CoAbode

'Nice Girls Can Be Naughty': A series of articles, By Erica Miner
Excerpted From Erica's Novel, Travels With My Lovers:

My thoughts briefly drifted again to Eric, whom, I feared, would judge me harshly if he had been aware of today’s events. Within a matter of minutes, however, Regina and I had entered the hotel lobby; and as we were rushing to the elevator to rejoin my precious but mischievous son, I glanced for a brief instant at the lovely drawing of ancient Florence, which hung on the lobby wall. It was labeled “Fiorenza” – very evocative. But I still preferred the contemporary Italian version of the name: Firenze – the city of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, the city with which I had fallen in love at first sight, the city whose heady atmosphere and burnished roofs embodied for me the phrase “Italia.”

As we sped down the hall and to our room, I looked down at the delicate cameo locket dangling between my breasts, and I vowed that I would someday give it to Regina for her unwitting bravery that day. As soon as she was old enough, I would say: “to remember our time in ‘Fiorenza.’ ” The wee one must have known I was thinking about her, because she turned to me and gave me the biggest, most grateful tired smile, as if to say, “I don’t want to go anywhere ever again.”

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Personal Narrative By Erica Miner:

"What takes precedence over a mother’s paranoia about what someone else – in this case, my hubby – thinks about her? The reality of her children’s needs, of course. Nothing was more important to me at that moment than having living proof that my son was safe: neither paranoid thoughts of the kids’ dad nor evidence of the beauty of the city of Florence, which had inspired me from the moment I set eyes on it. I was focused on one thing only: seeing that Julian was okay. As I reflect on this experience in my long-ago life, it occurs to me that a certain bonding took place between me and my daughter at that time. Her patience and forbearance, way beyond her tender years, helped me realize – and appreciate – what a trooper she was. She remained so during much of this fascinating but daunting voyage to Italy. She nurtured me when, at age 5, her father left us to cope on our own. And she, now grown up and on her own, is still that generous with her caring to this day. Where would we all be without the compassion and support of our moms?"

Posted by CoAbode at 9:47 AM | Permalink

'Nice Girls Can Be Naughty': A series of articles, By Erica Miner
Excerpted From Erica's Novel, Travels With My Lovers:

Apparently so. The concierge answered my frenzied call from the cop’s phone.

“Yes, my friend Julian, he is here.” I could almost see the concierge’s broad smile as he spoke. “I gave him the key to the room,” he continued.

Relieved, but a bit embarrassed, I thanked the police chief and smiled at his squadra, who smiled back. Dragging a hungry and whiny Regina - who, being the bright-eyed early riser in the family, had been up since the crack of dawn. I hurried back to the hotel, ready to thoroughly chew out Julian – though I was secretly proud that he had negotiated the confusing streets successfully and without mishap. Thank God Florence was small - a lot smaller than New York.

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Personal Narrative By Erica Miner:

"Okay, how many of us have had this immense ambivalence about how bright our kids are? When they outsmart us, it hurts our egos but makes us proud all the same. It’s a sign that they’re growing up, which in itself causes conflict in our minds and hearts. We want them to stay little forever, yet we also want them to become independent and productive citizens of society. It’s one of the reasons parenthood is the most difficult job on earth. Does it get any harder than this?"

Posted by CoAbode at 9:41 AM | Permalink

'Nice Girls Can Be Naughty': A series of articles, By Erica Miner
Excerpted From Erica's Novel, Travels With My Lovers:

Meanwhile, impressed as I was with how seriously Italians seemed to consider the disappearance of a child, the reality was that no further progress had been made in the search for my little guy. In reality, Julian was a resourceful New York City kid and could probably hold his own on the streets of any city. But I was still fraught with anxiety, all the more since I was plagued with fears about what Eric would think if he knew about the situation. I loved my husband dearly, and I didn’t want to worry him needlessly, but I had no particular desire to incur his wrath. Finally, in desperation, I had asked the policeman in charge to phone our hotel, just in case my son had somehow managed to find his way back there: was Julian that clever?

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Personal Narrative By Erica Miner:

"Talk about mixed feelings! Was I just kidding myself that my seven-year-old’s New York street smarts would serve him well enough to help him survive in a foreign city? Was it wishful thinking on my part? Adding to this was my worry about what my husband would say when he found out, countered by my inner sense of injustice, which made me ready to blame it all on his absence. To say I was confused would be an understatement. Crisis does that to you, at least that’s been my experience. Has that been yours as well?"

Posted by CoAbode at 9:37 AM | Permalink

'Nice Girls Can Be Naughty': A series of articles, By Erica Miner
Excerpted From Erica's Novel, Travels With My Lovers:

I watched the bustling police activity all around me - a response to my impassioned plea to the Carabinieri, in my hit-and-miss Italian - to help me locate my son. I could barely describe Julian without bursting into tears. I was so flustered, in fact, that I gave the Police Chief my maiden name by mistake, then had to correct myself. I must really be overwrought, I imagined. This was very unlike me. After almost nine years of marriage, I was as wedded to my married name as I was to the robust, hair-curling espressos that Eric made for me every morning.

As the hours dragged on, my sunburned arms felt as if they’d fall off from having to carry ill-tempered little Regina all around the Palazzo Vecchio. (Of course I couldn’t blame her - what kid her age wouldn’t be grumpy, traipsing through the Uffizi Gallery for two hours with her fanatic art-lover mom?) And in the midst of all the confusion, which was all the more so since it was Italian confusione, the poor kid’s nose had started bleeding all over my shoulder and onto the sidewalk, completely annihilating a fledgling street-Michelangelo’s masterpiece-in-progress. I handed him a five thousand lire note to start him off on his next one. He grumbled, “Grazie,” and we fled before the crimson tide engulfed what was left of his artistic endeavor.

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Personal Narrative By Erica Miner:

"At this point, I was in a dreamlike fog, divided into two moms: one who was having an almost out-of-body experience watching what was going on around her, and the other, who was panicked beyond control. This dichotomy was a reflection of the defense mechanism we as moms develop in order to cope with crisis situations with out kids. It just would not do to lose my composure, but it was almost impossible not to. Again, I let drop a subtle hint of the nagging doubt in my mind about my husband’s absence. There must have been some ambivalence about him for me to flail about my married name.

Meanwhile, as all of you with more than one child are aware, the non-missing child needed attention as well. This passage brings to mind what my brother-in-law had warned me about after he had his second child. “Two kids are four times as much work as one, not twice as much,” he advised me. Not that it prevented me from having another kid after my son. But it hit home as I tried to handle the grief and panic of searching for my lost child while simultaneously dealing with the needs of the one who clung to my shoulder at the time. I was besieged with guilt: for subjecting a toddler to the intricacies of a renowned art museum in which only I was interested, and even more so for losing her older brother. Why are moms always so torn? Do you think it’s because we’re always multitasking to Herculean proportions, trying to deal with so many things at once?"

Posted by CoAbode at 9:32 AM | Permalink

'Nice Girls Can Be Naughty': A series of articles, By Erica Miner
Excerpted From Erica's Novel, Travels With My Lovers:

He’d always seemed to be a mirrored image of his dad – “little Eric,” we sometimes called him – and I’d always thought that his affection for me reflected the genuine admiration and supportiveness that Eric always demonstrated towards me. But lately, my husband had gotten less attentive; and strangely, Julian had filled the gap, vacillating between an annoying clinginess and a fierce, unpredictable independence.

I tried to remember how I had felt at his age and suddenly flashed on the exhilarating freedom I’d felt when I had put my own mother through a similar torment. Too impatient to wait for her, I walked home alone from my urban grade school, crossing a busy, dangerous thoroughfare all by myself. When I reached home I found her, head bowed over the kitchen table, crying bitter tears of worry and grief. It was one of the few times I ever saw my mother cry. Now, I supposed, it was my turn to be fraught with anxiety over my own missing child.

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Personal Narrative By Erica Miner:

"For the first time in my life as a mom, thousands of miles and an ocean away from home, I was experiencing the burdens, not only of being solely responsible for my kids’ welfare but the nagging feelings of neglect from my husband. Why is it that moms always suffer the brunt of these types of neglect? It seemed that “little Eric” had taken it upon himself to be grown up far beyond his years in wanting to make up for his father’s lack of attention towards me; but underneath it all, my little boy was still just that – a kid, not mature enough to divest himself of his need for mom’s nurturing. And I was the one who had to make up for any lack from his father’s attention, either towards me or towards my son.

Nonetheless, it seemed to me, as I flailed over the sudden disappearance of my kid, that most mothers seem to experience at least one incident of temporary insanity when a child suddenly goes missing. There is no greater test to one’s mettle as a mom than facing the possibility that something terrible might have happened to our kid; or worse, that we might be at fault. Haven’t we all been through this, at a shopping mall or a theme park or… dare I say it – on some kind of foreign turf?"

Posted by CoAbode at 9:27 AM | Permalink

'Nice Girls Can Be Naughty': A series of articles, By Erica Miner
Excerpted From Erica's Novel, Travels With My Lovers:

By mid-afternoon Florence had become, to my overloaded senses, a bewildering maze of crisscrossing streets and piazzas choked with tourists. Then, when the kids and I had finally got our bearings (I was feeling calm and we were on our way to a bar to reward ourselves with some gelati) the unimaginable happened. My son, who had insisted on chasing pigeons through the Piazza della Signoria, disappeared; and suddenly the phrase "sightseeing" took on a whole new - and frightening - meaning.

Julian was only eight - what made him think he could just take off like that, in the middle of an unfamiliar, foreign city? One minute he was alternately pursuing the ubiquitous birds and fidgeting impatiently while five-year-old Regina and I admired the imposing statues in the colonnade; and the next minute he was out of sight. Something was definitely going on with him.

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Personal Narrative By Erica Miner:

"This is every mom's nightmare, single or otherwise. To add to my distress and guilt over wanting some much-needed time for myself, now I had to deal with my terror over what might have happened to my son. He had always had a mind of his own (how many of us have recognized this in our own progeny?) But he was my firstborn; and I was impossibly young and didn't have enough mothering experience to know if this kind of behavior was 'normal' for his age or not. I could only speculate that he was either trying to establish his own personality, or that his actions were a sign of something else troubling him. One way or other, the pressure was mounting on this poor beleaguered mom. How many of us can relate to that?"

Posted by CoAbode at 9:20 AM | Permalink

'Nice Girls Can Be Naughty': A series of articles, By Erica Miner
Excerpted From Erica's Novel, Travels With My Lovers:

I was beside myself. Admittedly, I was hopeless at maps – this had always been my husband Eric’s job – and suddenly I found myself in my first European city without a clue as to where I was heading. Although I wasn’t a single mom, it certainly felt that way, with my two tykes in tow and a husband bailing out at the last minute to stay in New York. Like a relentless mama sheepdog, I pushed and prodded my precious kids along the cracked cobblestone sidewalks. Where was the shopping cart when you needed it? Or the red wagon, for that matter? I think there comes a time in every mother's life, when you just want to say, what was I thinking?

Don't get me wrong, I loved being a mom. But much as I treasured my two adorable little cohorts, I was beginning to be desperate for some exploration time alone. Julian and Regina, thank God, were not hyper kids; but they were both up for adventure and kept me going, going, going.

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Personal Narrative By Erica Miner:

"Although I wasn't a single mom, it certainly felt that way,...
Maybe I was preparing myself psychologically. I was already feeling self-doubt about the reasons why I was going this alone with my kids. My inherently suspicious nature was at war with my desire to be optimistic about my marriage. At this point in my life, I had thought that everything was going great with my hubby and with my kids. But a little voice, which I tried to ignore, was nagging at me. Just why had the kids' dad stayed home and sent me off with them alone?

And I couldn't help thinking, "If this is what it feels like to be a single mom, I don't think I could handle it." We are all familiar with the difficulties of handling kids on our own, whether in a home environment or in a traveling situation. We adore our children, but we all need our 'alone time.' This dichotomy causes many of us to feel guilty, or at least ambivalent, about having these needs. I could definitely count myself as one of this group. And I was really, really stressed-out to say the least. Well, who wouldn't be?”

Posted by CoAbode at 8:52 AM | Permalink