My first mother, who I will call my “real” mother — no offense to my birth mother –raised me through infancy, kissed my boo-boos, dressed me up for school, taught me to play the piano and sewed killer Halloween costumes.

My second mother – my birth mother — gave birth to me when she was too young to keep me, but she thought about me every day, and wished that someday she could see me again.

My real mother allowed me the privilege of knowing her. She did not let many people know her. In fact, I was never supposed to talk about “What goes on in this house” with my friends. Nothing unusual went on in our house. She was just ultra-private.

My real mom was really fashionable. Although piano was her first and only love, she went to fashion high school in New York City, and she later focused her fashion energy on me. Some moms and daughters play tennis, some make cookies – we shopped. She didn’t even wait for me to shop most of the time. She taught piano after school so her days were free, and I’d come home from school to find four sweaters in different sizes to try on. We’d keep the ones that fit and she’d return the rest.

I tried to talk to her about boys and social stuff, but the most I ever got from her was that, before you get married, you are supposed to put on “the act” with men – laughing at their jokes, acting coquettish. After you’re married all bets are off. That kind of advice didn’t work for my teen years or even beyond, but she told me what she knew.

I never knew if she was listening to me. Most of the time she wasn’t. We’d be talking, and I’d be spilling my guts and crying my eyes out, and she’d reach over, brush the hair out of my face and say, “You need a haircut.” The conversation would end right there, or worse, turn to making hair appointments and whatnot. Appearance was always more important than substance. When I published my first essay in my hometown paper, I called her to see what she thought. “That picture of you is beautiful!” she said of the modeling picture I’d sent in with the essay.

“Did you read it?” I asked.

“Such a gorgeous picture!” she said.

I cried.

My mom taught me how to be Greek. My father’s Greek too, just not so much into the culture. My mom taught me how to speak Greek, dance Greek and eat Greek, although Greek cooking (mercifully) was left mostly to my Yiaya, who’s a whole different mother story. My mother would drive me crazy, though, growing up in suburban New York. Whenever she didn’t want anyone to overhear us in public (see “Never talk about what goes on in this house”) she’d speak to me in Greek. Horrified that bystanders would think I was some kind of foreigner who didn’t speak English, I’d always respond in English. I didn’t learn much Greek that way.

She kept it up through adulthood. When I was moving into an apartment in Astoria, Queens (because that’s what Greeks do), we were on the street moving stuff in from the truck and my mother started to say something in English. Fearing she’d be overheard, she switched to Greek. Thing was, she was more likely to be understood in Greek in Astoria than in English. I laughed my ass off. She was not amused.

That was my mom. She was a terrible cook, an expert seamstress, a lousy listener, a great piano teacher, a fashionable dresser, a shrewd shopper, and a good Greek who took herself too seriously.

Fifteen years ago, my mom started to show the signs of Alzheimer’s disease. For thirteen years, she suffered – the first five, she still knew me and her surroundings, but the last eight, she was just trapped in a body that wouldn’t let go. When it finally did, it really was a relief (see “The Last Lesson“)

Six months after my real mother died, I got a letter from the agency that handled my adoption. They’d matched me with my birth mother. She and I hit it off immediately and she’s become the adult mom I missed all those years. She’s got advice about raising my kids, and support when I need it. She assures me that even though I work and I don’t have the kids all the time, my job with them is still pretty darn hard. She sees me as an adult the way my real mother never did.

My birth mother and I are a lot alike – something I never saw with my real mother. We’re partyers (which would explain the teen pregnancy) and we’re very social, very much unlike my real mom. We love to cook and we love to eat. We jive in a way my real mother and I never did. For an adopted kid, it’s amazing seeing the things that are hereditary. The first present my birth mother ever sent me was wrapped in leopard-print paper, which I later found out was one of her favorite things. I have more leopard-print clothes than I can mention. Maybe love of leopard print isn’t hereditary, but isn’t that kind of a weird coincidence?

My birth mother accepts me for who I am – she’s even proud. My real mother encouraged my writing from the beginning but she would be mortified that I write about my family, and that I reveal so much about myself. My real mom stood behind my dad when he insisted I find a nice, safe job in insurance. I never did. That essay in the local paper led, in part, to a job, and that was the start of 16 years of writing professionally.

My birth mother and I have forged the relationship that, sadly, my real mother and I never would have. My birth mother let me get to know her, and she listens to me, and she wants to know me. My real mom let me in as much as she could, but it wasn’t much and she couldn’t listen enough to see who I really was. She had to endure things my birth mom never did – the drug years, the promiscuity, the suicide attempt, the manic episodes – and she did. She didn’t always handle them well, but she stuck by me.

I missed the last eight years of her life. During that time, I got married for the second time, had my first child and moved across the country. My daughter never met her Yiaya. By the time she was born, we lived in Seattle and my mom was in New York, but proximity wouldn’t have mattered. My mom didn’t know who or where she was by the time my daughter was born and I was afraid seeing Yiaya would scare the little one, so I never introduced them.

I’ve had a son since then, and my kids see their new Yiaya several times a year now. My birth mother is a great Yiaya. She spoils them with gifts but takes no crap when it comes to behavior. I could learn a lot from her. And I will.

This Mothers’ Day I’m really grateful. I’m grateful for the amazing privilege of having two mothers in my life. One was always there and one was a complete surprise but each made their unique contributions and I’m privileged to know both of them.

My husband and I had decided that the doll was an investment. She won’t appreciate, but she is cheaper than the orthodontia our four-and-a-half-year-old daughter will need down the road if she doesn’t give up her pacifier. We may even be too late, but we’ve heard some success stories so here’s hoping. This is not our first attempt to abolish the Binky (see The Passion for the Pacifier, Lying, Cheating and Stealing, Banishing Bad Baby Behaviors). But so far, it’s the first one that really worked. Well, sort of.

The morning the Paci Fairy came and left the doll my daughter lit up like it was Christmas. Wide-eyed, she opened the doll’s box with her dad and marveled at her new best friend. When it was nap time, we instructed her to hold onto her doll really tight, and she’d fall asleep. And she did.

That night, she went to bed with her doll without much fuss. She hugged the doll and fell asleep again. The next day, when nap time came, she started asking for a pacifier. I said no, that’s why she had her doll, and if I caught her with a pacifier, I’d have to take the doll. She asked to sleep in our bed, and I let her. I went in to check on her, she’d stolen a pacifier from her brother. I took the pacifier and the doll and when she woke up, told her she’d lost the doll.

She cried. I really wanted this whole endeavor to be a success so I said she could have the doll back if she went 24 hours without a paci. She agreed, she did her 24-hour-stint and she got the doll back. After that, she kept asking for a pacifier at nap time and we kept explaining that if she wanted a pacifier, she didn’t want her doll. She kept choosing the doll.

A few days later, I found a purloined paci in her mouth during her nap. I confiscated it. We had agreed in advance and warned her that if we found her with a pacifier again she’d have to return the doll to the store. When she awoke, my husband and I told her we’d found the pacifier and she had to take the doll back to the store with Daddy. Hysterics. Full-blown hysterics. Sobbing, screaming, crying, punching, kicking. For at least an hour. My husband, who’d devised the return-to-the-store plan and wanted to carry it out on the first offense, felt bad and wanted to give her a way to earn back the doll. Finally we decided that she had to go paci-free for a month and she could get her doll back.

My husband helped her wrap the doll and put her back in the box to be put away. She told the doll goodbye for now, and that she’d be back, and we put the doll up in the closet. It’s been three weeks now, and my daughter’s been paci-free. At first, she’d ask for a pacifier, especially for naps, but I’d say, “I guess you don’t want your doll back,” and she’d stop.

She’s also stopped taking naps. I wasn’t ready for that. I wanted to believe that the Nap Fairy would somehow bring me naps without a paci. Turns out there is no Nap Fairy. I knew the end of the paci meant the end of naps as we knew them. It’s part of why I let her keep the paci for so long. Oh who am I kidding? It is why I let her keep the paci for so long.

She goes to bed at night earlier and easier now. She used to make countless trips into the living room, bugging her father until 11 p.m. every night, long after I’d gone to bed. Now she’s asleep at 8:30. Now my husband and I have some time together after both kids are in bed, which is nice. And he’s got some daddy time after I’ve gone to bed.

I’ve completely lost my mommy time in the afternoon. Her brother still naps at “her” nap time – something I worked hard to achieve – but now she’s up. I’m trying to make lemonade by taking the opportunity for special mother/daughter bonding, and it’s about time, apparently, since she outright asked for one-on-one time just the other week. I love the time we spend together, but now I’ve got no time to take care of me. I’m happy we’ve quit the paci, but I wish had my own Fairy. If you know of one, please send her my way.

Taken by my 4 1/2-year-old budding photographer

We finally found our weekend groove. We’ve never been able to strike the right balance between doing something and getting something done, until now. We found that a short, fun activity each day makes the weekend enjoyable, but still productive, as we have plenty of time left for weekend projects.

So last week we wanted to go to the Tulip Festival in Skagit County. The tulips grown in Skagit County account for 75 percent of the tulips sold in the U.S., according to Sunset magazine. Basically, you pack the kids in the car, drive up there and traipse through the vast tulip fields, taking pictures and gazing at acres and acres of tulips and daffodils. The farm that we visited has beautiful gardens as well, in bloom for photos, and they sell flowers and food.

Visiting the tulips doesn’t sound like as much fun as it is. Although all you do is walk through the fields and take pictures of flowers, yourselves with flowers, and other people with flowers, it’s really beautiful; the sheer numbers of tulips blow your mind; and oddly enough, the kids really, really like it.

So when we decided to go to the tulip fields this year, I was understandably excited. The last time we went, we rendezvoused with another family, and, at their insistence, we left at the ass-crack of dawn, got up there in the morning, saw the tulips among a few other people, went to town, had lunch, and headed out, noting bumper-to-bumper traffic headed in, thinking smugly, Boy, I’m glad we’re not messed up in that! We were home by 2:30.

This year was a little different. This year I intended the Tulip Festival to be a half-day, (well, maybe three-quarters of a day) affair. That was shot to hell when we didn’t leave the house until 10:30 – it was my husband’s day to sleep late – and by the time we waited on line to get gas at Costco, we didn’t get on the road until 11 a.m. We hit the first big traffic backup at the first river crossing, where cars backed up from the exit a mile down the highway. We were shooting for a different route, so we passed that exit and well before we got to our exit, cars were lined up on the shoulder, and backed up on an on-ramp for the previous exit. There was no way to get into this line of cars, so we passed by, overshot our exit and doubled back.

Our detour proved a good way to get to town, and when we got there, we found a street festival. My husband suggested we check out the festival and get lunch. All I wanted to do was see the tulips, but we had to eat, so I acquiesced. Just across the parking lot, we saw an ice-cream stand. I don’t know who said “Look, ice cream!” It may have been me. But immediately, my daughter said, “I want ice cream! I want ice cream!” and we explained that she could have ice cream, after lunch. “I want ice cream now!” she said, channeling Veruca Salt.

There was a tent with all kinds of free toys next to the ice cream stand, so we got the kids interested in them, and, I thought, over the ice cream. Once we finished with the toys, we headed into the festival in search of lunch. We saw an Italian restaurant, which I vetoed, because I’m from New York and I do not eat Italian food in Podunk towns anywhere but Italy. Then we saw a burger place, which my daughter vetoed, then sausages on the street, which my daughter vetoed, then two more places she vetoed, so I stood her on a bench and talked to her face to face. She was cranky and I told her we had to find a place to eat. That’s when she said she wanted ice cream. I said the deal was she’d get ice cream after we ate. I put her back down. What finally saved us was a sno-cone machine in front of a Mexican restaurant. She wanted a sno-cone and we said, “If you come in here and eat a taco, you can have a sno-cone when you come out.” And she did.

After lunch we headed back to the car, my daughter munching her sno-cone, and headed for the tulip fields. When we turned onto the small country road leading to the fields, we found a mile-long line of cars at a dead stop. There was another way around, but we didn’t know if it went all the way through according to the map, so we didn’t take it. Instead we wound up waiting in line to turn onto the farm’s road for an hour, and during the last half hour, we were serenaded by my son crying in the backseat. His milk was gone and we hadn’t been able to get any at the restaurant, and we forgot on our way back to the car. We gave him a pacifier. He threw it. We gave him food. He threw it. Then my husband started bitching – about our son. He’d already been bitching about the traffic.

“He’s getting a sunburn! He’s in pain! He sounds like he’s in pain!”

I looked at him. “He’s in the shade.”

“No he’s not. I can see the sun coming through!”

“It’s not hitting him. It’s above his head,” I said.

“Do we have any sunscreen?”

“No, but if he’s sunburned we have some Oragel. It’ll numb his skin.”

“F-in’ traffic. Come ON!!!”

It turned out the traffic cop was favoring the other streets at the intersection. They all got to go twice before we went once. I don’t have to say that my husband was pretty pissed about that. When we got to the parking lot, he skidded the minivan into a space, jumped out of the car and got our son out.

“Look,” he said, pointing at my son’s reddened arm. “He’s sunburned!” He handed him to me as he went to set up the baby backpack.

I pressed my fingers into my son’s skin. “He’s not sunburned,” I said calmly. “He’s just red from crying.”

“He’s hot from sitting in that seat!” he said.

“Probably.” I rinsed his cup out and gave him some water. He drank it. “And he was thirsty.”

We put my son into the baby backpack, for the first time. He kicked and cried. Guess that was a waste of money. I wanted to see if he’d walk, so we brought the leash. No dice. We carried him and brought the stroller.

When we got to the gardens, my husband gave my daughter his camera. She loves taking pictures, and she’s getting really good at it. We emphasized that this was her day with the camera and she was so happy. Our son, however, was not. He was ok for a little while, but it wasn’t long before he wanted to play with the camera. We told him that it was his sister’s day with the camera and he just couldn’t have it. On came the tears, and the whining, and the “eh, eh, eh, eh,” whenever she got close. It got to be too much. We asked our daughter to give up the camera, just for a little while. She refused. We said, “Do you want to listen to him whine all day?” She gave it up.

Then she pouted. She walked away, arms crossed, head down. My husband followed her, offering his camera phone. No dice. We were stuck in this beautiful garden with a pouting preschooler and a now content toddler. We just couldn’t win. We dragged our daughter to the tulip fields and soon the flowers got the best of her and she asked for Daddy’s camera. She took some really good pictures with it too. Somewhere on the fields I remembered that my son’s been in love with car keys lately, so I traded him my keys for the camera, and returned it to my daughter, so for about a half hour, everyone was happy.

On the way back, we sat in traffic again, this time for about a half hour, headed back to town. And again on the highway. We kept hitting slowdowns for no apparent reason that would bring traffic to a standstill. It was no fun being around my husband for that. We finally got home at dinnertime, and, too tired to cook, we ordered Chinese food.

I learned a lot from this experience. One, leaving at the crack of dawn is the way to go to the Tulip Festival. Two, if I want a half-day excursion, I must tell my husband so that we both have the same goal. Three, if I want to have any sort of good time, I have to avoid stuff with the potential to piss my husband off. And four, I need to buy each kid a camera.

We love cruises — in fact, most of our vacations, all if you don’t count family visits, are cruises. We’ve found that with two small children, cruises are the way to go. When we wanted to go to Hawaii, the resorts that had kids’ clubs would only take kids that were five years old and older. When we looked at cruises, we found that they took two-year-olds, and better still, when we cruised the Caribbean, our ship took our infant on port days. Please visit

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“Hello, this is the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department. Your father’s part of a program where we call him every day to make sure he’s ok. He didn’t answer today. I’m outside his house right now.”

“Oh, yes, I know about the program. What can I help you with?”

“Well, I called both key holders and I can’t get in touch with either one. Does your father have any keys hidden outside the house?”

“Oh, no, Officer, he’s not that kind of a guy,” I said.

“When did you last talk to him?” he said.

“Two days ago,” I said.

“Well I can’t get in the house unless I break a window. Do you want me to do that?”

I thought about what my father would say if I’d given permission to break his window. I was fairly certain he was ok – my gut said so, and I’d received this phone call before and he was perfectly fine, although I did entertain the thought that we might have to fly back to the East Coast the day after we’d returned. “No,” I said. “Don’t break a window.”

“That’s the only way I can get in,” he said, glass-lust on his breath.

“I really don’t think it’s an emergency. I spoke to him two days ago and he was fine. I do know someone else with a key, but she’s at work right now,” I said.

“Give me her number. I’ll call her,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”

I finished getting the kids ready for school and we were about to walk out the door when the phone rang again.

“Ms. Fisher? This is Officer Iezzi again. Your father just drove up. He forgot about the phone call and went to the store. He’s fine.”

“Okay, good. Thanks so much for your help, Officer,” I said, frantically trying to text my BFF to tell her not to go home for the key. It turned out the sheriff had called her off before he called me, God bless him. And, God bless him again, he had not told my dad that she had a key. Immediately, I thought, Imagine what he would have done if he’d come home to a broken window? Brrr.

I didn’t talk to my dad that day. I did talk to him a few days later. We chatted – he asked about the kids, I answered, then he launched into his list of things that were new. Eventually he got to, “The police were at the house the other day. I’m in this program, ‘Are You Okay?’ and they call me every day to make sure I’m all right.”

“I know, Dad. They called me. This was the second time,” I said. “I told you about the first time.”

“Oh, they called you?”

“Yes. They call me every time they can’t get in touch with you,” I said. “And both times they’ve told me they can’t get in touch with anyone that has a key to your house.”

“Well, Jay has a key and Oswald has one.”

“I know. And they work. In the city. An hour and a half on the train and twenty minutes from the station. They are not around when the police call them. The officer asked if you had a key hidden around your house.” I proceeded to tell him an ingenious hiding place my old landlord used once – sorry, if I make it public, it loses its power.

“Yeah, these crooks, they know all the tricks. You can’t hide anything outside,” he said.

“The Police Officer thought it was okay to hide a key,” I said. “He wanted to break a window.”

“Whaat? Naaah, don’t break a window,” he said.

“That’s what I told him, but he said he couldn’t get in any other way,” I said. “That’s why he asked if you had a hidden key.”

“Jay and Oswald have keys,” he said.

“And he couldn’t get in touch with them. Why don’t you hide a key somewhere that I can tell the cops next time they call?” I said.

“No, no, these crooks look everywhere,” he said.

Oh, Lord, “Okay, so next time I’ll tell him to break a window.”

“Whaat? No, no, there’s no windows breaking,” he said. “Maybe I could give a key to Mr. Schlotz.”

Hallelujah. Mr. Schlotz lives in the neighborhood and he’s retired.

“But he’s out of the house more than he’s in it,” Dad said.

“But he’s LOCAL. Wherever he goes, he can get back quickly. That’s what you want,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him about giving a key,” he said.

“Okay, good, Dad. That’s really good. Thank you,” I said.

My father’s changed a lot. Oh, not in any fundamental way. He’s still the same paranoid, antisocial shut-in we all know and love, but now that he realizes he’s vulnerable he’s sometimes reasonable.

This conversation was a cake walk compared to any other attempted persuasive discussion. Like six years ago, when the nursing home social worker called me in to try to convince my dad to check my mother in, instead of just having her rehab there. Ha! She actually thought I could change his mind. I politely explained to her that the nursing home cost money and under no circumstances would my father spend money. She argued that people save for a rainy day, and they don’t realize that it’s pouring. I finally just told her I’d talk to him. And I did. And he told me the nursing home cost $100,000 a year.

But now things are different. My dad’s realizing his limitations. He just turned 83. He hired a kid to cut his grass. He used to love cutting the grass, but he told me he physically can’t do it anymore. He fell off of a ladder changing a light bulb. He fell off of a ladder going into the attic. He said he’d ask someone to climb ladders for him next time.

He’s old. It’s not like he just realized it. He jumped on that senior discount the minute he turned 65, but now, after being capable for my mom for 13 years until the Alzheimer’s killed her, he’s realizing that for some things, he’s become incapable. And he’s doing something he’s never done before. He’s asking for help. I’m sorry it took so long, but better late than never. Maybe, just maybe, through receiving help from different people, he’ll realize that everyone is not, in fact, out to get him. I can only hope.