About the Author The short story Angels on Caffeine is the first collaboration between writers Christine Gillan and Donna de Kuyper. Donna de Kuyper is a published songwriter and former Broadway actress. She created and currently teaches an NEA-funded theatre education program, "Rehearse for Life Theater." Christine Gillan teaches college courses at the graduate and undergraduate level and is a communication skills consultant and trainer. Donna and Christine have received an Artist’s Fellowship Opportunity Grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts ’s to write their first novel, which is based on "Angels on Caffeine." Their work has also been published in "Delaware Beach Life" magazine and other local publications. This is their first story for Nuvein.

I like to think I’m a combination of Erma Bombeck, Joan of Arc, Malcom X, and Kelly from the original Charlie’s Angels, except I wear a water bra.

In fact, my two best friends and I are just like we picture Jill, Kelly, and Sabrina would be if they had left police work for marriage and motherhood. Our kids think Charlie’s Angels are movie characters, who have perfected butt-dancing and bikini skydiving while on top secret, crime-stopping assignments. But I grew up part of a whole generation of women who watched the Angels on TV. As teenagers we couldn’t imagine what their missions would be as mothers. Now we have a pretty good idea.

Before we became the Angels on Caffeine, Alanna was on the Broadway stage, Jordan was the Communications Director for a member of Congress, and I, Macy, was an ICU nurse. It wasn’t enough for us, though. Before long came the complicated world of husbands, children, mortgages, and that ultimate decision for each of us to become stay-at-home moms. We traded paychecks for Pampers to raise our families in Lewes (pronounced Lewis), Delaware, a small coastal town in the mid-Atlantic.

It seems natural that this story is from my point of view. After all, I’m the loudest, bossiest, and most opinionated of the three of us. As the supervising nurse in an intensive care unit, these qualities served me well. Now I spend my time raising children and eyebrows.

We’re not rich women. It was truly a financial sacrifice for us to give up our jobs. We worry about whether our crummy and expensive health insurance will help cover the cost of braces. We drive, cook, clean, do laundry, and all of the other jobs rich women pay younger, firmer women to do. The only nanny my kids will ever know is Inga, the Swedish au pair who was created by my husband, Jake, as the fantasy future mom in the family if I am ever tragically killed in a mini-van pileup.

The term "stay at home mom" is in itself laughable, because we rarely get to stay home. In fact, our mini-vans (and the SUVs of the cooler moms) serve not only as transportation. They are restaurants, trash cans, closets, and libraries. For the younger siblings, car seats substitute for cribs. The energy we once spent on our careers is used for carpooling to school, activities, and meetings we don’t get paid to go to. Our energy comes from caffeine.

Alanna, Jordan, and I met each other one morning when there was only one table available in the local coffee shop. Fishing for something to talk about with a couple of strangers, I asked, "Do you have kids?"

When they nodded, I continued. "We’re new in town. On my way here I saw my daughter’s Kindergarten bus driver try to outrun an ambulance on Savannah Road. I was just wondering. Who usually wins?" That’s all it took. Before long, we realized that we had more in common than a caffeine habit. It was over coffee that we began to discuss the modern maternal missions that would right the many injustices of our world.

All moms need an endless source of caffeine. Fortunately, today we have a very caffeine-friendly society. It has become perfectly acceptable to carry your ecologically unfriendly Styrofoam cup into schools, clothing stores, food markets, and Home Depot. You can even carry a cup of coffee into your dentist’s office for your teeth-bleaching appointment to get rid of the stains caused by excessive coffee drinking. But I don’t like to get my caffeine fix alone any more than I like going to the ladies room without a friend.

In fact, our coffee sessions are cheaper and more fun than therapy. It is in the coffee shop that we plan our missions. I’m not saying that Colin Powell is going to call us for our opinions on foreign policy. We concentrate more on taking small steps toward making life just a little bit better right here. What I mean is, if you discover there’s asbestos in your community playground equipment, we’re there! Need backup on a school legislative issue? Look no further! Want to get rid of a corrupt city councilman? Give the Angels a call! Think you’re going to murder your pre-teen daughter if she talks back to you one more time? Bring her over! After a while we hardly know which kids belong to us anyway.

Our coffee shop looks the way we’d like our own kitchens to look, but they never will. It is cozy, yet sophisticated and smells like cinnamon and vanilla. There is no clutter. The canisters that hold spoons, stirrers, crème and sugar (substitute) are made of fine Italian porcelain. The counters are clear and crumb-free. We hear Norah Jones playing in the background instead of Mary Kate and Ashley’s Greatest Hits.

"Isn’t this place great?" Alanna asked me the first morning we met. "I refuse to drink my first cup of coffee in the morning surrounded by hen-covered wallpaper, checked curtains, or cute, stenciled hearts bordering the ceiling." I later learned that she hates anything described as "cute" or anyone who describes her as "cute." Small women really seem to have a thing about that.

There are old, black and white photographs of groups of women talking artfully positioned on the walls. They are in restaurants, on trains, on the beach, and on wide, southern porches. Sometimes they’re laughing. Other times they appear to be deep in conversation. I think they look just like us, but in another time and place. Of course their issues were different than ours. They wanted the right to vote, leave home before they were married, and get a job. We’ve shared studio apartments with cockroaches and had plenty of entry-level jobs. Now our main goals are to make the carpool lane safe, keep down the cost of birthday parties, and find the source of the offensive odor in the back of our minivans.

We are not coffee sluts. You know, those women we all know who can be found at any number of different coffee establishments throughout the day. No. We are monogamous and loyal. There’s only one place for us. We even have our own table at the coffee shop. It doesn’t have our name on it, but everyone knows it’s ours. It’s in the furthest corner away from the door by a big bay window. This way, we can see everyone in town walk by and then talk about them – but not in a catty way. We just want to help. From reporting idiots who leave their babies unattended in sweltering cars to chasing down a friend who doesn’t realize she’s a victim of unsightly panty lines, we’re always ready to help those who can’t help themselves.

From the moment we met, we realized we found all of the same things funny, absurd, and intolerable. But we’re also very different from each other.

I am a typical, Irish redhead. I overreact to everything except medical emergencies involving strangers. A misplaced loveseat can send me right over the edge, but I can perform CPR on another customer in a restaurant and go back to eating my dinner. I’m tall, funny (I was voted class clown in high school), and my husband, Jake, thinks I look a little like a red headed Goldie Hawn from the Banger Sisters in the slutty clothes he buys me.

Even though I am an RN with a master’s degree, I always felt like a decorator trapped in a nurse’s uniform. I was distracted from my job by the cheap wall art and the lack of proper furniture placement in hospitals. Whether I was drawing blood, charging the defibrilator, or holding an elderly man’s penis in my hand to change his catheter, I was preoccupied, wondering things like, "What idiot picked out those window treatments?"

I have three daughters, aged 8, 10, and 13, but even the younger two act like they have PMS at times. I would be a raving bitch without our sessions at the coffee shop.

Alanna grew up here and couldn’t wait to escape small town life. But she returned, after living in Manhattan for 10 years, willing to sacrifice the bright lights of Broadway to raise her kids at the beach.

She has two young daughters and a husband she’s known all of her life. (She was married once before, but she was an actress, so it doesn’t really count.) Nick likes to refer to himself as her current husband.

While Alanna is relaxed singing the Star Spangled Banner a capella in front of a thousand people, she’s not really comfortable with strangers unless they’re separated by an orchestra pit. She’s petite and has short, brunette hair like Ashley Judd’s. She’s larger than life, but in a very small way. She doesn’t even think of putting down her purse or taking off her shoes before she gets weighed at the doctor’s office.

Jordan, on the other hand, takes off her rings when she steps on the scale. She is a very pretty, athletic size 6 who resembles Meg Ryan, but pictures herself looking more like Kathleen Turner when she played Chandler’s dad in drag on "Friends." She and her husband, Chris, have one daughter, two sons, and a variety of weird pets.

Jordan should have come of age in the sixties. Then she would have had plenty of company in all of her missions for change. She has a flower-childlike belief in the innate goodness of all people coupled with a healthy dose of righteous indignation. The injustice that drives her particularly crazy is the apathy that exists in society today. She was once interviewed on local television about a serious school issue. When another parent approached her the next day while she was doing research at the library and said, "I saw you on the news last night," Jordan thought she’d really gotten the ear of the community. Unfortunately, his next remark was, "Your teeth looked great!"

Although Jordan has the lion’s share, all of the Angels share a finely-honed sense of guilt. There is justified or irrational guilt involved in just about everything we do. We feel guilty for not bringing in a paycheck. We feel guilty about not being perfect mothers and wives. We feel guilty that the house is messy, but even guiltier when we stick the kids in front of the TV so we can clean the house. And we get no sense of satisfaction from cleaning. We’re not smiling as we do it like those deranged women on the sparkling toilet bowl commercials.

In fact, guilt is what led me to quit my job in the first place. With one child it was kind of fun to pretend that fathers and mothers could do almost exactly the same things. Jake and I could both change diapers, make dinner, do laundry, and coordinate our schedules so that our first born children spent an equal amount of quality time with each of us. Then came baby number two.

We really thought we’d mastered this having-it-all lifestyle and that going from one to two kids would be a snap. Hah! Imagine doubling your body weight or taking care of a house twice as big as the one you now live in. Life as you know it would spin out of control.

Working mothers end up with two full-time jobs and frustration that neither job performance is up to par.

By the time I was in college I was watching The Cosby Show and Family Ties. Claire Huxtable was a lawyer, and Elyse Keaton was an architect. They had plenty of time for their families, wonderful homes, and great marriages. Even commercials reinforced the notion that women could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let him forget he’s a man." Double hah!

Jordan thought the solution was to work from home. The turning point for her came when she realized that her children’s earliest memories would be Mommy shushing them while she was on a conference call. Although she was flattered that her boss, a local Congresswoman, offered her this option, she ended up having conversations with reporters and legislators affecting national public policy while huddled in the coat closet just to keep them from knowing she was home with two babies.

The technology doesn’t exist that would allow Alanna to work from home. And her audiences certainly wouldn’t have fit in her former Manhattan living room. Her final decision was made one night when Nick was out of town on business, and she had to bring a sick toddler to the theatre to camp out under her dressing room table. "My union contract doesn’t cover babysitting services," her understudy complained.

I toughed it out until I had my second daughter. I was working part-time and started to notice that my oldest daughter, Meg, was sick every time I had to go work my shift at the hospital. When I questioned the sincerity of her sixth stomachache of the month, she broke my heart. "I just want to be one of your patients, Mommy." What the hell? As I already mentioned, the hospital environment just wasn’t feng shui enough for me anyway.

We all agree that our most important mission is to serve as each other’s reality check.

Our nervous breakdowns are not very different from those of our mothers’ generation. We just have better drugs. No one could have prepared us for the depth of emotion and responsibility we feel as parents. I decided that the only way I could possibly make it through the ups and downs was by finding other parents to survive the experience with. Although my friends and I provide ongoing group therapy for each other, there are certain scenarios that make us particularly insane.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Jordan grew up in a house where Christmas lasted from Thanksgiving until Easter. After all, even though most beach people hate to see Christmas decorations up too long after the holidays, she grew up in Vermont, where it’s wonderful to see snowy houses with Christmas lights, even in April. Her mother took Christmas cheer to a whole new level, and Jordan feverishly follows in her footsteps. She decorates every corner of the house, inside and out. She’s slightly embarrassed at the Christmas tree total in her house (one in every room but the bathrooms) but not enough to change it.

In addition to being qualified to host a reality TV show called "Extreme Decorating," she sends photo cards to a list of 350 people. Today handwritten Christmas cards are practically obsolete, but this doesn’t stop Jordan from sending out hundreds of Norman Rockwell-esque photos of her three children with whatever pets they have at the time. I like to arrange people as well as furniture, so I’ve been their placement consultant for the past few cards. The craziness doesn’t bother me because it’s not my family.

The photo session usually begins with a fight about what the kids are going to wear. Surprisingly, the most determined arguer is her 5 year old son, Sam. He stands his ground until she finally gives up on the solid color fleece jacket she had picked out and lets him wear his favorite Spiderman pajama top with webbed wings.

She and Chris pack up the kids and their pet menagerie to make the annual pilgrimage across town, where I meet them at Cape Henlopen State Park. There are plenty of backdrops to choose from there, including acres of sand dunes, woodsy hiking trails, miles of ocean, and the all-time favorite – clusters of swaying beach grass. I help her arrange the kids and their various gerbils, rabbits, mice, hermit crabs or the occasional snake on a dune, while Chris focuses the camera to make sure one of the World War II era Nazi U-Boat Watch Towers is in the background. The park is huge, but it’s still tough to get a picture during the month of November without the back of some stranger’s head in it, or worse, the prominent butt crack of some man posing his family. Everyone within a 30-mile radius goes to the park for their Christmas picture.

Once the kids are in their positions, time is of the essence. Chris is the calming force when the kids start screaming "He’s touching me!" "Move over you big wuss!" "I’m freezing!" and "Aren’t we done yet?!" Usually Jordan can handle the moans and groans. But this past Christmas she really lost it.

The chaos began when Hunter tried to drop his snake down Hailey’s back, and then her rabbit jumped off of her lap and hopped off toward the woods. The kids took off after him.

Jordan scrambled after them. "Get back here! Forget the rabbit. We’ll get him later!" I wanted to say, "We’ll eat him later."

"No! Hunter has to get Doc! It’s his fault he ran away," Hailey wailed.

Hunter was uncharacteristically cooperative. "Sure, I’ll get him. Here," and he handed Hailey his snake. Jordan should have known that was coming.

"Aaaahhhh! Get away from me!"

Sam screamed, "I’ll get him," as he disappeared into the woods.

After a frantic family search for Sam and the rabbit, I finally got the kids posed again. I heard Jordan hiss at them. "Don’t you move a single muscle." Be afraid. Be very afraid.

By the time Chris was ready to take the picture, Hunter was making rabbit ears behind Hailey’s swollen and tear-stained face, and Sam’s Christmas smile resembled a character out of Deliverance. By the end of the photo session, Jordan was screaming at all of them, including Chris, at the top of her lungs.

"Jesus Christ! All I want is a little Goddamn cooperation around here! I’m not doing this for me, you know!"

She anticipated the look Chris gives her every year when she wigs out. That look clearly says two things: that she shouldn’t be cursing in front of the kids; and that she absolutely IS doing this for herself because no one else gives a damn about the freakin’ picture!

"Shut! Up!" she seethed at him through clenched teeth as she noticed one of the local Martha Moms laying out a four course picnic nearby on this unusually warm November day. Before her kids could get too distracted by the delicious aroma of home-baked, deep dish, caramel apple pie, Jordan yelled again. "I have Pop Tarts for you in the van. Look at the camera…Now!"

Little do people know why, when they receive this happy photo each year, Jordan’s children’s smiles are bordering on maniacal. It’s because they fear that this is the year their mother will follow through on her threat to cancel Christmas for the rest of their ungrateful, little lives.

The photo session is the kick off for six weeks full of holiday cheer. It’s mandatory that her children be treated to every parade, choral production, and light exhibit in the mid-Atlantic area. They travel far and wide, bundled up in their warmest clothes, to see a plethora of lighted, steel frames in the shapes of the Grinch lounging in a beach chair, Rudolph riding a surfboard, and Santa driving a Sport Fisherman.

All of this would be great if her 42-day Christmas schedule went uninterrupted by laundry, part-time jobs, homework, sports, dance lessons, bills, grocery shopping, car and piano tuning appointments, allergy shots, school volunteering, and fights with the online store who delivered her sexy Mrs. Claus lingerie to her next door neighbor. If only the rest of the world could stop while Christmas happens. But it doesn’t, and Alanna and I know Jordan needs us to help her get through her annual Christmas meltdown, which occurs sometime between December 15th and 18th.

It came a little early this year, but we were ready.
She stormed into the coffee shop, threw herself into a chair, and said she could only stay a few minutes. We could see the tears welling up in her eyes, so I asked "What’s wrong?" as if I didn’t know.

This brought on a torrent of exclamations beginning with "I’m out of cards and I forgot to send one to Aunt Emily! My live animal nativity pageant at church was a disaster! And I just found out that I’m supposed to make an elf costume for Sam to wear in his pre-school program tomorrow night!" A litany of other problems came spilling out, none of which were overwhelming by themselves. But they seemed insurmountable when she was already totally consumed by the demands of the season.

We allowed her to vent for a while and get it all out. Only when she had completely finished, did I offer her a fresh perspective. "First of all, Aunt Emily lives in Phoenix with fifteen cats. She doesn’t even know it’s Christmas."

"And I’m so sick of always knowing what’s going to happen in the Christmas Story. And the Christ child was born to the Virgin Mary, blah, blah, blah…I thought your unique interpretation was inspired." Alanna can always find art in the midst of mayhem.

"I especially loved the goats trying to eat Gabriel’s wings," I said. "That little brat certainly needed a kick in the ass, but a bite in the ass was good enough for me."
Alanna added, "And, Jordan, you don’t need to worry about Sam’s elf costume. He can borrow mine." I decided not to ask.

We bought Jordan a cup of Fa La La La Latte. That seemed to give her just the caffeine jolt she needed to survive another Christmas crisis.

Now, Alanna’s meltdown comes in the summer. Because we live in a resort area, we all have houseguests from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Alanna told me that her theater friends couldn’t wait for her to leave New York and move back home to the beach – not only because actors are always happy to get rid of some competition - but because Lewes is only four hours south of The City. Alanna’s house, although modest, still has closets the size of some of their apartments. Her place is a free beach hotel in the summer, when it’s too damn hot in Manhattan to breathe. Besides, they’re getting too old for another summer stock production of Grease.

Alanna’s stories of her houseguest adventures have made me laugh so hard my cappuccino has escaped through my nostrils more than once. Her theory is that there are three kinds of guests. All of their visits result in her taking to her bed for a full day after they leave. There are those who come to her house to fall in love. There are the ones who bring a boyfriend or girlfriend she and Nick can’t stand. And some still think it’s ok to smoke a joint to relax, even with children in the house, as long as they close the guest room door.

None of them have kids.

The first summer Alanna was back in Lewes, she and Nick didn’t have much guest action. They were renovating one of the old houses in town, and she was pregnant with their second daughter Lily. That all changed beginning the next Memorial Day. Claire was three and Lily was a few months old when Alanna’s former roommate, Leisa, brought a new beau to the beach for the long weekend. They rented a car because no one who lives in New York actually owns one. Alanna knew something was up when Leisa called from a rest stop breathless, saying that they would be a little late. "We just couldn’t keep our hands off of each other for the whole four-hour drive. We had to pull over."

Then she proceeded to tell Alanna that the economy car they’d reserved wasn’t available, "so we really lucked out getting a rental with a big backseat." Alanna is no prude, but she has a very vivid imagination. When the lovebirds finally got there and climbed out of the car, she couldn’t stop herself from picturing them naked.

They arrived just in time to watch Lily and Claire get fed and bathed. As I said earlier, Alanna is not a domestic goddess. It was very stressful making sure everything was just right for her first houseguests. And here she was, greeting Leisa and a complete stranger in an old, short, terry cloth robe, which barely covered her ugly nursing bra. Even worse, she smelled of pureed carrots instead of her trademark Channel No. 5.

It wasn’t hard for Leisa to notice that Alanna was exhausted. Trying to be helpful, she said, "Don’t worry about dinner. Let’s go out! We’ll drive." Alanna and Nick looked at each other, both remembering the recent backseat action in the rental, and screamed, "No! We can walk to the Dairy Queen."

The rest of the weekend was a blur of stage whispers and shadowy figures emerging from the guest bedroom just long enough to grab a bottle of wine or a shower.

Then there was Jason, who brought his bitchy boyfriend to the beach. Jason is a fabulously dark and handsome stage director that all women, including Alanna, immediately have a crush on until they realize he doesn’t share their hetero lust. He doesn’t take any shit from his actors, but he has no control in his relationship with the very high-maintenance Tom.

Nothing Alanna cooked or planned was agreeable to Tom. For instance, one morning he looked over her shoulder as she made omelets, then asked, "Who wants to go to Fisherman’s Wharf for a REAL breakfast?"

Later, he whined, "I hope you’re not planning to go to the beach all weekend. I’m very fair, and I get hives if I go in water where I can’t see the bottom and things swim up against me."

And my personal favorite, "Did you remember that I’m lactose intolerant?"

Finally, they all, even Jason, went off to the bay without Tom. Jason was a good sport when they buried him in the sand and sculpted him into an exotic mermaid that transcended gender.

When they got home that afternoon, Tom was nowhere to be seen. Alanna put Nick in charge of the girls and ran upstairs for a quick shower before she attempted to create a non-dairy lasagna for dinner, since Stouffer’s doesn’t make one. As she entered her walk-in closet, wearing only her Big Mama panties to find a post-maternity mu mu, imagine her surprise to discover Tom inside. As far as Alanna knew, Tom had never been in the closet. She wondered what the hell he was doing in hers. Without any explanation, he pouted, "Well, it’s about time you all got home," and went back downstairs.

That night Alanna emptied a generic brand SPF5 sunscreen into designer SPF30 bottle and sent it with her guests off to the beach the next day. A bronzed Jason and a sunburned Tom were heading back to their sweltering city apartment by sundown.

Free spirits are tough guests to accommodate, too. Lots of people in our generation think smoking a joint is the same thing as having a glass of wine. But everything changes with children in the house. One night after these particular visitors, Ben and Margo, had disappeared into the downstairs guest room, leaving Alanna and Nick to watch TV in the den, they both looked at each other at the same time. "Do you smell that?"

Sure that this second-hand smoke would cause irreparable brain damage, Alanna flew upstairs to open the girls’ bedroom windows. While she was busy airing out the rest of the house, Nick remembered a trick from his youth. He soaked a couple of beach towels and shoved them under the guest room door to seal in the offending fumes.

They stayed up half the night worrying about how to talk to Margo and Ben about their recreational inhalation without making them feel unwelcome. Just before they fell asleep, Nick, in his infinite wisdom, finally said, "This
is ridiculous. How about if we just tell them the truth?"

So the next morning Nick brought it up.

"We noticed an unusually sweet fragrance coming from your room last night…" The level of Nick’s discomfort was revealed in his use of the word "fragrance."

Alanna interrupted, "We really love you guys, and we’re probably overreacting, but with Claire and Lily’s little brains in important stages of development…"

Nick jumped in, "And with all of the reports about second-hand smoke being harmful…"

Ben cut in, "How about if we just don’t smoke pot in your house?"

Nick was apparently on a roll. "It’s a big responsibility being parents, and we’re just going to have to ask you not to smoke pot in our house."

"OK."

"You’re two of our oldest friends, and…"

Alanna elbowed him. "Nick, they said ok."
"What?"

Ben, Margo, and Alanna all yelled in unison, "OK!"
By mid-July that first summer of endless guests, Alanna started subtly expressing her irritability to her company. By mid-August, she was even getting bitchy with us. Something had to be done, so Jordan and I helped her put together a list of cheap, local motels to include in the Christmas cards she sent to their out-of-town friends. This helped, but by the next summer, Alanna had to accept that she will always have some actor friends who are either too broke or too wrapped up in their own dramas to take the hint. Jordan and I learned to be on call to watch Lily and Claire on the one day following each visit that Alanna takes to her bed.

I only put up one Christmas tree (a stunning, pre-lighted, artificial one), and when I invite people to my house, I encourage them to bring their own food and linens. The source of my insanity is hormones – not my own as much as those that flow like hot lava through my three daughters. I never know how they’ll react to simple, everyday requests, like "We’re late for school. Go get your shoes on."

"I hate every shoe in my closet!"

"What do you mean by that?!"

"Why do you always pick on me?"

"Why don’t you ever ask her to do that?"

"I don’t need school! I’m going to be a movie star
anyway!!!"

"Shoes! That’s all you ever care about?!!"

"Why do you hate me?!"

One day after my daily shoe request was ignored…again, I found my sensitive middle daughter, Julia, in tears on her bedroom floor. "Julia, hurry up! For God’s sake, what’s wrong?"

"I don’t know, Mom. I just can’t stop crying."

"About shoes?!!"

"No! You just don’t understand me!"

I know I get too wrapped up in taking their emotional temperatures. There is hardly ever a day when one of them doesn’t get in the van after school looking close to tears. Me and my big mouth! Before I can suck it back in, I ask, "How was your day?" Out pours a melodramatic re-enactment of a fight with a best friend, an unjust criticism from a teacher, or an unkind remark about the zit they thought was well camouflaged with flesh-toned Clearasil. My knuckles get whiter and whiter on the drive to dance class as I fantasize about avenging the honor of my perfect, blameless progeny. But by the time we arrive, they bounce into the studio without a care, and I am left sitting in the parking lot, steaming up the windows with my unrequited fury.

My first thought is always to call my husband at work so he can feel my pain. But instead, I call Jordon on my cell phone. I know what she’ll tell me. "Macy, don’t get on the roller coaster."

She’s right. Why should I get stuck on Space Mountain, when my daughters have already moved on to It’s a Small World?

Meg is 13 so everything is a big deal. She thinks her feet are too big (they are a size 10, but it looks like she inherited my height); her hair is too curly (and it’s all my fault); she’s too shy, too loud, too bossy (that’s true), too skinny, too fat, too flat, and recently the boy she’s been "going out with" broke up with her. I don’t understand it anyway when kids say they’re going out with someone when they are still too young to go anywhere. This reality, however, has nothing to do with the gut-wrenching pain that occurs when they stop going wherever it is they never really went.

Strangely, the thing that brings me comfort is the story of my own "first suicide attempt" when I was 13. There hasn’t been a second attempt, but Alanna thinks calling it a "first attempt" is more theatrical. I shared my sad tale of adolescent angst with Jordan and Alanna one rainy morning over coffee.

The very studly seventh grader Jack Bryan, who is now a dentist with a comb-over, broke up with me over the weekend for Josie Andrews, who at last report is an alcoholic cocktail waitress in Wyoming. My mother had to go to work on Monday, and not having the strength or time to argue, let me stay home to listen to "The Best of Bread" and tend to my broken heart.

I grew up in a typical, Jersey split-level filled with wonderful old family furniture, a reminder of my maternal family’s better pre-depression fortune. Filling most of the upstairs hallway was an enormous, ornate, mahogany, full-length mirror. It provided the perfect backdrop for the tragic ritual that was about to unfold.

As soon as I heard my mother’s wood-paneled, burgundy station wagon pull out of the driveway, I dragged an old metal trash can into the hall in front of the mirror. I gently placed all of the love letters Jack had written to me into the metal trash can, which was serving as my ceremonial pyre. Then I scavenged around for one of my dad’s Bic lighters and dragged myself downstairs for a can of Tab, which was fitting for such a ceremony. I wonder if it still tastes like hemlock? As an inspired afterthought, I grabbed the Poloroid camera off a hook in the living room coat closet.

I moved wearily back up the stairs to my final resting place. Staring at my reflection, I worked up some huge, crocodile tears. (They were so impressive that, in retrospect, I’m sure I could have given Alanna a run for her money.) I lit the letters in the trash can on fire, posed, and snapped a soggy photo of myself in the mirror. Then I slowly took from my bathrobe pocket three – not two, but three – Midol tablets. I dramatically ingested the overdose with the Tab and then collapsed in a heap, thinking about how Jack would feel when I was discovered cold, dead, and alone later that day. But when the smoke alarm went off seconds later, I threw myself and the whole burning mess into the shower, took a four-hour nap, and was recovered quite nicely by the time my friends came over to check on me after school.

Each time I have a morning like I did last week with my Meg, when I finally grabbed a cup of cold, three-day-old coffee out of my cup holder and threw it behind me into her face as we were driving home from school just to get her to stop the hysterics, I try to remember that my mother survived my youth. I would survive hers. With a little help from the Angels on Caffeine.

I honestly don’t know how people home school their kids or raise them in a cabin isolated in the mountains of Alaska. Like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining, I know I would go completely nuts if I didn’t have my friends to pull me back into the real world when I’m teetering on the edge of sanity. I know how lucky I am. I have a great husband, three happy and healthy daughters, and friends who know all about my parenting skills and still never consider calling social services.

Yesterday morning we met at the coffee shop just like we do most mornings. We were sitting at our table discussing our latest mission to figure out a way to invest for our retirement years with no money down, when I noticed that Jordan was distracted by two new black and white photos on the wall. They were of the three of us. In one, we were deep in an intense conversation at our regular table, completely unaware that someone was taking our picture. The other one appeared to have been taken on the same day, but we were laughing so hard, it looked like Alanna had tears in her eyes.

The pictures looked very natural among the other old photographs. We wondered what the next generation of Angels would imagine about us. Who were we? What were we worried about? What did we find so funny?

The truth is that I can’t possibly remember what the topic was that day. We might have been watching Alanna’s dead-on imitation of the flamboyant middle school music teacher, who reminds me of the emcee in Moulin Rouge. Or it might have been just after I told them about the time I wore a sexy little camisole to Jake’s company picnic without knowing I had it on inside out with the built-in shelf bra on the outside. The intense conversation could have been about finally discovering the perfect pair of thong underwear or maybe it was when we came up with the brilliant scheme to convince Starbucks to hire us as their expert spokes-moms. Wouldn’t it be great if our caffeine habit could send our kids to college?!

No matter what happens, looking at those pictures makes me feel rich. As Emily Dickinson once wrote, "My friends are my estate."