Guest post about my thrifting obsession over at Lauren’s style blog, Stylemammal. Perhaps you can tell from the photo that my children, just outside the camera frame, are driving me kah-ray-zee.
My friend Lauren has launched a terrific new blog focusing on personal style. Lauren has a dry sense of humor, excellent writing chops, and a great eye for clothes, making this a must-read for anyone who takes pleasure in putting together an outfit. And guess who got to be one of her first interviewees? Yours truly. But if you read only one post of Lauren’s, make it this one, because she articulates something that I think many of us understand innately but have trouble putting into words.
My friend Amy Gutman writes this excellent blog called Plan B Nation — a rundown of what life is like for those of us laid off during the Great Recession. My friend Karen Brown interviewed Amy (and me!) for our local NPR affiliate.
Something I said to Karen — which may sound a little Pollyanna but is the absolute truth — is that life is so much better for me now, here in Plan B. I am happier, a better mother, a more satisfied writer, and feel far more potential in my career than I did at my last job. If I had known back then what life would be like now, I might have left Plan A voluntarily. But I guess that’s the point of Plan B — you never get there by choice. It’s something that happens to you, for better or for worse. I’m happy to say that for some of us, it’s for better.
Beach baby.
Let me be clear, with myself as much as with anyone else: I do not want another baby. I am finished with the whole parenting-a-baby thing. Sometimes I felt like I was doing it very well, other times I felt like I was failing profoundly, but in any case, done is done. And I do mean done. Even toddlerhood and the preschool years are distant images in the rearview mirror.
But.
Lately I find myself arrested by sudden echoes of those early years. A snippet of a song that I used to sing to them, or the scent of a treat I used to make. And I realize that while I do not want another baby, at times I long for my babies, for the diapered heft that I nestled against my hip, for the laden-down stroller I would always have at least one hand upon. I miss the quiet rhythm of those days. And while I recall resenting it at the time, part of me even misses that encumbered feeling — that sense that everything, everything, would take at least twice as long as it does for anyone else, and that even my physical presence wasn’t really mine, but out on permanent loan.
The other day my daughter looked at me and suddenly grinned, and I flashed back to ten years ago, right after 9/11, when I was nursing her in the rocker in her bedroom. It was a gorgeous fall day, and I had spent all morning crying, but I was calm, and I looked down at her as she nursed, her eyelids starting to flutter their way to a nap. Then she popped her eyes open, locked her gaze onto mine, pulled away, and grinned. It was the very same expression.
One of the hottest new curators in Northampton’s famed art scene.
Here’s how I see it. Allowing her to dye her hair purple today inoculates her against excessive tattooing and body piercing tomorrow.
Rosh Hashana: Time to pause, reflect, reconsider, plan ahead. I started off the year with a bang by missing the children’s service. Oops. I guess I’ll have to atone for that in about a week.
This whole personal-introspection thing is coming up at a handy time, however; I’ve recently set myself a goal of writing four personal essays in the next four weeks. I’m a quick writer; I can usually slam three hundred words together in about an hour and have them sound pretty good. (Maybe not great, but that’s where editing comes in.) The first essay practically poured out of me; I was in that writerly zone where you just know the next word is the right one, and so is the one after that, and the one after that one, too. A beautiful thing.
But this next essay I’m working on? Oy. It’s one of those times when you realize you were looking at something in the exact wrong way — and you come to this realization because every sentence you write sounds wooden and trite. I have adept avoidance techniques, both in writing and in life. I attack my personal stuff by hiding behind someone else — I convince myself that I’m upset on behalf of my daughter, for example, or that I’m frustrated by something my mother is doing. I can get away with this in my head, but putting it on paper gives proof to the lie. Sometimes it’s not them — it’s me.
Oh hi! I haven’t been here for a while. I’ve been too busy putzing around on the Internet to write a blog post — for a while now.
That changes now. Last weekend I attended a writing workshop that was part nuts and bolts, part therapy, part motivational seminar. One of the (many) revelations I had over the course of the weekend is something that probably all my friends already figured out: While I never miss a deadline on my paid gigs, I use Facebook to avoid doing meaningful writing. As someone else put it, I tend to use those little status updates to get my writerly kicks — instant feedback, much of it positive! And then there’s the false sense of satisfaction from having “finished” something so quickly. Meanwhile, the longer, tougher subjects are festering away, unwritten.
So anyway. I’m taking a little break from Facebook. I will be updating more often here, though, and everything I post here gets cross-posted there — try not to hold that against me. I need someplace to write down my kids’ bon mots, after all.
