Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life by Quinn Cummings

her daughter to sleep-away sewing camp to avoid the look of pity and horror I would earn giving this shiny new sewing machine an intestinal blockage.
    Still, I kept trying to be the crafty mom. We made a pinecone Christmas tree. In under a minute I had glued the tree to my hand. I started ineffectually jabbing the pipe cleaner I was supposed to use for tinsel between the tree and my hand, to free it from my skin. It did loosen a bit, but only after I stabbed myself in the palm, leaving a permanent silvery reminder under my life line. It’s hard to get excited about homemade ornamentswhen you’re trying to decide if you need an antibiotic booster for Boxing Day.
    At one point, Alice was given a book of elegant paper dolls and I, removing them from the page, cut off their heads. This wasn’t a complete loss, as it led to a fun afternoon of “Alice dresses the aristocracy during the French Revolution.”
    A parenting magazine showed a picture of a rock with googly eyes and painted hair attached. In its own way, it was strangely winning. The magazine swore we could do it together. That day, I learned I can attach googly eyes to anything and no matter where I place them, no matter how many times I move them around or align their focus, the effect is that of a mortally wounded soldier on the battlefield, gazing up into your soul, mutely begging you to shoot him.
    This all would be easier if Consort were equally incompetent, but he’s not. His google-eyed rocks gaze upon mine with scorn. He can cut out paper dolls. He could create a Conestoga mini-wagon that would run on solar power and spark a bidding war between Lilliputian pioneers. In fact, there’s a thick file in Alice’s brain labeled T HINGS D ADDY C AN D O THAT M OMMY C AN’T . Daddy can drive a stick-shift and Mommy can’t. As my mother says, our people don’t drive a stick-shift for the same reason that we don’t beat our clothing clean against a rock. But the fact remains: Daddy can leap into a stick-shifted car and peel away; Mommy would sit in the driver’s seat and wonder why there was an extra pedal on the floor. Daddy can use all those dangerous-looking carpentry tools he has in the garage. He doesn’t, mind you, but he could. Pointing out that I have a kitchen full of tools I don’t use doesn’t make me cooler. Daddy, like some of the more charismatic boys in Alice’s class, can make a noise usingonly his hand and his armpit. Mommy claims she could, but doesn’t choose to—which makes no sense because who wouldn’t want to make noises with their armpits?
    Eventually, we will leave the Craft Age (which comes after the Bronze Age, before the Bronzer Age) and will enter the Higher Math Age, at which point I will lose face all over again. The y awning sense of incompetence and panic that washes over me when confronted with construction paper, pipe cleaners, and glue is as nothing compared to what I will feel when Alice asks for help with her geometry homework. Proofs, theorems, sines, cosines, algorithms—they all blur together in my head, creating a hellish bouillabaisse that will drown the last of my daughter’s respect for me. Her father, of course, enjoys higher math thoroughly, so this will be a wonderful bonding time for them. They will make calculus jokes and, after a few seconds, I’ll laugh along, nervously and a little too loudly; and because they love me they will take pity on me. One of them will bring out the dusty Conestoga wagon and we’ll all look at it as a wheel falls off. Alice will cover my hand with hers and say something kind before she and her father go off to create cold fusion.

Lift. Twist. Pull.
    I DON’T KNOW HOW I GOT SO LUCKY, BUT WHEN CONSORT gets sick, he gets sick discreetly. Possessing a high tolerance for discomfort—a trait that might owe something to living with me—he just plugs away until I find myself shouting, “Would you please just get into bed and insert in the IV!” This is, I should note, a loving