New Columns

In our newest columns, Sybil Lockhart (Mama in the Middle) writes about her daughters’ intense connection to one another:

[Encouraging their closeness] seemed like a brilliant tactic at the time, but watching Zoë and Cleo now, I wonder what weird dynamic I have created between my children. Zoë depends on Cleo being hers. They seem almost too close, too joined. Why is it SO important that they look the same? I wonder if Zoë, in her own kid-logic, has decided that if they look exactly alike, no one will compare them, and then they will be equally loved. Or maybe they really are just close, loving sisters, and I don’t recognize that when I see it.

Lizbeth Finn-Arnold (Mom and Pop Culture) describes her search for balance — in her body and in her life:

I lean forward, as if this will help restore my balance. I can feel the familiar tingling in my fingers and toes now. My heart feels like it is racing, and I take a couple of deep breaths, in the hopes of slowing it all down. The whole right side of my face is throbbing. I massage the back of my neck as my jaw pops. This is it. This is what it feels like to have your body assailed from the inside out. I don’t know why they call a migraine a “headache” since it is so much more than that. It is an all-over bodily assault.

And in my Mother Shock column, I pose the question: is it time to go back in the world?

“The little one isn’t so little anymore,” a friend remarks of her nearly four-year-old son. “What am I supposed to do next year, when he’s in school for a full day?” She worries her uselessness will be exposed. Without a young child, a baby, to consume those long school-filled hours, she fears she will no longer have justification for being, as she calls it, out of the world. Is it time to go back in the world? Does she want to go back in the world? A third baby might make those questions moot, at least for a few more years.