I BLAME THE royal wedding. Though I was far from obsessed, let’s face it, the news of Kate and Wills was inescapable. Is that why my daughter started bringing home English history tomes from the school library?

In fact, my girl’s fascination with British royalty started last year, when she and her best friend determined to invite the current monarch to a special Valentine’s Day tea. Though that dream is as yet unrealized, my girl, in true fashion, hasn’t given up.

Her latest focus is arguably the British monarchy’s biggest-ever sensation, the king of appetites of all varieties, Henry VIII, his many wives, and most of all, that seductive cipher, Anne Boleyn. We’re in the thick of the story now, as Henry moves earth and heaven to get his way, to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. Both kids are fascinated by the dynamics of power and love at play in this story, even the much-sanitized version we’re reading, which omits, for example, the affair sister Mary Boleyn had with Henry before Anne caught his eye.

Theories abound on Anne–witchcraft! extra digits! deathbed writings!– making me feel that in her day, she must have been the focus of incessant gossip and attention, much like Duchess Catherine of Cambridge now, or Princess Diana before her. And even now, she inspires countless biographies, novels and films. Is it the royalty? The Reformation? Or just then, as now, the idea of a girl capturing the heart of a king?

My girl, meanwhile, likes the idea of lavish jewels heaped upon her, banners flying at jousts, and rides in a carriage drawn by flashy steeds. But the idea of wedding a king, past or future?  She pronounced on the morning of the wedding her definitive take on the matter. “I don’t  want to be a princess. I don’t really care about princesses, except Jasmine. But when are they going to smooch?”

I think my level headed daughter has it right: study the royals, their place in fascinating histories, sure–but cast your ambitions elsewhere.

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WASP BY BIRTH, non-religious by choice, I nonetheless welcome the religious holidays that herald the start of spring. While my kids are counting down to the Easter Bunny, I’m thrilled to celebrate Passover tonight.

Passover has a special meaning for me, never mind my lack of faith or even Jewish roots. It’s a holiday when I celebrated the family I’ve formed over the years, from friends and children and shared experiences. When I lived in L.A., I spent nearly every Passover with my sister-friend Chris and her family…which is why this morning, I found the picture above in my email inbox. Chris’ email said “Brisket ‘before’ Picture.” I’ll just title it, “The Brisket I Won’t Be Eeating”.

Though I’ll miss my family-of-friends in L.A., though I’m lucky to be joining new friends for tonight’s celebration…and I’m bringing my favorite Kosher-for-Passover chocolate cake. I found the recipe thanks to Martha Stewart, and it’s a part of my ever-evolving sister, Passover story. I hope you’ll read, and enjoy, and if you need a seder dessert, cook along with me. Zissen Pesach to all.

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BEVERLY CLEARY, AUTHOR of arguably the best exasperating little sister book every written, turns 95 today. Do you remember Ramona? Whether you have children or not, now’s a good time to refresh your memory.

Ramona, fanciful younger sister of Beatrice (better known as Beezus) Quimby, is one of contemporary kid lit’s most enduring, and award-winning characters. In Ramona the Pest, Beezuz and Ramona and 10 more titles, Ramona’s flights of imagination often turn others’ lives topsy-turvy…just like every real-world little sister I’ve ever known.

Cleary has said in interviews that her inspiration came from her own life, and the lives of children she knew. And as the New York Times reported just this week, Cleary in turn inspired at least one other beloved children’s author, Judy Blume. Do you remember reading Ramona? Are your kids reading these books, too?

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THE ROCK, AKA my sweet daughter, turned 6 last week. She asked for a simple gift, but her request turned our family on our collective ear.

More than one of my daughter’s kindergarten girlfriends have pierced ears, and she’s anxious to join the club. I have no problem with piercing, ears anyway. My own were pierced for my seventh birthday, causing no end of ire directed towards my own indulgent mama. She still remembers classmates’ moms calling her, horrified at her letting me blaze that particular trail.

The Rock is drawn to all thing sparkly, so the more jewelry the better is her motto. Why wouldn’t she want her ears adorned? All was well with her request, which she made driving home one afternoon from school, until her brother joined the conversation.

“I want to pierce my ears.” This is also no surprise: the kid wants to be a rock star, and as he plays two instruments, was Gene Simmons for Halloween, and sports the coolest wardrobe in the 4th grade (think skinny jeans and rock ‘n roll T shirts,) I think he’s on his way. I’m good with his alt-ambitions, just as I’d be fine if he developed a passion for accounting. (He’s a math whiz, too.) But the ear piercing request, coming from him, stopped me short.

Mind you, when I met my husband, he had long hair and an earring in each ear. He’s cut the hair shorter and shorter over the years, and hasn’t worn an earring since, oh, 1999, but there are no knee-jerk macho reactions to pierced male ears happening in this family. So why my hesitation? Why did I tell my kid we’d have to think about it a bit before signing him up for the needle, too?

I realized that what made me hesitate was my fear of what others would say about an ear-pierced 9 year old boy. We live in a very tolerant community, by and large, where the prevailing ethos is either “It’s all good”, or, for the more conservative, “Mind your own beeswax.” But what about outside our little small town bubble? As I said to my husband, the first kid at camp who made fun of my kid for wearing earrings would have to deal with one enraged mama bear–not a pretty scenario. And so, I took a deep breath and started to explain, with a kind of heavy heart, the idea of a double standard, the idea that yes, it is sometimes different for boys and girls. As the daughter of a first-wave feminist (ERA marches, anyone? Oh, yeah, I was there in 1978) this was anathema to me.

My son, though hardly pleased, understood my concerns, and agreed to revisit the issue in a couple of  years. He has yet to give up on the idea of shaving his gorgeous locks into a mohawk…though we’ve tabled that one until at least high school. What say you, sisters? Have you ever felt yourself betraying your own beliefs to protect your kid? Did I do the right thing? I don’t know; I’m still waiting for my copy of the handbook.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

I didn’t start him down this rocker path–he found it on his own– but I love music, too, and I did take him to his first concert this summer. Our roadtrip to Saratoga to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was really a blatant nostalgia trip for me: Tom Petty was the first musician I saw in concert (1981, Alpine Valley, Wisconsin. I was 14. My super trooper of a dad drove me and my best friend for hours and waited for us in the car the whole time.)

My trip with the River was only a partial success. New experiences are anathema to him, and intimidated by the crowds and noise, he asked to leave after six songs…but later said the night was one of the best ever. His love for Tom Petty, though, after an initial first blush of infatuation, has waned. If his mother loves the man’s music that much, he might not be cool, after all. But there’s hope for us. Last week, noodling through my iPod on the way to school, the River stopped spinning the flywheel on Patti Smith. “Because the Night” thrummed us to life in the Subaru.

“Who’s she?” he asked. “Rock goddess, poetess, memoirist, empress of all that is original!” I wanted to shriek. But I breathed instead. “She was a punk pioneer. Check her out.” Playing it cool is always the best policy with my kid. We drove on, thinking about love in the dark in the bright shock of a sunny white January morning.

“Mom?” He had been silent through three songs. “Could you take me to see her in concert?”

Oh, yeah. I twisted my arm to the back seat for a high five.

If you love Patti like I do, be sure to check out this video gem I unearthed last year. And tell me–how do you bridge the gap between your kids’ passions and your own?

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ALL GOOD THINGS must come to an end. It’s a cliché for a reason. True of this year’s bounteous harvest, and of our ongoing blog-fest cooking marathon. But with the ultimate foodie holiday on the horizon, I’ve got some good things to give thanks for, and to share.

When your life turns upside down, either by choice or by force, it can take a long time, years even, to see what’s been transformed, and what’s remained the same. When my family and I left Los Angeles nearly four years ago for our now-not-so-new home in the (very) rural Hudson Valley, we were able to anticipate a lot of the changes. But one I didn’t foresee was that my Thanksgiving traditions, ones I’d held to perhaps a little too tightly, would fall away without my even noticing.

You see, my children had to remind me last week that yes, in fact, this Thanksgiving would be the very first one we’d spend dining, myself at the culinary helm, in our now-not-so-new house. After years of hanging on like a solo mariner in a gale, I’d let go of the lines. Not one but three different sets of friends have hosted us over these last few years. I helped, I brought, I ate, but every time,  I was decidedly not in control of anything from menu to table setting to guest list. And guess what? I survived. (Should we take it personally that none of them have invited us back? God, I hope not.)

This year, I’m back in charge, at least nominally. The turkey, from a new and dear friend’s farm, is in the fridge. I’ll be hunting for local sweet potatoes today, and hitting my favorite bakery for bread for stuffing, too. I haven’t yet figured out exactly what’s going in my turkey brine, nor which stuffing recipe I’ll use. (For years, and years and YEARS: I sent invitations. In the MAIL. I made and remade guest lists. And my menu? It never varied. Not a whit.)

Is it better this way, loose and a little serendipitous? Yes, and no. Is it different? Yes, and no. But we’ve found our way through all the changes to a place that suits us. I’m as excited as ever for my feast, but a lot more relaxed about what the day will bring. It’s a nice metaphor, really, for the pace of rural life, where you are constantly butting up against the unexpected, the inconvenient, and the just plain absurd, most attributable to natural, not human, capriciousness.

So this year, I’ll raise a glass to the unexpected, and a newfound ability to embrace its gifts as well as its challenges. What better way to appreciate the bounty that feeds us?

(Need more substantial Thanksgiving guidance? Be sure to check out some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes here, here and here. Need to relax? Check out our best-ever picks for Thanksgiving movies. And whatever you do, be sure to visit my fellow Fall Fest bloggers for this last week of goodness.)

Alana of Eating from the Ground Up on Turkeys and Apple

Caron of San Diego Foodstuff : Bounty to Be Grateful For in the Form of Community (And Pecan Pie.)

Liz and the crew at the Food Network on Thanksgiving Bounty We’re Grateful For.

Jennifer at The Gilded Fork on gratitude.

Caroline at The Wright Recipe on Butternut Squash Biscuits.

Tara at Teas and Cookies on surprisingly wonderful stuffed pumpkin.

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WHAT IS IT about the human condition that we can never treasure the age we’re in? This problem is not just confined to rapidly sagging, middle-aged people (like me). It strikes our progeny, too, though sometimes in unexpected ways.

In the last week, my son has spent countless school commutes waxing near-poetic about the impending arrival of his driver’s license. He cannot bear it, cannot wait. He’s 9. “Why?” I asked, not really needing an answer (who can’t remember this feeling of “hurry up! grow up!”?) “Why are you so anxious to be older?” “Because then, I won’t have to listen to you. I’ll have more freedom.” Sigh. Apparently I was too slack in my bedtime reading. If I’d been more diligent, we would have been sure to read this gem, from that great sage, Winnie the Pooh: “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” My River, so sadly, is in a great rush.

Meanwhile, my daughter, at 5, has entered yet another regression session. They’re common as kids enter school and transition away from all-mommy, all-the-time. No big deal. But, precocious thing that she is, she’s now got the ability to articulate her feelings, along with the usual temper tantrum mode of self-expression. And what is she expressing? “I want to be a BABY!”

“Why?” I asked. “Why don’t you want to be 5? Isn’t it fun being 5?” (All evidence suggests that despite the inevitable injustices and slights, her life at 5 is indeed, FUN.) She shook her head and buried her head in her dad’s shoulder. (Though she melts my heart, too, he’s the big softie in these moments.) “Babies get held. All.The.Time.”

This was certainly true in our family, home to colicky babies who needed cuddling and bouncing all day and night to keep from crying.

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I CAN’T SAY I wasn’t warned. Sheilaa Hite, our lovely in-house (in-blog?) astrologer-extraordinaire, told us all to be careful.

With Mercury in retrograde for nearly a full month (over soon, thank goodness, on September 12) Sheilaa counseled us to avoid all manner of life’s more challenging moment: don’t sign contracts she said, postpone big ticket purchases. Parenting though? That’s a challenge you can’t postpone, once you’ve signed on the dotted line.

So far, since this astrological meltdown, we’ve had screaming, tears, and skinned knees in near-constant rotation. Add to that the broken lamps, melted electrical circuits, dead air conditioning and mysteriously-disappearing internet connection, and I feel like my mercury experience is complete.

The River and Rock even seem to have noticed the tension crackling like heat lightning through the air. They’re fighting like crazy, yet again, but they’ve developed a new strategy. Who needs words, really, when wrestling will do? Every day, in the last week of freedom leading up to the start of the school year, my sweet, usually low-key kids turned our family room into an outpost of the WWF: turning each other topsy turvy, a** over teakettle, with elbows and knees flying.

This is normal, I am told, by friends with children older than mine. But as I watch my kids pummel one another, I feel yet another instance of this only child mama having not a clue what sibling relations are all about. So I take a deep breath, ignore the chaos, and try not to break anything else myself.

It’s all fun, right, until someone loses an eye?

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I SWORE UP, DOWN and all around, that I would never raise another puppy. Puppies, I said glibly to friends considering getting their own, are like children, without benefit of diapers. What I should have said, instead: Be careful of the stone certainties, the pronouncements, the “I’ll nevers”–they’ll bite you in the ass, every time.

The Rock, you see, wanted a pet of her own. The cat? Really, he’s Grandma’s (they have a thing going.) The lab? She belongs to her big brother–just see where she chooses to settle down every night at bedtime. The horse? He, to all of our surprise, is really her Dad’s. Another cat was out of the question. A pony? Well, yes, that’s in the works, but that’s another story, and you can’t bring a pony into your bedroom. The girl wanted, had to have, needed with every fiber of her being, a dog. Her own.

I started with “No.” “No” soon changed to “Maybe, but only a really small dog.” (Yes, I am weak. And she is very, very strong. Her name is Rock, remember?) Experts (you know, like Oprah, and Dr. Phil) say that if you want to make a change in your life, one crucial step is to start telling other people about it. I made the mistake of mentioning to a friend who’s a passionate rescuer of animals that we were thinking about adding to our family. What seemed like minutes later, my phone rang.

A friend of my rescuer friend, a dog trainer, had heard we were looking (were we?) and knew of a tiny, sweet dog who needed a home. Would we like to meet him? Oh, and, by the way, isn’t it great? He’s a puppy! Just 12 weeks old. Ah.

As I mentioned, I am weak. You see the result above. And now my children have a whole new opportunity to compete with one another, but finally, finally, in a way that actually benefits me. They now fight to see who is the more responsible dog parent: “I fed Muffin first!” the Rock shrieks. “He still hasn’t fed Pasha,” she adds, in case I’m too dense to see how far superior she is to her older brother.

“But I took them both outside!” he retorts, indignantly. And so it goes. Meanwhile, I drink my coffee, and, OK, yes, pick up the occasional accident. Still no doggie diapers, sadly. But no regrets, either.

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I THOUGHT IT WAS ONLY PARENTS who felt (with guilt aplenty, of course) that they wished their children, sometimes, you know, just for a moment, time to collect one’s thoughts, or maybe just form a thought…could you all, please, just for a second, BE QUIET? Apparently, this is a sibling issue, too.

As I’ve written before, only child that I am, the whole sibling relationship is an elusive and beautiful thing for me, often every bit as mystifying as it is lovely to observe. But, as I’ve whinedopined here of late, the sibling relations have, once again, gotten a little, um, strained around here. This week, my sweet son explained a whole new reason why.

We were at lunch, all four of us, a rare treat, especially this year, when my husband’s been traveling way more than he’s been home. I was basking in the glow of togetherness, but the River, unbeknown to me, was already at a slow simmer, and threatening to boil over.

“Here she goes AGAIN.” (Emphasis distinctly his.) Sentence followed by a very sophisticated eye roll. Lovely. (This is a skill both children have recently mastered. To my unending horror, I fear it is a behavior both learned and hereditary.)

“Mom.” He clipped the end off, the way he does when, you know, I’m in trouble. “She’s giving a SPEECH.”

“Huh?” Thus the insightful response from yours truly.

“You know how she is, Mom. She has to give speeches. All the time. About everything. It’s embarrassing.” The cardinal sin of childhood: to embarrass another.

The lightbulb finally flickered on. The Rock, bless her, has had one of those explosive periods lately (an explosion of intellect more than temper, though we’ve had those, too) and her vocabulary, her reasoning, her logic all have increased like crazy. But, I realized, thanks to the River’s eye rolling complaining, she does have a tendency to think things through…out loud. And, yes, at length.

I was thinking all this through silently, when my son nudged me. “See? Do you see? She’s still doing it.” He was hissing now. The Rock continued, oblivious. She was mentally dissecting the various ways in which caring for a pony might enhance not just her life, but the lives of all of us in her family. It was something of a discourse. But her argument? Cogent. Persuasive. Unless you happened to be her older brother.

I strive to teach my kids tolerance; they know the concept of freedom of speech. But is it possible to extend these noble concepts to each other? I’m not so sure.

(Thanks to The Outsourcing Company for the image above.)

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