysie’s (the 2 year old) smoothie away now – he’s starving- so I just let him have it in the car, knowing it’s a bad idea. But I’m living on the edge now.

Right as we get on 81 the dreaded words rise up from the very back of the van. “Mommy? I have to go potty.”

What? Now? Can you hold it? “Um… ok.” So I’m coaching him like a taxi driver with a mom in labor in the back. You can do it buddy. Hold it in. You’ve got this. Just a little further!

We make it to 581 and finally to the Carlisle pike exit. He’s not gonna make it. We are going to have to use a bathroom somewhere. But where? I look at my saggy saggy boobs and think about my unwashed hair. I picture my diseased infant in the backseat and my ragamuffin shoeless toddler and preschooler in ill-fitting PJs covered with the usual scrapes and bruises.

Surely if we try to use the bathroom at some establishment on the pike someone will call child services. I look deranged! We look homeless and ill. The children look neglected. This could be it. The end of my family!

Then I have an idea! My gym! We’re so close! The staff have known my boys their whole lives! They know I’m not an unfit mother! It’s all going to be OK!

We race there and I pull up to the curb like I’m out of that movie I can’t think of the name of with the fast cars driving erratically.

But, why… why is it so dark? Did you know that my gym is closed on Wednesday afternoons? Neither did I. But now I do.   It’s ok though! There, at the other end of the parking lot is a grassy area with a tree. Perfect! We swing around and I pull the 4-year-old out of the van as he shouts “I can’t hold it! I can’t hold it” I hold him up and out of the van like he is Simba being presented to his kingdom(bare feet, remember) a he gets back to nature and waters the tree in full view of the Carlisle pike.

That was a close one. Disaster averted. Back on the road and on our way to the strawberry smoothie at the end of the rainbow.

And my gaslight comes on.

SHITFUCKMOTHERFUCKERPISSCOCKDOUCHECANOE

We can make it. We can make it.

Soooooooo we get the smoothie, Roland is happy, and we coast home on fumes. No, my friends, thankfully we did not run out of gas on our way home.

Oh, don’t worry, the above swearingfest wasn’t voice-to-text. I’m switching back and forth.

I unload the kids from the car and Roland is a sticky mess as expected. Rhys, though, appears to have done a pretty good job. There isn’t a drop of smoothie on the front of his pjs.

And then I lift him out of his car seat.

Don’t worry. It’s not poop yet. Just chocolate banana smoothie. I still don’t know how he ONLY got it under his butt. It was a lot though. Soaked his pull-up too.  (Three years later this is still a mystery.)

So I strip him and run upstairs to draw a bath. I know that once again I’m living on the edge, tempting fate. Rhys has been known to pee on the pack the pack and play on occasion when left in his birthday suit.  But I’m on a good lucky streak and I’m feeling confident. Roland didn’t pee in the car and we didn’t run out of gas. And I’ll only be a minute.

A lot can happen in a minute. A lot of poop can happen in a minute. A lot of poop on my nice rug which I can now scrub while I day-drink. Because they jumped in it. Why? Why did they jump in it?

I had to pre-bathe them before their real bath they JUMPED IN IT.

Someone remind me of this next time the kids want a smoothie. I think it’s some uber specific smoothie poop curse. Probably voodoo.