My parents have never been interested in the men I date. When I was in my 20s and single, they never asked about boyfriends, nights out or whether I received flowers on Valentine’s Day.

If I brought someone home, they looked down their noses, waiting to find something wrong. I can’t tell you why and I wish I knew, but it’s a pattern they’ve stuck throughout the past four decades.

The last time my parents took an interest in a boyfriend was Ted, the first guy I dated in college. Mom and I sat for lunch one day at their favorite local diner and she asked about what it would be like if we got married one day. I broke up with Ted, a supremely nice guy, at the end of sophomore year because I just wasn’t ready for forever.

John was next and he was my first heart-pounding love. Like magnets, we chased each other around campus and home for school breaks. For the holidays, my parents bought him a key flashlight to help him see his iced-over car lock on dark winter nights. When I wanted to invite him home for the Passover seder, they said an adamant NO.

They tried to mask their dislike as grounded in the fact that he was not Jewish - but when my brother took up with a high school sweetheart, also outside our tribe, they were enthralled. She is now my sister-in-law and probably my favorite family member - but let’s just say my parents never batted an eye over that pairing.

It came as no surprise, so many years later when I met Avy, that they were not only uninterested - they were downright opposed. This time, it was because he was Orthodox.

And when we married, they had complaints all the way down the aisle. “What do you mean no mixed dancing?” “Why are you wearing a hat over your hair?” “You’re pregnant again? Don’t you want to let Asher be the baby a while longer?” I was already pregnant, and on purpose!!!!

Nothing I did satisfied them so I did everything to try to satisfy myself. And though it took me 37 years, I finally succeeded.

So now I’m dating Dan and at the best I’ve ever been in every part of my life - and it’s the same old tune. I keep telling myself I don’t need their approval and I shouldn’t even want it. But old habits die hard.

When I changed my Facebook status to in a relationship, Dad called immediately, all chatty-happy. He called again later that same day to invite me to breakfast.

And while Mom sat beside him and they were perky and interested in every part of my life, the two times I mentioned his name, they blank-stared. Nothing. Nada.

It’s become a joke between us, this blatant dysfunction. And still I wonder - what’s behind it all? Seriously, Mom and Dad. Isn’t it time to just let the past go?

In the garden, the earth was packed in tight. The tomato vines were spindly and gray, dead with the season. I pulled out the tomato cages and rested them in the garage until spring.

The children clomped over the wet dirt in rain boots, bundled in fleece coats and soft hats. They pulled weeds and plants out of the garden, all of them the same by now, none of them beautiful any longer.

It’s never enough to let old things wither away to die. We must secure the ritual of saying goodbye and retrieve them from their hold, flatten the soil, turn it over and rake it smooth so that it can percolate through the winter. We had an array of tools and two soft bags to carry them in. I pulled back the chicken wire and rolled it up as waste.

We had free entry into the garden box and when the sky opened its tears upon us, we were not deterred. Let’s stay out here, even in the rain, Mommy, the kids said. And I wholeheartedly agreed.

There are times when you feel so alive, moments you wouldn’t trade for anything. And that was one of them.

Like yesterday, in the children’s garden at MSU, when Shaya told his name to a little 3-year-old girl and asked hers. They ran through the Alice in Wonderland maze and over the green bridge, trampled on the pavilion seating and wandered through the pine tree playhouse.

When it was time to go, Shaya waved and then walked up to Kennedy and through his arms around her. “Bye Kennedy,” he said.

And as we steered the car away through the winding campus roads, he was melancholy in the back seat. “I miss my friend Kennedy,” he said.

The moments. Little jewels. The sky was gray yesterday and Asher’s soccer team lost their final game of the season terribly. A shut-out. One boy sat on the picnic table at the edge of the field, wholly disinterested in playing another game. He won’t be back next season. He is trading soccer for tennis, looking for answers in another sport.

What was good about today? I asked Eliana at bedtime. 

Sunday school. Playing at the playground. The garden at MSU. Seeing Amanda. Being with you.

Jewels. Little things. The moments.

And a new week is dawning.

It’s that voice in my head, my personal party line from long ago, the insistence on low weight, straight hair, blond, and blue eyes, as if we have total control over our very being. As if how much I weigh will in any way determine the kind of person I am.

The other day, my daughter said she won’t wear glasses, even though she has trouble seeing in the distance. Why? “Because I won’t look good in glasses,” my 5-year-old princess proclaimed. She is beautiful. Nothing will change that - which is what I said to her, but somehow she has already at this young age inculcated into her being that exterior factors will somehow change how she is perceived by the world.

My message is still with me. My parents’ insistence that ultra-thin is the goal to strive for, that straight hair trumps curly. My mother has spent 30 years asking for her restaurant food to be grilled “dry,” sauces “on the side,” and melting fat-free cheese slices (which do not melt) on a slice of bread for breakfast. She does not enjoy her food but my father proclaims to all who listen what a great figure Mom has “for her age.”

I say all this with the caveat that I love my family. Truly I do. But when I am away from them, I am comfortable in my skin. With my curls. With the curves of my stomach and hips. I have no desire to suck away under doctor’s lights the evidence of my 38 years and I do not want to eliminate taste and pleasure from my food.

The words we hear from early on shape us forever more. Pave our paths for years to come. One of my supreme challenges of motherhood is to measure my words and carefully carve my children’s self-images so that they stand tall, forward-facing.

Daughter, you are lovely. Flaws are inevitable and, frankly, lovable.

From Fast Company’s July/August issue:

Nature’s Simple Rules for Survival (which can be extrapolated across mediums)

1. Diversify across generations.
2. Adapt to the changing environment.
3. Celebrate transparency.
4. Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally.
5. Form groups and protect the young.
6. Integrate metrics.
7. Improve with each cycle. Evolution is essential for long-term survival.
8. Right-size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally.
9. Foster longevity, not immediate gratification.
10. Waste nothing - recycle everything.

This morning, over coffee in Cafe Bellagio on Hornby Street, I read articles about Canada’s national identity. And articles about the reality of America versus the long-held fantasies. And I began to wonder how a national identity is constructed.

From where I sit, there is no national identity in the U.S. None. Nada. Zilch. We are a conglomeration of very different, inward-focused people with a sense of entitlement and superiority for being American. Plain as day. And maybe we deserve it. Or maybe we don’t.

Don’t get me wrong - I am quite proud of and thankful for my American citizenship. Hands-down, my nationality entitles me to carte blanche protection and open doors in most parts of the world. I’ve just spent a week in Canada and did not formally change my dollars into loonies and toonies not even once. Because my currency is universal.

Still. We are in quite the pickle in America these days. One Globe and Mail article speculated on the impact of new American frugality and a saving-money trend that may well forestall global economic recovery. How can it be a bad thing for Americans to start saving money? It’s something we should’ve been doing all along.

Another article lamented the lack of local diners and charming shops in rural America and spotlightedhow urban blight has turned into open fields with wildlife running through it. My city perhaps a prime example - months ago, in my father’s car on a driving tour of his childhood memories, we found two of his formative homes still standing but one completely wiped away except from memory - and all that was left was a vacant plot with wildflowers swaying in a rapid breeze.

And so a national identity for Canadians involves a canoe and the versatility of surviving in and near  the Arctic freeze. It also involves looking south to determine long-term fate.

Walking Vancouver’s streets, I’ve noticed a multiracial melting pot with a multicultural inflection. Fifty-five percent of this city’s population is Asian. In one quick meeting, I encountered a woman from east Africa, an Iranian woman, an Italian girl and a woman who hailed from Germany. Working together in a common shop.

Not where I come from. Diversity is stratified and segregated in Detroit. Always has been. Here live the Jews, here live the WASPs, there live the Polish, and over there, yet another identity altogether. Never the twain shall meet? What do we see if we stare only at others who resemble us so closely?

Today my children are walking familiar streets to synagogue, in what I’m told is oppressively hot weather. Sudden summer come on strong. Today I board a plane to return to life-as-I-know-it and life-as-I-prefer-it. Vacation is only good because it is a world away from the diurnal. From the familiar.

Their little voices on the phone, their plaintive pleas, my baby’s almost-wail of, “I love you too.” I’ve had a good run this trip. I’ve kayaked in ocean waters against 25 km winds and scaled sheer rock faces. I’ve looked ahead, looked behind, tasted the sea, slept uninterrupted.

And now, I am going home.

When my eldest son was an infant, and I would take him into a crowded room, he responded by shutting his eyes and immediately falling asleep in my arms. Yesterday, as my children and I joined 50,000 Detroiters in urban streets for the Race for the Cure, I could see him wanting to do the same thing - only, at 7 years old, it’s not quite as easy.

Frankly, as I’m equally uncomfortable in crowds, I wanted to shut my eyes and kick back as well. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t close my eyes to the fact that every person there had in some way been impacted by breast cancer.

I couldn’t shut out my children’s questions: Mommy, why did Auntie Jody get cancer? my daughter asked. That’s a very good question, I responded, for which I have no answer.

And Asher, doing the math of 50,000 people giving donations to walk the streets with pink ribbons and T-shirts and bandanas, plus uncountable sums donated toward finding a reason and a treatment and an eradication. A future scientist who’s great at math, his mind calculated the magnitude in just this one city.

We stood in the beaming morning sun on the corner of Montcalm and Woodward, waiting for 50 friends and family members to arrive. People swarmed the streets and filled the parking lot beside Comerica Park.

And then, just a few hours later, after sitting and eating with 25 people around a rectangular table, I retraced our steps toward the parked car. Empty streets. Vacant lots. A lone man shluffing along the sidewalk behind us.

Echoes pervaded my city. Was it symbolic of something? I’m sure it was.

I rushed everyone into the car, folded the stroller and put it away. I pushed the door-lock button like I almost never do. In overcast day, what fear lurked behind the dash?

My sister was lucky not to be alone during her battle with breast cancer. It is at those moments exactly when we realize what surrounds us and what we lack.

Our black T-shirts matched yesterday. Pink script flowed over our backs, announcing our team of Jody’s Jems. My sister wrote a note of gratitude forever imprinted on cotton cloth for all to see.

Her hair is growing back, her life is starting over, the black cloud that covered our lives since last August 18 has lifted. But we are forever changed, in ways even impercetible to each of us.

You’d think I might learn eventually … eliminate clutter of any kind and you create space. Blessed, peace-promoting space for energy and for accomplishment. For good times and for connections. Eradicate the tension and you have clean air purer than snow, inhaling with each gulp the possibility for good.

My grandfather sat over my left shoulder, the place he has taken to of late, as I sat in the grass at the cemetery, my eldest son leaning all his weight against me, his curly hair under my nose. My daughter sat to my right. Our fingers grazed the gray stone of my grandfather’s grave, their small fingers tracing the carved words.

Tall trees rustling in the heavy breeze above us, birds calling around us and no other sound except for our own breathing in and out in the mid-day sun.

“When I turn into the cemetery, I like to turn off the music,” I told the kids.

“I’m going to close my book,” Asher agreed.

And I drove slow between the embankments, in no rush, with no need in the open afternoon.

It has been a blissful weekend. All children and snuggling and open windows with blessed air mixing into the house.

We sat by the lap of the lake and watched the fish in the murky water. We played under trees, climbing whatever walls stood righteous before us. We watched a white heron high in a tree and listened to the flowing patter of fountains.

On Sunday, we opened the doors and the windows for my little guy’s friends. One hour, a birthday cake made by the careful eye of a mother in love with her children. Ice cream cups and sandwiches and lemonade pouches and we sang Happy Birthday to a beaming boy whose Friday haircut erased the baby and established the little boy.

Three years ago today … I lived a different world.

Three years ago today I emerged from the cocoon of childbirth and brought home a precious bundle wrapped in blue. My older two were innocent in their round cheeks and blue eyes and I explained as they climbed on the bed that a mother’s heart grows to hold more love with the addition of a new child.

Three years ago, it was two months beyond the realization that my marriage would die. Three years ago, my wise friend Salley said carefully over the long-distance line, “It’s ok, if you wait a year. You have a newborn.”

And so I sat in the shroud of knowing that I had chosen the wrong partner even though in the context of him I created the three most wonderful souls under the sun.

Today is for remembering, essentially those individuals who fought for the freedom of our country. But in theory a memorial day is a day to reflect and to acknowledge what laid the foundation for the day in front of us.

I remember being married to a man I couldn’t know. I remember feeling alone when I was supposed to be the most together a person could be. I remember gazing out my morning window in perfect silence and wondering how I decided to abandon myself for the illusion of connection.

It has been a blissful weekend. My children and I are seamless creations of perfection, our smiles infectious, the flavors abundantly pleasing as they dance on our tongues.

In my office, I keep a picture of Asher and Eliana in the blueberry orchard, four years ago, my little girl in blond pigtails so close to the ground. I remember them plucking the little blue orbs from the branches and popping them into their mouths, so few plunking resonantly into the bucket.

In becoming their mother, I was given life anew. And in braving the courage to leave a stagnant place mired in murky waters, I gave myself life yet again.

It’s a new day, you know, and it’s mine for the taking.

“Figure-ground theory states that the space that results from placing figures should be considered as carefully as the figures themselves.” Space is called negative space if it is unshaped after the placement of figures. 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick

I love when the sun rises very early in the day because it feels like an invitation to awake and fully embody every single minute of sunlight. Unlike the long Michigan winter, when darkness pervades the morning and the evening, these few months of brightness and dawn are my best time of year.

So many people to choose from - potential friends, clients, lovers, neighbors. Yesterday, I arrived home in full sunlight with two of my three angels asleep in the back seat. My neighbor stood at the bottom of her driveway, watching for her one-and-only to walk the block home from school.

The sun beamed down in perfect temperature unobstructed. Wasn’t too hot, nor too cold. In the day, I hiked in the forest with my daughter’s Kindergarten class, not a cloud breaking the perfect blue of the sky.

It’s these moments, you know. These little raindrop-sized awakenings that are everywhere.

How many times have I said lately that when a door closes, a window opens? Cliche, I know, but evidently true.

In a different life, a former life driven by fear and what-ifs, I made dinner every night. I baked in the mornings and fed armies every weekend. It has seemed like a dream to generate fodder for my family on a daily basis ever since I started this path toward a different existence.

But last night, I sauteed onions with olive oil, oregano, pepper and salt for split pea soup. Carrots cooked soft, red potatoes, skin still on, split peas and white beans and vegetable broth. Delicious, parmesan cheese sprinkled over top of each steaming bowl.

My table was set with a variet of options. Creamed herring (only I ate it of course), tuna fish (an offering for Asher), the last of the noodles, new dills and pull-aparts with cream cheese or whipped butter, and roasted cauliflower with a sprinkle of curry.

It was a good night, a filling night, a brief gathering of everyone I love around a single table. These are moments for which we all live. These are the moments to love.

I was sick in bed with bronchitis, reeling between fever-induced sweats and chills and coughing continuously. My three angels were understanding about the weekend of continual television, of everlasting cuddles and quick-to-throw-together meals. Mommy’s sick, I explained, not for a minute wishing that they were at their father’s house so that I could sleep without worrying about what a boring weekend they were having.

It was my favorite Mother’s Day yet.

Because I got a paper bag decorated with stars and hearts and big capital letters and fat exclamation points.

Because I got a handmade book, written in careful scrawl by my kindergartener, which said her favorite thing to do with me is have time alone and that in her eyes, I am 50 feet tall and 30 pounds.

Because my not-quite-three-year-old painted a wooden box for me and filled it with Hershey kisses for all of us to eat.

This year, I did not get one store-bought present for Mother’s Day but it was my favorite celebration of motherhood yet. My children’s warm hugs and sweet kisses, our synergistic weekends together, seeking meaning, seeking light, seeking connection with each other and with everything around us.

A few weeks ago, we spent a warm Saturday hiking through the Cranbrook campus. The children took off their shoes and waded in the trickling waterfall of the Japanese garden, felt the soft massage of pebbles underfoot. We inhaled the scent of pine needles and stopped to stare at flowers and listen to the rush of water narrowing from a serene pond into a cascading tumble over concrete blocks.

It was the perfect day.

Every day with my children is a perfect day, even those when I become exasperated and lose my cool. Even the times when their tantrums ring hollow and long. Even the times when we rush from point A to point B to point C.

Late in the afternoon on this Mother’s Day, my ex-husband sent me a text: I know we’ve had our differences, but I want to wish you a happy Mother’s Day.

It was icing on the proverbial cake. That’s very nice, I typed into the smartphone. Thank you.

Last night, my plane taxied twoard the gate and I edged at my seat, eager to deplane and get home to the people whose hearts beat in sync with mine. I had gone to New York in search of escape and connection with self, in search of inspiration for my multi-tiered quest.

New York has lost the allure for me. Its bustle and rush too frantic, and the distance between me and those three important souls around whom my life revolves too great.

Coming home was more than an end to a trip, more than a mere arrival.

Zesting the blood oranges, then squeezing the black-red juice over the whole chicken, skin and all. The halves stuffed inside for flavor, for aroma, for seeping through the skin and meat to the bone.

Olive oil drizzled over top and spices - garlic, onion, salt, pepper, paprika. Baked at 350 until the juices run clear and then tearing the pieces away from the whole, slicing thin pieces of meat into the juices.

Broccolini sauteed and simmered with garlic until crunchy-soft. Mushrooms - baby bellas and shitakes - soft and fragrant. A salad of shredded cabbage, salted pumpkin seeds, scallions and avocado, dressed in balsamic vinegar.

The kids came home with hugs. The table was set for dinner. But first, chocolate lollipops and Mamma Mia on the TV. “You got it from the movie store,” they exclaimed as if it were the greatest gift.

The baby nuzzled the mother’s cheek repeatedly. The older children kept climbing into her lap. The bath swept in current and wave. The baby peed on the toilet for the first time. There was calm. There was synergy. They were home.

…he hears the cheep of winter birds searching the snow for crumbs of garbage and knows exactly how much light and how much darkness is there before the dawn…he thinks of places he has never seen but heard about, of the great desert his father said was like no sea he had ever crossed and how at dusk or dawn it held all the shades of red and blue in its merging shadows…he had come to live for those suspended moments… (Every Blessed Day, Philip Levine)

Before they returned, she hiked through leaf-covered muddy paths, the trees bare enough to gleam the sun onto her face. It was beautiful and whole and she turned her face to seep it in.

Before they returned, a voice on the line from so many years before familiar in its folding. They shared a name though they were not family and he spoke of his three-year impossible love. She remembered the sound of the river rushing past the window at his house where she slept. She kept it open at night just to feel the pace of the river moving on its way.

She had climbed the Big Horn Mountains and eaten cheese and sausage by an ice lake, in which she saw a bear claw floating. She turned away because there was so much else to see.

Before they returned, late afternoon sunlight walked in through the open door, announcing what was forthcoming, establishing the day. The house isn’t so bad, she told herself, and thought it again when the daughter bounded in, her blond hair bouncing and the door swinging slowly closed behind her. The now is good, she told herself as the children collapsed into her open arms. Rich enough for me.

Every day when I pick up Shaya from preschool, he runs to me, down the hall, arms open wide, ready to jump into my arms. I can’t help myself when I see his cute round face, alight with eagerness to return to me.

I open my eyes like wings to fly and run, too, down the hall until we reach each other, both smiling and electric, and he jumps into my arms and I scoop him up and close, holding him there, breathing in his soft soft scent.

I knew motherhood was going to be spectacular but I couldn’t have told you what it would feel like until I lived it.

I write here frequently about how I miss Oregon - my one-week solo trip last summer, scaling mountains and tasting new flavors. I do. I miss the freedom to travel and the excitement of exploration.

But I don’t really yearn to be somewhere else. Vacations are wonderful because they’re rare, at least for me.

It is hard when living in the moments to recount them quickly. Because I don’t have my children with me all the time, I have more time than many parents to reflect on moments with them and savor the little details.

Last night, I dreamt that I took Eliana and Asher to a water park. Somewhere in the crowds and the rides and water slides, I lost both of them. And the rest of the dream was a frantic rush to find my babies - climbing stairs and poring through rooms.

When I finally found Asher, just before I awoke, he was one of hundreds of boys in summer-camp configuration with counselors and sitting on rows of benches. I simply called his name, “Ashi! Ashi!” And he leapt up and said, “Here I am!” And I scooped him into my arms and held him tight to me and didn’t let go. I woke up then and, eyes closed, could almost feel my son’s skinny warm body pressed to mine, his heart beating in sync with mine.

My kids are in public school now and as such, they are poised to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day this week. Eliana has been busy for the past week furiously coloring hearts that I cut out of notebook paper.

The playroom table is covered in marker streaks and those hearts, they are so damn beautiful - her little, still-pudgy hands painted in marker, too, the hearts signed Love, Eliana, her dedication to the task at hand so complete. I’ve sat there with her in a kid-sized chair, just to watch her focus and create.

My children are my everything. I’ve always resisted defining myself according to others, but you know, I have become my best self because of them. Truly.