If Gandhi had a dog: Juno's peaceful protest

It was with a strong stoicism that I wished my daughters a fond 'adieu' and encouraged them to start new, successful lives in sunny San Diego. Naturally, they begged to stay but I was firm in my resolve for them to achieve independence: To step out of the shadow of being 'Amy Mosiman's children.'

You can imagine how I partied it up while Brad and the girls were driving west. I was so busy having fun that I almost missed the tell-tale sign of trouble happening right under my nose.

"How's everything else going?" Brad wondered after I called to ask about the proper size metal bracket that could bear the weight of the disco ball I was installing in the kitchen. "Pretty good," I said, "although Juno seems to have developed other interests outside of flinging her dog kibble around the room."

By the time Brad got home, Juno had gone full-fledge fast; abstaining from both food and water. "She's not pooping," I cried. Usually I cry because she won't STOP pooping. Brad observed her trembling back legs and her marked lack of delight over discarded socks and made the call. We were on our way to the veterinarian's office within hours. Fear crept into my heart. My rottweiler typically turns into an obnoxious canine pogo stick the moment she spies her leash but her dull-eyed ambivalence had me convinced that this would be a one-way ride.

Our kind vet listened with astute attention as I listed the physical changes in my droopy-headed dog. He conducted a thorough investigation. No fever. No mass in the belly. Hips good. Lungs sound. With our permission, he did a blood test. And now, he too, was genuinely baffled. "I do have one more thing to tell you," I admitted, a bit embarrassed. I went on to explain how our twenty-two-year old daughter left home a week ago, relocating across the country. The doctor nodded, his gaze returning to the sad dog slouched on the examination room's floor. "I believe that you may have just diagnosed her," he said. Brad and I stared at each other in relieved disbelief. The Mosimans are more rub a little dirt on it people. Fractured wrist? Here's a bag of frozen peas. Sad is just a state of mind. We've quoted M*A*S*H's Colonial Potter's wisdom to the point that it should be embroidered onto a couch pillow: Don't worry. You'll have MUCH more worse days than this. Suck it up, Buttercup.

But now Brad and I had just shelled out $167.00 to discover we had a full-blown case of doggie-depression on our hands. And it broke our heart. We cradled our sweet baby and showered her with loving attention. Brad sat on the kitchen floor (under the newly-installed disco ball) and hand-fed Juno slices of the finest roast beef deli meat that our refrigerator had to offer. She was allowed a rare appearance on our bed. It was a long road to recovery. At least eight only slightly expired slices of roast beef deli meat. Two sleepless nights with an awkward orangutan splayed out on my bed (Juno missed the memo about how her early ancestors lay tightly curled, cave-side, by primordial fires.). But eventually, she fought her way back to us and was soon back to pooping, without reserve, all over our lawn. It was the best $167.00 that we've ever spent.

We got a long way to go, and a short time to get there...

 "You know how you can see state and country borders on your GPS?" Brad asked while driving late at night through the Arizona desert on his way to San Diego. "Yeah," I answered, one eye on the TV as I worked my way through my third bag of Snyder's Honey, Mustard, & Onion pretzel pieces. If I wasn't going to sleep for a week, I might as well give myself gut-wrenching heartburn on top of it. Brad waited until I finished crunching before speaking again. "Well, the Mexican border is less than five miles from here."

I groaned. After a goodbye dinner with my folks, my dad had ushered us all into the restaurant's glass vestibule for a speech. I readied myself for a heart-wrenching message sprinkled with sage advice. He cleared his throat. "You two remember," he said pointing at Savannah and Sydney, "You're less than ten miles from the Mexican border..." "Dad!" I interrupted, "Really!?!?! THIS is the speech you have prepared for your granddaughters? Where is the We're proud of you? The Go get'em! Your send-off is a diatribe about illegal immigration?"" Side-note:  This is NOT a story to recount later three margaritas deep at a Mexican restaurant to your friends. You will get elbowed and shushed. Someone will also probably spit in margarita numero quatre.

As it turns out, my dad wasn't too far off. PLEASE don't ever tell him I admitted that. Having lived the bulk of our lives in Western New York, we Mosimans are very comfortable living along an international border. Oh yes, from time to time, we have to shoo those pesky Canadians back over to their side when they're desperately seeking out a Dunkin' Donuts but we understand. Everyone gets sick of Tim Hortons after awhile. But I guess that the Mexican border is just a little different.

"There are a LOT of helicopters," Brad reported. Hmmm. Must be like those tourists excursions so popular in Niagara Falls. "I think there's a check-point up ahead," Brad said, "I'll call you back." Hmmm. They're probably conducting a safe-vehicle check like they do in New York...making sure your tires are filled with the correct amount of pressure and so on. How thoughtful.

Another little detail to make this quaint story a tad bit more entertaining is to know that one of Sydney's favorite movies is "Smokey and the Bandit." I'm not sure what that actually says about her but, yes, she can sing the ENTIRE song as well. She insisted that this little cross-country road-trip would be just like the movie. Sydney and Savannah riding in the "Bandit" car with Brad, hauling their precious cargo in the moving truck, would be the "Snowman." Well, "Bandit" apparently, was easily waved through the checkpoint, speeding happily off into the distance. "Snowman," in his suspicious moving van, was immediately pulled over. "Open the back, please," came the polite but firm request. Brad, a normally law-abiding person, would have loved to if he had actually had the combination for the recently-purchased $1.37 padlock which, humorously, was in "Bandit's" glove compartment. After finally getting a-hold of his good buddies, Brad spun that lock several times, unsuccessfully. Turns out that "Bandit" included a wrong digit and was now out of cell phone range. Brad, at this point, was pleading for bolt cutters and Savannah was desperately trying to turn the car around to get back to her father but was intimidated by the 100-feet-tall signs screaming, No Emergency Pull-Overs EVER. "Look, there's a place to turn around," Sydney pointed. They stared at the mass of patrol cars, the flash of blinding lights, and the hogtied individuals on the ground and decided to skip that particular turn around. "I'm sure Daddy will be just fine," they assured each other.

After finally getting the lock open, Brad's van was thoroughly inspected and deemed free of invasive houseplants or fresh fruit. Whew. Wait. What?!? According to Brad, it was an agriculture inspection. Thank goodness for the helicopters and zip-ties! See! My dad didn't have anything to worry about, after all. Good thing we lived along the Canadian border for so long so we're used to these things.

If you love something...let it go (and other stupid sayings)

Was it really less than two weeks ago when I was screaming like a lunatic at Sydney for leaving her bobby pins all over the house? And now she's living in San Diego and I'm randomly bursting into tears whenever I find one of her leftover half-filled water bottles in random corners. I spent all week actively avoiding the coffee stain she left (as usual) by the keurig machine; finally washing it away today as tears streamed down my face.

This was not my finest hour. Apparently, I was not destined to play the part of the benevolent matriarch, bestowing valuable wisdom to my nestlings as I encouraged them to spread their wings and fly. Instead, I chased after them with scissors, determined to trim their flight feathers and ground their flight. It was June Cleaver meets Psycho.

Savannah, to her credit, left in increments. A summer in Alaska. A college apartment less than an hour away. Then Connecticut where I quickly learned that a seven hour drive is NOTHING when you want to see your firstborn. But suddenly, from out of nowhere , San Diego. And this time, she was taking my baby with her.

For days, I kept the news to myself. I didn't tell anyone because I COULDN'T tell anyone. And when I did, tentatively, start telling those closest to me, I quickly realized that I needed to provide them with a helpful script. I tested it out on my friend Geri first:

Me: I am about to tell you something and I need you to respond in one of two possible ways. Option One is where I tell you my news and you say,"Wow! That's so interesting! Here's a Pepsi." Option Two is where you respond, "How exciting! Here's a Snickers bar." I'm not picky. It could also be a Twix or a Peppermint Patty. In a pinch, I'd take a Kit Kat. Also, if we weren't in school, you could substitute the Pepsi for a margarita. Are you ready?

Geri nodded.

Choking back sobs, I told her and she stared at me in silence. After a minute, I asked, "Aren't you going to say something?" "I don't know what to say," she exclaimed. "I gave you a script," I shouted. "All I have is Orange Crush," she said sadly, pushing the half-empty bottle toward me.

The script protected me (and others). Helpful people would try to bolster my spirits by saying how proud I must be of my girls (I am), how brave and adventurous they were (I agree), and how every successful parent must inevitably face the moment where their offspring moves away (No shit...oops, sorry). These well-intended phrases provoked in me an unspeakable and murderous rage where I would feel the need to verbally (or even physically) eviscerate the speaker.

Others would look upon me with soft, sad, compassionate eyes. Offer a gentle touch to my arm or shoulder. Rub my back. Take my hand. A warm hug. Trigger the water-works. And add more fuel to my fire.

Savannah was very pragmatic about the move. "Mom, it's a five hour flight. That's less time than it took to drive to Connecticut." But it didn't help. It was the wrong ocean. Wrong timezone. I now had to depend on a middleman to get me to my babies. As I cried into my pillow into the wee hours, I tried to have a tough talk with myself. "For pete's sake, Amy," I scolded, "It's not death. It's just California." Unfortunately, I don't have a great deal of respect for the not-so Golden State. San Diego has more fleas per capita than any other U.S. city. Gas in California is eighty cents higher than the rest of the nation. We all know that it's going to flop off into the Pacific any second. Why would anyone want to live there?

4:30 in the morning came much too quickly. Kisses delivered. Vehicles loaded up with those I love the most. I stood by the stop sign at the end of our road, sending a not-so-subliminal message as I waved at the headlights as they disappeared into the darkness. It was then that I felt it. The Shift. I had once been hauling something heavy in my truck and a spring had disengaged, causing the back-end to shift alarmingly. I felt that now. My role as a mother, my very identity, just shifted. I stumbled into the house, scrambling for my ringing cellphone. From the time they were little, every family vacation began with Brad annoying us as he played Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again." And now that song was playing in my ear, with Sydney and Savannah singing along. My legs could no longer hold me and I sank to the dining room floor and gasped the lyrics along with them. "We love you," they shouted.

 I love you, too.


More stupid sayings:


 “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
– Herman Hesse

“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.”– Raymond Lindquist

"Hey, I have a little favor..."~Reasons to avoid Joan

The process evolved slowly from "I'm going to sell all my stuff and just pack what fits in my car" to a small pull-behind trailer ("What about Sydney's stuff, Savannah? She, at least, needs to bring her mattress." "She can sleep on a cot," Savannah declared.) until calmer heads prevailed ("How much weight can this trailer hold, Savannah?" "One thousand pounds," she reported. "How much does your car weigh, Savannah?" Long pause. "Fifteen hundred pounds?") until Savannah, who is really good at math and physics, settled on a small moving truck.

With this in mind, my friend Joan, who may or may not be good in geography, made a small request. "I am calling on twenty-five years of friendship," she said as we split a fish fry on the night before my girls were to pack their lives into a truck to travel cross-country in a futile effort to finally put some distance between themselves and their loving mother. I squirted lemon on my fish and asked for extra tartar sauce. "What do you need?" I asked, mentally preparing myself to update her resume or offer her an organ. "Is there any way that Brad and the girls could swing by Soldotna on their way to San Diego?" "Soldotna, Arizona?" I asked around a mouthful of fish. "Is there room in the truck?" she wondered. "We'll find a way," I assured her before turning to the waitress to order lemon meringue pie.


"Soldotna, Arizona?" Brad asked as he maneuvered the moving van from Connecticut to our house. "It's a treasured family keepsake," I explained, "It's a favor for Joan." The conversation, for all intents and purposes, was over. It was a favor for Joan.

Sydney and I headed over to Joan's mom to pick up the treasured family keepsake that weighed three hundred pounds and had a rocking mechanism designed to guillotine unsuspecting fingers. While we watched Joan's nephew Lane effortlessly wrestle it onto the pick-up, I was busy wrestling Joan's petite mother as she insisted that I accept payment for our efforts. I think that woman could have loaded the treasured family keepsake by herself...she is strong. An hour later, I had a pocket full of money and Sydney had thrown out her back, not-so-effortlessly, wrestling the treasured family keepsake into the moving van.

Joan and I followed the progress of the Mosiman Family Moving Van as it crossed the nation (Imagine the map featured as Indiana Jones traversed the globe); stopping first in Mason City, Iowa for a fond farewell to the grandparents, shooting over to KC for some barbecue, pausing to peek at the Petrified Forest before swinging over for the treasured family keepsake exchange in Flagstaff. Whew! What some people won't do for Joan! An organ exchange might have been easier!

Sydney's "I'm hopeless" chest

As bright and beautiful and creatively talented as Sydney is, her gifts do not necessarily translate in the kitchen. Don't get me wrong, Baby Girl ROCKS the microwave but we worry that her inner Julia Child will forever remain in an infantile state of Spaghetti-Os and boxed mac-n-cheese.

But there's nothing like leaving the nest to encourage the expansion of one's culinary wings. And, as it turns out, our friend Amy had been busy squirreling away kitchenware for Miss Sydney in anticipation of this very moment.

We got off to a sort of rocky start as Sydney began unpacking the boxes upon boxes that Amy had
brought to the house. "This is the weirdest iron that I have ever seen," Sydney declared. There was a brief moment of silence where Amy and my friend Joan judged my ability to mother my child before, in between raucous bursts of laughter, it was explained to my clueless daughter that what she was holding was a mixer. Realizing that I could be brought up on charges of educational neglect, Amy turned her attention to tutoring Sydney. "This coming from a woman whose award-winning chili included a super-secret ingredient of prunes," I argued, feeling betrayed. And a little ashamed (I didn't know it was a mixer either.).

Joan joined the ranks of the confused as we regarded a slender plastic tray that Sydney pulled from a box. "It's a colander," Amy squealed with delight. We just stared at it. It was a tray. But no. With a snap of Amy's wrists, a colander accordioned out of the middle. "It's great because it straddles the sink and is a snap to store," Amy announced. Joan and I were amazed as the colander disappeared like a rabbit in a hat. "I want one of those," Joan admitted.

I sighed when the crystal glasses appeared. "Thirty years of marriage and I'm still drinking out of plastic tumblers," I whispered to Joan. Enough was enough. "This is NOT how you're suppose to start out," I told Amy, jealously eyeing up Sydney's crepe-maker. "I was poor. Paper plates were a luxury." Amy nodded in understanding. "Jeff and I were so poor that we ate salsa toast." I glared at her. "That's called bruschetta," I snapped, "and kings and queens dine on bruschetta. That's not poor. I was poor. I was so poor that we ate saltine nachos. We couldn't even afford pre-shredded cheese." Joan rolled her eyes as Sydney, digging in another box, triumphantly pulled out a grater. "I'll expect saltine nachos when I visit," Joan told her. We concluded our visit with a toast to Sydney. Sans salsa.