MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

At 8:40 this morning I did something completely crazy. I bundled my daughter up in her coat, hat and gloves, walked her two blocks to this big brick building on the corner, opened up the door to the cafeteria, and left her there ! I didn't follow her in to make sure she got to a table safely. I didn't follow her upstairs to her classroom to make sure she put her coat away properly. I didn't sit at her desk and listen to the other kids talk to make absolutely sure no one was ever being mean to her, and I don't have the room bugged to ensure her teacher is never yelling at her.  I didn't do any of these things because Maya is in first grade. She goes to school every Monday through Friday, and she does so without me! Because that is what school is, the place where you leave your kid so someone else can teach them. I, as a parent have to trust that I picked a good school and that Maya's teacher is at least a halfway decent one.  Or I can homeschool her. And th...

My husband and I have a lot of our best conversations in the car. In fact, if you ever showed up at a special class at our dojo, enrolled your kids in our summer camp, or were the victim of one of Matthew's "why carbs are bad" lectures, you have benefited from our car talk. And if you see me all bleary eyed on Saturday morning, chugging coffee like it is orange Gatorade after the Super Bowl, it is most likely from our drive, not some wild party. For some reason we often pick 10:30pm Friday night, on the FDR Drive, to start a debate about religion or quantum physics or, I don't know, the meaning of life. It is not unheard of for us to still be talking at midnight. Hey, at least we still like each other.  Yesterday, while driving home from the dojo, I suddenly felt compelled to make this shocking admission: "I think I have reached the point in my jiu-jitsu training where the idea of someday being a BJJ black belt is not unreasonable." Wait...what? Di...

I am a plan ahead kind of person. Actually, that is not true. I am a worry ahead kind of person. You know those people who stock their kitchen pantry with canned goods, bottled water, Tamiflu and a chainsaw for when the inevitable end is upon us? That is not me. I am the one who stays up late into the night frantically visualizing the zombies eating my brains but never actually boards up the windows.  When Hurricane Sandy was upon us, I bought candles. I also spent numerous stressed out hours imagining our dark apartment with no TV and no wifi.  Of course, we never lost power here in Brooklyn, but we did get glass in our feet for a week after I accidentally smashed two of those candles all over the floor. (See, the hurricane was dangerous!)  Last week Matthew's father had surgery. The type of surgery doesn't matter. Well I am sure it does to him but for the purpose of this selfish story (which is all about ME)  it will suffice to say that a doctor cut him ...

Not my kid. But it could be. I am going to admit something shameful, something that is going to make all the mommy bloggers out there cringe. But I think it is high time for me to be honest, to own up to the truth, despite the terrible backlash I am sure it is going to cause.  I love that Rainbow Loom. Yeah, you read that correctly. And no, it is not sarcasm. And before you wonder if perhaps I have been mixing the vodka with the coffee this morning, I will tell you that I am making this statement while fully awake and alert. (Well as much as one could be at 8am on a Tuesday.)  Listen, I read all your blogs. I completely understand about the tiny rubber band explosions all over the living room floor. I too have experienced the Starburst meltdown. I also wake up in the middle of the night with the voice of that You Tube video girl stuck in my head like a bad 80's song. But before you crucify me, before you toss me out of the mommy club like bad cheese, please listen to...

About two years ago, I wrote this post about womens classes:  http://mamommyarchives.blogspot.com/2012/01/no-boys-allowed.html . It can be summed up by saying that while I agree there are certainly benefits to training with women alone, in general I do not like these classes. Recently there has been a discussion on the Internet about a mens only dojo in Japan. Here is the link to their school:  http://bjjaoyama.com/wordpress/184 .  First of all I will say that I believe if we can have women's dojos we can have mens dojos. I know the idea of someone saying "No women allowed here" makes us all uncomfortable, but the truth is men can feel just as awkward rolling around on mats with women as we do with men. They feel judged too. They feel pressure to look cool in front of the ladies. I imagine if you remove all that you get a training environment where guys can just be guys, and that is pretty nice. (It is also probably pretty stinky in there.)  So if someone wants...

Today, January 6th, marks the 25th anniversary of when I first joined the dojo. Twenty five years ago, I was a shy, awkward teenager who was afraid to kiai too loud and thought taking a sparring class was akin to climbing Mt. Everest.  I do not have your typical "why I joined a karate school" story. Actually, when I was 13 I was still a competitive gymnast, although I was nearing the end of my flipping and twisting career. Olympians do gymnastics at age 13. The rest of us, well, we do high school. And although I did spend all 3 years of high school as an official member of the La Guardia gymnastics team, I stopped competing in my junior year, after tearing my ACL. (Here is a bit of advice for all you Mary Lou's out there. If you fall off the balance beam, do not land on one leg, hyper-extend that knee, and then get back up and continue prancing around.)  I LOVED gymnastics and for years, the YMCA gym was the place I ran to after school. It was a somewha...