The return

Five months after leaving town, College Girl is coming home for Christmas.
“Coming home” — moms of college kids love to hear those two words. Add the word “Christmas” and we fall onto the floor in a frenzy of motherly delight.
Of course, there were a few things to be done before we could roll out the red carpet.
First, her room needed to be cleaned out. In a small house with five people, an empty bedroom doesn’t stay that way for long.
Over the past few months, middle daughter had been found lounging on her sister’s bed, scavenging old art supplies, and smuggling the ferret into the room for “secret” ferret videos that can probably be viewed on something like iluvferrets.com.
She also raided the closet for any leftover ugly sweaters that oldest daughter is so fond of.
Someone rifled through her nail polish collection and old makeup stash.
Another someone “borrowed” books from her room.
Everyone felt free to pilfer at will, yet oddly enough no one felt compelled to vacuum or dust the room. I had to put a stop to some of the invasion when I found myself repeatedly cleaning up a room no one was living in.
I take some of the blame. During November, I realized Oldest Daughter’s bedroom would make an excellent temporary gift storage and wrapping room. Shopping bags gathered on her dresser and desk. I could have turned her room into my private scrapbook den, but I didn’t want our girl to think she’d been replaced by a Martha Stewart craftland.
As her return date gets closer, I’ve turned into that kind of mom who goes around announcing to random strangers the number of days until our daughter comes home for Christmas, including the flight number (#2769) and arrival time (10:40 p.m.).
I may also issue a press release: MEDIA ALERT — HUFFMAN DAUGHTER RETURNS TO NAPA.
Note to self: contact advertising staff at Register to arrange for half-page “welcome back” ad. Correction — full page. They don’t call me the Most Embarrassing Mom Ever for nothing.
No visit home is complete without a fridge full of favorite foods, so I made a special trip to the grocery store to stock up. Our little carnivore must be living on Top Ramen and cereal because when I asked her what she wanted to eat, she asked for meat, meat and more meat.
B.C. (Before College) there were no special trips to the grocery store to buy pounds of bacon and steaks. But A.C. (After College) a mom will kill and butcher the cow herself if it means College Girl wants a hamburger for dinner.
I’ve also come up with a theme song for her visit inspired by “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” It’s called “College Girl Is Coming to Town.” I’m making a list and checking it twice. And it’s got bacon, ham and pork on it.

Sleep on it

Three co-workers have recently had babies, which means I now have a self-inflicted case of baby fever.
And there’s nothing cuter than a newborn baby. Especially one that goes home with someone else and wakes up in the middle of the night with that someone else.
I was the mother of all amateurs with our first baby. It was a rude awakening, literally. Out she came and boom, next thing you know, a thing that I am very fond of called sleep was sorely missing from my life.
As if channeling her future teen self, our newborn adopted the “You Are Not the Boss of Me” philosophy when it came to sleeping.
She was determined not to sleep. And when she was sleeping she was determined not to stay asleep for more than two hours at a time. I guess she figured, “Why sleep? I’ll miss all the action.”
On top of no sleep, emotions had their way with the new Mom me, causing many tears at many random moments.
I cried when the baby woke up right when we sat down to dinner.
I cried when I pulled up to Starbucks and the drive-through line was too long and our new baby couldn’t wait 10 minutes for me to get my mocha.
I cried in the middle of the night when she was wide awake and wanted to party.
They say to nap when your baby naps. You try sleeping in two-hour stints for about 13 weeks. You become a zombie. A zombie that can change a diaper in the dark and unsnap a onesie one-handed, but a zombie.
Another thing I figured out after weeks of only napping is that without a good five to six hours of sleep in a row — at night — the day feels like it never ends. It’s just one endless cycle of feed, burp, change, rock, nap, wake, feed, burp, change, rock, etc. Insert random shower every three days or so. Such a marathon will crush even the most Zen of moms.
Even when a new mom does sleep, she’s still on alert. The sound of your baby’s cry quickly imprints on your brain.
You hear it even when she’s not crying. You listen for it, because you know it will come again. And probably right when you’ve just sat down for that dinner.
It probably didn’t help that at the time we were living six states away from our family. It was just me, my husband and our new baby, who I knew would never sleep through the night. Ever.
This was pre-Facebook and almost pre-email, so the only way to share pictures or baby updates was the old-fashioned way, by snail mail or telephone.
I’m thinking I might have felt less alone if I’d had a few hundred Facebook friends I could share photos with like new moms today. Where were you in 1994 when I needed you the most, Mark Zuckerberg?
And then one night it happened. Our baby slept for six whole hours in a row. I woke up confused.
What happened? Where was I? I felt funny. Alert. Awake. That’s when I knew I was going to make it. I would survive motherhood.

Put a stamp on it.

Last week I spent about 17 too many hours fretting over ordering our family Christmas card. Choosing the family photos for the card wasn’t the hard part — I’d been forcing our girls into posing for group shots all year.
It was the rest of the card that gave me fits.
Like which uplifting phrase to choose to be printed next to our pictures.
Ask any parent of teenagers if any of the following sentiments sum up their year. Note: Make sure they’re not eating or drinking when you do.
“A year of love and laughter.”
“Blessings beyond measure.”
“Delightful days and merry moments.”
Or simply:
“Sparkle.”
Really? Sparkle?
I would use a lot of words to describe 2013.
“Sparkle” is not one of them.
Next, each card also has a space to include a longer written message. Oh how I hate that space. I’m a writer. I love my words. But I just hate my words on a Christmas card.
I never know what to write. How do I describe a whole year in two paragraphs?
Use headlines? Verbs only? Adjectives only? Emoji icons? Hashtags? Censored with black boxes over the bad parts?
Write a glowing, five-star review of the “highlights”? Come up with a fake-sounding “happy news only” version?
Gag me with a Christmas spoon.
The truth is way too boring:
Mom and Dad didn’t get enough sleep. Teenagers got too much.
Children misbehaved in various appropriate and inappropriate ways.
There was grades drama. Boyfriend drama. Sharing-a-bedroom-don’t-touch-my-stuff drama.
A Huffman college student went to class. A Huffman college student did not go to class.
iPhone screens were shattered. Accidentally.
Teen Twitter accounts had to be suspended. A DMV driver’s permit test was taken four times.
There was rotator cuff surgery. Insurance deductibles were met. 5K races were run. 5K races were walked.
Too much money was “saved” using the Target red card. Way too much money was not saved buying caramel Frappuccinos and cake pops at Starbucks.
FasTrak violation notices were received. A dog wasn’t walked enough. A dog’s poop wasn’t scooped often enough. Laundry wasn’t always folded promptly. Dust on dressers was ignored. Stairs were definitely not vacuumed often enough.
Too much frozen food was served as “dinner.” Nobody ate enough vegetables. Nobody ate less ice cream. Not everyone made it to church every Sunday.
Ferrets were found living in a closet. Mice were found living under the house. 4-H rabbits multiplied in the backyard.
Children still aren’t able to kill spiders in bathrooms. The word “whatever” was heard way too often. Eye-rolling will likely continue into 2014.
Is there a card for that?
I didn’t think so.
I’ll just order the “Sparkle” one instead.

Choose your battles

I’m supposed to be teaching our 16-year-old how to drive, but it looks like I’m the one who should be studying the DMV manual.
Can I blame it on Halloween? Because it was Oct. 31 when I had my run-in with the law. OK, it was a meter maid, but she wore a uniform and had a shiny badge. And instead of a gun, she had one of those handheld computer thingies aimed at my car.
I can explain. School tradition says eighth grade throws the annual Halloween carnival. So there I was last Thursday in the parking lot of the youngest Huffman’s school, wearing my witch hat and glittery witch cape. I was working at the nail polish booth painting Strawberry Shortcake’s fingernails when I heard our principal announce: “Parents, if you are parked illegally, move your car.”
I’m not parked illegally, I said to myself. I know not to park at a red curb, and a green curb and all the other colored curbs. I know not to block driveways or park in disabled spots. Because I am such a know-it-all, I just knew that it was OK that I happened to be parked next to a silver fire hydrant.
I was in that state of denial, the one where you think: “My car is fine parked next to that silver fire hydrant because the red ones are the only important fire hydrants.” That kind of denial.
A few minutes later I looked up and that’s when I saw her — Mrs. Meter Maid, or Ms. Parking Enforcement Officer, which I am now thinking is a more respectful sounding name. She was slowly walking up the sidewalk. Like a hunter stalking her prey, she looked up and down the street as if to say, “Who’s the next parking scofflaw/numbskull/dummy I’m going to run across today?”
And then I saw her look at my car.
“Tell me that car is not parked next to that silver fire hydrant,” read the imaginary thought bubble over her head.
Two things became very clear to me at that point. Parking next to a fire hydrant was not a good idea. And I was about to get a ticket for doing so.
From across the parking lot, I ran. I ran like my life depended on it.
“I’m coming,” I yelled, holding onto my witch hat, my cape billowing behind me.
Arriving at my car, I practically skidded to a stop at her side.
She looked at me sternly.
When is it OK to park next to a fire hydrant? she asked me.
When it’s silver? I said feebly.
As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I knew I’d given the wrong answer.
It’s never OK, she said, even more sternly.
I gulped.
You’re absolutely right, I said.
What if there was an emergency, she said? What if the fire department needed this hydrant?
She lectured me for another minute or two, throwing in numerical references to the California Vehicle Code during which I only nodded my witch hat in agreement to everything she said. I may have thrown in a few “yes ma’ams” as well. She had me dead to rights, and I knew it. I had no legs to stand on. I was at her mercy.
After more deep gulps on my part and more sternness on her part she left me standing there, ticket-free, in her wake.
Only I didn’t stand long. I jumped into my car and moved it far away from any fire hydrants.
An editor of mine always said never pick a battle with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
I say never pick a battle with a Parking Enforcement Officer.

Mother and child reunion

The oldest Huffman had been at her new college for around two months when the school invited us to its annual parents’ weekend, otherwise known as “Mom and dad, come visit and bring your checkbook.”
For a mom who had not seen her firstborn in about eight weeks — OK, 63.5 days — I was looking forward to the trip. Correction: I was pretty much dying to see our girl.
She’d left with barely a warning, and now she was living her new college girl life and I just had to clamp my own eyes on her to believe it. Plus I was sure she needed me for something.
Arriving in Boulder, Colo., we headed straight to see her at work at a local toy store. I figured her boss wasn’t expecting an emotional mother and child reunion between the Playmobil and Legos, so I tried to be cool when I walked in, but oh, seeing her again I had the best feelings in all the history of feelings.
I could hardly take my eyes off her. She looked good. She looked happy. She hadn’t starved, crashed her bike, gotten visible tattoos, dropped out of school or become homeless.
After she detangled herself from my mother-who-hasn’t-seen-her-daughter-in-63.5-days hug, we went to get lunch, where she even let me hold her hand for about 30 seconds, which was probably 23 seconds too long for her but three hours too short for me.
I wanted to pick her up and put her on my lap and squeeze her some more, only we had just gotten there and I was afraid she’d tell us to turn around and go right back home this instant.
She said she needed a bike fender and helmet, so she went back to work and we went to a bike store, where my husband got her fender and helmet plus the brightest bike light he could find.
It’s 400 lumens, my husband noted with satisfaction.
I’m not sure what a lumen is, but if 400 of them are illuminating our girl’s bike, that sounds pretty good to me. 
The next day her school invited us to an informational seminar about contemplative education, but we had bigger plans — a trip to SuperTarget.
We got fuzzy lined boots. We got shampoo. We got a can opener, a step stool, paper towels and a jumbo bag of Halloween candy. We got a furry rug for her floor and a hanging organizer for her closet. I tried to talk her into a handy underbed storage box but she declined. I guess College Girl is capable of figuring out her own underbed storage strategies from now on. Sigh.
We found a tool kit to install the bike fender that included screwdrivers and even a hacksaw. She said she wouldn’t need the hacksaw, but we got it anyway. Who knew when a fallen branch from a freak snowstorm would need to be sawed up for emergency kindling? She does live in the mountains, after all.
Cart filled, we stopped to get some breakfast at Starbucks inside the SuperTarget.
She and my husband ordered heated ham sandwiches.
Ahhh, she sighed, eating her sandwich.
Now I’m all warm inside, she said.
“We are, too,” said my husband.

Leave me out of it

For the past several years, I was under strict orders to leave the oldest Huffman out of this column. As a high-school student, she did not appreciate her mother broadcasting her so-called escapades, no matter how clever I thought I was being.
I get it. Most teens don’t want us moms blabbing about them to anyone — not to our friends, not to their grandparents — and definitely not in print and shared with thousands of strangers over breakfast.
So to keep the peace, I kept a lid on much of the high school years of the oldest girl.
Like the time she said she was going to sleep over at a girlfriend’s house and I found out that she, her friends and several b-o-y-s had instead gone camping at Lake Berryessa. Overnight. With tents. 
Or the time she and a girlfriend slept in her car in the parking lot at Napa Valley College after grad night because they were “too tired” to drive two miles home to our house.
Or how about that one semester when our girl, who happened to have spent more than a decade in Catholic schools, barely passed her religion class.
Yeah, I had to leave out stuff like that. What we writers do for our children.
But now, with oldest daughter at college one time zone away, I figure I have some wiggle room on our agreement.
There’s no Napa Valley Register sitting on her kitchen table each morning.
No teachers to comment during math class on my latest column.
No one to ask her if she is the sister in that one column I wrote about someone farting on someone else’s math book.
It’s not like I set out to embarrass them on purpose.
I like to think I poke more fun at myself in this column than I do our girls. I feel like I’m the one bumbling through motherhood.
They’re just along for the ride.
There have been a handful of times when I’ve been out with our girls and a reader has actually said something encouraging about this here column. How often does a mom get complimented in public, in front of her kids, and for something work related?
That’s the kind of role modeling our girls need. To see mom doing something she hopes to do well at, no matter how badly I fumble through my 500-word limit. That it’s OK to be more than just “mom.”
I wonder if the other two Huffman girls are worried mom’s column-writing attention will swing their way now that oldest daughter has physically relocated.
True, I have written an awful lot about the youngest Huffman’s bunny farm lately.
Middle daughter is lying low, but she just got her driver’s permit. And we are going to see the oldest daughter for an upcoming parents weekend at her college.
Just think of the column possibilities. 

A compact experience

So the oldest Huffman has disappeared to her new college, leaving behind enough old clothes to start our own Goodwill, 4,582 art pens and several half-eaten boxes of cereal in her room.
Then there’s her car. Well, it’s not exactly her car. It’s a “family car” that she happened to drive. The car, unlike the girl, did not leave for college.
After she left, I wondered about the car. It’s parked on the street, where a car can only remain for so long, lest the police or neighbors think it abandoned and one of those orange stickers gets plastered on its windshield. Not that it’s a junker — it’s a 2000-something Scion, and all its bumpers are in place. Sure, it has 108,000 miles on it, but who’s counting?
The little compact came preloaded with a bike rack on top, a Coldplay sticker on one window and a Giants sticker on the other. Inside there’s a USB plug and a button to choose the color of the inside dash lights — turquoise, green, yellow, red or purple.
This car definitely says 20-something. It does not say “Mom or Dad of 20-something.”
But that didn’t stop my husband from driving it one day. Might as well get some use out of it, he said. The fact that he was missing her had nothing to do with it. Not at all.
He came home that night with a look of wonder on his face. I drove the Scion to Lodi and back; it got 41 miles per gallon, he said, awestruck. Forty-one, he repeated. This is a man who for the past 10 years has driven an SUV the size of a small house. He knows gas mileage.
I’m taking her car again tomorrow, he said.
I like good gas mileage, too. I decided I should drive the car to the next school volleyball game in Santa Rosa. Sure enough, 90 miles later, the gas gauge had barely moved at all. It was like driving a Prius, but without the attitude.
Here’s another nifty thing about the little car. Some cars think they’re a compact. This car really is a compact. It’s so compact that when you have a passenger in the front seat, you can practically hear his or her heartbeat next to you. There’s no sharing the armrest in this car. There’s only one, and there’s only room for one arm on it.
Driving a real compact means you get to choose from a whole world of parking spaces. Compact parking here, compact parking there, compact parking everywhere!
It’s no show car, so I don’t worry about where I park it. Someone dings the door? No sweat. Wayward shopping carts, pooping seagulls, trees that drip sticky berries — I fear them not.
The little car reminds me of the last time I owned a real compact — before children moved in along with their strollers, car seats and jumbo boxes of diapers. Now the kid paraphernalia is gone. And I’m back in a compact car.