Do you worry a lot about what other people might think —

About you?

Have you ever stopped to consider the cost?

It was one of the scariest moments of my entire life.

I looked up to heaven and I prayed to God. I promised Him that if He’d just help me out with this one, I’d never do anything so stupid ever again.

When Gussie was so dead set against it, I suggested that we do it anyway. I believe that her exact words were:

“If you do this you will be weird dog lady and I will have to act like I don’t know you”

I should have listened to her but –

Who knew?

Who knew that we would be mistakenly misdirected to the 1:00 showing when we were on time for the show that we came for at 1:40?

Who knew that we would then be forced to sandwich ourselves in between two people who obviously pride themselves in following the rules, shooting us dirty looks from both sides — alternately.

WHO KNEW!!!!

Who knew that the movie Marie Antoinette would feature barking dogs?!! And how was I supposed to know that dogs barking in a movie would inspire Jake, secretly tucked away in his bag —

TO BARK BACK!!!! At the screen!!! In a packed movie theater!!! With people watching Marie Antoinette!!!!

“Please God! Please!! Just shut his little dog mouth right now!! PLEASE! Oh God! Help us please…”,

I pleaded as I stared into the whites of Gussie’s horrified eyes, sweat dripping from both our brows.

“This is exactly what I get”,

I thought, as I hurled an entire bag of doggy treats into Jake’s doggy bag, in hopes that he would be shocked (with glee) into silence, too busy eating to bark.

Whew! It worked only –

Who knew that his crunching on the snacks would be louder than his bark? Cue the dirty look from the left. Cue the one from the right…

Who knew?

Gussie knew, that’s who. And she tried to warn me, but NO!!!! I am the woman who brings my own pears into restaurants and adds them to my salad myself, remember? So, dog-in-a-bag-at-a-movie, fits right into my idea of what could work…

What can I say? I’m not proud? I am a horrible mother?

How about:

This brings new meaning to the phrase “Doggy Bag”…?

They laughed so hard that they cried –

is what she told me.

She told me that she was at the beauty salon on Friday morning, getting her hair done when in walked –

The Man. The man with the afro on his head.

She told me that, because she was sure that she and her hair dresser were on exactly the same wave length, she felt safe to very discreetly whisper to him from way under her breath:

“No one, but NO ONE over the age of 25 should ever be caught dead trying to wear an afro.”

To which her hair dresser, smiling at The Man who is smiling and waving back, politely replies:

“Too late.”

It is really one of my favorite moments, hands down…

It is 6:30 in the morning as I type away at my computer. Auguste has jsut handed me a cup of coffee like he does every morning about this time.

That moment between when he hands me that hot cup and when I take my first sip is just priceless to me –

for so many reasons…

Do you have a hero? Is someone’s hero YOU?

Why would someone call you hero? What would make somebody yours?

C-O-U-R-A-G-E.

Although the qualities that make up a hero are many, one fundamental characteristic of heroism is undeniably

Courage.

There I was caught in the act.

It was one morning last week that we were already running late when Gussie announces to me casually, as we are halfway to the subway station, that she has forgotten her wallet…

which means that she has forgotten her subway pass, which meant that she now has to squeeze throught the turnstile with me because I refuse to pay a fare when kids ride for free anyway, which means that I am –

extremely annoyed!

I could go on but I won’t…

Later, when I picked her up after school, she had the nerve to get mad at me because I didn’t remember to bring her wallet with me when I came to pick her up. Now she had the nerve to be annoyed.

As I swipe my card, Gussie steps through without waiting for me. Panic stricken, I try to hop thropugh before it is too late, before I have to go back thropugh the hassl;e of standing in that long line to buy a pass that I don’t really ahve to buy because she is a kid…

In the process of trying to squeeze through with Gussie, I get stuck –

straddling the turnstile. Are you imagining?

Right at the height of afterschool rush hour when who knows who could be witnessing, not only the fact that I am trying to slip my daughter through (which, by the way, I am not totally convinced is stealing) but now I am stuck on a moving turnstile with only micro-seconds to figure out how to get myself out of this “position”.

With the grace and agility of Edwin Moses I fling my leg over that turnstile and fear of prosecution is the only thing that keeps me from tackling Gussie to the ground.

Today, I am still sore and I am convinced that Gussie did that on purpose.

Today, what I want someone to tell me is –

At what point does a mother earn the right to wear the cloak of dignity?

Today, I shudder to think about what might have happend had I not been able to channel Edwin Moses to the scene…

He told me that, all of a sudden,

he realized that he had never given himself permission to dream.

That is what Auguste told me one morning, awhile ago, as we were making up the bed. Something clicked and he had this epiphany that he had never really given himslef permission to have what he wanted.

Later on that day I overheard him talking to Gussie about the importance of dreaming and daring to believe that you can have what you want, even if it seems impossible. Excited, Gussie found a picture of a dog on the Internet and saved it to use as her screen saver so that every time she turned her computer on she would be reminded of the dog she dreamed of having. After months and months that screen saver wasn’t even anything that she noticed anymore.

Gussie just got a new dog. His name is Jake and she loves him. About a day or two after she got him I was passing by her computer and noticed her screen saver, the same screen saver that I had been looking at day in and day out for months. But I noticed it this day because the dog on the computer screen looked just like Jake!

Gussie couldn’t believe that, without even trying, just because one day months ago she dared to believe, she got Jake.

He had never given himself permission to dream but he was going to make darn sure that his girl got a big head start…

“Why don’t you stop and look me over! Am I the same girl you used to know?”

A friend shared with me, not too long ago, about an operation that her husband had undergone, to correct a lifelong eye problem. While his procedure had gone well and the result was magnificent — afterward, he was still experiencing himself as “defective goods”. Even though he looked beautiful and better than ever, he was still relating to himself as if nothing on the outside had changed at all.

That’s because nothing on the inside had changed — at all.

My friend’s husband had always known himself to be — broken, it is who he had become for himself. Somewhere long ago; somewhere deep down inside of himself, he made a decision that something was wrong and that he needed to be fixed. The thing is, you can fix yourself up on the outside all you want, but until you are willing to…