Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper

Smartmom feels like her life is spinning out of control. She’s
vastly over-committed and finds that she has less and less time to do
the things she really wants to do.

Many of her friends feel exactly the same way.

Mrs.
Kravitz juggles a busy job as parent coordinator at a local elementary
school with her involvement at Old First Reformed Church. On top of
that, there’s her children’s complicated after-school schedule of piano
lessons, tutoring, Brownie meetings, Irish step dancing classes, and
play dates.

Add to that getting dinner on the table, cleaning the
house, dealing with her son’s severe allergies and being a great friend
to many people — her life is like a speeded up ride on the Cyclone.

Divorce
Diva is breathless with all that she’s got going on. In addition to her
daughter’s busy school and after-school schedule, Divorce Diva is a
freelance magazine writer with a business to run, who is also in
training to become a personal coach.

And if that wasn’t enough,
she bought a toy poodle last week on a whim while shopping for a
cockatiel to replace her dearly departed one. Birds are fairly easy,
but this toy poodle is a handful, even though she only weighs a single
pound.

The little poodle had a seizure last week, and Divorce Diva had to race to Animal Kind on Seventh Avenue.

The
poodle recovered after spending the night hooked up to an IV, which was
a good thing because it gave DD a chance to take a breath.

Then
there’s Mrs. Cleavage, who’s a regular perpetual-motion machine. She’s
single, unemployed, and can no longer afford to live in Park Slope, so
she lives in East New York and subways with her son to PS 321 every
morning. Then it’s off to the big city for a temp job and back again to
the Slope to pick up her son after school.

In her copious amounts
of free time, she sends out cover letters and resumes, looks for a new
apartment, writes her blog, Mrs. Cleavage’s Diary, and attends to her
own personal writing, for which she has won numerous awards.

It’s enough to make anyone want to take a nap.

So
you see, Smartmom is in good company when she says that her life is out
of control. Last week, over momtinis at Black Pearl, another busy
friend suggested that Smartmom make a list of everything she’s doing.

It
was an interesting exercise. After compiling the entire list, Smartmom
understood why she feels like Sybil (it’s not the multiple personality
disorder, but simply that she’s trying fit a whole lot of life into
that small, overweight body of hers).

So what could be eliminated from the list? Not much it turns out:

• She must remain a good mother to Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One and be there for them when they need her.

• She must remain a good wife and friend to Hepcat and give him the love and support he needs.

• She has to work to pay the bills, oversee the family’s finances, and take care of her home (at least, nominally).

• She has to be a good daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and member of her extended family.

•
She has to honor her creative side and work on her novel, her column,
her blog, which are all parts of her life that give her great
satisfaction.

There are plenty of things that sound expendable, but on further review, aren’t:

• She wants to keep organizing Brooklyn Reading Works, a monthly reading series at the Old Stone House.

• She wants to stay involved with Blogfest, an annual gathering of bloggers.

• She really should keep participating in her weekly writer’s group.

•
She really should keep co-editing Pandamonium, PS 321’s poetry magazine
but she’s under doctor’s orders not to do it next year.

• And how could she bail on helping to organize Stoopendous, a celebration of the summer solstice in Park Slope on June 23?

• And she wants to keep doing her monthly work-shift at the Food Co-op.

Whoa.
No wonder she’s has no time to meditate, to exercise, to read, to run
in the Park, to have a mammogram, to catch a show at the Brooklyn
Museum.

Buddha knows that Smartmom is spreading herself a bit too
thin. And she’s learned the hard way that doing too much can really
backfire.

She screws up; she forgets meetings; she hands in her
Smartmom column late, and Dumb Editor gets mean [Dumb Editor note:
“mean” is a subjective term].

She neglects her other responsibilities. She’s out of shape. She’s not taking good care of herself.

Yet she has no problem seeing when her friends take on too much or say “yes” when they should be saying “no.”

She told Divorce Diva that getting that little toy poodle might put her over the edge.

She warned Mrs. Kravitz that becoming a church elder might be pushing the envelope.

She
counseled Diaper Diva that taking that freelance job with the
looney-tunes producer might put her life into a tailspin (and give her
less time with Ducky).

But you can’t keep a good woman down. They
want to do what they want to do because they feel passionately about so
many things — even if they wear themselves out in the process.

Smartmom
tried to take her own advice. It is so obvious that she needs to prune
the tree of her life and prioritize. But it’s not so obvious what
should go.

Well, it’s a tough call. Saying no isn’t as easy as it
sounds. Still, Smartmom may have to pass on quite a few of her
activities or at least get a whole lot better at delegating. She’s
already found someone to replace her on the poetry magazine (Buddah
bless her) and a committee of bloggers (oy vey!) wants to take over
Blogfest for next year.

Now all it will take for her to get
something done will be to stop going out on Seventh Avenue, stop
answering her Razr, stop hanging out in the lobby at PS 321 after
dropoff, stop responding to e-mail.

Maybe next year.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper.

For the first time in 10 years, Smartmom and the Oh So Feisty One are going their separate ways.

That’s
right, the umbilical cord has finally snapped and Smartmom and her
beautiful girl are spreading their wings and flying off to different
locations for two weeks in July.

Well, it’s not like they’ve never been apart.

OSFO
does go to school every day and Smartmom goes to her office. OSFO goes
on playdates, to day camp in the summer, to birthday parties. Likewise,
Smartmom has had dinners with friends and did spend a weekend at a
Goddess retreat in the Berkshires.

But this is different: OSFO is
going to a sleep-away camp in Vermont and while she’s away, Smartmom is
planning a solo trip of her own.

It’s a scary thought — it really
is — but it’s also an unbelievably exciting one. Smartmom hasn’t been
on her own in years and years. And she’s looking forward to it with a
thrill that verges on the orgasmic.

To be specific, Smartmom has
booked a room on a top-secret island off the East Coast, where she
plans to finish writing her book [Dumb Editor note: This is the first I
hear of a book? I’d better be in the acknowledgements!]. She’ll also
run, ride a bike and meditate. And then work on her book some more.

She
plans to spend so much time alone she’ll probably get completely bored
with herself. But, still, she wants to pursue her little writerly dream.

If
you’re wondering about Teen Spirit, don’t. He’ll be home with Hepcat,
but, Buddha knows, that kid barely needs his momma anymore. Besides, he
and Hepcat did just fine 13 years ago, when Smartmom went away on a
business trip. He was only 3 then. And Smartmom made it up to them by
bringing Teen Spirit a really cool pirate sword and hat (Hepcat got a
duty-free bottle of Scotch whisky).

No guilt-filled present will
be necessary this summer. Teen Spirit has so much stuff lined up he
probably won’t even notice that Smartmom is gone. Hepcat’s a big boy
who can make it after all — not that he likes it, of course. And he has
that typical male dysfunction whereby he forgets to eat, sleep, make
the bed or do anything but work. Smartmom knows the apartment will look
like a Greg’s Express jobsite when she comes back from her island
getaway. But she’s willing to take that risk because OSFO is going to
sleepaway camp.

Sleep-away camp? It seems incomprehensible: OSFO
rarely has sleepovers and she still likes to fall asleep in her
parent’s bed from time to time. She’s a homebody who loves the
apartment, the stoop, the sidewalk on Third Street with a passion.

Truth is, she can still change her mind.

She
certainly was dubious about camp at first. After Smartmom registered
her for the two-week session, OSFO told her, “I was praying that they
wouldn’t have room for me.”

But
they did. And for months after, she didn’t want to talk about camp. It
was becoming the giant chartreuse elephant with polka dots that no-one
wanted to mention.

The big C.

Then last Friday night, out
of the blue, OSFO asked Smartmom to read her the entire Parents’
Handbook from start to finish and when they were done, OSFO asked her
to read it again.

Maybe it was the description of the baby farm
animals they have at this camp. Little piggies, goats, calves, but
whatever, she been excited ever since.

So for the first time in
10 years, Smartmom and the Oh So Feisty One are going their separate
ways. They’ve ordered a hot pink duffel bag. Manhattan Granny is
starting to iron nametags into her clothes. They’re going to Eastern
Mountain Sports next week to buys a backpack and sleeping bag. Before
you know it, they’ll be putting OSFO on the bus.

Is this really
happening? Is it possible that OSFO is old enough to go to summer camp?
Will she like her bunkmates? How will she feel about the composting
outhouses and the lack of electricity? Isn’t she going to freeze at
night in those open-air cabins? How will she handle the silent Quaker
meetings every morning?

For that matter, will Smartmom enjoy so
many days alone on an island facing her keyboard, trying to write. What
if she gets writer’s block? What if there’s a big thunderstorm and
she’s scared? What if she gets lonely?

What if she gets homesick?

Smartmom
usually goes to bed with her little OSFO purring beside her and her big
Teen Spirit playing his guitar in the next room. Her Hepcat is almost
always at the computer desk in the living room. She watches one or two
episodes of “Scrubs” (love that nasty Dr. Cox), sets the alarm, and
drifts off to sleep.

Chances are everyone will do just fine. Even
if they do get homesick and sad, Smartmom and OSFO are both certain to
have an interesting time (like the old Chinese curse).

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper.   No, Diaper Diva is not angry at Smartmom for writing this. In fact, Smartmom showed it to her pre-printing and she even made some corrections to the story. Her lawyer did, however, give Smartmom a call today. Wonder what she was calling about? Smartmom and her sister are all made up and best friends again.

So Smartmom and her twin sister Diaper Diva went on vacation together…

OK,
so there were some touchy moments. No fighting, no biting. But some of
that sibling tension that makes family vacations so much fun.

Let’s
start at the very beginning. Smartmom and the Oh So Feisty One showed
up at Diaper Diva’s apartment expecting to pack up the car immediately.

“Should I bring your suitcase downstairs?” Smartmom asked helpfully.

"No, I’m not ready. I still have work to do,” Diaper Diva said testily.

So, Smartmom, OSFO and Ducky waited until Diaper Diva finished working.

“I feel like you’re pressuring me,” she said before making yet another phone call. “I feel like I’m disappointing you.”

They waited some more.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just that OSFO has been up since 8 am and is dying to get there.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Diaper Diva said with more than a little bitterness in her voice.

“Should OSFO and I just take the bus?” Smartmom chided.

It was that prickly getting-annoyed-with-one-another-vibe that can really make or break a short weekend away.

The
drive to the hotel in New Jersey, where they were going to spend two
days of rest and relaxation with their daughters, was fast and even
fun. OSFO and Ducky watched “Dora the Explorer” on a portable DVD
player while Smartmom and Diaper Diva made careful conversation.

“Hey,
look, it’s Wayne, New Jersey! We should go to the Fountains of Wayne —
they based a Soprano’s episode on that place,” Diaper Diva said,
obviously beginning to relax.

But when they got to the hotel, Diaper Diva seemed dubious — she wasn’t sure she liked it at all.

“This place is so 1970’s ski chateau,” she said. She always did have an unerring eye for interior design.

“OK, so it’s 1970’s ski chateau,” Smartmom said.

“Well, it could just use an update, that’s all,” Diaper Diva added.

Smartmom
wanted Diaper Diva to relax and, shall we say, be in the moment. But
she seemed incapable of it. Everything was like tin foil on a filling —
she was just bugged and there was nothing Smartmom could do about it.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have left on Friday,” Smartmom said.

“Well
that’s water under the bridge, isn’t it?” Diaper Diva said, still
having a tough time letting go — of her difficult work week, of the
stress of being with her terribly cute terrible 2-year-old and her
annoying twin sister.

They went to the dining room (“What’s with
these weird kites on the ceiling?” Diaper Diva asked). They ordered
pizza and salad, but Ducky staged a world-class tantrum because she
couldn’t get her mind off of the fun-looking swimming pool she’d just
seen.

Typical 2-year-old: she kept running away from the table.
Finally, Diaper Diva realized that a restaurant lunch was not in the
stars and took Ducky downstairs to the pool.

When the food came,
Smartmom asked the waiter to pack it up. She brought it downstairs and
offered it to Diaper Diva who was famished.

“This is my idea of a nightmare,” she said. “Being with a 2-year-old at a swimming pool.”

“Do you want to go home?” Smartmom asked.

“No. But I’m allowed to be miserable, aren’t I?”

“I guess.”

Smartmom
was determined to help Diaper Diva relax. She finally convinced her to
go to the hotel’s spa for her scheduled pedicure. Diaper Diva looked
worried.

“Look, she’ll be fine with us,” Smartmom said. “We won’t let her drown. Besides, she’s wearing water wings.”

Ducky was happy as a clam playing with OSFO in the pool. She even floated by herself courtesy of her bright orange floaties.

When
Diaper Diva returned to the pool (her toenails painted a deep
burgundy), Ducky’s mood changed. She wanted mommy. In the pool. Now.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

“Like I said, being here is my idea of a nightmare,”

“Then
why don’t you leave Ducky with us. She was having a great time before
you got here. Go into the sauna and she’ll be fine,” Smartmom said
holding a squirmy, unhappy Ducky in her arms. Diaper Diva jumped into
the water and grabbed Ducky out of Smartmom’s arms.

“Go to the sauna. YOU NEED TO RELAX,” Smartmom screamed.

“But she’s crying,” Diaper Diva said.

“She’ll cry for a minute. Then she’ll be fine,”

“I WILL NOT leave my baby crying,” Ducky exclaimed.

“You are digging your own grave. I THINK YOU’RE GOING OUT OF YOUR MIND!”

Oops. Now Smartmom had gone too far.

“Oh, that’s not very ‘Smartmom,’ is it? Telling a mother she’s going out of her mind because she wants to comfort her baby…”

OK,
so there were some touchy moments. No fighting, no biting. But some of
that sibling tension that makes family vacations SO MUCH FUN (or just
plain hellish).

Talk about tension. Back in the hotel room,
Smartmom and her sister gave each other the silent treatment. Smartmom
entered her self-righteous zone — her sister was going mad, she was a
control freak, she was making herself crazy. Smartmom felt righter than
right.

Diaper Diva deserved to be stressed out forever.

Smartmom
considered taking the bus home (but OSFO would be furious). Instead she
went into the lobby and called her mother and told her EVERYTHING in
gory detail. In the midst of her vitriolic rage, she saw her sister
with Ducky and OSFO in tow walking toward her.

“I bet you’re talking to Mom,” she said. “I called her an hour ago.” Her face broke into a smile. She finally looked relaxed.

Manhattan Granny had played dumb.

“Be
compassionate. It’s hard to travel with a 2-year-old,” Manhattan Granny
advised. “She had a very stressful week. Maybe she shouldn’t have said
yes to the vacation. Be kind to her. She’s new at this…”

Ahhh. Compassion. Kindness. Understanding. But it’s so hard when one feels like KILLING her sister.

Still,
Smartmom tried to be understanding. She’s been a traveling mom for more
than 15 years, while Diaper Diva has been at it for less than two. If
she doesn’t feel comfortable leaving Ducky in the pool with Smartmom,
that’s okay.

Everyone got a good night’s sleep and woke up
refreshed. The next day, Diaper Diva enjoyed a soothing aromatherapy
massage and soaked her feet in warm water with rose petals. Smartmom
ran around the track. OSFO and Ducky played in the water endlessly and
Smartmom learned a thing or two about compassion. Understanding.
Kindness.

Even if she did feel like killing her sister.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

It was just an innocent attempt to organize some books that started when Smartmom came home from her office and found towers of books precariously balanced on the floor of the hallway and in Teen Spirit’s bedroom.

Apparently, Beautiful Smile emptied a couple of bookcases.

“I haven’t dusted them in ages,” she told Smartmom, who thought it was a fantastic idea.

Analyzing this Eiffel Tower of bookdom, Smartmom decided it was time to go through and prune them. Surely, the family didn’t need all those books.

An old law dictionary Hepcat found in the garbage? Computer Shopper Magazines from the 1990s? A complete Handyman’s Encyclopedia?

Mass reorganization and throwing away: it’s Smartmom’s idea of heaven and Hepcat’s idea of hell. That’s why she and Beautiful Smile kept their project hush-hush.

No sense in Hepcat getting all agitated…

Before they knew it, it was dusk and time for Beautiful Smile to go home to Coney Island.

Smartmom knew she had a long night ahead.

While Smartmom worked in the back of apartment, Hepcat worked at his computer up front.

Shhhh. Hepcat gets apoplectic anytime Smartmom reorganizes. He still hasn’t forgiven his mother for throwing out a complete set of Outer Limits trading cards, now worth millions.

Quietly, Smartmom sorted through hundreds of books.

It was like traveling through Teen Spirit’s childhood when she dove into his old trove. She used a damp cloth on his Harry Potter hardcovers and volumes 1–13 of the “Series of Unfortunate Events,” Daniel Handler’s wacky, dark masterpiece of literary name-play.

Smartmom lovingly dusted off Teen Spirit’s collection of “Alice and Wonderland” books, which he started collecting in middle school when he decided it was his most favorite tome.

Tin Tin, Narnia, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes and a large set of Manga comics.

Finally, more recent reads by authors like William Gibson, Stanislav Lem, Terry Patchett (Mad Magazine meets J.R. Tolkien). “Catch 22,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “All the President’s Men,” “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Phew.

Once all the keepers were dusted and placed on Teen Spirit’s shelf Smartmom went in for the kill. And she found plenty of stuff to toss. Out with the Magic Treehouse books, “Captain Underpants,” “Henry and Mudge,” Dorling Kindersley.

Smartmom’s heart beat wildly as it always does when she is purging her household of unwanted items. The act of clearing space creates a kind of euphoria mixed with hysteria.

Books, books, and more books — more grist for the stoop sale, the PS 321 rummage sale, the Salvation Army … Ahhhh.

The emptiness of the bookcase in the hallway gave Smartmom a Zen-like feeling of calm. She was letting go of worldly processions. Reaching Nirvana.

Minimal. Empty. Clean.

She sat and stared at the empty bookcase like the Buddha underneath the Bodhi tree. She’d always despised that bookcase because it’s such a junk collector: pencils, action figures, dice, single earrings, outdated Metrocards, business cards nobody needs. No matter how often she clears it, that bookcase refuses to stay clean.

But what to do with it, she wondered, the apartment is pretty much maxed out in terms of furniture space. Hmmmm.

Eureka. Ah ha! The bathroom. For towels and toiletries. OK.

All. By. Herself. Smartmom moved the bookcase, which is like six feet tall and three feet wide very, very quietly.

Change is such big deal for Hepcat. Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One, too. But Smartmom was absolutely certain that the white bookcase would look great in the bathroom.

It was heavy and cumbersome, but Smartmom is strong when she needs to be. A regular superwoman, she didn’t tell Hepcat for almost an hour that she’d moved the bookcase.

Then he went to the bathroom.

Expletive deleted!

“What the hell? It’s so claustrophobic in here. Where are the books that were on this bookcase? I’ll have to pee sideways,” he ranted.

After a few days, Hepcat, Teen Spirit, and OSFO seem to have adjusted to the new arrangement. Maybe they even like it now.

Really. It was just an attempt to organize some books.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from The Brooklyn Paper:

These days, Smartmom and Hepcat are like ships passing in the night. In recent weeks they’ve spent more time apart than together and people are getting suspicious.

“Everything okay between you two?” Groovy Grandpa asked the other day on the phone when Smartmom told him that Hepcat was in California.

He’s just visiting his mother in California, she told her nosy dad. Besides he needed to check on The Little Orange Car, the Porsche he inherited from his beloved uncle, which he keeps in a container behind his mother’s house.

“But you went away last week with the Oh So Feisty One,” Groovy Grandpa reminded her, obviously building a case that Smartmom and Hepcat are on the outs.

Well, they’re not and Smartmom wants to make that abundantly clear. When you’ve got two kids in different schools and different schedules you’ve got to divide and conquer in order to make things happen.

Everyone knows that (doesn’t he)?

And more to the point, when you’re as busy as Smartmom and Hepcat are — with different work schedules and deadlines — you’ve got to grab any downtime you can get.

Still, the conversation with Groovy Grandpa did make Smartmom wonder if it was normal for a married couple to take short trips independent of one another.

Normal schnormal! Who cares about normal? Smartmom may not be Marlo Thomas, but she believes that the freedom to be you and me is essential for a good marriage. And it’s major tenet of her relationship with Hepcat.

Still, Hepcat and Smartmom have been going solo quite a bit of late. So what’s up with that?

Well, last month, Smartmom decided on a whim to take OSFO to the Minerals Inn at Crystal Springs Spa in Vernon, New Jersey for a quick getaway during the seemingly endless winter break.

Before making the reservations, she asked Hepcat if he wanted to join them. But he had too much going on at the office. Besides, it didn’t sound like Hepcat’s kind of vacation. Too cushy. Too comfortable. Too bourgeois.

Hepcat grew up on a farm and is a rugged kind of guy. He still kvells about his three days alone in the woods with Outward Bound like it was three nights at the Ritz.

Hepcat’s idea of a vacation is an itinerary-free drive cross-country in The Little Orange Car, staying in Indian-owned motels.

But Smartmom and OSFO crave some R&R (or, technically, P&P — pampering and pillows) every now and again.

So Smartmom, OSFO and the Kravitzes went off for a fun and sporty weekend at the New Jersey spa. Third Street goes on vacation.

What’s not to like? Seven inter-connecting pools, including an outdoor heated pool for winter swimming under the stars, hot tubs, a steam room, sauna, an indoor track, an indoor basketball court, tennis, Pilates classes, a salon for massages and facials.

The kids had a first-class vacation and so did Smartmom and Mr. and Mrs. Kravitz (who picked up three bottles of red wine at the local mall). Plus, it was fun for them to hang out with good friends somewhere other than their identical dining rooms.

Once they got home, Smartmom told Hepcat all about the restful trip, but he still wasn’t convinced it was his kind of thing. And Teen Spirit, well, he was perfectly happy hanging out with friends and practicing his guitar (too loudly some would say).

A few weeks later, Smartmom went on an overnight to Boston with Best and Oldest, her best friend since fifth grad, to see Opera Diva, her high school best friend, sing the lead in “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.”

Well, Smartmom couldn’t exactly skip hearing her friend sing the lead in this rarely performed opera by Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht.

But Hepcat couldn’t come along — someone needed to stay home to police Teen Spirit and OSFO. Plus, it meant being away on a Tuesday, and that’s Important Staff Meeting Day at the Edgy Startup where he works.

So Smartmom went solo. After the show, which was terrific, she and her high school pals drank martinis until 2 am with the cast and crew. It was the most fun the three old friends have had together since they each turned 30 in 19 — (we’re not telling!).
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos

Once home, Smartmom and Hepcat barely got a chance to chitchat before he was getting on a Jet Blue flight for Oakland. Because it was the week of the fourth grade test, it was out of the question for Smartmom and family to join him.

Besides, he likes to visit the family farm and see his family by himself from time to time. He has lots of things to take care of out there and there’s always The Little Orange Car.

Yes, The Little Orange Car.

Okay, so Smartmom is a tad jealous of The Little Orange Car. It’s just that, Hepcat pays so much attention to HER. She’s his screen saver, for Buddha’s sake! When they’re together, he takes her for long scenic drives, buys her expensive gifts like piston rings, seat belts, and a $2,000 carburetor.

When was the last time Hepcat bought Smartmom a $2,000 carburetor? The Little Orange Car: she’s almost like his mistress. Except, well, she’s a car.

Hepcat came back on Saturday night and now they have only a few days together before Smartmom is off on her own little adventure at a writer’s conference in Rehoboth Beach. It’s called “Writers on the Beach,” but Writers on the Beach During Off-Season” sounds more accurate.

Smartmom has never been to a writer’s conference, but she likes the sound of it. It’s a professional trip, a serious investment in her writing career, a chance to mingle with important writers.

It’s also a chance to sleep in a hotel for three nights, eat dinner out, and be alone.

Smartmom hasn’t even told Groovy Grandpa about this trip. She’s afraid that it’ll only add to his sense that Smartmom and Hepcat are going through a rough patch and heading for the Big D.

But that’s not it at all. Smartmom and Hepcat know that the secret to their togetherness is their ability to be apart. They try to give each other the extra space they need when they need it. That way there are no built up resentments or hurt feelings.

Even so, Smartmom hopes the next time she goes away it’s with her Hepcat. She does enjoy being with the man she married every now and again.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

Smartmom wants to know: does New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks know anything about Park Slope?

This
Sunday, the neo-conservative writer and enthusiastic supporter of the
U.S. intervention in Iraq (on moral grounds, no less!) ranted against
hipster parents in his article, “Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox.”

In the
process, he insulted an entire generation of counterculture parents,
who buy Ramones t-shirts for their kids, log onto Urban Baby, and
prefer that their kids listen to Dan Zanes and Music for Aardvarks than
Disney fantasy garbage.

As if that wasn’t enough, the author of
“Bobos in Paradise” managed to conflate Brownstone Brooklyn with
Williamsburg and dig his sharp pen into the parents of Park Slope.

“Can
we please see the end of those Park Slope Alternative Stepford Moms in
their black-on-black maternity tunics who turn their babies into
fashion-forward, anti-corporate, indie infants in order to stay one
step ahead of the cool police?” he wrote.

Hold on there! Brooks
may have a penchant for clever coinage, but he also suffers from
out-of-control generalizations. He certainly isn’t talking about the
Park Slope that Smartmom knows and loves (and, yes, sometimes thinks is
ridiculous).

In fact, Brooks is so off the mark, Smartmom wonders
if he even knows the difference between Williamsburg, Park Slope,
Cobble Hill and Fort Greene. (Why he decided to bring up the title of a
1970s movie about desperate and robotic housewives is anyone’s guess).

In
Park Slope, the moms are pretty darn conventional — they care about
good schools, neighborhood sports, and, damn it, they even want their
Bank of America ATMs un-littered.

Park Slopers are probably more
conservative about “child-rearing” than Brooks — except, of course,
Slopers insist on gender neutrality, race diversity, and eco-friendly
toilet paper in the bathroom.

If anything, Park Slope parents are the uber-parents that the hipster parents from Williamsburg love to hate.

Obviously,
there are plenty of reasons for Brooks to rant against Park Slopers.
But turning their babies into “fashion-forward, anti-corporate, indie
infants” isn’t one of them.

The fact is, no one could ever accuse Park Slope parents — or their offspring — of being particularly fashionable or cool.

Everyone knows that Park Slope is the schleppy capital of Brooklyn.

“Most
of the women I see at drop-off are hardly hipsters,” Mrs. Cleavage told
Smartmom over lattes at the Cocoa Bar. “They all need fashion
makeovers. The fashion faux pas are rampant. No lipstick, no make-up.
I’m sorry. Everything is shapeless and drab.”

Smartmom immediately put on some lipstick.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t fashionistas around here. But they stick out like a Fresh Direct box at the Food Co-op.

Smartmom isn’t knocking schleppy. It’s just that Seventh Avenue isn’t exactly Bedford Avenue, if you know what she means.

Come
on. Williamsburg is where the hipster parents live. If Brooks would
just leave his office at the Times and hop an L-train (it leaves
Manhattan, David, so you may want to grab a map), he could visit groovy
playspaces like Mama Lou’s and hipster tot shops like Flying Squirrel
and Mini Jakes.

It seems that Brooks has really fallen under the
spell of writer Adam Sternbergh, who recycled the not-very-flattering
word, “grups,” to define a generation of New York parents who who look
and act like 22-year-olds.

Why does Brooks rely on the
observations of a New York Magazine writer when he could just read The
Brooklyn Paper or, Buddha forbid, come out to Park Slope himself (don’t
forget your map, Dave)?

Sternbergh took the term from an episode
of “Star Trek” in which the crew lands on an adult-free planet ruled by
children. (It doesn’t stop Kirk from falling in love with one of the
kids, but that’s another story.)

While Park Slope does sometimes
feel like a planet ruled by children, Smartmom doesn’t think the
parents around here are quite that youthful.

But if Brooks thinks she and her contemporaries look and act like 22-year-olds — she’ll take that as a compliment.

Even
when it comes to cyberspace, Brooks gets Park Slope wrong. Contrary to
Brooks’s generalization, no one around here reads UrbanBaby.com, which
describes itself as “a dose of hip info on where to shop, play, eat,
travel and have fun with your kids.”

Park Slope Parents is more like it. Has Brooks even heard of it?

He
even is wrong about the books Park Slopers read. “In a sign that the
hip parenting thing has jumped the shark, the movement gets it own
book, the indescribably dull ‘Alternadad,’ ” Brooks wrote.

That
was the last straw buddy. Park Slope is one of the most literary
neighborhoods in New York City and “Alternadad” is not even in the
window of Community Books. Didn’t he read Smartmom’s take-down of Neal
Pollack a few weeks ago in these very pages? Smartmom thought the Times
had editorial researchers to make sure the columnist didn’t make such
glaring errors of omission.

The funny thing is this: Brooks could have found loads to object to in Park Slope if he’d really done his research.

For
starters, most of the people around here opposed the war in Iraq (from
the start) and are disgusted with Bush’s plans for escalation.

And Park Slopers by and large oppose the Atlantic Yards because they care about contextual architecture and human scale cities.

Thousands
of Park Slopers are willing to work three hours every four weeks as
members of the Food Co-op to shop for inexpensive organic food and
green products.

Instead, he falsely blamed Park Slopers for leading the gruppy brigade. And that’s just plain wrong.

It
reminds Smartmom of Brook’s support of the war in Iraq. Like Bush, he
picked the wrong enemy — Iraq — as responsible for 9-11.

As for
his other criticism that hipster parents are turning their offspring
into “miniature reproductions of their hipper-than-thou selves,”
Smartmom had one comment: Isn’t that what parents do?

Whether
they’re living in Brooks’s halcyonic 1950s suburbia, a hut in the
Sudan, or an apartment in Bensonhurst, parents everywhere try to make
their children just like them.

It’s up to the kids to reject
their parent’s values — and whether they’re rejecting Lawrence Welk or
Patti Smith — what’s the difference?

Yes, Park Slopers do so many
things that would make a conservative like Brooks go ballistic. But why
are they getting blamed in the New York Times for being hipster parents
when they’re not really that hip at all?

You just can’t win.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

Snow was in the forecast. Valentine’s Day was coming (it’s Hepcat’s
least-favorite Hallmark holiday). And in the middle of everything,
Smartmom found out that one of her paying projects has been
substantially downsized.

Smartmom has the blues and she’s got ’em bad.

Yeah. Yeah. One door opens and another one closes. But try telling
that to Smart Tuition when it comes calling for the $3,500 she still
owes for Teen Spirit’s Bay Ridge Prep schooling.

Not to mention the stack of bills on the dining room table mingling
with last night’s dirty dinner plates that she couldn’t bring herself
to clean.

And Buddha forbid that Hepcat pick up a dirty plate and take it to
the kitchen sink (forget putting it in the dishwasher — that would be
beyond the beyond).

And don’t even get her started on OSFO or Teen Spirit.

She’s asked them again and again to remember to clear the table. But
far be it from those entitled sycophants to be considerate of Smartmom
on her worst night in months.

Obviously, Smartmom is feeling very Rodney Dangerfield-like at the
moment. She don’t get no respect from her kids or her husband. Truth
is, she don’t get no respect from nobody. Life sucks and she can’t take
it anymore.

Slow down, Smartmom. You’re getting a little carried away. It’s not like anyone is having such a good time these days.

Take Mrs. Cleavage. Last month she was laid off from her job as an executive assistant at a high-powered non-profit.

She sobbed all the way home on the 2 train.

“What a nightmare. I hate public displays, but I could not keep it
together,” she told Smartmom over white chocolate cake at the Cocoa Bar.

When Mrs. Cleavage, a single mom, got home, she called her
therapist. “He now stands even less of a chance of being paid for his
services. I sobbed through that phone call.”

Then there’s Smartmom’s friend, Tall and Lanky, whose daughter was
injured in a school circus arts class and had to spend two days in the
pediatric ICU with a spleen injury.

And Divorce Diva’s life makes Smartmom’s travails look like a day at
Canyon Ranch. Last month, she broke her foot walking down the stairs
and has been on crutches ever since.

Then, she discovered that she and her daughter were infested with
head lice. After two $300 visits from the Orthodox Jewish Ladies Lice
Brigade (www.licebusters­nyc.com), they are lice free. To make matters
worse, her daughter contracted pinkeye — from her stepsister no less.

Just when she thought things were getting better, her 10-year-old cockatiel, Jackie, got deathly ill.

Saturday night after midnight, Divorce Diva placed Jackie in her
grandmother’s sewing basket and took Eastern Car Service to the Animal
Medical Center’s emergency room in Manhattan. The beloved cockatiel was
dead by 11 am.

Rest in peace, Jackie.

So Smartmom should stop her bellyaching. In the scheme of things, it
could be worse. She could have a broken limb, a head full of lice, a
child with a spleen injury or a hysterical crying jag on the subway.

But life is not a game of comparative misery. We all get to be as nasty as we wanna be. No matter how bad or good the reason.

And Smartmom really doesn’t have a good reason. She’s got two great
kids — who refuse to use the hamper and leave their clothing on the
bathroom floor.

She’s healthy — even if can’t bare to look at the bathroom scale anymore and seems incapable of going running in the park.

She’s got a wonderful husband — who comes home late from work, walks straight
to his computer, and continues working until the wee hours of the
morning. Plus he probably forgot to give her a Valentine’s Day gift
(really, what’s so hard about going to the Clay Pot?).

Lastly, she loves what she does — but she’s not making enough money.
And she needs an agent. And she has all these aspirations, all these
goals and sometimes she doesn’t know how to go about meeting them.

Truthfully, the best thing Smartmom has going in her life right now
is the new high-definition, flat-screen TV on which she and Hepcat
spent too much money and on which she watches re-runs of her new
favorite show, “Scrubs.”

Yes, all is right with the world when Dr. Perry Cox, the
curmudgeonly, caring, and wildly funny John McGinley, rants about
everything that’s wrong with his life, the residents he oversees, and
the quality of care at the surreal Sacred Hearts Hospital.

Smartmom can relate. Life sucks. What can you say. “Scrubs” is a really great show. You should watch it sometime.

Here is this week’s Smartmom from the rebranded and award-winning Brooklyn Paper:

The Oh So Feisty One thinks Alternadad is an idiot.

And she
told him so. It happened on Sunday night at the Tea Lounge on Union
Street in Park Slope, where Neal Pollack (a.k.a. “Alternadad”) was
promoting his new book.

Early in the reading, Pollack ranted
about “The Backyardigans,” a Nick Jr. show he thinks is unctuous and
stifling to the imagination. He much prefers that his 4-year-old son,
Elijah, watch a classic superhero cartoon like Justice League of
America. Then he looked out at the audience.

“Does that boy out there watch the Justice League of America?” he asked.

Everyone looked around wondering whom Pollack was talking about.

“That boy,” he pointed right at OSFO, who was wearing her brand-new Navy blue Brooklyn Industries hoodie — with the hood up.

“That’s
not a boy, that’s my daughter!” Smartmom corrected. On cue, OSFO
removed her hood, which revealed her beautiful, ultra-feminine face and
long billowing brown hair.

“I thought she was a boy because she was wearing a hood,” Alternadad said.

Them’s
fightin’ words in gender-neutral Park Slope, where a maelstrom
developed last year after a woman inadvertently assigned gender status
to a Navy blue hat that was left at a playground.

You could say
that the reading didn’t get off to such a good start. And Smartmom was
already miffed because Dumb Editor asked her at the last minute to
cover it for The Paper. Still, she went along with it, judging this
book reading by its cover (a funny picture of a rubber ducky with a
nose ring in his bright orange beak).

Before the reading, Smartmom sauntered right up to Pollack and introduced herself.

“Hi, I’m Smartmom,” she said.

“I’m Dumbdad,” Pollack answered. “There, you have your lead.”

Snarky.
Very snarky. This hipster guy is one super ironic dude. Still, she
tried to keep her mind open to Pollack, whose new tome is getting raves
(which always raises Smartmom’s eyebrow).

Next problem: finding a
seat. Not an easy task on Sunday night when the Tea Lounge is packed
with childless twenty- and thirtysomethings doing whatever it is they
do with their laptops.

Finally, a scuzzy yellow armchair freed up and OSFO grabbed it.

Pollack
read from the preface of his “tell-it-like-it-is” parenting book for
people who spent their pre-kid years, like him, obsessed with popular
culture, babes, bars and bongs.

Big surprise: the book was all about poop.

Like many a snarky guy, Pollack is obsessed with excrement — the most-dreaded reality of fatherhood for many a would-be dad.

Pollack told of the time his 2-year-old son took off his diaper and threw poop all over his bedroom.

There went Smartmom’s eyebrow again. Ho freakin’ hum, the mother of two thought to herself.

The
big surprise of the book is really no surprise for anyone who has had a
kid (presumably, Pollack’s audience). The “Alternadad” comes to realize
that he loves his kid even more than he used to love the Sex Pistols.
It’s a rocky, often painful, ride from rock-and-roll dreamer to
responsible and pragmatic parent. But he loves it in the end.

In
the book, Pollack discovered that such love trumps going out to the
midnight show at Union Hall or Southpaw. Sure, he still goes out. But,
frankly, why bother? Judging from the many “isn’t-my-kid-cute-and-cool”
anecdotes throughout the book, his kid really is the best show in town.

And
that’s the part that made Smartmom squirm. Pollack acts like he’s the
only parent in the world who thinks his kid says the darndest things.

Just spend a half hour eavesdropping at Sweet Melissa’s and you’ll get better material than his.

Perhaps
no one has had the guts to say it, so Smartmom will: Pollack is not the
first cool guy to procreate. Even Keith Richards is a dad, for Buddha’s
sake.

This
edgy writer guy with his not-so-edgy book deal from Pantheon and a
savvy publicist to boot may be funny, but so is Smartmom’s fave Annie
Lamott, author of “Operating Instructions.” And, frankly, so is
Smartmom herself. You can go to the Tea Lounge and hear her read (to
herself) any time you want.

Yet here comes “Alternadad,” this
braggadocious boho, veteran of artsy performance spaces and poetry
slams in the backroom of independent bookstores. Suddenly, he grows up
and becomes a Dad. And he likes it. In fact, he finds it amazing! It’s
even stupendous! It’s even better than the sex he no longer has. Now
Smartmom knows he’s nuts.

So you can see why Smartmom, who’s been
mommying for 16 years, was annoyed having to listen to this cool cat’s
initiation into parenthood.

Needless to say, Pollack’s got sequel
written all over him. Heck, he’s got a cottage industry with his kid:
Elijah Takes Theremin Lessons. Elijah Meets Patti Smith. Elijah Gets
Thrown Out of Waldorf School.

A TV deal is no doubt in the works. This kid thing is a cash cow!

Do
I really need to hear Neal Pollack kvell about his kid: “Elijah is
imaginative. He’s wonderfully creative. He asks interesting scientific
question, and makes up imaginative superheroes. He’s a smart kid and
great to have around. He is endlessly fun and endlessly hilarious…”

Blah.
Blah. Blah. Speaking of kids, OSFO really is one smart cookie, too. She
called it as she saw it: Alternadad really is an idiot.

So I was walking down Seventh Avenue talking to my great friend Red Eft (Gluten-Free) on the cell phone as I often do and I mentioned that she and her husband, Dadu, were in this week’s Smartmom.

I guess she was near her computer because she read the column while I was crossing Union Street.

"’Suburban Pals a Memory?’" she said. "We didn’t move to the suburbs. Kingston is a small city."

"I know. That must have gotten edited out," Smartmom said.

"’A city childhood is no different from childhood anywhere else?’" she read my line from the article. "I don’t think that’s true at all," she added.

"I know. It’s kind of a joke," Smartrmom said.

"’The ease of shouting up to a window Brooklyn-style must be replaced with the effort of picking up the phone?’ You never shouted up to our window Brooklyn-style," she joked.

"Ahh. Yeah. I took liberties. The characters are sometimes amalgams. You know. Smartmom is an amplified version of me," I said probably defensively.

"This thing is so NY-centric," Red Eft said.

"Yeah. That’s kind of the joke. Smartmom has this persona…"

By the time I got to Lincoln Place we were talking about other things. I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me or just taking issue with the writing. I certainly didn’t mean to offend them and I’m pretty sure she knows that.

Red Eft and my friendship transcends geography and is all the richer for their move upstate. It is a friendship built on shared interests, trust, shared emotions, and insight. I value her deeply — not that I have to say that here.

I amplify aspects of myself and my Brooklyn-centric attitude when I write Smartmom. Much of it is tongue-in-cheek. Some of it isn’t. I guess it can be hard to tell. When I write Smartmom, she speaks to me. Half the time, I don’t even KNOW what she’s gonna say.  And that’s the fun.

Red Eft, Dadu, and family are coming down to Brooklyn on Sunday. We’re having brunch at Beso, our old favorite Fifth Avenue haunt. Kingston is really just two hours from Park Slope.

They left Park Slope for their own, and very personal, reasons. And they’ve made a really interesting life for themselves in that SMALL UPSTATE CITY. I commend their ability to change their lives in such an interesting and fulfilling way.

But I bet they don’t have pancakes like Beso’s in Kingston. oops.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers (brooklynpapers.com):

Monday night, Hepcat, Smartmom, and OSFO bought a Christmas tree from the gentle Canadian man, who sell trees in front of the CVS drugstore.

“The trees are from Nova Scotia,” the man told them. “But I live in Montreal.”

For seven years, he has been coming to Brooklyn, where he lives in a truck and sells trees 24/7 until Christmas Day, when he goes back home.

Smartmom felt funny picking out a tree. Growing up in a secular Jewish family on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, her family did celebrate Christmas — but a Christmas tree? That was crossing the line.

Sure, they thumb-tacked their red felt stockings to the non-working fireplace and left notes for Santa Claus. Her parents decorated the house with foil-covered paper bells and velvet ribbons. And Christmas morning was a gift fest — something she and her equally Jewish twin sister Diaper Diva looked forward to all year.

Smartmom’s romance with Christmas temporarily ended during college when she fell in with a band of Socialist Zionists with anarchist leanings. They rallied for a Palestinian state and planned to spend their lives on a kibbutz named Gezer, which means carrot in Hebrew.

Her Jewish consciousness was raised, thanks to friends who lived in a kosher house off-campus and lit Hanukkah candles to celebrate the Maccabean miracle.

Smartmom’s romance with Hanukkah ended years later when she and Hepcat were dating and he invited her to experience Christmas Hepcat-style. The family home in northern California was decorated top to bottom with Mexican creches, Advent calendars and a live tree festooned with handmade ornaments and glass balls from the 1950s.

On Christmas morning, Smartmom felt like she’d died and went to shiksa heaven. What magic, what fun — and what fresh baked cinnamon buns! Dressed in bathrobes and slippers, the adults watched as Hepcat’s nieces reveled in the delights under the tree.

After they were married, Hepcat and Smartmom never missed a Christmas in California. Soon they had Teen Spirit with them, who loved sitting by a roaring fire on Christmas morning as he and his cousins explored their voluptuous Christmas stockings.

However, the year Smartmom was seven-months pregnant with OSFO, the family didn’t go to California because her obstetrician told her not to fly.

She obeyed. But Hepcat was mighty cranky about it as it was the first time he’d ever missed Christmas with his family. Worse, Smartmom had no idea how to do Christmas in New York. As far as she was concerned, a New York Christmas was presents in the morning, a movie, and dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

If only for her beloved Hepcat, she had to figure out how to celebrate his special holiday 3,000 miles away from his home.

At the last minute, they decided to buy a tree, but they didn’t have any ornaments. They bought colorful lights and hung Teen Spirit’s action figures on the branches. On Christmas Eve, they hung their socks on the windows in the living room.

Smartmom spent too much time worrying that Hepcat and Teen Spirit would be disappointed. And in a way they were. Their Brooklyn Christmas seemed a cheap imitation of the one in California. They really hadn’t bothered to infuse it with their own special style.

Hepcat was relieved to return to California the next year, with baby OSFO in the Bjorn, and vowed never to spend Christmas in New York again.

Until last year.

Smartmom decided that she was sick and tired of spending every Christmas out in California. Gingerly, she brought it up with her man while he was cooking dinner.

“Well, I guess it’ll just be me, Teen Spirit and OSFO,” Hepcat said somewhat defensively. Smartmom was aghast that he planned to split up the family during the holidays, but she decided, uncharacteristically, to take a wait-and-see approach.

Teen Spirit came in from dining room, where he’d obviously been overhearing the delicate discussion.

“Dad, I wouldn’t mind spending Christmas in Brooklyn,” he said.

Hepcat had that stoic look on his face that usually indicates that he is in a great deal of pain.

“Well, I guess it’ll just be me and OSFO,” he said. Now he had that pleased-as-punch expression obviously confident that he could rely on his little girl to stick by him.

“No way!” OSFO screamed from the dining room. “I’m not spending Christmas without Mom and Teen Spirit.” At that, Hepcat looked dispirited.

“Well, I guess I’ll go out alone.”

The next morning at breakfast, Hepcat told them he wasn’t going to California for Christmas — that he’d never want to be without his family on that day. Group hug. Or at least that’s what they probably should have done.

For Smartmom, this was major turning point in their long marriage.

For the first time, Hepcat seemed to recognize that it was important to invent holiday traditions with his family in Brooklyn.

Last year, instead of trying to recreate a California Christmas in Brooklyn, they worked hard to make it their own.

On Christmas Day, which was also Hanukkah, they opened presents before going over to Diaper Diva’s, where they lit the menorah, ate lox and bagels with Ducky, Bro-in-Law, Groovy Grandma and their cousins. Afterwards, they went to see “King Kong” at the Pavilion.

After the movie, Smartmom was tempted to order from Szechuan Delight, but they had too much risotto left over from the previous night’s Christmas eve dinner.

To say they had it all ways at once would be an understatement. As a family they cobbled together a Christmas that was eclectic, eccentric and fun — just the way they like it.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers:

One day while lunching on a turkey sub at the Subway on Seventh Avenue, Smartmom ran into a mom she knew back when Teen Spirit was in elementary school.

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” Smartmom’s Mom Friend exclaimed. Smartmom put her sandwich down ready to launch into “The School Dialogue.”

Where’s he in high school? How does he get there? Does he like it?

The questions came fast and furious. The curiosity was sincere and unstoppable: an enthusiastic conversation among friends who’d lost touch.

Beacon. Bay Ridge Prep. F train to the A to Columbus Circle. The R train to Bay Ridge. He likes it. Yeah.

The neighborhood teenagers are strewn about hither and yon. Some go to schools nearby like Murrow, Midwood, or Brooklyn Tech. Others journey to schools in boroughs far away like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, LaGuardia and Nest.

While many of the teens have managed to stay in touch with the friends they made in middle and elementary school, their moms have, in many cases, lost the connection.

Back in the day, they’d chat during Choice Time, in the school’s backyard while waiting to pick up their boys, during Parents as Reading Partners one Friday morning a month, at the Holiday Craft Fair.

Standing in line at ConnMuffCo, they’d compare homework loads, middle school applications, and learning styles.

It’s almost as if those friendships were site-specific. They thrived because they shared an intense situation during an intense time. When that experience ended, so did the friendship. No effort was made to stay in touch because they never had. They didn’t even know each other’s phone numbers.

At Teen Spirit’s graduation in the sweltering hot auditorium at John Jay, Smartmom shed tears when the class sang “525,600 Minutes,” the song from “Rent.” She cried for this milestone in her son’s life, but also for the friends she’d made that she knew wouldn’t survive a change of venue.

During middle school, Smartmom rarely ventured inside Teen Spirit’s Fifth Avenue public school. Sure, she went to parent-teacher conferences, curriculum night, school plays and concerts. But that was it.

Since he walked to school and came home by himself there were no drop-off or pick-up friendships. There were few opportunities to gather in the kid’s classroom, little time to form even temporary friendships.

Now that Teen Spirit is in high school, Smartmom almost never visits his Bay Ridge private school. And Teen Spirit wants to keep it that way. She doesn’t know the names of more than a few of the kids in his grade. They don’t even take a class picture anymore.

Buddha knows, Teen Spirit guards the identity of his high school friends like a chef’s secret ingredients. And she wouldn’t know their parents from Adam.

This worries Smartmom. What kind of kids is Teen Spirit bonding with? For that matter, what are their parents like?

At Subway, the old mom friends reminisced about the third-grade teacher with the well-deserved reputation for running a tight ship.

“Remember how she drilled them in the multiplication tables?” she said.

Really old school. But a very good teacher she was.

And who can forget the fourth-grade sleep-away trip to the Pocono’s?

“That was the first time my son ever slept away from home,” the Mom Friend remembered.

“It was so quiet when Teen Spirit was away. OSFO really missed him,” Smartmom added.

For the first time in 20 minutes, there was a lull in the conversation.

“Can you believe they’re going to college in less than three years?”

The thought took Smartmom’s breath away. Literally. She felt her anxiety rise. Not because of college essays, SATs, and college trips — but because she can’t imagine life without Teen Spirit on a day-to-day basis.

Silently, the two moms shared the idea that their little boys were turning into men who would one day embark on college and the life beyond.

“I can’t wait to turn his room into a workout space,” the Mom Friend joked.

“Teen Spirit’s room will make a terrific office. I’m counting the days.” Smartmom chimed in.

They didn’t mean it. Not a word. Those rooms would be like shrines, awaiting the time their boys needed to come home. The jokes were a way to deny the fear and confusion. How had their children gotten so old?

For that matter, how had they?

Trouble on Third Street. Last Friday, during a rehearsal of Teen Spirit’s band, Cool and Unusual Punishment, in Drummer Boy’s apartment, the downstairs neighbors (DNs) called up and told them to cease and desist.

Immediately.

Apparently, the DNs, who were having houseguests, had sent an e-mail to Drummer Boy’s parents that explicitly asked the band not to rehearse over Thanksgiving weekend.

Understandably, the DNs were pissed. The music is cruel and unusual punishment for anyone sitting in his living or dining room.

You’d have to be a saint to live below a drummer (and these nice people seem willing to put up with his daily practice). But the ear-splitting band rehearsals are, quite truthfully, beyond the pale.

Smartmom ran into Drummer Boy’s parents on Third Street. They felt terrible about not reading the DN’s e-mail until it was too late. And now, the DNs don’t want the boys to practice in the apartment anymore. Ever.

Looks like it’s time to find a rehearsal space for the boys. And that spells the end of an era.

The boys have been rehearsing in Drummer Boy’s apartment for almost three years. They even wrote a song called “2L.” The people who used to live in the apartment below were noise-tolerant, rock aficionados.

Only once did they call during a rehearsal. The kids got scared — unnecessarily, it turned out: “Please play ‘Where is my Mind’ again. It’s one of our favorite songs,” one of the DNs said.

Phew.

The Pixies-loving old neighbors moved out and the new ones are not nearly as enamored of the pounding bass, the banging drum, and the migrane-inducing guitar feedback.

You really can’t blame them.

Clearly, Drummer Boy’s parents don’t want to aggravate their neighbors. But they also want to support their son. It’s tough to be the parents of a rock and roller these days.

And, apparently, it’s not all that unusual, either. All over the Slope, kids are forming rock bands. An article in the Styles section of the Times called it the “Kid Core” scene. What seemed merely cute a few years ago isn’t just cute anymore: it’s serious. And these bands — Cool and Unusual Punishment, Fiasco, Care Bears on Fire, Dulaney Banks, Tiny Masters of Today, Hysterics — are talented and career oriented.

“They are developing a following on New York’s burgeoning under-age music circuit, where bands too young for driving licenses have CDs, Web sites and managers,” the Times wrote.

Perhaps the Times should have called them “momagers.”

That phrase was coined by Drummer Boy last year when the moms of Cool and Unusual Punishment helped them organize a Teens for New Orleans benefit concert at the Old Stone House.

The moms (and dads) transported equipment, sold food and tickets, and helped clean up afterwards. They cried during the sad songs and clapped along with the audience during the rowdy ones. They had to force themselves not to get up and dance.

It’s embarrassing enough for their kids that they’re in the audience at all.

Truth is, the parents are as into it as the kids. And why not? The kids are showing real initiative and creativity. They’re developing responsibility, ambition, and even musical chops.

It’s also a perfect retort to that classic Seventh Avenue question, “So what’s your kid up to?” He may not be enrolled at Stuyvesant, a star athlete, or racking up countless social service credits for college apps. But “He’s in a band” surely counts for something.

And among the alt-parent scene in Park Slope, it’s practically a badge of honor to have a kid in a band — especially among parents who wish they’d had the talent (or the kind of parents it takes) to be a successful rock and roller.

In the Slope, well-connected, media-savvy parents are helping their kids big time when it comes to the Big P: Promotion. Care Bears on Fire and Fiasco have already been featured in New York Magazine and the Times. What’s next: The Brooklyn Papers?

Being in a band keeps the kids off of Seventh Avenue on weekend nights when other Slope kids pay off homeless guys to buy them cheap vodka.

And the parents love the music. For the most part, it’s what they grew up on: punk, New Wave, roots rock. Teen Spirit loves to hear Hepcat talk about the Ramones at CBGBs, the Talking Heads at the Mudd Club and the B52s at the Pyramid.

For them, rock and roll is a way to connect — like other fathers and sons use baseball.

So you can imagine that not having a space to rehearse is a big problem for the Cool and Unusual boys. For that matter, it must be problem for many local teen rockers.

Where do all these other bands practice?

If it’s true that a lot of these kids have famous parents (Lucian Buscemi, son of Smartmom’s fave, Steve, is in Fiasco) which means that they probably get to practice in their parent’s brownstone or palatial apartment. Grrr, they don’t have neighbors to worry about.

Really, who’s going to complain to the guy who played a killer in “Fargo” that his kid is making too much noise playing the drums?

But what’s an apartment-dwelling Park Slope teen rocker supposed to do? Dulaney Banks, a local blues guitar and vocal duo, practices in the Ninth Street subway station.

That won’t work for Cool and Unusual Punishment because of Drummer Boy’s kit and Teen Spirit’s bass amp, each of which weighs at least 100 pounds.

Hopefully, Drummer Boy’s parents, a lawyer and a political speechwriter, can negotiate a workable agreement with their downstairs neighbors. Otherwise, the boys will be out looking for another place to practice.

Prospect Park is safer than ever, right?

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers

Smartmom almost fell over last month when Hepcat suggested they buy a new television. “There’s a big sale at Best Buy,” he said. “And 32-inch LCD flat screens are the sweet spot.”

Hepcat loves a new-fangled electronic toy and he was intrigued by the new flat-screen high-definition television sets.

But 32 inches? And this from the mild-mannered guy who, in a moment of acute exasperation, pulled the power cord of their old television and locked the set in the basement.

That was in 1999 and the TV-free life lasted for almost five years. Hepcat was sick and tired of the way his children turned into Zombies in front of the set. He hated the noise, the shows and, most of all, the wasted time,

In an instant, the television disappeared and Elaine, Jerry, George and Kramer were no longer nightly dinner guests.

The Teletubbies, Arthur, Barney, Marge, Homer, Lisa, and Bart, were also banished from the living room.

Smartmom, the daughter of an advertising copywriter who created the Quisp and Quake cereal commercials back in the 1970s (among other gems), wasn’t as anti-television as Hepcat. But, she went along with it because, well, everyone knows that less is more when it comes to television in the People’s Republic of Park Slope.

Still, there’s a downside to not having a TV. The idiot box is great for behavior modification. It can be a motivator: “When you finish your homework, you can watch Sailor Moon!” and a punishment: “No Drew Carey for a week!”

And as even many Park Slope parents know, the box also makes a terrific babysitter. Parking the two-year-old Oh So Feisty One in front of the cathode ray tube made it possible for Smartmom to boil the pasta, answer emails, and read her latest issue of The Brooklyn Papers (and the New Yorker, admittedly).

Sure, the apartment was quieter and less chaotic without the tube. Teen Spirit and OSFO were more physically active; time was no longer measured in half-hour and one-hour segments; and getting out of the house, getting them to do their homework and making dinner was a breeze.

But Smartmom couldn’t get anything done. Without her TV, OSFO became “Saran Wrap Girl,” clinging to mommy, mommy, mommy all the time.

It didn’t take long before she and Teen Spirit figured out how to adjust to life without the TV. It was actually eerie: One minute they couldn’t live without it, the next it was out of sight, out of mind.

But it was a myth: Smartmom discovered that her tots were merely slipping downstairs to Mrs. Kravitz’s apartment for their daily dose of the “Power Puff Girls” or “Seinfeld.”

Of course, they weren’t the only ones who missed television. Smartmom pined for her midnight liaisons with Charlie Rose (me-OW!) and Thursday night sob sessions during “ER.” From Diaper Diva she heard all about great shows she was missing like “Sex & the City,” “Six Feet Under” and “The Sopranos,” and had to settle for blow-by-blow retellings by her sis.

Then again, Smartmom did enjoy the moral high ground: “We don’t watch television,” she’d self-righteously tell people. That spelled a kind of disciplined parental style that, Smartmom figured, spoke volumes about her mothering capabilities.

Take it from Smartmom, it gets you a 10 in the Mommy Olympics. And it was a full 360-degree turn from her own television-drenched childhood.

Smartmom’s childhood memories are indistinguishable from Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Captain Kangaroo and Soupy Sales. She was even a contestant on “Wonderama” with Sonny Fox. Later, there was “All in the Family,” the “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and “Upstairs Downstairs.”

During high school, she and her pals would gather at someone’s apartment in time to catch the “Not-Ready-for Prime-Time Players” live from New York on Saturday night.

Current events happened right in the family’s Riverside Drive living room. When JFK was assassinated, her family’s black-and-white tube glowed non-stop for days.

In 1968, the sit-com Smartmom and Diaper Diva were watching was interrupted with an announcement bearing the unfathomable news of Martin Luther King’s murder in Memphis. And later, she remembers seeing Bobby Kennedy dying on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel.

In July, 1969, her family, along with the rest of the world, watched as Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for mankind. How strange it was to see the surface of the moon on the TV set and the moon in the sky outside their window.

While Smartmom was willing to give her kids the TV-free life, there were some shows she refused to miss: What about the Oscars, the presidential debates, the World Series?

For these television happenings, Hepcat would be summoned to lug the television up three flights from the basement. After these television feasts, Hepcat insisted on returning the box to its home in the basement before dawn.

On Sept. 11, 2001, it was a mixed blessing not having a television. It meant that OSFO and Teen Spirit didn’t have to see the traumatic images of the towers falling over and over again.

But the family did spent much of the days that followed in Mrs. Kravitz’s living room waiting nervously for news of what was happening and dreading what was going to happen next.

After that, Smartmom knew that it might be a good idea to get a TV. Although she was comfortable getting most of her news from Satirius Johnson, the intelligent newscaster on WNYC, she thought that in a national emergency a television might come in handy.

A year ago, they brought the television upstairs from the basement to watch Jon Stewart on the Oscars and it never went back down again because Hepcat’s rotator cuff was hurting and he didn’t want to strain it.

At first, the television just sat there like an unwanted guest. But soon, Teen Spirit and OSFO started watching “Seinfeld,” “the Simpsons,” and even “Friends” again.

Eventually, Smartmom and OSFO moved to “The O.C.” Teen Spirit met “House.” And Hepcat got “Lost.”

Smartmom realized that there’s nothing cozier than sitting around the television hearth with her family and watching a good television show.

On the other hand, there’s nothing worse than crappy TV and too many commercials. Don’t tell anyone, but last spring, Smartmom, Teen Spirit and OSFO became addicted to “American Idol.” Ace, Bucky, Kellie Pickler and Taylor Hicks were like crack to their delicate sensibilities. Luckily, the family is now attending TA, a 12-step program at a local church for those unable to drag themselves away from brain-numbing TV shows.

Yet last week, the monster television arrived in an enormous box. Smartmom worried that it was going to devour the living room and her family. She wasn’t sure she liked her new identity as the kind of person who owns a 32-inch television.

As Smartmom watched her organic brownie points, moral superiority and Park Slope values fly right out the window, she lay down on the couch with the new remote control and watched whatever was on in all of its high-def glory.

For a few days, even Hepcat seemed to enjoy the techno-geek aspect of his new digital toy. Teen Spirit worried that they’d spent too much money on something so “stupid.” OSFO was just glad for the bigger, bolder images of Summer, Taylor, and Seth on “The O.C.”

As expected, after a few days, the television started to get to Hepcat, who coveted the big TV in the first place.

“I can’t stand that noisy piece of furniture that makes my children catatonic,” he said.

Smartmom hopes Daddy won’t take the T-bird away again.

If this family can just limit itself to shows that are well written, smart and only sometimes completely stupid, everything should be all right.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers:

Thanksgiving: that most American of holidays. Pumpkin pie. Football. Divorce.

For much of Smartmom’s childhood, Thanksgiving meant standing in front of the Museum of Natural History waiting for Underdog and Mighty Mouse to fly over.

The Macy’s parade would be followed by an enthusiastic gathering of her extended family in the large, light-filled dining room of their Riverside Drive apartment for a sumptuous meal, spirited discussion, debate and her Great Aunt Beatrice’s delicious mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows.

Without fail, Nanny, Smartmom’s maternal grandmother, would say, “Good eatin,’” plus a smattering of Yiddish words as a way to bless the abundant feast that was topped off by too many slices of pie from Greenberg’s Bakery on Madison Avenue.

But on the night before Thanksgiving the year she was 17, Smartmom learned that her parents were separating. On Turkey Day, her father was gone and her mother didn’t leave her bedroom.

It was sudden, it was quick. Her parent’s marriage was over and family life as she knew it was kaput.

Thanksgiving da, Smartmom’s aunt picked up Smartmom and her sister.

“This is awful,” she said as she took Smartmom and Diaper Diva to her home in Westchester where Smartmom’s maternal relatives were gathered.

As she remembers it, nobody said a thing. It was the giant elephant; the great unmentionable.

Sitting at the huge Danish Modern dining table, Smartmom and Diaper Diva felt like orphans as they worried about their mother and wondered where their father had gone. The day went by in a blur of emotions. By the time the football games were playing on the black-and-white television, they already felt stigmatized by this unfortunate schism in their domestic lives.

Back home, the apartment felt empty and sad. Her mother was asleep and Smartmom sat in the living room and listened to the Laura Nyro album, “Gonna Take a Miracle,” feeling too confused to cry and too anxious to sleep.

Less than a year later, Smartmom left for college and an independent life of her own. She can barely remember the next Thanksgiving or the ones after that. Like most kids of divorce, she made a valiant effort to adjust to the new normal: life without an intact family.

Over time, Smartmom and Diaper Diva got used to their holidays being divvied up like portions of cake. Her mother always got Thanksgiving. Her father got Christmas. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover were up for grabs.

Nothing was written down or settled in a legal way; her parents weren’t legally divorced for years to come. So Smartmom and her sister were basically winging it every holiday.

It often came down to which parent needed them more. In so many ways, divorce forces the child to grow up fast and interpret the needs of their parents.

This can make a "child" feel responsible for a parent’s happiness or unhappiness in ways that are definitely not all that healthy for children of any age.

Even in this enlightened day and age, when divorce is understood as the monster it is, divorced parents continue to try to split their children in two.

Nowadays, most of the divorced parents Smartmom knows have it in writing which parent their children will be with on each holiday until the child is 18.

Typically, the big-ticket holidays are divided up like a bucket of coins. Luckily there are eight days of Hannukah.

One thing’s for sure: Mom always gets Mother’s Day. Dad has Father’s Day.

Sometimes the children become a rope in the battle between the parents. Some parents end up in court fighting over scheduling matters.

Smartmom knows some divorced parents who do unusual things to keep their offspring’s needs front and center.

One kid she knows spends Christmas morning with both parents and their significant others. Mom, Dad, stepmom and stepdad open presents together and even share some food.

But this kind of arrangement is very rare. Not every divorced couple is quite that civilized—or flexible.

Civilized or not, the more thought the parents give to the emotional needs of their children the better off those kids will be. While many parents are well meaning, the contentiousness sometimes clouds their ability to do what is right.

Kids are resilient, and Smartmom is as resilient as they come. But sometimes this so-called resiliency can cover up the pain that is really going on inside.

Smartmom isn’t sure any child of divorce ever adjusts to the split. Sure, they go along with it because they have to. But in the end, it is the children more than the parents who suffer because of it.

Smartmom’s parents’ divorce is the great before/after event in her life. It has affected her relationships, her sense of self, and her ability to love.

And the fact that the split occurred on Thanksgiving means her great American holiday is still colored by that life-changing event.

It still hurts that Smartmom never gets to see her father carve the turkey or make the first Thanksgiving toast.

But she’s used to it. By now, she has spent many more Thanksgivings without her dad than with him.

Still, that doesn’t mean that she’s not thinking about him. It’s a split-screen life for kids of divorce. You go through the holiday with one parent while you imagine what the other parent is up to. You worry about them, think of them, hope they’re doing well.

Children of divorce learn to be in two places at once: Where they are and where the other parent is. In this way, they keep the family together. If only in the mind.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers:

Smartmom was so impressed with the Annie Leibovitz show at the
Brooklyn Museum — with its ravishing shots of Demi, Brad, Scarlett and
a host of family and friends of the photographer’s — that she decided
it was about time she had her very own digital camera.

Not that there’s any shortage of family pictures around Smartmom’s
apartment. Being married to a professional photographer means that
every event large or small gets duly documented.

Still, Smartmom thinks it’s time she had her own camera because
having her own private paparazzi has made her lazy and a bit bossy.

“Get plenty of pictures of the bride,” she told Hepcat at the
wedding of her second cousin in Baltimore, or “Get that shot of City
Councilman David Yassky dressed as Elvis Presley,” she commanded at the
recent Park Slope Halloween Parade.

When Smartmom channels Lina Wertmuller (thick Italian accent, dark glasses, and all) it gets on Hepcat’s nerves big time.

But being married to a photographer can be annoying, too. A simple
trip to the Food Co-op to buy free range chicken thighs and Newman O’s,
can involve lots of stop and go while Hepcat grabs shot after shot.

After years of this, Smartmom just keeps walking; she and Hepcat generally travel two to three blocks apart.

So getting a digital camera seems like a good idea for a bunch of reasons.

First off, it would give Smartmom something to do while Hepcat is
taking pictures of the Key Food sign or one of his other artsy muses.

Second, she’ll get the shots she really wants: the people, places, and things that really matter to her.

But most important, she’ll finally have some pictures of Hepcat. She hardly has any of those.

Truth is, it’s just plain weird that the family album of their lives
is missing one of its major characters. Not that he’s completely
absent. Like Alfred Hitchcock, Hepcat sneaks himself into a photo from
time to time, but it’s usually just his shadow or his finger slipping
into the frame.

Diaper Diva doesn’t have that problem at all. She manages to shoot a lot of pictures of herself with Ducky.

Of course, everything Ducky does is a photo op as far as Diaper Diva
is concerned: Ducky at the Third Street Playground. Ducky at Beth
Elohim. Ducky with her dad. Ducky at ConnMuffCo. Ducky at Music
Together. It’s all Ducky, all the time.

In July, Diaper Diva took more than 300 shots of the red-haired
mini-Diva in the inflatable kiddie pool in the backyard of their summer
rental in Sag Harbor.

And she’s even good about ordering prints for the extended family, as a way to keep everyone appraised of Ducky’s every move.

Not so for Smartmom. It’s just not her thing. And she never
understood why people needed pictures of themselves in front of famous
sites like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the Botanic
Gardens. Haven’t you already seen a trillion pictures of those places,
already?

It’s not that Smartmom doesn’t love to have visual evidence of what
she and her family have been up to for the last 15 years. But her
snapshots tend to be the stories she writes in her journal, her blog,
and her column. She records the important moments in her mind, paying
special attention to the sensory details, the words and the humor.

And like a good reporter, she makes notes in her trusty Moleskin notebook. Just in case.

Still, sometimes you really need a camera.

Like last week, when she and Hepcat were walking up Lincoln Place.
Hepcat noticed a bird standing very still on the sidewalk. As Smartmom
continued up the street (she figured he was stopping to take yet
another photo), Hepcat picked up the bird and cradled it in his hands.

“I think there’s something wrong with this bird,” he said as he stared lovingly at it. “I’m not sure it can fly.”

Smartmom walked toward Hepcat and savored the image of her six-foot-tall urban farm boy handling the tiny bird.

“I think it’s a finch or a thrush,” he said, making Smartmom wish she had a camera.

They stood on Lincoln Place for more than 10 minutes trying to
figure out what to do. Hepcat bonded with the bird and considered
taking it home. But as they approached Eighth Avenue, the bird flew off
to a tree in front of the Montauk Club.

Hepcat rushed over to make sure it was all right.

Moments like these say so much about Hepcat. A picture would have
been worth thousands of words as it expressed the gentle, animal-loving
side of Hepcat that Smartmom adores and few get to see.

So that decides it. She’s off to B&H to pick up a simple
point-and-shoot. She knows that her snapshots won’t be nearly as
interesting as Hepcat’s or Diaper Divas. But at least the next time
Hepcat does anything even vaguely photogenic, she’ll be at the ready to
record another small, decisive moment in their lives.

NOTE: Today’s Pix of the Day is Hepcat’s beloved bird.

HERE’S THIS WEEK’S SMARTMOM FROM THE BROOKLYN PAPERS:

The new film with Kate Winslet and hunky Patrick Wilson, “Little Children,” reminded Smartmom of something she’s known for a long time: extra-marital sex just isn’t worth the bother.

The film, which follows Sarah and Brad, two dissatisfied parents in a high-end suburb not unlike Brownstone Brooklyn, makes hanky-panky seem even more transgressive than Smartmom ever expected. Why, it’s right up there with being a pedophile or something.

Sure, “Little Children” is meant to be a broad satire about marital infidelity among the stroller set. But it’s also a watershed cultural moment for parents of small children: a referendum on what happens when privileged Yuppies let their mid-life blues and marital blahs get the best of them.

And the unmistakable conclusion is this: Don’t let your libidinous selves get carried away, Slopers. It won’t solve any of your real relationship issues: kids, money, sex, career unhappiness or bad communication.

In the film, Sarah married the wrong guy, an older man who’s obsessed with Internet porn. When she falls head over heels for Brad, a former jock, who is easy to talk to and easier to land in the sack, it’s just lucky she has a gigundo suburban house with a tiny attic room with a mattress on the floor.

There, Sarah and Brad can hump and moan as loudly and passionately as they want because their toddlers take long naps in the afternoon.

But life doesn’t imitate art.

When Smartmom’s pal Tofutta had a massive crush on a stay-at-home dad she met at Tots-on-the-Go, she barely had enough time to go to the bathroom, let alone plan an afternoon interlude.

And there was just nowhere to go for their intimate interactions. His wife worked at home and  “doing it” in her marital bedroom would have been just plain weird. Plus, Tofutta’s husband’s dirty socks on the floor were probably not much of an aphrodisiac.

She considered trying the new Holiday Inn Express on Union Street, but realized that it was too close to the school where Mrs. Kravitz sends her children — and Mrs. Kravitz, with her vivid imagination, is always walking by that hotel.

Too bad The Lincoln Hotel got turned into condos. That old mansion/brothel between Seventh and Sixth avenues was no Brooklyn Marriott, but it did the trick. A friend (really, she was a friend) frequented the place when she was having an affair with You Know Who.

See, it’s tough keeping secrets in chatty Park Slope because all everyone does is talk, talk, talk and write, write, write. You can’t even have a juicy, tell-all conversation in the back room of Sweet Melissa’s without someone (sometimes even Smartmom herself!) running home and blogging about it.

Take what happened to Big Foot, when her husband had an affair with their babysitter while she was pregnant with their second child. She was devastated. But when she got back on her feet again, she started blogging about it big time. Everyone laughed — except her, of course.

Not everyone gets caught. But some get smart.

Stayathoma had a fling with that cute freelance writer with the lonely, bedroom eyes who picks up his third-grader at PS 321 every day.

Big mistake. They used to do it in his two-bedroom apartment every fourth Tuesday afternoon while his wife was doing a double shift at the Food Co-op and his son was at school.

Trouble was, Stayathoma knew three people who lived in his building and the walls were wafer thin. But that wasn’t all: the spark went out when she started to wonder why her lover wasn’t doing his own Food Co-op shift. She soon realized he was just as much of a do-nothing creep as her own husband. And not even as cute.

It would be so much easier to have a fling with another parent of the same sex. Who would suspect a couple of dads going off to “play tennis” at the Parade Grounds or “take a jog” in Prospect Park?

Or take the case of Jaded Mom and Lonely Mom, two heterosexuals — at least they were, until they became disciples of Sappho while their workaholic husbands were working late and their toddlers were asleep.

They took a much-deserved “mom’s weekend” at a Dutchess County B&B for some R&R. Aroma therapy, pilates class, hotel sex, facials.

But then Lonely Mom’s husband found a torrid email from Jaded Mom on the computer desktop.

Things got ugly. Fights. Divorce. Loneliness. And to this day, Lonely Mom says she’s not gay. She just wanted a little love and attention.

And that’s pretty much what any marital infidel wants (plus, perhaps, the thrill of doing what you’re not supposed to be doing).

Still, Smartmom doesn’t need a movie to tell her that, in the long run, it’s plain stupid to fool around. Having an affair is a cowardly way to deal with the real problems in a marriage (and we all know Smartmom does the right thing, what with her once-a-week couples therapy and twice-a-night Cabernets).

Marital infidelity is really just a temporary escape from what ails a marriage. And boy is it tough to recover from such a tumultuous breach of trust.

As for the sex, the illicit thrill wears off after a while and then it’s just another relationship with all of the inherent problems that come along with that.

So Smartmom is going to stick with her “until-death-do-us-partner,” whom she loves and adores anyway.

It’s hard enough adjusting to someone new. Especially when you’re just getting used to your spouse’s snoring, toenail clipping, and annoying habit of leaving his dirty laundry on the floor next to the hamper rather than in it.

Imagine getting used to a bunch of new bad habits.

Tough to admit it, but marital life is much like it’s depicted in “Little Children”:  the person who seems so right from a distance is probably an awful lot like the person you’re already married to.

Here is this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers:

Smartmom
was in one of her rages after attending Tuesday night’s discussion at
the Seventh Avenue Barnes & Noble with the authors of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It.

And it wasn’t
just because she forgot to take her anti-depressants for a couple of
days (though that didn’t help — just ask Hepcat).

Smartmom was in
a rage because the book’s authors, Nancy Kalish and Sara Bennett,
confirmed something that Smartmom has felt for a long time: homework is
ruining everyone’s life.

There is almost
no evidence that homework helps elementary students achieve academic
success, and there is little evidence that it helps older students. The
authors draw on academic research, interviews with parents, educators,
kids and their own experience as parents at a Park Slope private school.

So what gives? If the research is so convincing, why do the schools persist in assigning super-sized amounts of homework?

In a word: parents.

Most parents are
unaware of the research and blindly believe that it’s good for their
children because the teachers and administrators say so.

But that’s not
the only reason. Parents want bang for their buck. From the Apgar to
the SAT, Slopers want high scores and high achievement from their
overscheduled kids.

For many
parents, the amount of homework their kids do is a badge of honor. Read
the subtitles: “My kid spent the whole weekend doing homework”
translates as “My kid is going to Harvard.”

But guess what?
If the research is correct, your kids can be super-achievers without
homework. In fact, one of the best predictors of academic success is
the family dinner table, which many local kids rarely have time for
because they’re, you guessed it, too busy doing homework.

But not all
family dinner tables are created equal. Sure, Smartmom’s family loves
to discuss string theory over pasta primavera. But some dinner
conversation is just not all that elevated.

A teacher did
speak up during the discussion at Barnes and Noble and defended
“well-thought-out homework” as beneficial for kids who won’t find
enrichment at home. And many parents, she said, think scads of homework
is a great way to limit the amount of television their kids watch.

But what’s so
bad about television, anyway? Less homework would mean that Teen Spirit
and OSFO could watch multiple episodes of “The Simpsons,” where they
can learn just about everything they need to know about western
civilization. And who can disagree that “House” offers a top-notch
education in medical ethics and cell biology?

So who’s right?
A teacher on the front lines or Kalish, a journalist, and Bennett, a
lawyer, who have spent the last few years trying to debunk an activity
that they said is detrimental to family relationships?

Since first
grade, Smartmom and Teen Spirit have had nightly battles about
homework. Buddha knows, she is not proud to admit that when Teen Spirit
was in third grade, she slapped (yes, slapped) him in the face when he
refused to write about a memory in his writer’s notebook.

“I don’t have any memories,” he said.

“Of course you have memories,” she said.

“Not any that I want to write about for homework.”

For those who
are familiar with these kinds of homework battles, the book offers
practical advice about how parents can change homework policies at
their schools.

At the
Berkeley-Carroll School, a private institution in Park Slope, Bennett,
a criminal defense appeals attorney, challenged the school’s homework
policy after discovering that her children were doing four hours a
night. And she wasn’t afraid to be dubbed a troublemaker when she
organized a parents group to discuss the situation.

After the
reading, Smartmom felt like throwing out every bright red homework
folder, marble notebook, homework organizer, and reading log in the
apartment. Especially, the ubiquitous reading log, where students are
required to document the name of the book and author, as well as the
number of pages, they read.

The whole idea
of making kids accountable for what they’ve read is a surefire way to
turn kids off to reading altogether. And that’s not a good thing, when
reading is the single homework activity that is associated with
academic success.

Smartmom found
herself very excited, even agitated, as she discussed Bennett and
Kalish’s book with Hepcat, who had also been at the reading.

“Parents of Park Slope, unite,” she shouted out as if processed by the revolutionary spirit of the anti-homework book.

“You have
nothing to lose but your children’s homework folders and years of
fighting about something that is useless and stupid!”

Standing on the green leather couch with her finger in the air, Smartmom suddenly heard Teen Spirit’s voice.

“Mom, Does this mean I don’t have to do homework anymore?” he asked softly.

“What are you kidding?” Smartmom replied.

“But you just said homework is useless and stupid,” Teen Spirit said.

“I said no such thing, buddy,” she replied. “No such thing.”

Here’s this week’s SMARTMOM from the Brooklyn Papers:

When Smartmom’s
Friends with Brownstone ask if the Oh So Feisty One would be willing to
water their plants or feed their pets while they’re away, she almost
always says “yes.”

“OSFO loves
taking care of pets,” Smartmom tells the FWBs. Or “OSFO is saving up
for a new Build-a-Bear, so she’ll be more than happy to make a little
change.”

But those aren’t the real reasons why Smartmom is so quick to accept these pet-sitting offers for her daughter.

It’s all about Smartmom and her brownstone envy. Truth is, she just loves to spend time in other people’s brownstones.

Call it
play-acting or a form of delusional behavior. Call it whatever you
want. While OSFO plays with the cat or fills the plastic bowl in a
birdcage with little pellets, Smartmom gets to commune with her inner
brownstone-dweller. She even cooks in the kitchen using her friend’s
All Clad pans or listens to their Glen Gould CDs sitting on one of the
parlor chairs.

Buddha knows
Smartmom would love to have her own brownstone. But having missed the
S.S. Real Estate as it sailed away, vicarious brownstoning is probably
the closest she’ll ever come.

Last weekend,
while OSFO shoveled cat poop into a garbage pail in their friend’s
roomy brownstone, Smartmom sat in the sun-drenched couch of the master
bedroom reading the New Yorker (and the always-scintillating Brooklyn
Papers).

Later, while
OSFO was re-filling the cat’s bowls with water and foul-smelling cat
food, Smartmom admired the colorful tiles on her friend’s shower wall.

“I’d love a bathroom like this,” Smartmom heard herself say aloud to no one.

Last summer,
OSFO and Smartmom took care of two guinea pigs and a pair of Mynah
birds in the lovely home of another brownstone friend. This one had a
fancy Jacuzzi in the bedroom — and you can bet she and OSFO took turns
taking bubble baths in there with the jet stream on high.

Ah, this is the life.

Shoveling cat
poop or rolling up newspaper from the bottom of a urine-stained cage is
small price to pay for this kind of temporary luxury.

Smartmom is the
first to admit that she feels marginalized in her own neighborhood,
where real-estate values have gone through those limestone roofs. It
hurts to have been one of the early settlers in Park Slope yet failed
to stake a land claim.

Back in 1991,
Smartmom, Hepcat and Teen Spirit arrived in Park Slope after being
priced out of Manhattan. She, for one, had to be dragged kicking and
screaming to their first apartment on Fifth Street.

But they needed
the space, and Park Slope was an oasis back then — even if your friends
and relatives treated the East River like The Great Wall of China.

Smartmom didn’t
live up to her name then, failing to buy a building because she and
Hepcat weren’t even sure if they were going to like it here. It was
Brooklyn, after all.

But the red
brick, the brownstone, the dogwood trees, the sense of community all
struck a chord with Smartmom. She fell in love with the scale of the
neighborhood, its architectural integrity, and its beauty.

All these years
later, Smartmom still enjoys walking down Garfield or Berkeley at night
staring longingly — OK, hungrily — into bay windows.

What a nice life
those people must have, she thinks. How lucky those children are to
grow up there; to romp in a leafy, green urban backyard; to eat festive
dinners by candlelight on the back deck.

But OSFO doesn’t see it that way at all.

Her reasons for
enjoying these pet-sitting jobs are very much her own. She likes the
money, of course — and she’s growing quite a savings account at the
fancy new Commerce Bank on Fifth Avenue. Plus, she loves animals and
dreams of opening a pet-care center when she grows up.

And she doesn’t seem to have a bit of brownstone envy. In fact, she hates it when Smartmom wanders around the house.

“This place is too big,” she says. “I don’t like to be on a floor without you.”

Last weekend,
while Smartmom fantasized about having a bedroom big enough for more
than a bed and a dresser, OSFO was impatient to go home.

“Don’t you want to stay here any longer?” Smartmom asked.

“Not really,” OSFO said. “I want to go home.”

Home really is
where the heart is. Similarly, Teen Spirit made his parents promise
that they’ll never, EVER move out of the apartment on Third Street. And
while OSFO sometimes says she’d like a bigger bedroom, she’d hate to
live in a building where her best friend didn’t live on the first floor.

Even if her kids
have good values, Smartmom is still besieged by crippling bouts of
brownstone envy. Luckily, the occasional pet-sitting gig is like a
soothing ointment on the pain in her butt called “the grass is greener”
syndrome.

One quick dose, and she’s back to life on Third Street.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers: This week she’s on the front page (above the fold) and not in her usual spot. Way to go, Smartmom.

The week before
Rosh Hashanah, Smartmom was meditating in her bedroom. Her attempts to
meditate at home are usually a comedy of errors and this was no
exception. The fragrance of burning incense seems to attract her
offspring like flies to honey.

The Oh So Feisty One tiptoed into the bedroom and assumed her very
best lotus position and scrunched her eyes shut tight. After a minute
or so:

“I’m bored,” she said. “Is it okay if I bang your singing bowl really, really softly?”

Grrrrr. So much for Inner Peace. Then the phone rang. It was Groovy
Grandpa reminding Smartmom about Rosh Hashanah dinner on Saturday.

Smartmom returned to the half-lotus position, her right hand resting
on her left palm, but she had a hard time quieting her mind because of
that Rosh Hashanah call. Should they go to shul? If so, which one?

The religion thing nags at Smartmom: Nag, nag, nag. Especially during the Jewish holidays.

It’s not like she grew up religious or anything. Hers was a secular
Jewish upbringing on the Upper West Side of Gaphattan. In other words,
she was brought up by atheists, who were very committed to their Jewish
heritage and their lox and bagels from Barney Greengrass on Sunday
mornings.

Still, on the high holidays, something deeply personal and profound
compels Smartmom to seek the sound of the shofar and the stirring
melody of Kol Nidre.

When Smartmom was 10, her parents decided that she and her sister
needed to go to Hebrew school — it was time to get some of that
old-time religion. Just in case.

It seemed hypocritical, but it probably was a good experience, even if the future Smartmom thought it was dumb at the time.

Going to Hebrew school meant no more Sunday morning bike rides in
Central Park, a cherished family ritual and one of the great pleasures
of Smartmom’s youth. Sitting in the basement of Congregation Rodef
Sholom learning Hebrew, and discussing anti-Semitism and the Holocaust,
was not.

Smartmom dropped out after a year. Maybe that’s why she’s so
ambivalent about going to synagogue: those Hebrew school Sundays really
cut into bike riding time with dad.

Yet since childhood, Smartmom has yearned for a spiritual
connection. For reasons she still doesn’t fully understand, she longed
to fast on Yom Kippur, to eat only matzoh during Passover, to see the
Hanukkah candles glowing night after night.

This child of atheists had an inner Jewish self that bloomed all by itself.

Clearly, she was after a spiritual experience bigger than the Nova
Scotia Lox counter at Zabar’s. She wanted more. Something elusive.
Something deeper than the day-to-day.

After Teen Spirit was born, Smartmom shopped for a synagogue or a
Jewish community for her interfaith family to be part of. Nothing felt
right. Nothing felt spiritual. Her quest eventually led to a private
meditation practice.

Smartmom closed her eyes and breathed in an out gently through her
nose. She heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. OSFO was playing
“Heart and Soul” on the electric keyboard. A Third Street alley cat in
heat was crying like a human child. Trying to meditate at home is a
joke, she thought.

Despite her forays into Buddhism, Smartmom works hard to instill the
ethics and values of Judaism in her inter-faith children; it is, she
feels, essential that they understand what it means to be Jewish (even
if no one seems to agree about what that means).

For Hanukkah, they light candles on a handcrafted, wrought-iron
menorah from the Clay Pot; they read aloud Isaac Bashevis Singer’s
classic stories while non-Jewish Hepcat prepares delicious potato
latkes.

On Passover, they sing a rollicking version of Dayenu during the
Seder ceremony, and search for the hidden matzoh afterward — the finder
even gets a little gelt.

Smartmom also feeds them plenty of lox and bagels from La Bagel
Delight — a poor substitute for Barney Greengrass or Zabar’s. Hepcat
especially loves the lox and bagel part, but he nearly fainted the
first time he saw gefilte fish.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Smartmom focused on her breath in an attempt to clear and quiet her racing mind.

It’s been harder to find a way to meet the family’s disparate
spiritual longings. Hepcat and the Presbyterians parted company when he
said, “If God made everything, who made God?” in Sunday school.
Intellectually, he’s an atheist. Emotionally, he’s an animist.

Early on, Teen Spirit was interested in the big questions of Life
and Death. Although he never liked going to synagogue and didn’t want
to get bar mitzvahed, he was crazy about the Broadway production of
“Fiddler on the Roof” (with Alfred Molina, no less!).

After that, he learned enough Hebrew to say the basic Jewish
prayers. And she gave him a copy of “The Jewish Book of Why” on his
13th birthday. Just in case.

The Oh So Feisty One, from a young age, seemed to believe in a
higher power (Jewish or Presbyterian — it didn’t seem to matter). As
early as age 4, she’d put her hands together and pray, “Please, please,
please God, get me a Kit doll and a pair of her beach pajamas from
American Girl Place.”

When OSFO started asking questions about death, Smartmom knew
intuitively that she wanted to believe in heaven, a place where
Smartmom would love and care for her forever and ever. As Smartmom
affirmed OSFO’s belief in heaven, she, too, felt comforted by the
eternal power of love.

On her black meditation pillow, Smartmom returned to her breathing,
trying to unclutter her mind. But that’s about as easy as trying to
straighten up Hepcat’s desk (which she’s not even allowed to do). Too.
Much. Thinking. Should they go to Beth Elohim or Kolot Chayenu? Maybe
they should try the children’s service at the Park Slope Jewish Center.

There it is again: Nag, nag, nag. Even when she’s meditating. It’s
true. She never joined a synagogue. She never makes reservations or
gets tickets in advance for high holiday services. Obviously, it’s a
commitment problem.

Smartmom’s Orthodox friend, Yiddishe Mama, once said, “You have one
foot in and one foot out because part of you does not want to let
yourself believe in miracles.”

Actually, Smartmom thinks she’s still pissed off about missing those
Central Park bike rides. Or maybe she just finds organized religion
boring and irrelevant. So why, she wonders, does she always decide at
the last minute to go to synagogue?

Last year on the eve of Yom Kippur, she Googled Kolot Chayenu and found out that the Kol Nidre service started at 7:30.

Smartmom and OSFO got there in warp speed and were lucky enough to
find a seat in the last row. The service happens to be in a church,
which is perfect for the inter-faith Smartmom clan. Someone takes pains
to cover the crucifix with a beautiful handmade textile.

As usual, Smartmom felt part of — and not part of — the service
(there’s too much Hebrew she doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t know
all the songs; she gets tired of standing up and sitting down). During
the service, she closed her eyes and tried to meditate while listening
to Kol Nidre, that haunting melody on this most holy of Jewish nights.

The phone rang again. Smartmom knew she wasn’t going to get any more
meditating done. Who is it this time? Probably that religion thing.
Nag. Nag. Nag.

This year Smartmom knows that she’ll be racing off to Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur services — somewhere.

Maybe this year she’ll accept that her quest to find a way to honor her Jewishness continues.

Maybe this year she’ll accept that her meditation and her Judaism
can exist together like cream cheese and lox on a poppy seed bagel.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

Maybe this year she’ll even pick up some tickets — in advance.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers.

The other night on the way home from the Park Slope Pavilion after
seeing “Little Miss Sunshine,” Smartmom asked Hepcat which actress
should play her if anyone ever makes a movie or a television series of
her life.

It was a silly question. Just a game to pass the time on the walk
home from the theater. Who would make a movie of Smartmom’s life,
anyway?

Then again, why not? Reality TV is very big right now, and the
day-to-day travails of life on Third Street would make a great show
(not to mention Gawker’s Smartmom rip-off, “Diary of a Park Slope Mom”).

For starters, there’s the boom and bust of Hepcat’s computer career.

Then there’s Smartmom’s transition from Park Slope mom to Park Slope
columnist and citizen blogger; Mrs. Kravitz’s donation of a kidney to
her husband; and neighbors dealing with empty nests, financial
setbacks, second marriages, bi-coastal gay relationships, and a son
going off to Iraq.

There’s more than enough for a television series.

“Well, you know, Lillian Gish is my favorite actress of all time,” Hepcat said after a long pregnant pause.

But Smartmom scoffed at the notion that the silent-screen great
would be right to play a very verbal fortysomething (Gish is long dead,
too, but maybe that’s not such a big deal).

“How about Barbara Stanwyck. She’s from Brooklyn isn’t she? Or Judy Holiday?”

Hepcat could tell that he wasn’t earning any brownie points bringing up dead Hollywood starlets.

“For the early years, maybe we could get Leslie Caron.” Now Hepcat
was talking. “Well, you sort of looked like her when I met you.” She
squeezed his hand, clearly flattered.

“Why do I feel like there’s no right answer to this question?” he asked. “It’s like, ‘Do I look fat?’ ”

Hepcat was right. There is no correct answer. Surely, it would take
an actress with the depth of a Meryl Streep or Susan Sarandon to
express the full range of emotions — from zen-like calm to apoplectic —
to play the part of Smartmom.

Once on Seventh Avenue, Smartmom and Hepcat discussed the film they
had just seen, a zany comedy about the Hoovers, a family on the verge
of a psychotic episode, that journeys cross country in a
mustard-colored VW microbus.

The more they talked, the more they realized how much their family
life (and the life of so many families across Brooklyn) is like the
Hoovers: full of stress, disappointment and a multiplicity of moods and
meltdowns (no heroin addict, though, with all due respect to the great
Alan Arkin).

Call them strange. Call them dysfunctional. But the truth about real American families tends to be stranger than fiction.

Of course, there are a lot of differences between the Hoovers and
Smartmom’s clan. Richard, a middle manager who is trying to get rich
with a self-help book scheme, is nothing like Hepcat (who, unlike
Richard, is not played by Greg Kinnear).

But something about his square chin and the way he interacts with his antique VW van reminded Smartmom of her beloved.

And his mid-life quest to do something meaningful certainly brings Hepcat to mind.

Then again, the Oh So Feisty One isn’t like Olive, the adorable
7-year-old who wants to be a beauty queen. Yet her self-confidence, her
guts, and her precociousness did remind Smartmom of her girl from time
to time.

Dwyane, the 15-year-old son who has taken a vow of silence and only
reads Nietzsche, isn’t one bit like Smartmom’s 15-year-old man/boy.

Sure, Teen Spirit was obsessed with the ubermensch for a while, but
he seems to be moving on to the Beat Generation. Vow of silence? Not if
it means giving up those constant cellphone conversations with his
friends.

Yet Dwayne’s very teenage disdain for family and school did remind
Smartmom of Teen Spirit, a little too loud and a little too clear.

But it was Sheryl, the stressed-out wife and mother, who most
reminded Smartmom of herself (not the Toni Collette part of her, of
course).

Like Smartmom, Sheryl has to wrangle her family, a collection of
strikingly different and difficult personalities, and help them exist
together and find their own way.

Sometimes Smartmom feels like an air-traffic controller trying to
avoid collisions between various combinations of family members.

Living in their too-small apartment on Third Street, with such a
cross-country trip worth of problems, needs and aspirations, Smartmom
feels like she is trapped in that VW microbus.

Sheryl, like Smartmom, is the glue that holds the whole shebang
together AND gets dinner on the table, even if is take-out fried
chicken accompanied by a “homemade” green salad.

Smartmom can relate: when she orders a large plain pizza from
Pino’s, she always tosses together a vegetable course consisting of a
bag of Organic Valley pre-washed lettuce, grape tomatoes from the Coop,
and a little Paul Newman’s.

But despite the take-out dinners, the neurosis, the teenage angst and
the mid-life disappointments, the Hoovers are just like so many
families on Third Street, who are evolving together through the good,
the bad, and the ugly.

Ultimately, it is on this journey (in a VW van, a 1980 Volvo or
the subway) that they find out who they are and what they mean to one
another.

Walking up Third Street, Hepcat suddenly shouted out: “How about
Toni Collette?” Smartmom smiled. The down-to-earth, unglamorous actress
might make a very decent Smartmom.

“She doesn’t look remotely like you. But she can definitely play the
kind of person who can deal with one thing after another. Like you.”

Yes, it would take an actress like Toni Colette to portray the up,
down, and sideways motion of the whirly Wonder Wheel of Smartmom’s life.

Is she available?

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers:

It’s hard enough returning to the routines of school so soon after
Labor Day — the getting the kids up and out before eight in the
morning, the scramble to scramble eggs for that all-important
fortifying breakfast, the two hours of picking out an outfit — but
that’s nothing compared to the annual Invasion of the Park Slope
Body-Snatchers!

You can’t see these evil villains, but they’re there. And they’ve
already snatched dozens of Park Slopers, transforming them from laid
back, convivial summer people into stressed out, pushy, neurotic
PARENTS.

After the first drop-off of the year, Smartmom ran into a friend who
just last week was wearing shorts, reeking of SPF 45 and regaling her
with tales of a family vacation in Tuscany.

On this day, she engaged Smartmom in a long conversation about the
pros and cons of the John Hopkins University Talent Search for gifted
kids and her middle schooler’s SAT scores (since when do middle
schoolers take the SATs?).

The body-snatched person may look normal (whatever that is), but
don’t be fooled. Smartmom waved at a friend in front of Back to the
Land on Seventh Avenue.

“How was your summer?” she asked cheerfully. But her friend spoke
with desperation in her voice: “Do you know when the Department of
Education is releasing last year’s standardized test scores?”

Smartmom saw another friend nursing a chai latte at ConnMuffCo
before pick-up. Last week, she was sitting on her stoop sipping an iced
mocha latte frappuccino macchiato and reading the September Vogue.
Today, she seemed edgy, distracted, a tad tense.

“How was your Labor Day weekend?” Smartmom ventured.

“Fine,” she said, but Smartmom knew her friend had been snatched.

In fact, all that Smartmom’s anxious friend wanted to do was compare
and contrast Upper Carroll and the area’s “hot” public middle school.
The strange thing is: her kid is only in second grade.

At pick-up in the bus backyard of PS 321, a woman, Smartmom barely
knows, recited a list of all the books her third-grader had read over
the summer vacation, which included titles by Lemony Snicket, J.K
Rowling, a smidgen of Dostoyevsky and the first act of “Hamlet.”

It was obvious that this woman had also been snatched and she couldn’t help herself. Nor could any of the others.

Smartmom and the Oh So Feisty One took Sixth Avenue back to the
apartment in an effort to avoid Seventh Avenue, where the snatchers
were obviously lurking in droves.

“Mommy, I want to go to Maggie Moo’s,” OSFO said of her favorite ice
cream parlor. But Smartmom imagined being snatched while ordering
OSFO’s Very Yellow Marshmallow cone. Maybe it was something in the ice
cream.

“No, no, I have some ice cream in the freezer,” she said, rushing
her disappointed daughter to the relative safety of home (could Maggie
Moo’s be in cahoots with the Body Snatchers? Smartmom was not willing
to take that chance.)

Back at the apartment, Hepcat greeted OSFO and Smartmom.

“So how was your first day of school?” he said, looking anxious, his
brow was dotted with sweat. “Shouldn’t you start your homework? It’s
very important that you start your homework the minute you walk in the
door.”

Smartmom and OSFO looked at one another, wondering what had gotten into Hepcat — or is that really Hepcat?

“Then you need to read for 20 minutes. Make that an hour. No maybe two hours and afterwards practice your violin.”

OSFO glared at her Dad. “But I don’t play the violin,” she said.

Hepcat was not himself: “Er, I mean the piano. Practice the piano.”

The irony is that OSFO is nothing if not the Perfect Student. In
fact, she was the only one in the family who was actually looking
forward to the first day of school.

She had her outfit picked out a month ago and two-dozen #2
Ticonderoga pencils sharpened and ready to go. Teen Spirit, by
comparison, avoided thinking of school altogether, despite the thousand
pages of summer reading he needed to get done by opening day.

But with Hepcat apparently body-snatched, Smartmom realized that she
was next. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of
her life, as Bogart would say. The Body Snatchers would get her, too.
And she’d be obsessing about Teen Spirit’s 10th-grade report card, the
PSATs, the SATs, and his college essay. Come to think of it, is he
doing anything to earn social service credits for his college
applications?

Smartmom could even start stressing about OSFO’s middle-school
admissions and whether she was invited to enough birthday parties.

But Smartmom would be back to normal by next summer. Just like
everyone else. Then the family could enjoy blissful days and nights on
the beach in Sag Harbor and on the farm in California without once
thinking about school. They could even talk about books, writing, and
music without a word about homework.

But for now, the Body Snatchers were here to stay, transforming eager moms and dads into hyper, over-determined PARENTS.

Remember: be careful at Maggie Moo’s.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers.

A few years back, it seemed that a lot of couples were either getting divorced, thinking about separating, or in a real funk.

But something has changed: more of Smartmom’s friends are in
relationships that are stronger than ever. Even Hepcat and Smartmom —
after 17 years — are starting to get the hang of it.

Just last weekend, Smartmom, Hepcat and the Oh So Feisty One
attended a 10th anniversary jubilee for Dadu and Gluten-free. These
friends, who abandoned Prospect Heights for a humongous Victorian manse
upstate, home-school their kids, participate in a farm cooperative, and
have enough space to write, create art and make animated movies.

At their local Unitarian congregation, more than 100 nearest and
dearests heard the couple renew its vows and celebrate what has been a
remarkably successful and productive marriage.

Audience members were invited to light a candle and say a few words about the couple,

“I’ve liked them since I was two,” said the couple’s 7-year-old daughter.

“Marriage is a tricky game,” added a friend, a local carpenter.

“There is really a lot of love in your house,” said Gluten-Free’s brother, tearing up.

After the vows, the couple smooched, the Unitarian minister declared
them still married and the guests ate a gluten-free chocolate cake
replica of the Catskill Mountains with handmade figurines of the family
climbing upwards.

The beauty of the ceremony naturally made Smartmom wonder what her
friends and family would say if she and Hepcat renewed their vows:

“You guys seem to muddle along,” one might say.

“We thought you’d own a house by now,” Mrs. Kravitz would no-doubt taunt.

“Do you still fight as much as you used to?” another would say.

Back on Third Street, there is more evidence of strong marriages all
around Smartmom. A good neighbor recently underwent chemotherapy for
breast cancer and lost all of her hair. After the first chemo
treatments, Smartmom noticed that her husband had gone bald, too. But
he hadn’t lost his hair to chemo — he’d shaved his head in solidarity
with his beloved.

Smartmom was deeply moved by her neighbor’s gesture. But it left her
wondering: would Hepcat shave off his hair (what little is left of it)
if Smartmom lost hers?

Third Street provided yet one more example of marital stability. “In
sickness and in health” doesn’t even begin to describe the strength of
the Kravitz marriage.

When Mr. Kravitz’s kidneys malfunctioned, he was told by doctors
that he would have to be on dialysis for the rest of his life if he
couldn’t find a donor.

His father and his sister immediately volunteered, but his father
was too old and his sister, a smoker for many years, was deemed not
healthy enough.

Then, Mrs. Kravitz, his wife of 11 years and the mother of his two
children, came forward. It turned out that she was the ideal candidate:
a perfect match in excellent physical condition.

In the weeks preceding the transplant, Mrs. Kravitz underwent a
battery of tests (including psychological evaluation). She passed with
flying colors and was good to go.

On twin gurneys, they were wheeled into adjacent operating rooms.
Mrs. Kravitz’s kidney was removed first and ferried next door. The
doctors didn’t even take out Mr. Kravitz’s other kidneys; he now has
three.

With each passing day, he’s feeling stronger and better. He can work from home now and take walks to ConnMuffCo for iced coffee.

Loving. Brave. Romantic. It’s hard to find the right words to describe Mr. and Mrs. Kravitz.

Again, all this love got Smartmom to thinking: Would Hepcat would
give up a kidney for her? For that matter, would she give a kidney to
him?

In both cases, she knew the answer — but just hoped that she would be as brave as Mrs. Kravitz if it ever came to that.

Given all the love in the air, Smartmom recently asked Hepcat if he
would want to have a vow-renewal ceremony on their 20th anniversary.

Clearly, he was uncomfortable. After much groaning and a look of
complete and utter distress, he said, “I think we’re doing pretty well
without that.” And in an exasperated falsetto he added, “Do you really
want one?”

At this, he pulled her close and hugged her against his sweaty black T-shirt.

She had her answer. Every day is a renewal of their marriage vows.
Making breakfast. Shopping at the Food Coop. Attending Teen Spirit’s
rock ’n’ roll gigs at Liberty Heights Tap Room. Bi-weekly couples
therapy. Ordering pizza from Pino’s.

In sickness and in health. And if they could just remember their
vows, they might even say them to each other every now and again.

 Here’s the latest from Smartmom in the Brooklyn Papers.

Last week, Diaper Diva’s red-haired daughter, Ducky, celebrated her second birthday and her very first birthday in the United States.

Born in Russia, she spent the first year of her life in an orphanage. During the mandated waiting period before the adoption became legal, she celebrated her first birthday with Diaper Diva and Bro-in-Law sitting on small chairs in the orphanage’s music room.

Leave it to Diaper Diva, she tracked down party hats, balloons, streamers, and a birthday cake in Perm, Russia (motto: “The Gateway to Siberia!”), so they could have a little party for Ducky and her orphanage pals.

Ducky’s caregivers at the orphanage said that no parents had ever thrown a birthday party there before. They made tea, set the table, and enjoyed the birthday cake along with Ducky and her new family.

What a difference a year makes.

Ducky is a Brooklyn girl now. And Diaper Diva is a seasoned mom. With Smartmom’s help, they have both assimilated to baby life in the Slope. Ducky gets around in a Maclaren stroller; wears a chic T-shirt that says, “My other stroller is a Bugaboo”; goes to Music Together classes, as well as swimming and tumbling at Eastern Athletic; and eats low-fat corn muffins at ConnMuffCo.

And she had a big Park Slope-style birthday party last week.

True to form, Diaper Diva had the event planned to a “T.” Smartmom was full of advice, but Diaper Diva seemed to know what to do all by herself: the invitations went out weeks earlier; she’d purchased all the necessary Elmo party regalia; she hired Ducky’s Music Together teacher to entertain.

Still, Smartmom, wanting to make sure Diaper Diva did everything just right, accompanied her to Little Things for the all-important goody bags.

While shopping, Smartmom was full of sage party wisdom: You don’t want balloons in assorted colors (the kids will fight over the pink ones); you invited too many kids (tout le monde knows that you only invite as many kids as your child’s age, plus one); remember to serve the cake at the very end of the party (so the kids are home before the sugar rush starts).

Then this kernel of wisdom: give them out the gody bas just as the kids are leaving (it avoids fights). Mr. Little Things was obviously listening in.

“You sound like a pro,” he said with a smile.

Diaper Diva was less charitable, joking, “I guess they don’t call you ‘Smartmom’ for nothing.”

OK, so maybe Diaper Diva was sick and tired of Smartmom’s wisdom. But in the first few months of Momdom, she found it quite helpful.

“But now, it’s just so annoying so stop it.” Diaper Diva said.

Maybe it was a good thing that Smartmom would be out of town for the actual event (the once-a-year vacation). That way, Diaper Diva could do this birthday ALL BY HERSELF!

But for Smartmom, it would be hard to be 3,000 miles away, not because she wanted to smother her sister with advice, but because it didn’t feel right to miss even one of Ducky’s milestones.

On the big birthday, Smartmom and the Oh So Feisty One called Brooklyn from California and sang “Happy Birthday to You” into the phone three times. Then they listened to Ducky playing in the living room and Diaper Diva setting up for the party.

Smartmom and OSFO were swimming in the pool during the time of the party. “The guests are arriving now,” Smartmom narrated. And later: “They’re probably eating the cupcakes now.” She had to stop herself from calling Diaper Diva during the party. That would be really annoying, wouldn’t it?

That evening Smartmom called her sister in Park Slope to get the full post-mortem. From all reports it was a great party. Ducky was a little cautious at first when the kids came in. She was very clingy and sat on Diaper Diva’s lap for much of the party. There were a few last-minute cancellations, so Smartmom’s sister ended up with too many gorgeously decorated cupcakes, extra party bags, and multi-colored balloons.

“Did you ever miss one of our parties?” Smartmom asked Diaper Diva on the phone.

“Maybe one or two.”

That made Smartmom feel better. Smartmom asked her to freeze four cupcakes for the family. As soon as they get off the redeye next week, their first stop will be Diaper Diva’s for a belated birthday breakfast. Cupcakes and all.

And Smartmom promised herself she would offer absolutely no advice.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom. Check out this week’s Brooklyn Papers.

You’ve heard of road rage. Now there’s “Mommy Rage” and there’s no shortage of it in Park Slope.

Last week there was the mom who threw a can of beans at the back
window of a car because the driver cut her off when she was pushing her
toddler across the street.

Such an incident would have gone unnoticed in most neighborhoods —
or made it into the Police Blotter — but in Park Slope, where every
casual eye is actually a microscope on the minutia of everyday life,
the bean-can toss was quickly posted all over the Park Slope Parents
Web site:

“I saw one woman struggling across the street with multiple bags of
groceries hanging off her kid’s stroller; when she got cut off, TWICE,
she reached into her grocery bags and hauled out a can of beans, which
she threw at the rear window of the second car, cracking it clear
across.”

And then, the kicker: “Several witnesses clapped and cheered,” the posting ended.

Smartmom was disgusted. Sure city traffic can be a pain in the neck.
But come on. That guy didn’t deserve to have a can of beans thrown at
his car. And the fact that bystanders clapped and cheered just proves
that Park Slope is one crazy daisy place.

Another kind of “Mommy Rage” was also exhibited this week by Amy
Sohn, the former sex columnist for New York magazine, who has switched
from writing about on-line porn, girl crushes, and fake orgasms to
stories about life with a toddler in our little borough of heaven.

And what a surprise: The shrunken, Grinch-like heart that formed the
core of Sohn’s life as a single woman has not grown even one size as
she has morphed into motherhood.

Sure, most mothers have better things to do than watch “Boobas”
videos with their kids or read “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” for the
umpteenth time.

Like Sohn, yes, Smartmom found it exceedingly boring to be home with
the 1-year-old Oh So Feisty One. Whenever she tried to use her
computer, OSFO turned it off (clever girl, that OSFO).

When she tried to read “Everything is Illuminated” or another work of
literary fiction alone in her bedroom, tiny OSFO would crawl in and
insist on “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” (which is good, but not Foer-esque).

OSFO wouldn’t even let Smartmom go to the bathroom without toddling
in and pulling all the toilet paper onto the floor. That’s why Smartmom
escaped to her writer’s group on Tuesday nights, her therapist on
Wednesday afternoons and Manifesto Mamas, her radical mommy support
group one Thursday a month. Moms need breaks. No crime there.

But that wouldn’t do it for Sohn, who has bigger fish to fry than
organic tater tots for her little dumpling. There are books,
screenplays and columns to write. The woman is so frustrated about
having to take time away from her work that she ranted about Park
Slope’s Stay-at-Home-Moms (SAHM) on her blog (her blog! Clearly, she
has time for what’s important!):

“Here in my neighborhood, Park Slope, I am constantly encountering
insane stay-at-home moms. And I have come to the all-too-un-PC
conclusion that stay-at-home motherhood, despite the way our culture
lionizes it, is bad for the child and bad for the mom. And bad for
society. It’s just plain bad.”

Sohn goes on to say that most of the SAHMs she knows are really
miserable in a “neurotic, soul crippling, Zoloft-inducing, Yellow
Wallpaper-type way.” (How did Sohn know about Smartmom’s wallpaper?)

Why is Amy Sohn so nasty towards motherhood? Just because she (and
Smartmom and probably many others) doesn’t thrive on SAHM-dom, doesn’t
mean she should put down all those SAHMs, who are working hard and
trying their best.

Smartmom’s friend, Mrs. Kravitz, gave up a career as a graphic designer
to stay home with two kids. But Mrs. Kravitz, not Amy Sohn, put her
finger on the real problem with SAHM-dom: “By staying at home we permit
our husbands to perpetuate the long hours that drives so many of us out
of professional work in the first place.” Maybe Mrs. Kravitz should
have a column somewhere.

Sohn’s nastiness went further: “SAHMs have no opinions anymore and
spend their time talking about poop and pancakes with kale and Veggie
Bootie and natural Cheerios versus regular ones.”

Smartmom understands the sentiment, but wishes to point out that no
one chooses poop over Proust. And she’ll offer a piece of advice to the
obviously overwhelmed Sohn: Children take up so much time and energy —
but only for a while. And if you’re going to enjoy the ride, it
actually helps to take the kid to sing-along at the Tea Lounge or sit
with the other mommies at the Third Street Playground talking about
poop instead of trying to “have it all” (wasn’t that the knock on
career women?).

Most shockingly Sohn recommends that college-educated women outsource their childcare:

“Childcare should be the province of immigrant women trying to get a
leg up. I do not believe it is ‘better for the child’ to be with his
mother. I believe it is better for the child to have a mother with some
modicum of a life — whether it’s volunteering, graduate degree, or
part-time work.”

If you ask Smartmom, that kind of classist, racist, elitist and just
downright hostile comment is in the category of throwing a can of beans
at a car window. Sohn has jumped into the deep end without a floatie.

So what is Amy Sohn’s problem? “Mommy Rage,” pure and simple.

Sohn — like the bean-can hurler — is mad as hell because her life
isn’t the way she wants it to be. The Bean Thrower wants all traffic to
stop just because she’s pushing a stroller. Sohn wants to have a child
and a fabulous career.

As Smartmom (and that Mick guy) always says, you can’t always get what you want.

If Amy Sohn doesn’t want to give up her “life” and her ambitions for
her kid, that’s fine. But why take out her aggressions on the mothers
who either enjoy staying home or can’t afford to go back to work?

Look, Smartmom’s not immune to “Mommy Rage.” Being a mom does cut
into the time Smartmom should be using to find an agent, finish her
novel, and make enough money to buy a big house in … Bed Stuy.
Sometimes, she screams at her kids and Hepcat. Often she takes it out
on herself.

But she never throws cans of beans. That’s where she draws the line.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers:

Not long ago, there was a bomb scare in Park Slope. It wasn’t on the news or on the radio — heck, what’s a bomb scare in New York City anymore? — but in the Slope, it was a major incident.

Eighth Avenue was closed for more than five hours. People weren’t allowed onto Carroll Street, Union, or Berkeley. Oddly, they didn’t evacuate the buildings, they just wouldn’t let people go home.

In the late afternoon, Smartmom saw two-dozen police officers on the corner of Second Street. “Look for anything unusual,” she heard a sergeant say to her troops.

“What’s going on?” Smartmom asked, feeling her heart begin to pound.

“They found some suspicious packages on Eighth Avenue,” an officer told her.

Then she heard police sirens, ambulances. The Bomb Squad was there. Even a bomb-sniffing robot (good nose, apparently). Smartmom had a knot in her stomach. Here we go again, she thought. Right in Park Slope.

When Smartmom got back to the Third Street Cafe, otherwise known as the front yard of her apartment building, she was surprised that everyone already knew all about it.

“Yeah, there’s a bomb scare,” Mr. Kravitz said cynically. “They found some suspicious suitcase.”

Nobody seemed very upset.

“Tell me, what constitutes a suspicious package in this neighborhood?” asked Mrs. Kravitz.

Mr. Kravitz had the punchline: “A member of the Food Coop carrying a Fairway bag. Now that’s a suspicious package.”

Everyone laughed. The knot in Smartmom’s stomach loosened a bit. But the Oh So Feisty One, who had overheard the conversation, wasn’t in on the joke.

“Mommy, what’s a ‘bomb scare?’” she asked. Smartmom was hoping she wouldn’t find out about it. She tries to shelter her from as many of the grotesque realities of contemporary life as she can, which isn’t easy, considering there’s been a dead body on the front page of the New York Times every day for two weeks.

Plus, OSFO can detect trouble in an instant; must be Smartmom’s body language.

Smartmom picked her words carefully. This is one of those moments in every parent’s life — like the first time your daughter finds your tampons — when saying the wrong thing actually matters.

Smartmom told her that the police were worried that someone, a very bad person, may have left a bomb in a suitcase.

“A suitcase? Why would they leave it in a suitcase?” OSFO asked.

Good question. Smartmom told her that this bad guy might have put it in there to make an explosion. Oy, Smartmom felt herself getting in deeper and deeper.

“But why would someone want to cause an explosion?”

And so it went. Smartmom tried to play it down, but she also likes to be honest with OSFO.

A little over a year ago, OSFO heard reports about the London subway bombing on NPR. Needless to say, she had a lot of questions. How do you adequately explain to a child that someone wants to cause an explosion that will kill hundreds, even thousands of people? With difficulty. And sadness.

Teen Spirit at 15 is well attuned to some of the harsh realities of the world. An avid listener to NPR, he has a fairly broad sense of what goes on beyond the confines of his rather idyllic urban existence.

But at 9, OSFO’s understanding of the geo-political world is still quite vague. Geography is an abstract concept, despite the more than 100 globes Smartmom and Hepcat, collectors of vintage globes, have in the apartment. “Far away” is Queens or New Jersey where school friends have relocated. Even farther is California, where her grandmother lives on a farm.

OSFO was only 4 on September 11. She barely understood what was going on. Early that morning as news of the attacks came across the radio, OSFO was playing in the kitchen. Smartmom tried to quell her own anxiety, her sinking sense that the world was coming undone by polishing OSFO’s toenails pink while listening to the radio; an effort to make things feel normal on that most un-normal of days.

Later on, OSFO watched the attacks over and over on the television in Mrs. Kravitz’s apartment where everyone was gathering. The grown-ups were too distraught to even notice that the children were watching it again and again.

A few days later, OSFO told Smartmom that she dreamt that her Barbie doll crashed into a tall building causing a terrible explosion. Later she learned that her friend’s father, a firefighter, had died.

OSFO and Teen Spirit were born into a scary world. Still, Smartmom’s children want to believe that there is inherent goodness and innocence in it. They cling to a seemingly in-born belief that good will triumph over evil.

The bomb scare in Park Slope turned out to be a hoax — a homeless man leaving his suitcases in various garbage pails.

But what about when it’s real? How do you parent your children during a crisis when you’re freaked out yourself?

At the Third Street Cafe, everyone got a good laugh over the incident.

But OSFO, christened by her experience on 9-11, still seemed a little nervous. She kept asking about the homeless man who had caused all the trouble.

“Is he going to be all right, mom?” OSFO asked. “Is he going to be okay?

“Mom? Mom?” Not long ago, there was a bomb scare in Park Slope. It wasn’t on the news or on the radio — heck, what’s a bomb scare in New York City anymore? — but in the Slope, it was a major incident.

Eighth Avenue was closed for more than five hours. People weren’t allowed onto Carroll Street, Union, or Berkeley. Oddly, they didn’t evacuate the buildings, they just wouldn’t let people go home.

In the late afternoon, Smartmom saw two-dozen police officers on the corner of Second Street. “Look for anything unusual,” she heard a sergeant say to her troops.

“What’s going on?” Smartmom asked, feeling her heart begin to pound.

“They found some suspicious packages on Eighth Avenue,” an officer told her.

Then she heard police sirens, ambulances. The Bomb Squad was there. Even a bomb-sniffing robot (good nose, apparently). Smartmom had a knot in her stomach. Here we go again, she thought. Right in Park Slope.

When Smartmom got back to the Third Street Cafe, otherwise known as the front yard of her apartment building, she was surprised that everyone already knew all about it.

“Yeah, there’s a bomb scare,” Mr. Kravitz said cynically. “They found some suspicious suitcase.”

Nobody seemed very upset.

“Tell me, what constitutes a suspicious package in this neighborhood?” asked Mrs. Kravitz.

Mr. Kravitz had the punchline: “A member of the Food Coop carrying a Fairway bag. Now that’s a suspicious package.”

Everyone laughed. The knot in Smartmom’s stomach loosened a bit. But the Oh So Feisty One, who had overheard the conversation, wasn’t in on the joke.

“Mommy, what’s a ‘bomb scare?’” she asked. Smartmom was hoping she wouldn’t find out about it. She tries to shelter her from as many of the grotesque realities of contemporary life as she can, which isn’t easy, considering there’s been a dead body on the front page of the New York Times every day for two weeks.

Plus, OSFO can detect trouble in an instant; must be Smartmom’s body language.

Smartmom picked her words carefully. This is one of those moments in every parent’s life — like the first time your daughter finds your tampons — when saying the wrong thing actually matters.

Smartmom told her that the police were worried that someone, a very bad person, may have left a bomb in a suitcase.

“A suitcase? Why would they leave it in a suitcase?” OSFO asked.

Good question. Smartmom told her that this bad guy might have put it in there to make an explosion. Oy, Smartmom felt herself getting in deeper and deeper.

“But why would someone want to cause an explosion?”

And so it went. Smartmom tried to play it down, but she also likes to be honest with OSFO.

A little over a year ago, OSFO heard reports about the London subway bombing on NPR. Needless to say, she had a lot of questions. How do you adequately explain to a child that someone wants to cause an explosion that will kill hundreds, even thousands of people? With difficulty. And sadness.

Teen Spirit at 15 is well attuned to some of the harsh realities of the world. An avid listener to NPR, he has a fairly broad sense of what goes on beyond the confines of his rather idyllic urban existence.

But at 9, OSFO’s understanding of the geo-political world is still quite vague. Geography is an abstract concept, despite the more than 100 globes Smartmom and Hepcat, collectors of vintage globes, have in the apartment. “Far away” is Queens or New Jersey where school friends have relocated. Even farther is California, where her grandmother lives on a farm.

OSFO was only 4 on September 11. She barely understood what was going on. Early that morning as news of the attacks came across the radio, OSFO was playing in the kitchen. Smartmom tried to quell her own anxiety, her sinking sense that the world was coming undone by polishing OSFO’s toenails pink while listening to the radio; an effort to make things feel normal on that most un-normal of days.

Later on, OSFO watched the attacks over and over on the television in Mrs. Kravitz’s apartment where everyone was gathering. The grown-ups were too distraught to even notice that the children were watching it again and again.

A few days later, OSFO told Smartmom that she dreamt that her Barbie doll crashed into a tall building causing a terrible explosion. Later she learned that her friend’s father, a firefighter, had died.

OSFO and Teen Spirit were born into a scary world. Still, Smartmom’s children want to believe that there is inherent goodness and innocence in it. They cling to a seemingly in-born belief that good will triumph over evil.

The bomb scare in Park Slope turned out to be a hoax — a homeless man leaving his suitcases in various garbage pails.

But what about when it’s real? How do you parent your children during a crisis when you’re freaked out yourself?

At the Third Street Cafe, everyone got a good laugh over the incident.

But OSFO, christened by her experience on 9-11, still seemed a little nervous. She kept asking about the homeless man who had caused all the trouble.

“Is he going to be all right, mom?” OSFO asked. “Is he going to be okay?

“Mom? Mom?”

Here’s Smartmom from this week’s Brooklyn Papers. Lots of Atlantic Yards news and views to read there.

Smartmom thinks that the Oh So Feisty One, at age 9, is old enough to walk to the corner and cross the street.

In the eyes of some Park Slope moms, Smartmom is doing the right thing in developing her daughter’s sense of independence.

In other Park Slope eyes, Smartmom is guilty of child abuse

It all started when OSFO’s best friend, Crystal, was allowed to walk
to OSFO’s house unaccompanied. That meant crossing one-way Second
Street. Alone. She had to call home as soon as she arrived, of course,
but she made it.

After witnessing such success, OSFO began clamoring to go to Crystal’s house all by herself.

Smartmom wasn’t sure her girl was quite ready, so, for starters, she
let OSFO and Crystal walk around the corner to the candy store and Park
Slope Books.

Ah la liberte: what a blast to buy Skittles at the candy store and
browse picture books at the bookstore. Alone. And it involved no
street-crossing.

Next, Smartmom decided that OSFO was ready to cross Second Street
with Crystal. They are both capable and cautious kids who know to wait
for the green light and look both ways.

They also know to be wary of strangers and even familiar-looking people whom she doesn’t really know.

The other day, Crystal and OSFO were joined by their schoolmate,
Kate. Crystal wanted to pick up her Build-a-Bear at home, so Smartmom
said the three girls could go to Crystal’s house if they were very,
very careful crossing little Second Street.

Well, when Superprotective Mom got wind of it, she hit the roof. She
told Kate, in no uncertain terms, that she was NEVER to cross the
street. Ever. Later, Smartmom spoke to Superprotective Mom and told her
that she was sorry for her “Mommy boo-boo.” She should have called and
asked whether Kate was allowed to cross the street.

“It wasn’t about crossing the street,” Superprotective Mom said. “I
don’t want Kate on the street at all. There are too many bad people
around. I don’t think she’s ready to deal with something if it happens.”

Smartmom felt duly reprimanded, but she knew that she wasn’t going to put the kibosh on OSFO’s burgeoning independence.

Continue reading SMARTMOM: THE 9-YEAR-OLD ON HER OWN IN THE SLOPE →

This is the latest Smartmom from the  Brooklyn Papers. Pick up your copy every Friday at Key Food, Conn. Muffin, Haggen Daz, Cousin Johns (to name a few) or visit Brooklyn Papers.com.

Smartmom cried on the Oh So Feisty One’s last day of school this
week. She always does. They were quiet tears: quickly-brushed-away
tears, and tears-that-got-stuck-in-the-middle-of-her-throat tears.

There is something about seeing the teachers coming out of PS 321
with the children they have been teaching for the past year that really
moves her. The teachers look near tears themselves.

On the last day of first grade eight years ago, Teen Spirit’s
teacher was wearing the same floral print dress she wore on the very
first day when she was welcoming the children.

That killed Smartmom. Just slayed her.

On Wednesday, Smartmom observed OSFO, slightly stooped from a
backpack stuffed with the contents of her desk, as she walked away from
her third-grade teachers and classmates — the people who, for a year,
formed an important part of her world.

She and her friends looked a little dazed. They held their
Build-a-Bears and Build-a-Dogs, who had married, divorced, re-married,
and had children during the year in a complex social dance that played
out at recess.

Some of the children cried and hugged (Smartmom couldn’t tell if the
bears were crying). Other kids looked scared and uncertain about the
future. Many were, of course, tremendously excited to begin summer
vacation. Such a mixed blessing: the end of one thing, the beginning of
the next.

After the good-byes, the teacher thank-yous, the hugs, and the “see
you next years,” the parents ripped open the report card envelopes to
see which teacher they (er, their child) would have next year.

“Who’d you get?” was heard all over the schoolyard.

The answer was on the last page of the report card. But to
complicate matters, PS 321 gives the room number, not the teacher’s
name.

“Whose class is 318?”

“Does anyone know the teacher in 327?”

Parents attempted to match a number with a name. There was one savvy
parent walking around with the PS 321 directory, giving out the vital
information. Everyone gathered around that person.

Finding out about next year’s teacher is the de facto moment of
truth. The parents who got a desired teacher had looks of satisfaction
as they put the report card back in its small manila envelope.

But the parents who got an unfamiliar teacher, or Buddha forbid, a name that they didn’t want, offered looks of
disappointment, even anger.

And consider the children: “All my friends are in one class. I’m all alone,” Smartmom overheard one girl say tearfully.

Smartmom experienced a “now what?” feeling. The quest to find
companions for next year was suddenly replaced with the great expanse
of summer vacation.

It was a snap transition from schoolness to no schoolness and it felt a little empty, even lonely.

When they got back to the apartment, Smartmom and OSFO got out the
Pillsbury cookie dough and started baking for the end-of-school party
that OSFO had planned for her friends and their stuffed animals later
in the afternoon.

From the end of the hallway, Smartmom heard Teen Spirit, who has
been out of school for more than a week, stirring in his bedroom.

“It’s 12:30. Time to get up!” Smartmom yelled. At 15, Teen Spirit is
thrilled to be free of the shackles and chains of school life. Now he
just wants to sleep late and watch movies.

The fact that he hasn’t figured out what he’s doing this summer is
making Smartmom increasingly nervous. Initially he considered being a
CIT at his old day camp.

“But I sort of want to be able to sleep late on my summer vacation,” he said.

For the last week he’s been spending most of his time figuring out
chords on his new left-handed acoustic guitar and listening to his iPod
instead of canvassing Seventh Avenue shops for summer employment.

Smartmom emailed friends, trying to drum up a summer job for her nearly 6-foot baby boy.

“He’s handsome, smart, well read, and a fount of world knowledge,” she wrote. “Work experience: None.”

While the cookies were baking, a friend called to see if Teen Spirit
would be willing to feed a guinea pig, a parrot, clean the guinea pig’s
cage, and water plants while she was away on a week’s vacation.

Sure, Smartmom said, he loves that sort of thing. Not. But she knew he needed the work. Make that: Smartmom needed him to work.

Smartmom volunteered Teen Spirit to do something he probably
wouldn’t want to do. There would almost certainly be a fight. Nasty
words would be strewn about. She winced at the thought of the conflict
that was practically a daily fact of life.

Smartmom knocked on Teen Spirit’s door to wake him up and talk to him
about his summer plans. Specifically about his upcoming stint as a
guinea-pig-cage cleaner. Then she decided better of it and went back to
baking cookies. There was plenty of time for conflict. Later.

While OSFO squirted purple frosting on her just-baked cookies,
Smartmom read OSFO’s report card to sustain the connection with what
they’d just left behind: the class trips, the poetry celebrations,
class 320’s arctic museum…

There would be plenty of time to ponder what the summer would hold,
and to prevent Teen Spirit’s descent into slackerdom. But for the
afternoon, it helped to hold onto the report card, the backpack, the
stack of class work, the hard-to-store artwork.

Like a baby’s security blanket, these transitional objects would smooth the way into the next new thing.

Here is this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers. Check out their new web site.

Hepcat hates Father’s Day and could care less about gifts and cards. He feels the same way about Mother’s Day, but Smartmom has trained him to line up — along with the rest of the male population of Park Slope — at the Clay Pot to procure her Mother’s Day offering.

Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One figured out that the best way to celebrate Father’s Day is to ignore it. OSFO did make him a breakfast feast of scrambled eggs and bacon. But she was decidedly nonchalant about the whole thing. And she did NOT make him a card.

Teen Spirit had a card for his dad, but never bothered to give it to him. So much for that Leave it to Beaver image of the kids giving dad a hand-painted ashtray or a tie clip.

Smartmom always gets Hepcat a card, but she has a hell of a time finding one without golf clubs, fishing rods, baseballs, or neckties. Those images are so not Hepcat (who does, from time to time, wear a necktie — but in an ironic way).

Smartmom wonders why there are no cards that truly represent fathers like Hepcat: those who change Huggies, cook Annie’s Macaroni, memorize Music for Aardvarks tapes, clean up vomit, and check their daughter’s hair for lice eggs.

In Park Slope, Dads are not just about barbecues and toolboxes. Yes, Hepcat knows his way around a Weber, but he’s so much more, how you say?, dimensional.

Minutes after Teen Spirit was born, Hepcat held the tiny newborn tenderly and stared into his huge blue eyes — no pacing the waiting room or handing out cigars for him.

Once home, Hepcat taught Smartmom how to change diapers. And he was far less freaked out by the umbilical stump and the circumcision bandages than she was.

He even helped Smartmom figure out how to breastfeed: “I grew up on dairy farm,” he said. “I know all about this sort of thing.”

Hepcat’s father, of course, never changed a diaper in his life. And Smartmom is pretty sure that her dad never did, either.

Men have come a long way, baby. In fact, Smartmom and Hepcat have turned many gender roles on their head.

After Teen Spirit was born, Hepcat worked at home, while Smartmom worked 9–5 in the city. She was the one who didn’t come home until 7 pm, dying to hear her boy yell, “Mommy’s home!” as he ran down the hallway — already bathed and in pajamas.

Hepcat was the guy taking Teen Spirit to music classes, playdates and class trips to the Staten Island Children’s Museum.

True, he didn’t shop for groceries, do the dishes, make the beds, throw out the coffee filters, or clean the toilet — but that’s for a forthcoming column about how Smartmom and Hepcat’s gender roles haven’t changed enough.

When OSFO came along, Hepcat and Smartmom switched roles again. Smartmom stayed home, while he worked in the city. And Hepcat was the one dying to hear his girl yell, “Daddy’s home!” as she ran down the hallway — already bathed and in pajamas.

Hepcat was eventually outsourced from the Big Corporation, and he went back to cooking scallop risotto, making conversation with the Third Street moms, and cutting OSFO’s bangs.

In the process, Hepcat learned that girls need their dads as much or more than boys. Countless studies have shown how important the father-daughter relationship is when it comes to a girl’s self-esteem, emotional health and well-being.

Hepcat rose to the occasion — and now has a daughter who loves volleyball, power tools, build-a-bears, and manicures.

As for Teen Spirit, it’s a real high-wire act being his dad. They have door slamming fights, as well as tender moments like the one at Lenox Hill Hospital all those years ago.

So even if he hates Father’s Day, Hepcat still deserves a pat on the back (or a hug and a kiss) for keeping up with the times and reinventing fatherhood. Smartmom will still scour the card shops for a card that evokes Hepcat-style parenting. OSFO will still nonchalantly scramble those eggs and microwave the bacon. And Teen Spirit will buy the card and not give it to dad.

What better way to show their appreciation? Really.

Here is this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers.

Writing teachers always advise newbies, “Write what you know.” But Smartmom learned first-hand the perils of that credo after last month’s article, Ratner $$ can’t buy love, angered many in the PS 321 community.

The article — which Dumb Editor put on the front page (hmm, maybe he’s not so dumb…) — was about Bruce Ratner’s sponsorship of PS 321’s fundraising auction at the Brooklyn Museum.

Oy, it’s been quite a week.

One person called Smartmom “sleazy” because she is a member of the PTA and she attended the auction. Another person wrote that members of the auction committee, who worked so hard to organize the event, felt insulted and hurt. In all, Smartmom couldn’t count all the really dirty looks and unfriendly hellos she got this week.

Now, Smartmom feels like the philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who was called a self-hating Jew for her New Yorker article about Adolf Eichmann, during the Nazi’s war-crimes trial.

Smartmom’s goal was not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but to explore a very important question (and one, frankly, that everyone at PS 321 was already exploring!): What do you do when a generous and controversial benefactor comes along with a check?

Do you take the money or not?

For practical reasons, you take the money. The public schools are under-funded, overcrowded, and in desperate need of cash.

Every public school PTA in New York City works its butt off to raise money for pencils, art supplies, paper, and other very basic things. Beyond that, the PTA at PS 321 makes possible all sorts of enrichments that enhance our children’s lives.

So we need (and appreciate) all the money we can get.

But it’s still a relevant moral question. Ratner is, after all, a controversial figure in Brooklyn. Smartmom would have been remiss had she NOT mentioned that he was underwriting the event or that his name was in big letters on the program.

Some in the school were incensed about his contribution. Others were more practical: Just take the money.

The funny thing was, Smartmom was non-judgmental about the school’s decision to take the money and dance. Ever the good Park Slope mom, Smartmom doesn’t make judgments, but is far more interested in the way these issues play out in a school with politically savvy parents.

Long before Smartmom put fingers to keyboard, the PTA had debated whether to accept Ratner greenbacks. Prior to the event, there was a meeting with the principal and other members of the fundraising committee. The final decision was made by the principal, who said that the school had to take the money because it could not discriminate.

Smartmom’s story simply asked whether this developer, who is proposing to change the character of the Brooklyn we know and love, is an influence peddler or just a good friend of PS 321. Like many Brooklyn moms, Smartmom thinks that Ratner is probably a little of both. And that’s what makes the world go ’round and keeps newspaper columnists in business.

If he’d wanted to make things easy for the PTA, he could have made an anonymous donation. But he obviously wants the recognition — and the publicity for his company. That’s showbiz.

But back to Smartmom (yeah, enough about that Ratner guy). The muddled lesson that her Park Slope friends seem to be sending is that such issues shouldn’t be discussed in the local newspaper.

That, of course, is preposterous.

After all, Smartmom, who is an insider, is actually the very person that the PS 321 crowd should want depicting Park Slope in all of its neurotic complexity.

It’s like that old Woody Allen joke about how the rest of the country thinks about New Yorkers as “left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers.”

“I think of us that way sometimes and I live here,” Allen concluded.

Papers like the Daily News and blogs like nolandgrab.org have been eating PS 321 for breakfast ever since Ratner gave that money. If she does say so, Smartmom’s coverage was the only balanced thing on the topic so far.

Given her neurotic bent towards wanting to please people at all costs, you can imagine how much Smartmom hates being snubbed on Seventh Avenue. But she’s getting used to it and is growing quite a thick skin.

And to the people who think Smartmom was “sitting in judgment” of the PTA, a group with whom she is actively involved, Smartmom counters with this famous quote by Hannah Arendt from 1964:

“The heat caused by my ‘sitting in judgment’ has proved how uncomfortable most of us are when confronted with moral issues … and I admit that I am the most uncomfortable myself.”

With her eyes and ears open, Smartmom tries to write in an honest, and mostly loving way, about the community she is so passionately a part of.

Smartmom now knows that that’s a pretty dicey thing to do.

After all, it wasn’t the first time she ruffled some Park Slope plummage. She already lost one friend and angered another because of something she wrote.

And Teen Spirit has asked that Smartmom not write about him — too much.

And now even the Oh So Feisty One has asked for a name change.

Sorry, kid, but that’s where Smartmom draws the line!

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from Brooklyn Papers.

On the day of the 30th high school reunion of the Walden School (a
progressive private school on the Upper West Side that no longer
exists), Smartmom spent many hours beautifying at the Frajean Salon on
Seventh Avenue.

But even Stephen and the staff at the full-service hair salon/spa
could not make her look like herself at 17, a hippie wannabe who longed
to sing like Joni Mitchell.

(Come to think of it, what the hell was she doing in a hair salon. If she wanted to look like herself at 17, she would let it all hang out, split ends and all.)

The first order of business was highlights. Looking like Hellraiser
with tin foil sticking out of her head, Smartmom laughed. In high
school, she was the brown-haired girl with big brown eyes that all the
boys wanted to be friends with, while Smartmom’s best friend was the
blonde beauty whom all the boys wanted to sleep with.

But for the reunion, Smartmom would have blonde highlights! She knew
that would throw her old high school friends for a loop. Maybe no one
would recognize her.

After the highlights, Smartmom went downstairs for a waxing in a
room with bright examination lights and “soothing” New Age music. Hot
Wax Lady used boiling wax to shape Smartmom’s eyebrows (no Frida Kahlo
unibrow like in high school) and rip off (ouch) the old-lady hairs that
grow from her chin and make her feel like the witch in Hansel and
Gretel.

Then it was time for her toes and feet, which had to look beautiful
because she was wearing gold metallic sandals that made her look six
feet tall. She may have been short in high school, but 30 years later,
she’d be an Amazon.

The haircut and styling came next. After the cut, Smartmom watched
nervously as Stephen got out his hair curler from the bottom shelf.

“Please, I don’t want Farrah Fawcett hair,” Smartmom warned.

“But the 1970s are very big right now,” Stephen said.

“Yeah, but Walden wasn’t that kind of ’70s,” Smartmom said. “We were
very natural back then. We didn’t use make-up, or even shave our legs.”

This piqued the attention of Stephen’s 20-ish assistant.

“You didn’t wear make-up?” she said, shocked.

Clearly, she was too young to know of a time when women burned their bras and rebelled against the feminine mystique.

Finally, Stephen applied the make-up. It made Smartmom so nervous
that she thought she’d throw up — but as he applied a smooth layer of
foundation, he slowly erased 30 years of stress from her skin.

Gone were the lines from 30 years of laughing and crying; the dark
rings under her eyes from a cumulative loss of sleep from all-nighters
at college, 3 am breast-feedings and overheated arguments with Hepcat
about money; the crows-feet next to her eyes that made her think of her
mother; the scowly lines next to her mouth from feeling so much
disapproval and pain; her sallow complexion from spending too many
hours staring at her computer.

When Stephen was done, Smartmom looked great. But later when she and
Hepcat took the F-train to the reunion, she realized that she had spent
more than $300 for an impossible goal: she could never look like she
did 30 years ago because she wasn’t the same person as she was then. For one thing, she would never have spent five plus hours in a hair salon in 1976. Not a chance.

The reunion passed by in a blur of open-hearted, Cabernet-fueled
conversation. Most of her former classmates — financial wizards,
psychotherapists, writers, lawyers, environmentalists, an op-ed editor
of a national newspaper, an opera singer and a dress designer — seemed
to be doing what they wanted to do. Everyone looked great (even if the
men had lost most of their hair) and were as idealistic as ever —
products of a school that taught them to question authority and make a
difference in the world.

Smartmom was moved to tears (and skunk eyes from smudged eyeliner)
when Opera Singer (the aforementioned blond best friend) sang “Our Love
is Here to Say." She even got flirtatious with some of the boys she had
liked back then.

Later, in the cab back to Brooklyn, Smartmom thought about how much
had gone on since graduation: there was college, a career, Smartmom and
Hepcat’s trip cross-country in a 1963 Ford Galaxy; their wedding on a
rainy day in July; the birth of Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One in
a Manhattan hospital.

Back in 1976, you could get a brownstone on Garfield Place for less
than $20,000. It was before the AIDS crisis, the fall of the Berlin
Wall, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Bush 1, Bush 2, cellphones, compact
discs, Jimmy Carter, the Intifada (1 and 2), the iPod, the L.A. riots,
SUVs and Tiananmen Square.

Obviously, Smartmom knew she could never return to her 17–year-old
self in the same way that the world can never go back to the way it
used to be.

And then she understood: a high-school reunion is supposed to be a time to honor who you were then and respect who you are now.

And if Smartmom looked 30 years older that was OK. Everyone else did, too.