“ … Molinari writes about her naval officer husband, their three children, and her own foibles with love, warmth, and humor.”
—Jerry Zezima, nationally syndicated humorist and author
“ … a wonderful look inside the kind of family we all want to invite home to dinner.”
—Amy Newmark, editor-in-chief, Chicken Soup for the Soul
“A wry and lighthearted journey through the seasons of family life.”
—W. Bruce Cameron, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Dog’s Purpose
“Molinari writes about the illusive ‘perfect’ family with poignancy and humor … she embraces the chaos of everyday life—and her own vulnerabilities—through engaging stories that resonate. Her writing is pure Erma Bombeck.”
—Teri Rizvi, founder and director of the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop
“Molinari has written a hilariously honest, beautifully engaging, and vividly written memoir of her life as a military spouse, the mother of fabulously eccentric and demanding children … insight and revelation … signature wit on every page. A must-read.”
—Gina Barreca, author of They Used to Call Me Snow White … But I Drifted
“ … blend(s) belly-shaking laughs with poignancy … The Meat and Potatoes of Life is hearty fare, and I share my highest accolade: I kept saying to my husband, ‘Oh, please let me read this chapter to you!’” Suzette Martinez Standring, author of The Art of Opinion Writing
The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com
©2020 Lisa Smith Molinari
All rights reserved. The content of this book may not be reproduced by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a memoir, reflecting the author’s recollection of actual events. Every effort has been made to tell the truth, the whole truth, and sometimes an exaggerated version of the truth. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty.
Front cover illustration, hand lettering, and book design by Jessie Barnes for Elva Resa. Senior editor Terri Barnes.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Molinari, Lisa Smith, 1966- author.
Title: The meat and potatoes of life : my true lit com / Lisa Smith Molinari.
Description: Saint Paul : Elva Resa, [2020] | Summary: “Humorous memoir of an attorney who leaves her law career to become a navy wife and stay at home mom of three …”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019049231 (print) | LCCN 2019049232 (ebook) | ISBN 9781934617540 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781934617557 (epub) | ISBN 9781934617564 (kindle edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Military spouses--United States--Social conditions. | Navy spouses--United States--Anecdotes. | United States. Navy--Military life--Anecdotes. | Military spouses--United States--Anecdotes. | Children of military personnel--United States--Anecdotes.
Classification: LCC UB403 .M65 2020 (print) | LCC UB403 (ebook) | DDC 359.1/20973--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049231
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049232
Published by
Elva Resa Publishing
8362 Tamarack Vlg., Ste. 119-106
St. Paul, MN 55125
ElvaResa.com
MilitaryFamilyBooks.com
For Hayden, Anna, and Lilly.
I love you more than life itself.
Now go empty the dishwasher.
CONTENTS
A Word From Our Sponsor
The Rise and Fall of Supermom
Season One | In the Beginning
Episode 1 When Strangers Marry
Episode 2 Bagging the Bagger
Episode 3 Does This Baby Make My Husband’s Butt Look Big?
Episode 4 Pork Chop Envy
Episode 5 Silence Isn’t Golden, It’s Green
Episode 6 Rule No. 1: Follow the Rules
Episode 7 How You Play the Game
Episode 8 Cheeseballs, Perverts, and Other Financial Advisors
Episode 9 Airing Dirty Laundry
Episode 10 True Love Is a Gas
Season Two | In the Mix
Episode 1 Totally Tubular
Episode 2 Music to My Ears
Episode 3 Revival of the Fittest
Episode 4 Lord of the Houseflies
Episode 5 Vacationer’s Deadliest Catch
Episode 6 Thanksgiving’s Forbidden Fruit
Episode 7 Wanted: Mom Manager
Episode 8 How Many Idiots Does It Take to Fill Out a 1040?
Episode 9 Birds, Bees, and Brats
Episode 10 War of the Roses
Episode 11 The Stuff Families Are Made Of
Season Three | In the Trenches
Episode 1 Middle School Disorientation
Episode 2 Battle of the Bulge
Episode 3 The Car Pool Blues
Episode 4 Lilly Saves Christmas
Episode 5 Battery by Blender
Episode 6 A Midsummer Night’s Scheme
Episode 7 The Armchair Olympian
Episode 8 Feel It in Your Rear
Episode 9 The Chains of Love
Episode 10 Team Mom Survival Tips
Episode 11 A Christmas Carol, Redux
Episode 12 Working Out a Time to Work Out
Episode 13 One of Those Days
Episode 14 Bracing for Bankruptcy
Episode 15 The Family Meeting
Episode 16 365 Days and Counting
Season Four | In It to Win It
Episode 1 The Old Man and the Degree
Episode 2 My Hips Don’t Swing That Way, But My Belly Does
Episode 3 Lady Surgery
Episode 4 How to Succeed in Parenting by Really Trying
Episode 5 The Avocado and Golden Rule
Episode 6 Pomp and Unusual Circumstances
Episode 7 Life, Hot Flashing Before My Eyes
Episode 8 The Silent Treatment
Episode 9 Freshman Orientation and Other Alien Mind Tricks
Episode 10 Teen Terms
Episode 11 Tears on My Toothbrush
Episode 12 Puppy Personality Disorder
Episode 13 The Twelve Takes of Christmas
Episode 14 The Dieter’s Wall
Episode 15 The Other Men (and a Few Women) in My Life
Episode 16 Snacks in the City
Episode 17 The Fix Is In
Episode 18 What Remains to Be Seen
Season Five | Are We There Yet?
Episode 1 Lost on Memory Lane
Episode 2 Never Say Never
Episode 3 Once a Military Family
Episode 4 Shop, Drop, and Enroll
Episode 5 For the Ones Left Behind
Episode 6 The Elephant in the Bedroom
Episode 7 Traveling on Auto Potty
Episode 8 The Hair of the Dog
Episode 9 For Pity’s Sake
Episode 10 The Boy Is Back in Town
Episode 11 Bowl Day: A Play-by-Play
Episode 12 Fifty Shades of Mattress Shopping
Episode 13 The Truth About Our Son
Episode 14 The Last Time
Episode 15 The Realities of Now
Epilogue: It Won’t Hurt You, Mommy
Credits
Reader Discussion Questions
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
My family life reminds me of a television sitcom. Although the script does not follow a three-act formula, we don’t take commercial breaks, and there is no studio audience, we do have scenes and subplots, heroes and anti-heroes, problems, solutions, and plenty of comic relief. Unlike sitcoms that end with a heartwarming or hilarious message, the meaning in my reality is not always clear. It o
ften gets muddled with the trivial, mundane, and chaotic details in my daily routine. I have to peel away the layers to find my own hidden story arc.
These are the stories that helped me stay afloat over the last decade.
Each season represents an era in our family life, starting with marriage and progressing from the honeymoon to changing diapers, pee-wee soccer to itemizing deductions, middle school dances to driver’s permits, summer vacations to sassy teenagers, college visits to an empty nest.
Our perspective as a navy family also makes frequent appearances, adding another dimension to experiences and events common to many families.
So grab some kettle corn and a bottle of cheap pinot noir—they pair well, I promise—snuggle up on the couch, and get ready to laugh, cry, and rediscover the meaning hidden in the madness of modern family life.
THE RISE AND FALL OF SUPERMOM
Life was so much simpler when I was a kid.
I didn’t wake up in the morning worrying about social media profiles, glycemic indexes, or incandescent bulbs. I thumped out of bed, blissfully ignorant that my polyester nightgown was highly-flammable. I removed the faux-denim strap of my orthodontic headgear before padding off to the kitchen for a bowl of Cap’n Crunch or non-free-range eggs with buttered Wonder Bread, washed down with Donald Duck orange juice from a can.
Over breakfast, I wondered what the day might bring.
Would Mom agree to drop me off at the pool if I waited until she was done sunbathing in the back yard in her rollers? Would the kid next door want to come over to play, or was there still a beehive in the metal tube of our swing set? Would Dad let me ride my banana-seat Schwinn into town if I promised to pick him up a pack of Salems from the pull-lever cigarette machine in the Capitol Diner on the way home?
My biggest worry was whether my older brother, Tray, and his trouble-making friends would chase me around the neighborhood again with dog poop speared on a stick.
As a teen, I slogged through school gauging my enjoyment of each day by such mundane triumphs as staying awake in geometry class and finding peanut butter bars on the cafeteria lunch menu. At night, I talked to my best friend, Patti, for hours on my bedroom telephone, sorting out our insecurities and dreaming of being popular. On weekends, we’d sneak into the local drive-in theater, walk around the mall slurping Orange Juliuses, or borrow her parents’ station wagon to cruise past the local arcade in hopes the boys would stop playing Asteroids long enough to notice us.
Although I feared my lack of curling iron skills could potentially leave me without a boyfriend, I had no real worries other than a normal dose of teen angst.
Years later when I became a wife and mother, I began to wonder, Why, after such a carefree upbringing, am I ridden with guilt over using plastic grocery bags or the wrong sugar substitute? Why does my eye twitch when I hear my smartphone message notifications? And why do I hyperventilate when the DVR reaches ninety-eight percent?
Arguably, there comes a point when marriage, parenting, and family life in the twenty-first century takes more intelligence, physical energy, and organizational skills than most human beings possess.
I reached that tipping point long ago.
It was the late nineties. With three kids, our family life was hectic, but we were plodding along, happily keeping our heads above water.
My husband, Francis, and I bought a suburban Dutch colonial on a cul-de-sac, with an inviting little porch and a wooden play set. As a navy man, Francis worked long hours with frequent travel and occasional two- to six-month deployments, so I got used to taking charge of the kids, the household, and our sloppy 110-pound dog, Dinghy.
Of course, it wasn’t easy managing the household alone, but I had given up my career as a litigation attorney to raise our family, and I was determined to do it right.
No matter what it took, I would be Supermom.
Even when we found out our oldest child, Hayden, had autism spectrum disorder, I did what needed to be done to keep the many gears of our family machine running smoothly, whether Francis was home or away.
Hayden’s two younger sisters, Anna and Lilly, didn’t understand “special needs.” They grew up believing it was normal to play in therapists’ waiting rooms for several hours each week, for their older brother to eat a strange diet, and for Mom to spend a lot of time with him in the playroom, jotting notes into a spiral-bound notebook throughout the day.
A slave to my routine, I woke each morning at six o’clock to get the kids up and dressed for school. I slurped coffee, packed lunches, and listened to AM radio while they ate Cheerios. After walking Hayden and Anna to the elementary school—one hand gripping a to-go cup and the other pushing Lilly in the stroller with a dog leash around my wrist—I’d rush back to drive Lilly to Montessori preschool in our minivan littered with Happy Meal toys and gummy bears. When I returned home, I had forty-five minutes to do laundry and make beds before my step aerobics class at the YMCA, followed by the preschool pick-up. My guilty pleasure was the half hour back at home, standing at the kitchen island, when I ate a turkey sandwich for lunch and watched Days of Our Lives.
I maintained the same rigid efficiency in the afternoons, bringing paperwork, toys, and snacks to occupational and speech therapy appointments and doing play therapy with Hayden in the finished room over our garage while dinner was in the oven. After baths and bedtime stories, I’d hit the couch. But even then, I was multitasking: journaling Hayden’s progress in my notebook, sewing Halloween costumes out of sweatshirts and felt, folding laundry, and balancing the checkbook.
On weekends we rushed to soccer and flag football games, packed for scout campouts, went to church, cut grass, raked leaves, and cleaned gutters. Our rewards were simple: lawn chairs in the driveway on Saturdays at dusk, drinking cold beers with our neighbors and telling stories while the kids chased fireflies and rode scooters.
Though I was spinning multiple plates in the air, I somehow managed to keep it all together.
Then, life got more complicated.
On September 11, 2001, I was in the shower of the YMCA women’s locker room, crying. Right after my step aerobics class, a fellow navy spouse had told me about the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York City in a suspected terrorist attack. She and I both knew this event was not just everyday bad news. It was an instant crisis of massive death and destruction on American soil. The US would have to respond quickly and with force and keep a more vigilant watch to prevent more attacks. This would change our lives forever. I quickly retrieved the kids from nursery and preschool and rushed home to watch the horror play out on television.
Immediately, new missions were announced, and the military’s operational tempo gained speed. Francis, a naval intelligence officer, spent longer hours at work. At home, his mind was always on the daily intelligence briefing he would give the next day. Subsequent jobs sent him on frequent travel assignments, twice to Iraq for short stints. The years following 9/11 added a new level of stress to our lives, but also a fresh sense of purpose and patriotism. I was thankful Francis was not on the front lines. Even though his time away from home had increased, he hadn’t been asked to deploy for long periods like some of our friends.
But then one afternoon, Francis came home early. He sat at our kitchen table, looked down at the folded khaki garrison cap in his hands and broke the news. He was deploying.
In Francis’s career field, this was surprising news. While aviators, surface warfare officers, submariners, and other members of the navy were often sent on
deployments, intelligence officers compete with each other for the few deployment slots available to them during their time in the military. I say “compete,” because deployments, necessary to national security, are also beneficial to the careers of military officers.
Francis had volunteered to be an IA, individual augmentee, on an anti-terrorism task force. For him, this meant stateside training in South Carolina and Rhode Island followed by a yearlong deployment to Djibouti, Africa, adjacent to Somalia, which was known then as a haven for terrorists.
Selfishly, what I heard was that while he was off training in the States, then deployed to some godforsaken combat zone for at least a year, I would have to handle everything at home. Alone.
Many of my friends at the time were naval aviators’ wives who were used to successive deployments. Even they reacted to my deployment news with gasps. This was not comforting. “A whole year?!” they exclaimed. “Oh, girl. You better start stocking up on wine now.”
They assured me life as I knew it would soon come to an end, and the only way for me to survive was to lower my standards enough to shamelessly wear pajama pants all day and let the kids eat Fruit Loops for dinner. They told me about the frequent crying, the rat’s nest hairdos, the justified consumption of afternoon alcoholic beverages, and the shopping binges they creatively referred to as retail therapy.
But I wasn’t buying it. I was different. I was Supermom. I had proven I could rise to any challenge.
Besides, I didn’t depend on Francis the same way my friends depended on their husbands.
Francis is no ordinary man. Sure, he loves watching football as much as the next guy. There isn’t a cured-pork product he’d turn down. He has more than his share of body hair. And, like most guys, he goes into that weird trance-like state with half-open eyes and spittle on his chin when a Victoria’s Secret commercial comes on.
Unlike most men, however, Francis openly admits to having no mechanical skills. He refers to hardware stores as haunted houses and thinks the most useful tool is a handyman’s telephone number. I’ve seen him squeal and swat at the air like a scared little girl at the sight of a marauding bee or horsefly. He loves white wine, cricket sweaters, scented candles, fancy coffee, and has an interesting penchant for collecting Polish pottery. And although his family called him “Frank” when he was a kid, he prefers the presumption of refinement and sensitivity that comes with being known as “Francis.”