When a handful of faithful believers were waiting for the recent Rapture on December 21, 2012, I had other concerns on my mind. While they fervently believed the Mayans had predicted the end of the world and only the truly faithful would be saved, my brain once again punted around the debate of whom were truly “good” people, and who just thought they were.

I read cases of families selling all their possessions, quitting their jobs and hunkering down for The End of Times. I felt badly for their children, no doubt terrified with what their batty parents were preparing for, and also no doubt terrified that somebody would see them naked. That was one of the most notable parts about the proposed rapture, after all: where had once stood your faithful, trusting body would now just be a puddle of the clothes you’d been wearing. Wherever you were catching that connecting flight to didn’t require attire, I guess.

My father would be raptured each day during the gardening season. As daylight faded, he would come into the garage and drop his muddy clothes where he stood down in the garage. There would be his sawed off rubber wellies, gumboots he used to flush out with the hose once in awhile. He’d tuck his socks in them, because everybody knows you can always get another day out of gardening socks. His jeans – usually some design backfire he’d found for 3 bucks somewhere, like the 6 pairs of purple Levis he once scored – would hit the deck.

My mother would stand in the doorway and ask for the t-shirt, desperate to wash something, anything that was leaving his body. He’d usually refuse, unless it was a few days in and the t-shirt was trying to make a break for my mother’s outstretched arm. Dad never got the concept of cleaning something that was just going to get dirty again the next day, and Mom never got how you could put on a pair of pants that fit you like a muddy body cast.

Our house was festooned with my father’s garments at various stages of not-dirty-enough. Lumberjack shirts hung on the side door, and various hooks in the basement and garage held rain jackets, caps, shorts, long sleeved shirts and t-shirts. In the bedroom, draped over a small chair by the bed would be golf shirts that still had a wear left in them, and hanging in the closet – on a hook – would be his “good” jeans. Like some kind of farm version of Mrs. Howell from Gilligan’s Island, my father had an outfit for every occasion.

My mother of course, would just go around once in a while and gather up everything she could find and wash it. He’d storm around angry, as if fresh work clothes sucked a little of the masculinity out of the work.

I know why he did it. When we say today that we “did the laundry”, it’s not like we hauled it down to the river and beat it with rocks. Machines do the work; we push buttons. But that luxury still hadn’t made its way into my father’s mindset.

I’ve been doing heavy duty yard work this spring, and yesterday I came into the garage and hauled off my muddy workboots. Dropping my filthy jeans where I stood, I smiled and thought of my Dad. I came in the side door to find a muddy pair of pants and a sweatshirt, work shoes peeking out.

Ari had been helping me. Guess all three of us will end up in the same place.

I hope my father’s not in charge of wardrobe.

Every household has a second language, even if they don’t know it. We speak English and Family. You probably do too; all those words that are shortcuts through the communication forest. The one that draws the most raised eyebrows from outsiders – crabbyapplesauceface – didn’t even begin as ours. It’s still one of my favourites.

For decades, my parents had dear friends, Katie and Gale. Gale and Dad were friends from their rooming house days in Hamilton where they both worked at Dofasco. Katie and my mom became great friends. They all got married around the same time; to each other, not as a group.

Katie and Gale never had children, which was unfortunate. Uncle Gale, a big tall guy, never went anywhere without his cowboy hat. He would let me put it on, but then he’d always take it back. I really, really wanted that hat. When I saw it on his coffin over a decade ago, I burst into tears. He used to call us ‘the boys’ because we were girls. When we were little, we’d giggle ‘we’re not boys, we’re girls!’, knowing we were being teased and knowing we could count on it. He called us boys until the end.

They had a perfect house (because they had no kids, my Mom said) and his workshop was one of the best places I’ve ever been. Perfect bench in perfect order, unlike his best friend, my father: our garage looked like a before picture to Gale’s after. They also had a pool table and a bar. We’d sit on the bar stools and laugh at the clock that went backwards and drink Coke. He’d let us play pool, and I realize now that was a big deal for a perfectionist – letting loose a bunch of little girls with pool cues around his beloved felt.

Katie was as straight-laced as Gale was outgoing. More stern. Gale used to tease her. She was a tiny thing, and he called her Satchillass. I had no clue what a satchillass was, until one day he finally told me her butt looked like the book bag he carried as a kid growing up on the farm. Even then, I thought he was saying ‘satchel lass’ and they smiled. She used to smack his arm and say “Gay-al”. They loved each other. Forever.

Gale had a concrete driveway put in at their perfect Stoney Creek home. Katie didn’t drive, but they had two cars: a Dodge Colt he drove for work and a big something- that -looked- like- a- Caddie-but-wasn’t for the weekends. I do know my Mom was jealous they had a fancy car. We had station wagons, because of all those blasted kids.

Now, if you pour a concrete driveway, every kid with a hockey stick is going come to your house. You just know it. Katie didn’t know it. One day, a pack of little buggers (I’m quoting her) showed up and started playing in the empty double drive. Gale was at work, the other car was in the garage. They probably figured nobody was home. Katie was home. She leaned out and scolded them. And one yelled back at her “be quiet, you crabby applesauce face”. And ran away.

Appalled at their sass, Katie told Gale that night, and he told everyone else. They’re both gone, but I love that I get to tell that story whenever I use the word, because then I get to talk about them. We’re storytellers by nature and it’s how we hang on to those we love, even through the mist of missing them.

The doctor’s waiting room had that weird hush about it, where several people pretend they can’t see each other. Christopher, 21, had the clipboard in his hand and was busily filling out the blank spots. I scrolled through my phone, trying to catch up with some emails as he did this.

I glanced at him working away, once again noting that he clutches a pen the same way he clutched a crayon in kindergarten. Kids today, I said to myself. All keyboard, no cursive. The fact my own writing is illegible is a fact I handily put aside when I comment on the shortcomings of youth.

“Wait. How come you ticked ‘common- law’? You’re not married,” I told him, leaning over the page.

“Because Pam would kill me if I checked ‘single’,” he said, very matter-of-factly. They recently celebrated their third anniversary, something I respect immensely, even as it confuses me. At my age, three years seems long; at their ages, it’s practically dog years.

“This isn’t Facebook; Pammy isn’t here, and she’ll never see this form. It’s an official medical thing. You need to put’ single’, because that’s the appropriate box,” I told him. He sighed.

“You don’t understand.”

“Uhm, yes, Pam lives with us. But with us: your Mom and your brother and you. You two don’t live together,” I explained.

“She’s with me when I fill stuff out at school. I’ve been putting ‘common-law’ all year.”

Christopher has always been my black and white child. There has never been any room for grey. It’s a curious mix as the boy becomes an adult and recognizes his own shortcomings: how do you punish yourself? If he was always right, there wouldn’t be a problem. Since he isn’t, he’s developed into a debater without peer. Even (or especially) when he’s wrong, he will wear you down with arguments woven from gossamer; if you stop long enough to look away from how pretty they are, you’ll be able to blow them out like a birthday candle.

I agree with him, somewhat, on those stupid boxes we are required to check on forms. I’m old enough to remember when I had to handwrite ‘Ms’ on some, because I thought my marital status was my own business. I was 15 at the time. I’ve also had people tell me the gut punch the first time they have to check the ‘widow’ designation. It’s all boring details, until it’s not. Having your life outlined with 4 or 5 quick ticks can be tough.

Do they even matter? A few months back I glanced at my open file in a dentist’s office. I’d filled the form out so long ago, they still had a contact number at an office I once worked at. I told them I’d been fired – 13 years ago. I’ve also been known to test if they even read them: where it asks ‘what do you prefer to be called?’, I’ve put’ Goddess’. Where it asks who to call in an emergency, I’ve put ‘911’.

I watched him hover over the emergency contact section. Eventually, he wrote Pam’s name.

“What if Pam’s in class or something?” I asked him. “That still needs to be an adult they can get hold of to make big decisions.”

“I can’t put our home number. If you’re not home, you know Ari won’t answer the phone. I could be hanging from the edge of a roof.”

“So, your mother who they can’t call won’t find out from your brother who won’t know unless the girl who isn’t your common-law wife tells us?”

“Well, they don’t have a box that says ‘it’s complicated’.”

If you ever venture north in this province, you’ll know what you leave behind in the fall may be gone come spring. Businesses bloom and fade faster than a cherry blossom, meaning relationships of long standing are both special and rare.

There is a restaurant not far from our cottage that has somehow withstood the slow choke of the new bypass highway. The kids know I can be cajoled into breakfast at Memories of Muskoka with little effort; breakfast is perhaps the easiest meal but with the most pots and pans.

A little farther down the road one of my Dad’s favourite places, Mark’s Restaurant, was shuttered one fall only to turn up that spring, it’s windows papered over and signs declaring Girls! Girls! Girls! When Ari, now 18, was about 10, he asked what that meant. I said it meant that we wouldn’t be going to Mark’s anymore, though my father might have admittedly felt differently.

Marge had been a waitress at Memories forever; a tiny wisp of a woman with a growl like a longshoreman, she’d stare at each kid in turn, order pad poised, and announce they’d be having The Special. Nobody ever argued with Marge; she’d been on this planet more years than most of us combined, and a special is special, after all.

Marge was as deeply enshrined in our cottage history as a deck of 51 cards. One time, with the boys and their friends at the restaurant, I hauled out a camera. I knew that capturing Marge’s one- of- a- kind scowl should be added to our album as surely as I knew that one spring she might not be there. As the kids lined up with her in the middle, I pressed the button only to capture Marge lighting up in a pageant winning smile. I’d never seen it before; I’ve never seen it since. A new chapter for the endless mythology.

As more years passed, we watched the signs at Girls! Girls! Girls! fade a little. I can’t attest to the business it did; I tended to drive by at noon more often than midnight, and I’m sure in a township that counts its population in the hundreds darkness was a welcome cover. It was Christopher, three years older, who had finally clued Ari in. The resultant snickers as we passed with each new crew of friends became as much a part of the landscape as the rocks.

Maybe because an old cottage puts so much into suspended animation each year, or maybe because the harsh winters remind us of just how punishing the elements can be, traditions seem more important. Upon trekking into Memories early in the season a few years ago, the kids looked around expectantly for Marge. They had a couple of new friends in tow; the promise of being told you were having The Special was not quite believable, and had to be experienced.

I scanned the room, noting a couple of new waitress, no doubt students. One smiled in greeting, counting off menus in her arm. Before I could pull her aside, Ari spoke over the morning noise.

“Hey, where’s Marge?” he asked her. I hesitated, and braced myself.

“Oh, she’s working down the road now,” said the young woman.

In my relief that she was, in fact, still alive, I forgot about my son for a moment. Ari gaped in horror as he stared at the waitress.

“Marge is working at Girls! Girls! Girls!?” he yelped.

Over the winter, it had once again become Mark’s Restaurant.

I sat staring down at clouds last night, the wing of the plane I was on slicing through the cold night air. We’d just finished the tugging climb through the cotton, the buffeting not unlike the break of waves on a beach. Calm on the sand, floating in the water, but tossed through that boiling barrier that separates the two. I knew it would settle, though a little guy a few rows ahead had his doubts.

I didn’t blame him; I often think there is a certain lunacy to handing over all control, travelling 10,000 metres feet in the air at 800km/hr in a metal tube that is predicated on science I don’t understand. And yet I do it, because it is in these surrendered hours that I feel most calm. I’ve spent a lifetime feeling an obligation and duty to control everything, or at least believing I do. I’m aware I’m kidding myself.

I’ve flown in small planes that seat 12 people or so, a narrow aisle so cramped you can’t stand up. I do what I do on huge ones: I stuff my bag under the seat, plunk down and do up my seatbelt. We will fly and we will land and I will stroll off the plane, or we will fly and we will crash and I won’t stroll off the plane. The time to weigh that is when you say you’ll go; commitment is a funny thing that way, and hopping on an airplane is a wonderful example of discovering if you’re capable of going all in. Of trusting.

During a particularly perilous approach high in the Colorado mountains a few years ago, several adventuring young college students sat in the back of the tiny plane we were on, hands clasped across their chests, praying. As the plane caught on drafts and sheered wildly, the pilot made a couple of unsuccessful approaches. He looped back once more, the kids in back in tears.

“It’s okay,” I yelled, not knowing if it was or not. Their knuckles were white. “He knows what he’s doing and this is normal.” I wasn’t nervous, though I didn’t think it would be reassuring to tell the youngsters we would live or we would die, and the Colorado Rockies are a pretty spectacular resting place.

When I was small, we used to drive to Saskatchewan to my grandparents. My grandpa had been born in 1898, a fact that would fight inside my young brain like two cats in a bag. That someone might be able to span three centuries like a long-legged spider was fascinating to me, and I decided he had superpowers. The one he lacked? He refused to fly.

For years we drove, until he was finally convinced to fly to us. I’ll never forget his eventual explanation for his long-standing reluctance. Holding his hand level, he told me he was scared the plane would tilt if people walked while it was in the air. He tipped his hand to demonstrate, and I indeed imagined crew and passengers tumbling along an airborne teeter totter.

If this man who might span centuries could be convinced to relinquish control, then I knew I could too. It remains one of the few places I trust someone else, this space above the clouds. The fact it’s a complex combination of people I don’t know and physics I can’t do should scare me. Instead, I read, as the noise of the engines cocoons me and suspends the world.

I’ve spent a long time believing I can’t trust anyone; apparently I just needed a new perspective.

An alumnus of Princeton University, Susan A. Patton, recently published a letter in that school’s paper telling current women attendees to get their arses in gear and snag a husband before they graduate. She noted that they would never again have access to such a worthy pool of mates, and we all know how devastating it would be to go through life armed only with Princeton degree and not a Princeton man.

It reminded me of my own years at McMaster University, where I was stunned to discover some girls quite frankly admitting they were attending to earn an MRS degree. It was probably the first and only time in my life I thought I was a silly romantic.

Patton neglected to note in the original piece that she was recently acrimoniously divorced, and while her sons were Princeton prizes, her own ex-husband had attended “a school of almost no name recognition…a school that nobody has respect for, including him, really.” After 27 years (!), she realized the error of wedding such a failure, while attending Princeton events with her sons. Note to her sons’ potential mates: these worthy Princeton boys come with this mother attached.

When I was accepted to university, my parents were thrilled. I would be the first in the family to go, and it had always been my intention. But when I excitedly told another family member, this person looked at me and said “people who go to university are idiots”. This person knew exactly one person who had a degree, and that person was indeed an idiot. I’m sure I had a thought about correlation and causation (a term I am so sick of hearing clueless people lob onto a debate like a grenade), but instead I slunk away, wounded.

Do I care that Susan A. Patton is essentially blaming her lousy marriage and subsequent divorce on her worthless husband? No. I care that she is rebooting a depressing argument that a person’s worth is somehow defined by a piece of parchment. At a time when so many graduates are entering a non-existent workforce behind an eight ball of student debt, I nearly question the intelligence of marrying this double barrelled debt along with the affianced – Princeton calibre or otherwise.

While I eventually did marry someone I’d met at Mac, we also divorced. My best (and longest) relationship to date was with a man whose collar was decidedly bluer: as I was busily devouring Milton and Marx, my respect for my bricklayer father only increased. You’re better off asking a man what he values, instead of what he’s worth.

Patton’s unfortunate argument isn’t about higher education; it’s about class war. It’s about pairing off resumes instead of individuals. Some women responded vociferously and disgustedly that they weren’t desperate to marry, nor to marry “correctly”. Others took offence to the idea that a degree, and pedigree, ensures marital bliss.

I can only cut Patton some slack as a parent. My own mother was fond of saying it was just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one, which of course left me looking at her quizzically; we were decidedly not rich. She was guilty only of what most parents are guilty of -  wanting better for their children.

While I was busy ignoring trust funds (it must be said; they were just as intently ignoring me) and instead searching for young men who treated me well and made me laugh, it was my father who weighed in with the winning wisdom.

“Earn it yourself,” he’d growl in my ear.

Sorry, Mom. Marrying rich won’t top that advice.

Burlington was recently voted one of the best places to live in Canada. I agree, but my vote is firmly lodged in a far different time, before they paved it over just like Joni Mitchell said they would.

There’s a bike path that connects many parts of Burlington, running just north of Lake Ontario. Our street backs onto it, and though we used to call it the Power Line, it was the main conduit for a bunch of kids on bikes going anywhere. It was a single rutted dirt track that used to grab at your front tire if you weren’t watching. They widened it with gravel around the time Nixon resigned, and the gravel was a far bigger deal. Today, it’s paved. Of course.

In a tree set back off the pathway, there was a fort. This was in the time before lawsuits and kids in plastic bubbles, and if you fell out and got bruised you rode home crying, and if you fell out and actually got hurt , the rest of us would get you home and someone would haul your bike for you. At night, teenagers would sit in the tree fort smoking and drinking, and the next morning the little kids would collect empty beer bottles to get the deposit. I had a basket on my bike; I would ride through the bike path and Central Park each weekend doing this. I used to make good money and my father was proud and my mother was horrified.

The Odeon on Brant Street was the first theatre in Burlington. It’s long gone, but every Saturday for half a buck, we’d go for three hours to watch cartoons and The Three Stooges.  Mom would say call Mark Next Door (his last name wasn’t Next Door, it was Eichenberg) and we were the same age and we would walk down together – along the bike path – dragging along our little sisters, Gilly and Annie.

I would spend the morning making popcorn to smuggle in. Not wanting to waste my beer empty money at the concession stand, I’d knot a dry cleaning bag and fill it with popcorn it took me an hour to make. We didn’t know about dry cleaning chemicals back then, so they couldn’t hurt us.

The Odeon was spectacular, with worn seats, a heavy curtain, a balcony, and floors sticky as flypaper. I was 8 when my sister Roz took me to my first grown up movie, The Poseidon Adventure. I didn’t understand my mother going on about how beautiful Shelley Winters was because I only remember feeling sad for the old lady who couldn’t swim, and thinking it was funny they filmed her bum looking so big.

A year later, my visiting grandmother took me to a movie. I didn’t know her well, but we ended up walking down to see The Sting. I was 9, and I thought she was 100, but we both pretended we liked it. Walking back, her papery hand holding mine, she asked in her heavy German accent, “Vell, how you like de movie?” and I didn’t tell her I liked The Poseidon Adventure better because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

On Saturday, I’d be back at that same theatre being a kid, because the line between those worlds has always been blurry. I’d order a hotdog at the fancy Tien Kue restaurant because you could dress me up but not take me anywhere, and I collected grass snakes in a shoebox the day after I’d tried to understand what the big deal about Robert Redford was.

“Jimbo ate half a pistachio shell,” my sister Roz whispered into the phone. Jimbo is her 8 month old kitten that she saved from certain death in the wilderness, apparently only to risk his life with errant pistachio shells.

“Are you sure? What happened?”

“It’s Daryl’s fault!” she continued, because there is always room to blame your husband while you are fighting for your cat’s life. “I told him to throw it out and he just put it on the table. Jimbo found it and right in front of me, gobbled it up. I just spent half an hour on the phone with the vet.”

Roz had two cats for years, but they came to her as adults. This is her first kitten, and the learning curve has been sharper than anticipated.  She will call to tell me she had to give Jimbo a time-out for being bad, which means going down to the basement where he proceeds to sleep on the couch. This makes me laugh and laugh; she doesn’t have children, and I’ve had to explain that kittens and kids don’t nap, they store energy.

She is aghast to find footprints on her kitchen counter in the morning, because Jimbo isn’t allowed on the counters;  Jimbo missed that memo. She has renamed her favourite plant the Hasn’t Got a Prayer plant. Roz works from home, so Jimbo is with her all day. He tackles her and chews on her and drops toys at her feet so she can throw them. When her husband gets home, Jimbo curls up on his lap and purrs. Our other sister Gilly explained that Roz is Jimbo’s litter mate, hence the frolicking and wrestling and biting. I don’t think Roz really wanted to be anyone’s litter mate.

“The vet said we have to hope he’ll poop it out or barf it up, but…” I heard her voice go quiet. A pistachio shell is not a good thing to have inside a cat, and we both knew what we were talking about. The how-high-will-we-go discussion on vet bills is a popular one at my house, with the boys believing I will secure a second mortgage to save Maggie or JoJo, and me feeling like I’m approaching Joseph Stalin territory on the mean-o-metre for hesitating.

“How much?” I asked.

“Could be a thousand,” she replied. Now, Jimbo is one of those cats you hope to get when you get a cat. You can’t tell until it’s too late and you’re stuck with them (I’m looking at you, JoJo), but sometimes you just get a Jimbo or a Maggie: darling and smart and full of personality.

“Have you told Daryl?” I asked her.

“Oh, I already called him at work and yelled at him and hung up,” she said. “I told him he probably killed Jimbo.” We Sommerfelds are nothing if not dramatic.

“How’s Jimbo doing now?” I asked gently. Apparently, he was watching her talk on the phone, wondering what all the hushed conversations were about and why his litter mate kept crying.

I called her an hour later, as any worried auntie would do. “We’re giving him cat grass, trying to make him barf. I can’t believe I’m trying to make a cat barf,” said Roz. “He loves the stuff, and in 24 hours we’ll know what we have to do.” I pictured her stalking him to the litter box, wielding the sifter like a magic wand.

An hour after that, Daryl called.

“We found the pistachio shell,” he said.

“Out of Jimbo?” I asked?

“In the rug the whole time,” he said.

“Mom, you have to go see Silver Linings Playbook,” said Christopher, 21. “Pam and I went last night, and it was great. I think you’ll like it. You really need to see it.” This is the not-so-secret code for letting me know he saw parallels between the lead character who has bipolar disorder- played by Bradley Cooper – and me.  Since the movie opened, and especially since it got a lot of Oscar attention, a few people have nonchalantly asked me what I think.

“Is that the one with the crazy guy?” asked Ari, 18. “You really haven’t seen it yet? These are your people!” he laughed. “You could probably get special parking.”

And, so it goes, to borrow from the amazing Kurt Vonnegut.  Because openness and honestly bring light and air to scary things, no question is off limits when it comes to management of my bipolarness. I was about to say ‘battle’, but being in a daily battle would exhaust me, and I don’t have the energy to  do battle every day. I trundle along living a life I shape and like, and more often than not see my bent little brain as a gift I’ve learned to appreciate rather than try to return for what’s behind door number two.

I’ve read conflicting comments about portrayals in Silver Linings Playbook. It’s not that mental health issues haven’t been tackled over and over; once you’ve seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is there any going back? One reviewer blasted away at the depiction because it didn’t jibe with his own experiences. In my head I told him to shut up because for all the weaknesses in SLP (and there are weaknesses), it nailed some key elements of mental illness while using a welcome message delivery system: hope.

Here’s the problem with bipolar disorder: it’s different in everyone who has it. Sure, there are some points along the plot line that helpfully adhere to a general pattern, but in the details of bipolar, the living of it, we lose that plot. My bipolar is not necessarily your bipolar.

If a bunch of women all go into labour, you can assume they will all have a baby, or babies. The babies may have different features or colours or degrees of health, but they will all be babies. They won’t be mangoes or Tupperware containers. Bipolar disorder isn’t like that. The same diagnosis can lead to a multitude of symptoms and outcomes.

It’s why writing about it or portraying it is so difficult. You can’t depict everyone, you can’t mirror everyone, and you can’t score points with people too angry or close minded to appreciate how vital this conversation is, regardless of its genesis. If anyone sees that movie and realizes it’s time for their family to start talking, it’s a move forward.

While one actress won many awards for her role, it was the mother, played by Jacki Weaver, who riveted me. Married for decades to a mentally ill husband, desperately struggling to save their mentally ill son, you learn more about this illness in the strength and fragility reflected in her eyes than in any psychiatrist’s office. Those of us who struggle to keep our ships righted in the storm often forget the collateral damage we inflict on those who love us the most. Details and imperfections aside, the movie reminded me for all the difficulties I may have living with the pinball machine I sometimes have in my head, it is far more difficult for someone to live with me as I navigate my way.

Are these my people? Yes. But my sons are my heroes.

Every few months, the boys will go through a spasm of making smoothies. The blender will get hauled out to take up our already-limited counter space, and I will hear it grinding away at all hours. Suddenly, the fruit bowl will be emptied within a couple of days, and I’ll go on a spree of buying 3 bunches of bananas at once for weeks. The freezer will be stocked with bags of frozen raspberries and mangos, whenever they’re on sale.

Then the boys will just as abruptly stop, usually with no warning, and I’ll be staring at 31 bananas all the same age: old. Because I don’t bake, I start blenderizing myself to try and get rid of them.

“You used old bananas, didn’t you?” Ari, 18, will ask, staring dubiously into the cup.

I ignore him. I peel and freeze the bananas, and use the frozen ones in the blender. This changes the consistency somewhat, and I produce what Christopher, 21, calls gloppies. Trying to mangle up all that frozen fruit also sends the blender into cardiac arrest, but at least I don’t waste bananas.

A few weeks ago, I spied the blender out, once again. Beside it was a purple bag of something new. Something with ‘miracle seed’ emblazoned on the side. I peered at the contents, and called Ari down.

“What’s this crap?” I asked him.

“It’s for smoothies. It’s like health food.”

“It’s a supplement. Do you know what’s in it?”

“Good stuff,” he said with no authority. I am leery of everything; there is no dietary need I haven’t been able to meet or exceed with a KitKat and a glass of wine.  I looked more closely at the fine print. Salvia.

“Wait! This is fake pot!” I yelled. “I read about this. Miley Cyrus was caught smoking it. Salvia is like pot. You’re making pot smoothies.” Ari just stared at me.

“It’s not pot. We’re not smoking it. It’s healthy stuff,” he finished, now staring at me and wondering why I knew anything about Miley Cyrus’s smoking habits. Whenever we go over our downloading limit for the month, both boys look at me with straight faces and say they never download anything, ever, and it’s all the cat videos I watch. Now they think I watch Miley Cyrus videos. I’m not sure which is more embarrassing.

I Googled salvia. Words like ‘dangerous’ and ‘hallucinogenic’ hovered on my screen. I knew there was a reason all those smoothies were getting made at 2am. I knew there was a reason Miley Cyrus cut all her hair off, and Ari had stopped cutting his. My children were turning into potheads and my blender was their conduit to the dark side. That, and bananas.

I headed to get the magic purple bag to show them I was ditching it. As I did, I read something else: salvia hispanica. Oh. Wait. I’d Googled salvia divinorum. Back to Google, I learned that though of the same genus, they occupy different ends of the spectrum. And they’re all part of the sage family. Sage, which I have in my spice cupboard.

Christopher’s girlfriend Pammy, 20, came in as I was announcing the verdict on the purple bag.

“Forget it. You can eat this stuff. It’s just chia seeds all ground up,” I told them.

“Oh! Those are really good for you,” said Pam. “I’m going to start putting them in my yogurt.”

“I was worried they were making pot smoothies,” I told her. She gave me the blank look they’ve all perfected.

I don’t know how my parents raised us without Google.