My Words Go Here

It’s an ordinary Wednesday, lunchtime, on an escalator. I head up and down this escalator countless times a week, and don’t really pay much attention to where I’m going. Up and down. Down and up. In between the jumble of multi-tasking that goes on in my brain, on this particular day, a Talking Heads song burst forth and quieted the noise.

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
wife
And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here?”

On this day, I had a sudden freeze-frame moment. I saw myself, a girl wearing non-descript black pants and sensible heels. Green sweater, ponytail.  A girl, on an escalator, thinking about a job that she used to like a little bit, that she now hates and feels trapped by. A lawyer, on an escaltor, a banking and finance lawyer that doesn’t understand banking and finance. A girl, on an escalator, that lives on a lovely, tree-lined street and has a baby, a black lab and an SUV. A girl on an escalator in a big city, but not an important one. A girl with a good life, an enviable life. An ordinary life. An ordinary girl, with an ordinary job, in an ordinary city.

And some days, I am grateful for ordinary. I am lucky, and blessed to have an extraordinary baby and husband. We both have good jobs, and live in a great neighborhood, with neighbors we actually know. We are healthy and don’t want for much. I watch the news at night, and look over at my husband and think, Thank God. Thank God for him, and for O, and for our life together.

“And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself
MY GOD!…WHAT HAVE I DONE?

But. There’s always a but, isn’t there? I didn’t want an ordinary life growing up. I wanted a super-sized, extra-ordinary life. I wanted magic. I found a journal recently, one that I kept in my early 20’s, when I was living in California and was perpetually searching. Searching for the perfect job, the perfect boy, the perfect life, searching for who I was or was going to be. I had no idea what that meant, or what I wanted, but I had some pretty definite ideas about what that did NOT mean.

And this particular entry said “I don’t know what I want, but I do know that I DON’T want to be a lawyer or doctor, and I don’t want a big house with a white picket fence. I want more.” As I read these words, words sent across time from young me to not as young me, I was 8 months pregnant, a lawyer, and I had just moved into our big white house. It doesn’t have a white picket fence, but it might as well. How things change.

I chose this ordinary life. I got to a point, in my search for the un-ordinary, when I craved ordinary. I was anchor-less, adrift, going nowhere. There was no captain of my ship. I was 28, living pay check to pay check, with no real career to speak of. I wanted a house. I wanted someone to grow up with, grow old with. I though I might want the options of kids someday. I didn’t see any of that on the horizon, at least not from where I was sitting.

I decided to make the ordinary life happen. I moved back to Texas, went to law school. I met an amazing guy, was smart enough to marry him. I got a job working at a big national law firm, making craploads of money. Living in LA since I was 18, ordinary was refreshing to me. I felt like a girl in a movie who was mistaken for someone else and liked it, and let people assume she belonged. Though knowing all along that one day the jig would be up, that her real self would show up one day.

On that escalator, I had a Sliding Doors moment, my two futures passing each other. I saw the young girl I was, dreaming of extraordinary, saw the life that she didn’t give up on, passing the girl who gave it up for ordinary, for safe, for love. The two futures passed, and collided in the one present that exists.

So would I be here anyways? Did fate bring me here, or did my choices lead me here?

I think about this a lot. I tend to believe in fate. I tend to believe that things unfold in certain ways, ways that we can’t always understand and ways that we can’t see. If you get out of fate’s way, sometimes you get exactly what you need. There are certain things in my life, that I’m not willing to share about and that you probably don’t care about anyways, that I believe will happen. And for the most part, they’ve happened.

On the other hand, I strongly believe that you have to take control of your life, that you have to make choices and choose paths and not wait for someone to do it for you. I used to get paralyzed by making decisions, committing things, because of this tension between fate vs. choice.

Do I choose or do I let fate take its course?

When I moved back to Texas and went to law school, the plan was to move to NYC or back to LA and do entertainment law. Which would make sense, as that was my background, and it was a language that I spoke fluently. But I didn’t do that. I let myself float. I didn’t actively try to move to NYC or back to California. I let life happen. I dropped my resume at big Texas firms, because it was easier to stay there for the summer. I got a few offers, clerked, enjoyed it well enough. I clerked in real estate and was surprised when I wasn’t totally bored. For the first time, I actually understood what my father and his friends were talking about. I got a thrill out of doing something so practical and smart and well, ordinary. It felt good. So I went with it. Got a job offer that was too much money to turn down. The boyfriend (not yet the husband) got a job in Texas too.

As I let myself fall into this life, I can’t say I didn’t have doubts that this would happen one day, that I would wake up and say “How did I get here?” I’ve always known that my real self would perk up and say “Remember me?” I hoped that being a real estate lawyer would be enough. I’m not surprised that it’s not.

So I’m left wondering. Fate? Or an ordinary prison of my own making? I certainly chose this life, by NOT going after what I really wanted to do. Inaction is as much of a choice as action. But isn’t that where fate swoops in? If it’s fate, then it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, this is where I would end up anyways, right? Asking myself “how did I get here?”

I don’t think there is an answer, or at least one that matters much. I can play the fate vs. free will game all night, going round and round. It won’t change where I am. And I’m not so sure I would change any of it. I wouldn’t change my husband or my son. I wouldn’t change a single decision that led me to them. Even if I knew that I was choosing between an extraordinary life and an ordinary one. I will choose an ordinary life with them, over an extraordinary one without them, everytime.

I like to think of it this way. In the best circumstances, fate and free will synch up perfectly. If you are true to yourself, and make decisions based on what you really want, fate does lead you to where you are supposed to be. But if you just sit around, refusing to be bold and take action, refusing to choose because you believe fate will lead you, well, fate is going to deliver you one hell of a lesson.

For me, I let myself be carried by something that was not authentic to me. I let myself play a part that was not meant for me and I knew all along it wasn’t right. And the gig is up.

On the other hand, who is to say that this isn’t exactly where I need to be in order to make this writing thing happen? That had I not chosen ordinary, perhaps I would have been satisfied with my career and not needed something more? That had I stayed in LA or moved to NYC, I would be living an exciting life filled with wondrous restaurants and sparkling happy hours and sophisticated dinner parties and not have time or the desire to write?

Clearly I won’t be settling this debate anytime soon. So what do you think? Fate? Free will? Do we choose our own destiny, or are some things just meant to be?

The end of the song goes something like this, which I think is a pretty good answer…

“time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us
time isn’t holding us, time doesn’t hold you back
time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us…”

Songtrack to this post: Once In A Lifetime, The Talking Heads.

Poem: Invictus by William Ernest Henley

“Someday, I’ll be a real writer.”

“I’m a lawyer/teacher/rocket scientist by day, but what I really want to do is write.”

“If only I didn’t have to go to this soul-numbing day job and could just write all day, then I’d be happy/fulfilled/write that great novel.”

Sound familiar? For those of us that scribble on the side, who have “real” jobs that take up most of our time, the idea of writing full time sounds magical. That’s the goal, right? To turn this mad dash writing into a more permanent, structured, daily routine. Does that mean to turn it into, gasp, work?

I suspect every aspiring writer has some vision of that perfect writing life that will someday be theirs. I envision a cozy office, that bears little to no resemblance to any room that currently exists in my house. It will be perfectly organized, with just the right amount of artistic clutter- stacks of books, framed photographs, a wall of inspiration, with quotes and scribbles and torn pages, arranged just so. I am the one sitting behind the desk, curled up in the cream (comfy but stylish) chair, my hair pulled up in a knot, a coffee in one hand, as I stare at the ocean out of the window in between measured bursts of typing. I take a last sip of coffee, save my draft, glance at my watch, and zip out of my office to be on time to pick up my son from school. Where I will not be late, and my car will be clean, and he will hop happily into the car and chatter about his day. We will go home and have a snack together, after which I will return to my office and finish my word count for the day before dinner.

I know this is ridiculous. For one, there is a cream chair in my future vision. CREAM? I have a toddler who just yesterday poured syrup all over my couch. I also have a black lab that sheds. There will be no cream in any future office I might have. Please. I may be a dreamer, but I am not stupid. Also, I no longer live anywhere near an ocean. And I am not a stylishly cluttered person. In fact, “cluttered” would be a welcome change from my usual disorganized mess.

It’s ridiculous the way that it was ridiculous that I thought maternity leave was going to be this peaceful break from reality, one in which the new baby and I would drift merrily along, nap together and take long walks and live in a cocoon of bliss that I would never want to leave. My visions did not include tears and frustration and a red-faced screaming baby who most certainly did NOT simply snuggle up on my chest when he wanted to go to sleep. It did not include a husband who had a 3 month trial for the duration of my maternity leave, leaving me alone, scared and bored, to be honest. My vision did not take into account that having a baby, being a mom, was WORK. Hard work. That I was secretly glad to return to work just so I could get out of the house.

I follow a few blogs of lawyer turned moms/writers. They are doing what I hope to do someday. And occasionally they will post about missing the lawyer life, the meetings and the lunches and the sense of purpose. Of wondering if they perhaps made a mistake? I read these posts and I can’t relate. Maybe because I’m still there? I don’t think I will miss the work, or the sense of purpose or accomplishment. Mostly because I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment now. I do think I would miss the routine, the feeling of belonging to a world outside of home, the label that identifies me as a contributing member of society.

I signed up for NaNoWrMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year but of course didn’t end up participating, for various reasons. But I did get the “pep” talks in my email account. One was from Dave Eggers who had this to say about procrastination:

“It’s a very strange thing, because we all think writing should be fun. That is, when I was temping through most of my twenties, wondering what it would be like to write for a living, hoping for such a life, I thought it might be pretty sweet. I thought if I ever got to write for a living, I would feel pretty lucky, and that I would be so appreciative that I would bound out of bed every day and, like a goddamned adult, I would write as much as I could every day, and get work done in a reasonable amount of time. Again, like an adult.

Instead, I need, on average, 8 hours sitting on my writing couch to get one hour of work done. It’s a pathetic ratio. I stall, avoid, put off and generally act like someone’s making me do some terrible job I never wanted to do. I blow pretty much every deadline I’m given.”

I admit, I often wonder about what the reality of being a stay at home writer will actually bring. Despite my silly vision of my “perfect writing life” above, I pretty much think it will be like my Mondays and Fridays. In which I run around trying to be a mom, and do errands, and get my writing done. I will most likely not have an office, not at first. I most likely will still be at Starbucks, or at the library. I will procrastinate, I will be frustrated, I will not want to write, I will stare at a blank page, I will have a flash of inspiration, I will write something terrible, I will decide to quit writing, I will re-read that something terrible and find something decent, I will re-write and find something good. I will live for one good comment, and it will be enough to sustain me for awhile. I will begin again the next day. Pretty much what I do now, except that in between that I have to go to a job that I’m not good at.

My goal is to find a way to leave behind my lawyer suit and instead write everyday. Yes, like a job. Whenever my husband and I talk about the possibility of maybe, someday, me being able to quit my job, I never envision quitting to stay home. It’s only quitting to write. Which I would treat as a full time job, a 9-5 or thereabouts endeavor. But do I also have an unrealistic vision of what being a full-time writer will actually be like?

I suspect yes. When I think back to every big new adventure in my life (going to college, moving to Paris, getting married, having a baby, going to law school, re-organizing my closet), it’s never what I think it will be like. It’s always harder and always always infinitely more rewarding than I imagined. So I’m pretty sure I will look back on this post one day and think, oh, how much I didn’t know. But I hope I can always remember the way I feel about writing now, how much I love it and how much I am willing to sacrifice and how hard I am willing to work to get there. I hope I don’t lose the passion in the grind of the everyday.

Any “real” writers out there? What’s it really like? What do I not know? And any aspiring writers, come on, tell me what your dream writing life is like.

“Everything is practice.”- Pele

I feel out of shape, out of practice, out of focus.  The words, they are stretching and grumbling, they don’t WANT to come out and do their job, thank you very much, they are quite content to stay slumbering, to remain curled up in a warm fuzzy pile of possibility. It’s cozy in there. Tangled and twisted, these adjectives and nouns and verbs and adverbs have gotten used to doing nothing, or at least only doing the bare minimum. Over the past month, the words in my life have gotten quite lazy.

The words I use to talk to my son, the “O words” are the laziest. They loll about, drinking coffee with their eyes half open while I wake up O. Only a few words are required to do this job, and it’s the same ones, over and over, and they can do their job with their eyes closed.  “Good morning, merry sunshine!” And then some combination of “Up”, “Arms up”, “No sir”, “stay still” and “milk?”. There is no real effort involved there. And if it’s not a work day, no matter, the O words are still lazy. “No”, “yes”, “not for O”, “eat?”, “it’s bedtime for boys!”, “STOP”, “why are you crying?”, and “I love you monkey!” about covers it.

Then there are the words required to do my day job. These words are a little more alert than the O words, but really it’s the same combination of words every day. And while they have to be ready to jump into action, to clear up a misunderstanding or make the drafting of a legal document more clear, they are really just tin soldiers, marching in place and waiting to be called into action. They are good soldiers, the work words, they follow orders well and don’t think too much and understand that they all have a job to do, however small. There are a finite number of words that get used at work, and there are only a few possible combinations. The words are used to expand or contract, to clarify or to purposefully not clarify, to say yes or no. The work warriors do have a few specialty guys on call, waiting in the wings and doing extra push-ups, in case a situation comes up where spontaneous thinking and writing are required. But these situations are rare, and the specialty guys are too beefed up for their own good, with nowhere to let off steam. These guys also moonlight as my road rage team.

Then there are the good time guys and gals, the words used to talk with my husband, family, and best friends. These words are the chosen ones and they are so good at their jobs that they don’t really need to do anything. They’ve been doing this job for years, and have mastered the complicated short hand and inside jokes and terms of endearment that signify our worlds. They are like Tiger Woods before his fall, like Jay-Z (retired or not), like J.K. Rowling. They are masterful, they can do no wrong, they are just born great. They can do their thing while swilling a cocktail.

These are the words required to get through my day. At the beginning of November, I decided to get more serious about my writing. I planned to devote every Monday and Friday I had off to writing all day, I contemplated getting up every morning before work to get in a full hour of writing, and I was making a Plan. Well, we all know what they say about plans and God and roads of good intentions. Exactly. So of course I ended up working at my day job every Monday and Friday for the entire month of November. No free time, no designated time to write. No getting up early and reveling in my good intentions come to life.

And now, today, is the first day in over a month that I’ve sat in Starbucks and stared at a blank page. I don’t remember how to do this. This feels hard, I feel uncomfortable and out of shape, like I’m staring down a marathon that I forgot to train for. Or worse, I’m about to make a speech I forgot to write. I look around, I think about making a Christmas list, and emailing that friend I haven’t spoken to in a few months, and wonder if I should make a list of stuff instead of writing, because at least I have words for a to do list. Too many words, actually. And not the fun kind.

And the lesson? It is hard. It is work. Writing, words, like everything else, have to be used and exercised and practiced. Every writing book you pick up says you must write EVERYDAY. Write and write some more. Write terribly, write grandly, write drunkenly, write angrily, write happily, write with lots and lots of adverbs, but just write. And even though every writer knows this, at least in theory, we are still surprised by the slap in the face we get when we let the words remain dormant for too long. We are surprised by the reluctance of the words, by how unloose and uncooperative they are. And then we remember. We remember that writing is a practice. It is not a finish line, it is not an ending, it is not perfection. It is messy and unpredictable and glorious and frustrating and heart-breaking and fun. It is what we love to do best. But it is a practice and it is hard work. You can have all the talent in the world and it means nothing if you don’t use your words, everyday. Brilliance can die young, it can fade and it can get rusty. Remember Tiger Woods, Jay-Z,  J. K. Rowling? They work hard, harder than anyone else. They practice, everyday. A million golf swings, a million rhymes, a million words written.

Interesting thing, when I think about “practice”, my first thought is that you practice at something to get good. Sort of like the dress rehearsal. Football teams practice before The Game, which is the performance itself. If I say I’m “practicing” something, the message I’m conveying is that what I’m doing is not the performance itself. But this is actually the total opposite of a writing practice. There is no big game. There is no show to be put on. The practice of writing is the act of writing. Period. End of story.

This post? It’s bad. It’s creaky, the words are grumbling, the adverbs out front, doing the easy work, while the verbs and nouns haven’t really woken up yet. But they are waking up, they are yawning and stretching and getting ready to do their thing.

Because the other thing about writing is that it’s always here, waiting for you, to begin again. The words may grumble and give you a hard time, they may be spectacularly bad for awhile to teach you a lesson, but words never go away, they never leave you. They are here, waiting for you to pick them up again, to practice.

Struggling to get words, the right words, to line up and pay attention today. Today I want to write something funny but in the writing world, I am not in charge. So today I’m not funny. Today I’m thinking about closets. Yep, closets. But I lost my post and errands call, the glamorous life of a working mom. We have a birthday party to go to, and presents to buy. So for today, I will borrow someone else’s words.

All I want to be is Someone

Who makes New things

and Thinks about them.

– John Maeda

Click link to see Clifton Burt’s usage of the above haiku in a photograph. I think I need this for my office.

Happy Friday.

One of the strangest things to me about having a baby is the sudden identity switch that occurs. I suppose it’s not that sudden, you get 1o months to try it on, see how it fits, but that’s all just a dress rehearsal until you actually become a mom. And even now, the 14 months I have spent as a mom is nothing compared to the thirty-odd years I have spent NOT being a mother.

When I found out I was pregnant, my first thought was “Oh my god, I have to RAISE a CHILD.” Not just grow and birth a baby, but actually raise it. My second thought was that I was replacing myself. That sounds dramatic, but hear me out.  I have spent my life being many things, sister, friend, girlfriend, student, downtrodden assistant, lawyer, wife. But first and foremost, I have always been a daughter. I have always been someone’s child, my mother’s child. And no matter what happens, or how much I grow up and pay taxes and do grown-up things, I am still my mother’s child. When we go home or my parents visit, there is still that subtle shifting of place that occurs, and we all fall into position. Whether I like it or not, my place, my label is “oldest daughter”.  No matter how grown up we get, my parents still let us act like their children. They pay for dinner. They let us pick the restaurant, where we want to sit, let us squabble and pout. In short, they put us first.

So once I had O, that sense of place doesn’t quite fit anymore. Because I have replaced myself, generation-wise. Before, it ended with me. Now, I am the in-between, the link between my parents and my child. Now I am not just a child, a daughter, but also a mother. The link is complete. What that means is that I don’t get the luxury of simply being my mother’s daughter anymore. When I return home, my mother still takes care of me, but now I am taking care of someone else.

I was at a family party this weekend.  My mom introduced me to a couple she had been talking with, with the words “And THIS is O’s mom!”  She obviously had been talking about O, as grandmothers do. But it was such a strange thing to hear “O’s mom”. It’s not because at 14 months in that I haven’t gotten used to having a baby. It’s not that I don’t feel like his mother. But that term, those words, I don’t think have been applied to me yet. It’s always “my baby”, or “A’s son”. This was the first time that it was applied to me through him and his identity, rather than as an extension of me. It brought back memories of when I was young, and our parents were simply those ever-present tall people that gave us our boundaries. So it was “Amanda’s mom” or “Heather’s mom”.  Never Donna or Nancy. As a kid, my only relation to them was how strict they were and how much they let us play. It didn’t occur to me that they were individuals, that they had personalities and lives outside of their children.

But what really struck me when I heard myself being identified as “O’s mom” was the immediate thought that I couldn’t possibly be someone’s mom because I would never be as good as my mom.  That I have now inherited the title, and the power and responsibility that goes with it. That I am now responsible for his life, not just his physical life, not just keeping him alive, but the harder stuff, the making-sure-he-grows-up-happy-and-well-adjusted-and-stays-out-of-prison-and-mental hospitals stuff. My second immediate thought was poor O, the part of “mother” was being played by me, the understudy. And he deserves the main star.

My mother is a tough act to follow. I’ve tried to write her letters, to tell her how much of an impact she’s had on my life, to tell her what an amazing mother she is, but I can never seem to write anything that actually conveys even a sliver of what I want to say. It’s like trying to capture water in your fist.

I can talk about how she always encouraged me, but never pushed me. How she let me lead the way and let me be my own person, without putting her own wishes and fears for herself onto me. She encouraged us to participate, to be joiners and a part of things, but always allowed us our own opinions and decisions. She gave us space to fail. She let us make mistakes, and she made sure we learned from our mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, she made it clear what she thought was right and wrong (smoking is tacky, good grades are a requirement, you should always try to brush your hair and put on some lipstick) but she let us find our way. She gave me my love of words and reading. She makes the best cherry pies and sugar cookies at Christmas, so much so that certain family members have been known to hide these items at Christmas parties so they might steal away with one at the end of the party.  She is funny and smart and beautiful and much, much kinder than I am. Though she did once have a cat put to sleep because he wouldn’t stop peeing in her closet. So kind, yeah, but don’t cross her.

But all of those things barely add up to any sort of true description of her. Besides, how can I possibly describe what makes a mother a mother? It’s the multitude of tiny things that she did and does every day, it’s the unseen and unfelt decisions that have shaped me, it’s well, everything. Because everything that she has done since having me has been about me (and my siblings).

And even if it hasn’t always been about us, that’s her genius. She makes us kids feel like we are her entire world. Now that I’m a mom, clearly I see that’s not true. She had a life before me, she has an internal life and relationships and worries and dreams that do not revolve around me. But she never let me know or feel that. Ever.

My mom always used to say that I couldn’t understand how much she loved us, that I wouldn’t understand a mother’s love for her children until I had my own. She was right and wrong about that. Yes, it took having a child to experience the depth and sweet pain that is a love for a child. Yes, once I had O I instantly understood what she meant. But she was wrong that I didn’t know how much she loves us. My mother’s love is a living, breathing thing. I can feel it in the room with us, even over the phone. My mother may have done many things that upset me or made me angry or that I didn’t understand, but I have never, ever doubted how much she loved me.

A few months ago, O and I were visiting my parents’ house. I was sick, with some form of bronchitis, the kind where you can’t sleep because lying down makes you cough, sitting up makes you cough, everything makes you cough. I was feeling especially lousy, but as everyone with kids knows, it doesn’t matter how badly you might feel, the kids keep on going. There is no “off” button, or even a “slow down” button. They don’t intuit that you need some down time. Being sick sucks, being sick with a toddler is it’s own kind of hell. But I was at my parents’ house, which made it all bearable. Because my mom is that kind of mom. She let me rest, let me sleep, bought me medicine, made me soup and grilled cheese. She scooped O up and took over, and I didn’t have to worry because I knew she would take care of him. Didn’t have to even feel guilty, because she’s my mom. It’s what she does.

And then O got sick too. A different kind of sick, almost worse, because he was in pain and scared and there wasn’t really anything we could do at first, as he was just constipated. It was the worst day I’ve had with him since the early newborn days.  He would be fine, playing and gurgling happily, banging things, grinning at me as I sprawled on the couch and tried to breathe without hurting.  Then all of a sudden, he’d get this confused, panicked look on his face and run over to me. I would instantly forget about whatever misery I was currently feeling, and lift him up and just hold him. He would scrunch up on me, hold on as tight as he could with his little hands, and just cry. This happened all day long. I was crying, O was crying, my mom was crying. There is absolutely nothing worse than your child being in pain and you not knowing how to fix it. Constipation is not something that I ever thought was that big of a deal, until you see how far it can go.

But through all of this, I remember thinking, it’s going to be okay. I can handle this, we can handle this, because my mom’s here. I wasn’t scared or worried like I would have been had I been on my own. My mom is one of those women that can be a bit scattered in her daily life, losing keys or her mobile phone. But when it matters, my mother has the take charge ability of a four star general. She is calm, she is decisive, she is in charge. She doesn’t get over anxious or excited, she doesn’t fret, she just has that instinct on how to make things better.

We spent the day, her taking care of me, me taking care of O, her stepping in to take care of O when I needed her too. A full cycle complete, mother to daughter, daughter to son. We did things to make O better I never thought I would do, but we did it with calm and assured professionalism. My mom, because that’s just who she is. Me, because like a good solider, I was just following her lead.  I have never been so happy to see poop in my life. My mom and I changed his diaper, and fell onto the couch, exhausted, victorious.

The thing is, I’m not my mother. I am not even close to being like her as a mother. I am more selfish and moody, more used to having things a certain way.  I am not patient or calm. I don’t know how to sew on buttons or debone a chicken. I don’t sing well, I don’t have her knack for walking into any place and immediately making it feel like a home. I inherited many things from her, many wonderful things, but I did not inherit her calm and easy personality.

But lucky for O, the one thing I’ve got going for me is that I’m a quick learner. And even if I’m not her, even if I will never be as mom-like as my mom, at least she’s my mom. Which means she’s O’s grandmother. Which means something’s got to trickle down. And what I’ve realized, in writing this, is that I am like her in one way, in the most important way. I love O with a capacity that is limitless. I love him so much it hurts when I really think about it. I love him so much that I know I have to let him grow up and be his own person and live a life without me. And no matter what I don’t have as a mom, no matter how many mistakes I make with O, the one thing that he will never ever doubt, is how much I love him. And with that as my foundation, I can’t go wrong. Besides, whenever I don’t know what to do, I can just call my mother.

So thank you Mom. Thank you, for All of It.

I’m off today, so instead of a full post, here is a list of some of my favorite books. Whenever someone asks me what my favorite books are, my mind goes blank and all I can think of is Flowers in The Attic (which was my favorite book in 7th grade). So here’s the beginning of a master list, which is not inclusive. I know I’m missing a ton of favorites, so feel free to comment and tell me what I’ve left out.

Happy Friday!

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Monsters of Templeton– Lauren Groff

Confessions of Max Tivoli– Andrew Sean Greer

Unaccustomed Earth– Jhumpa Lahiri

Evening– Susan Minot

Kissing in Manhattan– David Schickler

Pride & Prejudice– Jane Austen

The Talisman– Stephen King & Peter Straub

The Sun Also Rises– Ernest Hemingway

Middlesex– Jeffery Eugenides

The Keep– Jennifer Egan

The End of the Affair– Graham Greene

The Blind Assassin– Margaret Atwood

Atonement– Ian McEwan

Play It As It Lays– Joan Didion

Neverwhere– Neil Gaiman

Good Omens– Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. – Patti Smith

Balance. That mythical, unattainable nirvana. A word that gets thrown around with much abandon in Mommyland. There are many many things that you learn when you become a parent. You learn how to change diapers, how to survive on no sleep, how to successfully hold a baby and load the dishwasher/put on your shoes/feed the dog. You also learn a whole new language. Swaddling, colic, reflux, Bumbo, Boppy, Jumperoo vs. Exersaucer, attachment parenting, four month wakeful. Words that were foreign to me before O.

Then there are the mommy conversations. No matter what kind of parent you are, you will find yourself having these conversations, conversations you swore you wouldn’t have. Eavesdrop on any mom conversation, though, and what you are hearing is really a secret language. The shorthand is something like this:

“What’s his nap schedule?” Which means, can we be friends? Are our children on the same schedule so we can actually leave the house at the same time? And further, it’s a test. If you have NO nap schedule for your child, then that says something about you as a mother. And a nap nazi is probably not going to want to be friends with a mom that can be so unscheduled. Who knows what else goes on at that house?

“Is he walking/talking/feeding himself/banging his head against his crib yet”? This is the great equalizer conversation. It serves to let each mom know where in the spectrum of great genius their child is (aka walking early is a definite sign of potential Einstein status- never mind that all kids eventually walk and very few geniuses when accepting the Nobel Prize for Physics or Economics acknowledge their early walking). But it also is the way to know you aren’t alone, that your kid isn’t the only one doing weird things like trying to eat butt paste.

And then there is the balance conversation. Balance is the thing that we are all searching for, the word that means everything to every mom- it means peace, happiness, a world where schedules work and no one is tired and screaming and you don’t wake up everyday feeling like life is pulling you into a million directions. Most of all it means feeling no guilt. “Work-life balance” is the one you hear most often. But even stay at home moms struggle to find balance. Balance between being everything to your kids and still maintaining a small piece of yourself. Not letting your kids swallow you up whole. Balance is the thing that we as mothers are always searching for, and is never attained. A working mother can spit out the word “balance” like it’s the dirtiest word on George Carlin’s list.

“Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.” -Barbara De Angelis

A friend recently said to me “I don’t know how to do this. How to balance a child, a relationship, friends, and myself in the little two days I have to pack it all in.”

I of course have been feeling the same way. As a working mom, I horde little scraps of time and ration them out to the demanding and starving pieces of me. The loudest one gets immediate attention. So I am a mother, a wife, a lawyer, a co-worker, a boss, an employee, a writer, a friend, a daughter, a sister, and whichever little piece is starving the most gets fed. Oh and then there’s simply “me”, the me that needs quiet time that isn’t devoted to being any of those things above. Before marriage and kids, “me” got my full attention. It wasn’t hard to balance.

Now there is never enough time to feed those pieces. I was thinking about what my friend said this weekend and realized my life would be so much simpler if I stopped writing. Now that I am at home on Mondays and Fridays, I would have ample time to be a mother, to get my errands done, to be a good wife and sister and friend. I might even have time to get organized. And frankly, no one would care or even notice. The world at large would go on just as it is if I stopped writing.

I mentioned this to the Husband last night at dinner. We didn’t really talk about it, as we had O with us and he is in a “phase” right now where he is really happy until he’s not, and then he turns into a shrieking, melting puddle.  It was one of those perfect nights, the weather was warm but not hot, we put O in the stroller and walked over to a local restaurant. We have found that when O is in a difficult mood (i.e. refuses to nap in the afternoon and therefore has a meltdown when you do something like dare to close the dishwasher before he’s done playing), it is best to take him out of the house. No, not to torture other people, but he’s actually much better behaved and entertained around others. He’s quite the show-off and flirt, so put him in a restaurant and he’s in his natural habitat.

Anyways, so we’re at dinner, the Husband and I are taking turns. He feeds O some chicken or plaintains and I take a long drink of my cold cold beer. Then he grabs his margarita, while I distract O with some beans and guacamole. It’s a good system, but one that makes actual conversation difficult. I mention that my life would be a lot easier if I just quit writing for now.

The husband doesn’t really look at me, it’s his turn to feed O, but he casually says “And give up on your dream?”

And that’s that. I didn’t really intend to give up the writing. It’s the one thing that makes the least sense in my life right now- why would I pick the first year of my son’s life to focus on something so completely selfish, internal, and time-consuming, and one that has no guaranteed path to success? It is not a balanced, logical thing to do.

And yet. It is the one thing that makes me able to handle everything else. Well, my husband and nanny make it logistically possible for me to handle everything. But writing is the thing that feeds the “me” part, that despite it’s time suckage, actually replenishes me. I feel more grounded, less untethered after I write. I don’t feel pulled in a million directions, I don’t feel anxious or depressed or like there is something missing. I feel balanced.

I go home and I sit with my son and I watch him dance around with a bead necklace his dad and I got at a long ago Mardi Gras. The small square of plastic lights up and sings a Mardi Gras song, and he delights in pressing it over and over, and dancing around in circles. I don’t get impatient and long for him to do something else. We read the same book over and over and over, and I feel lucky to get these moments with him.

Karen Maezen Miller, author of Momma Zen: Walking The Crooked Path of Motherhood (among others) and the fantastic blog Cheerio Road, discusses balance. A lot. A friend gave me her book when I was on maternity leave, and it was as if I was drowning and someone showed me a way to breathe underwater. I was stumbling and sleep-deprived and felt completely lost and helpless in my new role. I especially felt as if I was the only one who wasn’t feeling like this was the most magical time of my life. I opened Miller’s book and the very first chapter she admits the same. And Miller is a practicing Buddhist!

Miller talks about being in the moment and focusing on what is in front of you as a way to find balance. If you are doing the laundry, do the laundry. Nothing else. If you are working, work. If you are watching your child play, watch your child play. It’s called being in the moment and it’s damn difficult.

But for me, after spending an hour or two writing, this isn’t that difficult. Writing pushes away all of those selfish thoughts the former “me” has, or better yet, it lets them breathe. It gives my inner pieces a voice. And then I can just let them go and be. Be a mother, be a wife.

For me, writing, even though it tips the crazy scale of logic, is the thing that makes me feel the most balanced. Balance, like everything, is relative.

“Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats”- Ralph Waldo Emerson

And leave it to a poet to sum it up so beautifully and weirdly. Balance is not just juggling your life. It’s the thing that allows us to appreciate and recognize the extraordinary. Without rainy days, sunshine is monotonous. Without sadness, happiness is taken for granted. Without rats, how can we recognize the majesty of giraffes?

I’ve got a confession to make…

Though I love to read and read all the time, I have read very little “great” literature for an aspiring writer. I often have ten books on my bedside table and start and read three or four simultaneously.  Usually a “good” novel (by which I mean “literary” and well-reviewed), a collection of short stories, and then a book. By “book” I mean the one that I really want to read. Notice the discrepancy. And when it’s been a long day, full of work and phone calls and a screeching baby, guess which one wins out? I mean, who comes home from work and says, “I am dying to get into a bubble bath with my Reese’s Peanut Butter cups and get lost in Finnegan’s Wake?” Hint: not me.

I have noticed a division in the types of responses I get when discussing books based on whether I am talking to a “normal person” or an “aspiring writer”. I say “aspiring” because it’s not like I talk to Margaret Atwood or Jennifer Egan on a regular basis. Or ever at all.  The only writers I know right now are like me, wishing and hoping and scribbling.

So ask a “normal” person what they are reading, and most will happily rattle off a list, without any thought at all. “Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, Jennifer Weiner, Emily Giffin, James Patterson.”  No embarrasment, no qualifying.

Now ask an aspiring writer the same question. You’ll either get “I’m deep into the new Salman Rushdie/Jonathan Franzen/Philip Roth” or “Oh, I’m just re-reading Paradise Lost for the 13th time, I just adore Dante”. You might, might get “Well, I’m reading a few books right now, Franzen’s new book and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But I’m only reading the last one to see what all the fuss is about, it’s not normally the kind of thing I read, and honestly, it’s pretty terrible.”  And don’t even mention Stephen King or any other “bestseller” because you will get an eye roll and something along the lines of how King isn’t “what I would consider a real writer.”

I admit that I can sometimes fall into the latter category. With both books and music, I feel a need to prove that I have taste. If I am buying something that is considered popular or cheesy, then I feel the need to also purchase something of quality, to prove that I have a range. Because you know the store clerk at Borders or Waterloo Records is totally judging you. So if I buy Justin Timberlake, I feel compelled to also buy Ray Davies or Jeff Beck or Tool. Or if I buy the latest Emily Giffin, I also make sure to pick up a copy of some stellar short stories by Antonya Nelson or Tobias Wolff.  Pathetic on my part. But no more. Today I’m making my stand, standing up for good stories.

“Hello, my name is A—–, and I like Stephen King.” There, I said it.

I simply cannot believe that every person in my writing classes only read Proust and Joyce, and that they never read what I would call an actual good story. There is no way that one can truly enjoy Joyce’s books as stories. You might appreciate his writing, you might marvel in the context and his inventiveness, but you cannot tell me that you stay up late because you simply couldn’t put the book down.

Now that I live in Mommyland, I don’t have the luxury of time that I used to. So if I’m going to read something, it better be good. And I don’t just mean pretty writing. To me, a great book is one that is written well, that has developed its characters, AND that is telling a good story. Yes, it should make you think and be compelling and have something to say. But at the end of it, if you don’t have a great story, if I can put your book down, if I struggle to get through a chapter because I’m bored, then I’m sorry, it isn’t a great book. It may be beautifully written. It may be the novel that holds a mirror up to our generation. It may change the art form of novel writing. It may win every award. But if it doesn’t also have great characters and a compelling story, then it’s not a great book. To me.

So I am challenging myself to read a few classics here and there. I’m going to edumacate myself, so to speak. I’ve never read Wuthering Heights so that is first on my list.

My criteria for judging these books is simple: Does it hold up? Is it a good story? I have no context to Wuthering Heights. I never studied it in school, so I don’t know why it’s supposed to be a classic. All I know is that Heathcliff and Cathy are supposedly two of the most passionate and romantic characters in literature.

Initial Thoughts:

1. There is a lot of ejaculating going on at Wuthering Heights. The word “ejaculate” has been used an impressive number of times already and I’m only on pg. 82 As I don’t think Emily Bronte was attempting to write an erotic novel, I looked it up and it’s what I assumed. Turns out “ejaculate” also means “to utter suddenly and vehemently”.

2. Dialect- I have always been told to be careful with writing dialect phonetically. Well apparently, Wuthering Heights is the reason. There is a character named Joseph. I’m not sure what he does, but he is very religious. That’s about all I am ever going to know about him, because I’ve started skipping the paragraphs when he speaks. Sorry. Actually, no apologies. I can’t understand him. Don’t believe me? Here’s an example.

“They’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll nut open ‘t an ye mak yer flaysome dins till neeght”.

Yes, if you take your time, you can figure out what he’s saying. But imagine whole paragraphs of that. I’ve found it doesn’t matter. You can completely cut out all of his dialogue and it changes nothing.

3. Point of View- The first chapter or so is told from the POV of a rather annoying character, a Mr. Lockwood. As I’ve been told that WH is a great book, I kept going, though to be honest, if I had just picked this book up without knowing anything about it, I probably would have stopped reading by now. Even in the early chapters, there is something about Cathy and Heathcliff that I want to know, want to get closer to them and hear their story. This Lockwood guy is like the annoying person at a dinner party who is seated to your left and keeps ranting on in your ear, while an utterly fabulous and interesting couple is seated to your right and they are having the conversation you want to be having. So you keep trying to end the conversation with Lockwood, without trying to be rude, while at the same time trying to hear what the fab couple is saying.  As a writer, I am wondering why this POV? Why Lockwoood? Why not just give us Cathy and Heathcliff?

4. POV again- Now Lockwood has smartly asked Mrs. Dean, a gossipy house-keeper, to fill him in on Cathy and Heathcliff. Now the POV switches and Mrs. Dean is telling us all about Cathy and Heathcliff as young children. Now we’re getting somewhere. Now I am thinking this POV works, and even might be more effective, because it is keeping our glam couple, Cathy and Heathcliff, just out of reach. We are hearing about them, and are getting tidbits of gossip, yet not really knowing what they are thinking, so we want more. It’s like meeting Brad and Angie’s nanny.

I’ll write my “review” of WH when I finish. So far, I’m enjoying it. I am not staying up late because I can’t bear to put it down, but I’m definitely intrigued and want to know what happens next.

Have a great weekend. And if you’re a closet best-seller lover like me, stand proud.

I feel shattered today, come undone by a death I learned about on Facebook, about someone I do not know. This person’s tragedy has no direct impact on my life, I am not stricken with her loss, and yet, I find myself feeling her impact today, find myself with a tiny hole in my being, a hole that is filled with sadness and despair and questions. I can only imagine how big that hole must be for her family and friends.

This lovely woman and I went to law school together. I don’t remember her, but she was in my husband’s classes. She graduated and did what I wished I had the guts to do- she fought the good fight and was a criminal defense attorney, specializing in capital punishment. She fought hard for those that had no hope left, who were living on borrowed time. She was beautiful. She had a husband and a 5 month old baby. And she took her own life, allegedly because of post-partum depression.

Part of me feels wrong even writing about this. It’s not my story, it’s not my grief, it’s not my loss. Who am I to talk about her? I feel a bit as if I’m stealing her family’s grief to talk about how if affects me, as if how it affects me means anything. And yet. I am haunted by this story, haunted by the turn of events, haunted by the little girl she left behind, and haunted by the fear that this could be me.

Last night after I read about her death I felt raw and opened up. I kept looking at my little boy in the monitor, still and sweet in sleep. I had to grip the sides of the couch and focus on the TV show we were watching to stop myself from running in there and gathering him up in my arms and holding on. He so innocently slept, counting on me to love him, to support him, to feed him and let him grow, but most of all, just to be there. My most important job is to never leave him, never let him feel abandoned.

And I can’t bear the pain that fills me up when I think of how lost she must have been, to be able to leave her little girl like that. HOW can that be possible? I think I can imagine being so far removed from reality that life seems too painful. I have been depressed before, I know about the inability to connect to even the smallest things in your life that once came so effortlessly, the feeling of walking outside of your life and your skin, to always be watching yourself from afar and to just not care about anything. What once gave you joy, gives you nothing. It’s like being a walking zombie. You try to eat and sleep and laugh, but it’s all from rote memory, the only reason you are able to make the motions is because your body has done them before. There is nothing of you behind it. You aren’t there.

But what I can’t get to is how even if your life is full of pain and nothingness, there is still a little one there, a little one that counts on your existence. I get how ending it might end your suffering, but as a mother, I cannot get to how you don’t know that taking your own life is abandoning your child. I cannot get to how she could do that, how she could feel the love that a mother feels and then leave them.

And yet. There is a persistent little tapping in my brain as I write those words. An impish little thing that doesn’t let me keep my own thoughts, that constantly insists on pointing out that which I would rather not remember. She reminds me of cruel things I’ve done, or embarrassing things, or immature things. She remembers everything and she lets nothing go. So my little imp is tapping tapping tapping and what she wants me to remember is this.

That the way I feel now about my son is not how I’ve always felt. That I had many days and nights of darkness in the first few months of his life, regardless of the fact that it was August and bright and shiny outside. Inside, it was dark, always dark and heavy. I grasped at the small moments of sunshine I could feel. I knew they were there, yet I couldn’t always feel them. I don’t think I suffered from post partum depression, but I’m not a doctor. I didn’t want to harm myself or my son, I knew that things would get easier and better, I knew that he wouldn’t always be so needy and that I wouldn’t always cry everyday. But the thing that the little imp keeps trying to remind me of , the thing that makes me understand what I don’t want to understand just a little is that I didn’t feel overwhelming love for my son in those first few weeks. He felt like a stranger.

It’s strange because I did feel love for him, I did feel an instant and overwhelming urge to protect him and feed him and keep him safe. But it felt like I had rescued a hurt little animal and my job was to keep it alive. But he didn’t feel like mine, I didn’t feel like I knew him or that he needed ME, in my uniqueness, he just needed the person that played his mom. It’s hard to explain that to people, especially moms that I know that felt instantly and sappily head over heels the minute they met their babies.

I waited for that. I wanted that. I didn’t get it. He was a strange little alien that just required my milk. It took me awhile to love him for himself and not just because he was my baby. And I don’t think I’m that abnormal. I don’t think I’m the only one that took awhile to get to know their baby, to get to the place I’m in now.

Because now, I can’t imagine what filled me up before I had him. Now I look at him and I know him, I recognize him, he is exactly who I thought my son would be. I can’t imagine having any other baby or little man in my life. He fills me up when I am empty, he is the thing that creates my energy and my courage and my purpose. Before I was doing it for me. Now I am doing it for him and it’s so much sweeter. I looked at him, sleeping in the monitor last night, and it felt like the love that I held for him inside swelled so much that I wasn’t sure that my body would contain it. It almost hurt, but it is an exquisite pain, a pain that I will gladly feel every day if in return I get the joy of watching him laugh and grow and become a little person.

Which brings me back to this woman. While part of me cannot fathom how she could leave a 5 month old baby, part of me wonders if she just didn’t feel that connection either, yet. If she felt that her baby didn’t need her but just needed love. And if she was so exhausted fighting this nameless darkness that she felt she didn’t have any love to give. And so she gave up.

The website dedicated to her contains the sermon given at her memorial service. It is one of the most honest, painful, and beautifully written sermons I have ever read. The pastor said something that resonates so clearly that even the imp has to stop tapping and sit in wonder.

“Life is delicate.  The human heart and mind and body are fragile.  Like Jesus, (she) has proven to be an utterly precious being, but one terribly vulnerable to the power of darkness.  So too are we all.  We—you and I—escape one day into the next bourn along by the illusion of our intelligence and our forcefulness and our presence of mind, but we are vulnerable to our darkness…”

And that’s what it is, that’s what stuns us. Because when we hear of these things, when we hear of Andrea Yates drowning her children, or of other horrors, we think how terrible and how sad. But we also think that we, we would never do that, because we are too intelligent and strong and aware of such things. We use our intelligence and our reason like a shield, so sure that our brains could never turn against us.

And that is the fallacy. New motherhood is wondrous and amazing and life-changing and bigger than anything I’ve ever experienced. But it also can take over, take over your mind and your body and put you in a place you’ve never been. Since being a new mom, I’ve noticed most moms feel forced to put on this perfect face, to only allow to the world the amazing and beautiful part. They never admit to how hard it is, how numbing and overwhelming and identity-stealing it can be. So I make an effort, to always talk about the hard times as well as the good. Because we as women have to be able to get help if we need it. We have to be able to name the darkness if we are going to conquer it. This is real and we can’t afford to lose any more mothers. So please. Be honest with your experiences.

I was talking to one of my closest friends recently, who is pregnant with her second child. She was talking to me about some anxiety she was having, about losing her first child or something happening to her second. I am so grateful she feels okay to talk to me about this stuff, because it’s so normal. Being pregnant heightens everything. And what I think is this:

Once you are a mother, your capacity for love grows infinitely. Which means our capacity for loss is so much greater. We have gained the world in our children, but we stand to lose the world if we lose them. The thought of that is more than we can bear. It’s normal to fear losing that which is your world.

I have no answers. I have typed these words, but I feel I have no words, no real words for this. I can only pray that while our intelligence and our forcefulness are never shields against the darkness, that our love can be.

We’ve had a few firsts over here in Mommyland. O had his first haircut and we got him baptized. He is pretty much running everywhere and is much more aware of the world around him, the actions/reactions of people and things, what things are. I am starting to be careful of what I say. Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t about to utter a curse word. But he’s now on the same level as my dog. In addition to not being able to say “walk” out loud, I now cannot say “milk”, “phone” or “I-Pad” out loud without O immediately screeching for those things.

Yes, I said I-Pad. He is obsessed. My one year old can not only unlock the thing, but he can find his apps, correctly “play” the games, and turn the pages. He also knows where we keep it and often toddles over to it and reaches his little hands up and screeches for it. His dad is excited and thinks this means he will be a gamer. I am a bit worried about what it means for a one year old to be so immersed in technology already. But I fear I’m fighting a losing battle. Though I admit that having one on a plane ride with a toddler is GENIUS. They should have I-Pad commercials showing all the little hellions on planes sweet and silent and captivated by their I-Pads.

I often hear other moms say that they miss having a baby and where did their baby go? I understand the sentiment- I’m amazed at how much O can do. But I don’t wish for his babyness back. Partly because I found it really difficult and partly because I am really enjoying this time with him. I tend to be impatient, but I find with O I am actually able to just enjoy the moments. I don’t wish for him to be a baby again, and I don’t wish for him to be bigger. I love watching him just where he is.

We decided to have O baptized out in California. There is a beautiful glass chapel in Palos Verdes called The Wayfarer’s Chapel. It is on a bluff overlooking the ocean and is a simple, but stunning building. It was built by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son and is a one-room structure. The walls are glass and the trees and foilage surround and are entwined, so that while inside the church, you feel almost as if you are outside. It is a very peaceful and wondrous place. We called and they happily agreed to baptize O (for a small donation). The Wayfarer’s is officially a Swedenborgian church. They don’t baptize into their religion, but into the Christian faith in general. This sounded good to me, so we signed up.

During the ceremony, the pastor said something that I think about all the time. He said that though O was obviously developing his own little personality (obviously because O performed and laughed and flirted with the audience during the entire ceremony), it still wasn’t clear WHO O would be. What his strengths will be, what he will be passionate about, what will come easy for him, what difficulties and hardships he will face, what his life will hold for him.

I watch this sweet little boy who looks at the world as an absolute treasure right now, every nook and cranny and book and doorknob is a marvel and something to twist and turn and explore and laugh at. There is nothing that mars his memory or existence yet. He has not learned he can’t do something yet, he doesn’t know that people can be cruel, that life can be boring, that his parents aren’t perfect, that not everything will always be such a marvel. Someday, and soon, that doorknob will just be a doorknob.

And to be honest, that boy-to-be scares me a little bit. Right now it’s so easy to be his mother, so easy to make his world happy and right, so easy to be the hero. Someday soon, it won’t be so easy to be a mother. I won’t always be able to make everything right. He will learn that life is not always fair. And he will learn that not even his mother can always be a hero and wish away his unhappiness.

There is a small church in downtown that I drive by every morning on my way to work. It has one of those signs with the black letters that can be changed.  For more than a year, everyday during my pregnancy, the letters said the same thing:

“I will go before thee and make the crooked path straight.”- Isiah, 45:2.

Everyday I would drive to work, my decaf coffee in my hand, listening to NPR, and I would see those words and smile to myself, knowingly. It was as if the words were speaking to me directly. You are a mother now, they were saying. It is your job to protect and clear the way for your baby. And I felt like I understood the meaning of those words for the first time, actually felt the mother’s instinct to protect. And it felt good.

I watch O and I think about those words. They popped into my head when he began to crawl, and then walk. And I realized I was wrong. My job as his mother is not to make his crooked path straight. My job is to love him and give him the confidence and the skills to navigate that crooked path and navigate it well.

What makes a person strong, what makes a person interesting, is how they walk their crooked path. If his path is always straight and easy, what will he learn? If I do everything for him and clear his path of heartache and struggle, then how will he know what to do when he is inevitably facing those struggles alone?

This is the hard part of being a parent. Letting him fall. Letting him have his heart broken. Letting him learn about forgiveness and strength and doing the right thing. Our instincts are to protect our children from these things. But what kind of adults does that make them?

I think of my first broken heart. I think of mistakes I’ve made, big mistakes. I think of what I learned when I fell down, when I chose the wrong path, when I trusted the wrong person. I wouldn’t be who I am today without those experiences. I wouldn’t be a writer if I had never experienced heartbreak. I wouldn’t know the value of telling the truth if I hadn’t learned the hard way how terrible it is to lose someone’s trust. I wouldn’t have empathy for someone who feels left out if I had never felt left out.

Of course, my heart will break the first time my son comes home crying because someone called him a name, or didn’t invite him to a birthday party. And I will want to rip the hair out of some saucy girl that will decide that O isn’t good enough for her. But. I hope I remember that these things are there to teach him, to show him how to grow up, how to treat people, and how to one day be a man.

I hope I have the strength to let O fall, to let him have a heartbreak, to let him find his own crooked path. And all I can do is make sure that he knows that I’m there, right beside him, the whole way. So when he does fall, there will always be someone to pick him up, tell him he’s okay, and encourage him to keep going.