There is a long-running tradition of believing in superstition in my family. For example, my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother all lived in mortal fear of El Cucuy at some point in their lives, believing he’d whisk them away in the middle of the night if they didn’t behave. For years now I’ve tried to put it behind me like that bad memory involving P.E. class and accidental flatulence. For the most part, I’ve been successful. I no longer feel it’s necessary to scotch-tape a nickel to my belly during a lunar eclipse. I don’t feel like I’m cursing a baby if I admire their cuteness and don’t follow through with gently touching their head with my hand (an absolutely real belief in some circles). Black cats, ladders, the number thirteen and spilled salt mean absolutely nothing to me.

But.

There’s the eyelash issue. For some reason, the eyelash issue is exempt from my belief system. If I drop an eyelash, my kids rush to harvest it so they could press it between our thumbs, make a wish, pull the thumbs apart and see whose lucky thumb it stuck to. I could squeeze my eyes shut and PRETEND to make a wish in an effort to stay true to my non-superstitiousness. But I don’t. I actually make a wish. I wish for all the things that mothers wish for – healthy, happy children becoming healthy, happy adults, a secure future for each of them, strong teeth well into their nineties… But it really makes no difference because I never get the eyelash. I NEVER get the eyelash.

On Friday, my daughter threw her third annual Halloween bash that included an inordinate amount of hairspray and the disturbing confirmation: Like Mother, Like Daughter. [Insert evil cackle here.] [photopress:IMG_7899.jpg,full,pp_image]

We also played games such as Pin Pick the Nose on the Pumpkin, indulged in devilish epicurean creations including my green slime chocolate fountain, read a haunting story with Dora the Explorer who made a celebrity appearance and had a free-for-all civilized candy hunt in our backyard.

Bryan and I are tech freaks, so I am not surprised that Declan loves gadgets and gizmos already. At JUST-TURNED-FIVE.

We gave him one of our old PDA’s… and he uses it to practice his letters, do little graffiti drawings and manage the profusion of play-dates with his little friends. (Just kidding, that’s my job). OK, and he also likes to draw incredibly accurate sketches of the Palm Pilot itself, so it has its uses as a “model” too.

Growing up watching re-runs of Leave it to Beaver set me up for disappointment and self doubt later in life.

June Cleaver is my hero. Clean house, happy kids, and home-cooked meals. Ward, Wally and “The Beaveâ€? were served a hot meal and a smile every morning for breakfast. She was even polite and patient with the ornery, suck-up-of-a-neighbor kid, Eddy Haskell.

It’s hard to not feel like a failure of a modern mom compared to June. I realize that June Cleaver was a fictitious character, but she set a standard for me all the same. I grew up admiring her, but once I became a wife and mother myself, I realized how hard it was to emulate her.

Through careful analysis and contemplation I realized that June didn’t have any abilities or characteristics that I didn’t have. But, there was one very important detail I was missing. The one thing she was rarely seen without. The secret weapon that made her the mother of all TV mothers:

Antonia, my oldest, was a born nervous wreck. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that she’d been sharing womb space with Marilyn Manson for nine months. Traumatized is the only word I can use to describe her little facial expressions and her glass-shattering vocal pitch for the first year of her life. I do realize that newborns are supposed to cry. Some even have a condition commonly referred to as colic. But this was… different. Antonia seemed genetically-inclined to be disturbed by things like sunlight, water, nutrition, voices that didn’t belong to her mother, shiny things, furry things, socks, music, kisses, touching in general, and the concept of SLEEP, for crying out loud… I say this because she cried out loud. For YEARS UPON YEARS, she cried out loud.

When she was two months old, I decided to quit my job because I was afraid that day care people would surely throw her out with the dirty diapers just from sheer delirium. I thought, ONLY the person who gave birth to this thing can dig their claws into the cliff of sanity and keep from descending into prison. Alls I can say is THANK GOD I had that innate love thing going on. Otherwise, who knows.