We've paid the deposit on Ben's cap and gown, so it looks like this is really going to happen. In just a few weeks he will have completed the journey he began on his first day of kindergarten. I cried then, and I'm sure there will be plenty of tears shed when he accepts his diploma, as well.
Susan O'Doherty
Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D. (http://www.susanodohertyauthor.com/) is a writer and clinical psychologist who specializes in the creative process. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Mama, Ph.D. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her popular advice column for writers, "The Doctor is In," appears each Friday on Buzz, Balls & Hype.
To reach this person, click here.
Most Recent Articles
May 20, 2012
A few years ago, I took a 2-hour music improv workshop at the school where I was studying straight (acting) improv. The teacher, Rob, was first rate, fun and supportive, but were all terrified. (Of course there was no objective danger, but as we know, people tend to be more afraid of public speaking than of death, so imagine the terror involved in spontaneous singing in front of a group of strangers.) A few people abstained from singing through the entire class, which they had paid for, waiting for courage that never came. I forced myself to participate, but it was a real stretch. The payoff was enormous, though. I felt I was exploring areas of my brain that I had not known were there.
May 13, 2012
Several weeks ago, I sat through a play that was three hours long, with no intermission. The friend I went with joked that the omission must have been a strategic decision on the director's part, because if they had let us out, surely nobody would have come back in. I didn't blame the playwright. She was obviously impassioned about the subject matter, and assumed that everyone else would be, too. Maybe she had exercised great restraint in cutting it back from five or six hours. But at some point, someone should have intervened.
May 6, 2012
This week, The New York Times is running a series on the benefits and pitfalls of attachment parenting in its Room for Debate section, inspired by Elisabeth Badinter's "The Conflict." For the most part, the essays are thoughtful and measured, and some of them (Erica Jong's and Annie Urban's in particular, I think) discuss important factors in child-rearing.
April 29, 2012
Elizabeth's April 25 post about Nick's uncertain academic future moved me strongly, in part because of the excellent writing and in part because we have had many of those nail-biting moments in Ben's history. He is one of those students who seems destined to give teachers TMJ; a gifted underachiever, as his mother was before him.
April 22, 2012
Over the past eighteen months, Ben has considered, at various times, attending a university in another country; a marvelous but outrageously expensive arts college in North Carolina; and an equally pricy Florida school where he could play baseball year-round.
April 15, 2012
I hail from a long line of disowners. My maternal grandfather's Irish Catholic family shunned my grandparents after their marriage, because my grandmother was a Southern Baptist heathen. My father's family, also Irish Catholic, demanded that my mother convert so that my parents could be married in a "proper" ceremony, with my father's brother, Father Kevin, officiating.
April 8, 2012
In years past, I used to worry about what to "do" with Ben during his school breaks. This year, he had to remind me not to wake him up on Friday morning, because the start date of his spring break kept slipping my mind.
April 1, 2012
I have been following with interest the comments section of the recent New York Times article on the "cupcake wars," which explores the tensions among PTA parents in neighborhoods that are gentrifying.
March 25, 2012
Like many parents, I have been following the Trayvon Martin story with outrage and with deep grief for his family. And also like, I am sure, many parents of teenage boys, I am guiltily aware of feelings of relief and fear in the mix — relief that it wasn't my kid, and fear that next time it might be.
