By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 About this time of year, I sympathize with store managers. Although I’ve never worked in retail during the holiday rush, I have worked as a mother for nearly 13 years now. Moms and managers need the same skill sets to survive the weeks leading up to Christmas. Crowd control: From now until the last after-Christmas sale ends, store managers have to deal with lots of extra people — many of whom act like hyperactive children when they’re drunk on deep discounts and high on the possibility of getting the last copy of this year’s must-have video game. Moms also understand what it’s like when the house is full of extra people. […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 I got my first real job 19 years ago by replying to a classified ad that asked for resumes from “aspiring journalists.” Fresh out of college with an English degree and absolutely no idea what to do with it, I didn’t know if I was qualified to be a journalist. But I did know I was “aspiring” for something — even though I wasn’t clear on what. So I took my resume down to the newspaper office and dropped it off. A few days later, I got a call from the executive editor, which made me feel fancy and grown-up. I put on a dress I imagined a business woman might […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 There are two kinds of people in the world: grown-ups and fraidy-cats who are scared of needles. I’m in that second group. Something happened yesterday that “outed” me with the kids, so now they know that their mother – who they always assumed was a bona fide grown-up – is actually a big ol’ fraidy cat. Our insurance program sent us a couple of “biometric test kits” in the mail, requiring Tom and me to fill out a health questionnaire and submit a blood sample. The kit came with a little needle with which to perform the finger prick and a card that required three drops of blood. Trust me when […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 It was the summer of 1980 and the open field next to our house was overgrown with tall grass nearly waist-high. Then one day papers blew all over the field, getting snagged and tangled in the unruly grass, making it even more of an eyesore. So my mother sent me and my big brother out one afternoon to pick up the litter. My brother, who must have been about 13 or 14 that year, grumbled about the chore all the way out to the field, while I trailed behind him. He griped loudly right up until the second he picked up the first piece of trash and realized what it was. […]

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By Gwen Rockwood In a few weeks it will officially be fall, which means I can stop making excuses for why I can’t go camping. I realize there are millions of people who go camping each summer and love it. They feel free, peaceful and closer to nature. They get a much-needed escape from the texts, pings, alerts and emails of our overly connected world. I love the idea of an escape, too. I just think turning off my cell phone can give me that same freedom, minus the bug bites and poison ivy. Before we got married, I was honest with Tom about my aversion to spending the night in the great outdoors. He knew going into this thing […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 I tossed a new book into the beach bag and headed out the door with the kids to swim team practice. We both dove in – me into a world of words and them into the bright blue water of the pool. A few pages into the book, I realized I was pressing my thumb into the right-hand margin of the page, expecting it to automatically flip the same way it does when I read books on my Kindle or smartphone. Nothing happened, of course, and I laughed at how easy it was to forget that my old-school real-life book wasn’t going to react to a touch the same way an […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 A decade feels like a long time – right up until the day one of your kids turns 10 years old. Then it feels more like a fast 20 minutes. In just two short days, our middle child, Jack, will hit the big 1-0, and he can hardly wait to embrace his double-digit status. When Jack’s older brother turned 10 a couple years ago, I felt weepy every time I thought about it. He was halfway to 20 and only 8 years away from leaving the nest for college. The lump in my throat felt as big as the birthday cake. Now that Jack is also turning 10, I’ve learned that […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 Ham salad sandwiches. That’s what the school cafeteria lunch menu listed for Wednesday’s meal, which meant I’d be packing three lunches for school the next day. Ham salad? Those two words shouldn’t even go together. Did Michelle Obama sign off on this menu? Doubtful, I pulled the lunch-making necessities out of the fridge and started smearing mustard on six slices of bread. I pack lunches in the evening and stick them in the fridge overnight for one important reason: We’re not morning people. I’ve heard there are real live people who are razor sharp and even cheerful early in the morning. At any other time of day, I’d say I admire […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 Today was my scheduled day to read picture books to our daughter’s first grade class, a fact I remembered minus one important detail – the time of the reading. After working in my home office for a few hours this morning, I checked to see what time I was supposed to be at the school, fairly certain I had an hour or so before I’d need to go. I sifted through my inbox until I found the right email and then – NO! The email said I should be in the classroom ready to read at 10:15 a.m. It was, at that very moment, 10:02 a.m. I had exactly 13 minutes […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 I stood there for five minutes holding a pair of scissors, staring down at the big white box that had been in our hall closet for more than 14 years. Encased in a plastic sleeve, the box has moved with us over the years, and it always finds a place in the deep recesses of the closet we use the least. Today I took the scissors to it. The box held my wedding dress, and I nearly talked myself out of opening it. After you get married, one of the first things on your married “to do” list is to get your wedding dress “professionally preserved”—which means you pay a ridiculous […]

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