Dear Dear Meg

By C.J. Hirschfield

Hers is the first obituary I’ve ever seen that includes the word “poop.” She would have loved it.

For three decades, Meg Zweiback helped our community’s families with young children solve problems with – as the SFGate obit puts it – “poop, sleep, siblings, schools, and everyday life.” She left us on Sept. 9, when she finally lost a yearlong battle with leukemia.

Meg Zweiback with Charley and stuffed animals.

I felt that I knew Meg long before I ever met her, as one of the devoted fans of her monthly column in Parents Press. Her “Ask Meg” answers to parents’ concerns exhibited wit, kindness, intelligence and humor. A recurring theme was how to support a child’s strengths while helping adults find a way to be the parents they want to be.

Meg earned undergraduate degrees from UC Santa Barbara and UCSF and a master’s in public health from UC Berkeley, and became one of the Bay Area’s first pediatric nurse practitioners. She built a successful family consultation practice, helping parents with what she called “solutions for everyday life with children.” Both my husband and I have greatly benefited from occasional sessions with Meg, whose clients described her as a “parent coach” and a “lifeline to sanity” – both true.

Meg was also a contributor to the Oakland-based Bananas childcare referrals and resources center, where she led free workshops for parents of infants, toddlers, and 3- and 4-year-olds. Heather Lang, resource and referral manager at the agency, which strives to raise happy and confident children, recalls that Meg would often provide her with advice while they were setting up the room prior to the sessions. “It was probably about sleep—or not sleeping, or feeding, or sibling rivalry,” Heather recalls.

Meg knew a lot about poop.

The chairs in the room would be set in a circle; more like a support group than a lecture. “The sessions always had a warmth to them,” Heather says. “Parents felt safe in a place where they could get help sorting out issues without being judged.”

The kernels of information Meg imparted could be applied by every parent in the room. At the end, Heather says, parents would feel that “they had what it takes, and some more tools in their toolkit.”

Meg was paid for each of these sessions, but she always donated her fee back to Bananas.

Heather and I both attended the memorial service for Meg, where Zack Wasserman – her love of more than 50 years – and her sons Jake and Michael and daughter-in-law Alicia Dantzker were joined by a crowd so large that it spilled out of the room. Also in attendance was Charley, Meg’s comfort dog way before her diagnosis.

Obviously, there was much, much more to the marvelous Meg than the work she did helping inspire kids and parents to be their best selves. But as someone who observes families with toddlers nearly every day, I think I understand just how important good parenting is, and how hard it is to feel confident about this most important calling.

Thankfully, much of her advice can still be found at BringingUpKids.com, where you’ll definitely get the real poop.

Donations in Meg’s honor can be made to BANANAS Child Care Resource and Referral Agency: donate.bananasbunch.org.  

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C.J. Hirschfield has served for 15 years as executive director of Children’s Fairyland, where she is charged with the overall operation of the nation’s first storybook theme park.