A day off

March came in a like a stress lion for me; daily I found myself struggling to catch my breath and promising myself that things would settle soon, that I’d find time for a yoga class, that I’d stop hating myself for forgetting simple things.

When I found out family would be in town last Saturday, I called it: a day off. Even reserving it a month in advance does little to stem the mom guilt, that suffocation I feel whenever I leave my house without my girl. Mom guilt is the worst part of motherhood but the good news it it’s fleeting; by the time I picked up a coffee at a local bakery, I’d mostly moved on. I was ready for a day of nothing.

Nothing always begins with yoga. I tagged along to my sister’s favorite class, deep in Park Slope, a hefty hike away in the rain. I had taken a class the previous weekend, but it was at the Y, and it was restorative, which is basically an hour-long nap in various positions, so let’s not pretend that counted as any real workout. This, though, was a real class, one where my legs and shoulders burned and I panted. My head cleared. Poof. Namaste-urday.

Nothing continued with leftover pizza and magazine reading in my sister’s cozy apartment. She had work to do so, still in the rain, I left and found a coffee shop and enjoyed a latte and a croissant and a solitary hour with my laptop and no wifi, and got some writing done.

That is a midday treat, my friends.

In said coffee shop I saw a poster for "A Streetcar Named Desire" starring Gillian Anderson and coming to Brooklyn in just a few weeks. I texted a picture to my mom and sisters; last summer, I’d bought us all tickets for that very show and wrote about how it was one of the first times post-baby I’d said yes to future plans.

By mid afternoon, I felt fully restored. Also, my mom guilt had come roaring back. Sometimes it feels like it’s fine to leave my kid if I have actual things to do – work, of course, or a weekend vacation with friends, or a specific event. But when it’s just a Saturday in Brooklyn in the rain, when you’re just looking for something to fill the remaining hours, well…it starts to feel excessive.

It was time to go home.

Also, I couldn't stop playing peek-a-boo with the baby in the cafe.

Like the song

It's hard to dream of coziness when it's sixty degrees out, when you still wake up with allergies and go to sleep with the windows open. Where is my winter?

I will tell you where: lost in a bed, under rumpled covers and tattered copies of old Harry Potter paperbacks. December has clobbered me with two illnesses, for three weeks in a row now. I am forgetting what the holidays look like. How they feel. 

Our tree is up, at least. And when we put the baby to bed and turn off all the house lights (I like a dark house at night) the soft white of it sets a mood. I listen to Christmas music at work. Once, last week, I passed a pair of white ice skates out on the curb; a vintage holiday calling card. 

I don't want December to fly by like the rest of the months do. I want it slow and meandering, dark and frigid. Long like the song. My girl walks now. Communicates. I want her to remember this month as the one where everything changed for her, where things became possible. 

I wish you and yours a season of peace and light and joy. 

My baby turns one this week. I'm only just beginning to come out from under the wonderment. 

I have a baby, I have to remind myself still, sometimes. I have a baby who is my buddy, who grips me fiercely with one hand while she walks around our house, who leans in and collapses into me when she's sleepy. I have a baby who has two teeth on the bottom and four teeth on the top; who scrunches up her nose when she smiles. I have a baby with eyes that gleam a dark navy, that fill with tears when she accidentally bumps her forehead into my mouth, leaving a tooth-shaped bruise like a third eye. 

Because it's important to be honest about parenthood, I confess: In the beginning I thought Please go quickly. Let the days be fast and furious. Let me fast forward to this day, when she is one, when I won't have to wonder what she wants and why she's crying. Let me zip through 365 days. An entire Rent song. 

Well. It did. And I am sorry about that. And part of me wishes for one early day to be dropped into now so I can relive it. Because I think I'd do it all differently. I think I'd appreciate it more.

I try not to be secretive about the fact that I think I did those first few months all wrong. That I handled things poorly. But I also try to be gentle with myself, because what is the point of all that regret? I did the best I could, those early days. I'll do better next time. 

One year ago today I went into labor, waking up before sunrise, wondering what that sensation was that was causing a low-grade, dull pain to spread across my back. It took me hours to realize this was it, this was labor. It was all happening. 

What's funny is, now I know that it's always all happening when you have a little one. Every day, something is happening. A new facial expression, a new sound. A new ability, a new love. 

August anchoring

I am over summer. August feels heavy and long and slow; my office is empty, the park on weekends is empty; there are open parking spots on my block smack in the middle of a Saturday. I used to be one of those people who left during the summers. Pre-husband, pre-baby, I'd pack a light bag and be off from Friday night to Monday morning. My parents' pool; my grandmother's house on the beach; a weekend share in Fire Island with friends. Weeks in San Francisco, in London. Lying in the sun, the radio humming in the background, watching the dragonflies land on still water, daydreaming.

Someone said that summer ends on the 4th of July and I hate that that's true. Summer is mostly about anticipation, now. The bathing suit shopping and the beach house coordinating and the flip flop purchasing and the summer reading lists. By now, we've all already read or discarded our summer reading. We've moved on to fall releases.

So August is a murky in-between, and we all know I have never been good with in-betweens.

Every year, to anchor myself in the month, I start planning for fall. Soon we'll take an autumn anniversary trip -- the first time I'll spend a night away from my baby. (Gulp.) Soon we'll send out invitations for our girl's first birthday party. Soon I'll be buying a fancy dress for a dear friend's black-tie wedding; soon I'll be visiting open houses. Soon it will be Christmas and a new year and a whole new winter, where I'll start planning for summer.

We are all fine

My note to moms.

Spring

Something happens to me in the springtime. I get giddy; I get dreamy. I read other people’s tweets, their links to their work, their self promotions, and I think about all that’s possible, all that’s ahead. I want to do everything. I can do anything. Can’t you smell it in the wind? This week I burst into tears when I watched a slow-motion video of my baby girl laughing. Throughout the days now my husband, the reluctant texter, sends me photos and gifs and updates on our girl, on their days together. They teach me things. I study my girl's expressions intently when I’m taking a pump break in the basement of my office, in a sterile room that so many other women have used. I bring my laptop with me each time, ostensibly to get some work done, but mostly I find myself swiping my phone back and forth, up and down, staring at her. Thinking, wishing.

There are the dreams you have before you have a baby and the realizations you have after you have a baby and sometimes they don’t match. Sometimes, things you want have to be placed in a temporary hold because other things are more important right now. This spring, I am reading other people’s work and I am thinking, “I should write about this, and that, and pitch it here, and there” but then I remember the reality of my days right now. They are packed. They are rushed. I wake up bone-tired but alert, always alert, always listening for my baby’s cry and her breathing, always reading and intuiting her needs. I play with her and read to her and then I go to work and try to cram everything in. Where I used to have ten hours, I now have eight. Where I used to have unlimited time, I now have limits.

The world feels very much on Pause for me right now in all aspects except one, the most important one, which isn’t on Pause after all but instead is very much on Fast Forward. My girl is sitting up. She is teasing me, playing games with me. She is testing me. She is growing at such an alarming rate that all I can do is watch and marvel, and point out the flowers that are blooming.

Summer rentals

We lived in a pink house that summer. The top floor of a two-story rental, the deck was so rickety we would have "deck counts" every time we had company over. I'd open the screen door and ask, how many of you are out here? and then listen for the numbers echoing back in the starlight. Five was the limit, and even that was pushing it. We laughed and rolled our eyes at our paranoia, but at the end of that summer, the deck of a similar house up the island collapsed, so the risk was real. (A decade later I'd meet a friend who actually did experience a collapsing deck, this one at her college rental house in Michigan. She broke her leg. A newspaper article about it is still her first hit on Google.)

We were 19 and 21; carefree workhorses; young enough to work two jobs each day -- 10am to 4pm, then 4:30pm to close at another place -- and still find time for parties and bars and midnight beach gatherings. I eschewed the sun that year, for some reason; white as a ghost, I'd sneer at the tourists with their tan lines as I rang up their tee shirts and jewelry, their island trinkets. I was jealous, though. What good was living in a pink house on the beach if I was always stuck inside working?

I've never been a fan of springtime, but now I am craving the warmth and the light. Today, though, is gloomy. When my baby and I walked through the house on our regular morning routine she didn't have to squint her eyes when I pulled back the curtain and opened the blinds; the moon was still out and the sun was filtered through too many clouds. She looked confused. Where was the brightness? Was it really daytime? I kissed her plump face -- cheeks for days, that girl -- and assured her it was.

The pink house is gone now. A few years back they finally knocked it down, rebuilt it, like so many things on the island after Hurricane Sandy. Someday I'll walk my little girl past it. The sun will be on our backs, pounding, prodding us along the street. We'll be holding hands and squinting at the brightness. Look, I'll tell her. Mama lived there for a summer, just one, and managed to not collapse.

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Tick-tock

Today is my first day back at work full-time, after a transition period of part-time work. I like working, and I like my work, and I've always gotten immense satisfaction from leaving my house each day and entering a building full of people with  purpose. But there are Feelings today. Way back on a cold afternoon in January, when my husband and I could only get our girl to sleep if we took her for a walk (ask me anything about the streets of Park Slope, I know them by heart), we began talking about my return to work. I started crying, even then, even knowing that I wanted to go back, that being a full-time caregiver is not for me. Even knowing that it was far away. Because the thing is, this whole parenting-while-working thing is a lose-lose and a win-win situation at the same time. I lose whether I stay home or go back to work. But I win, too, just in different ways. And the struggle is figuring out which ways are more important. More pressing. More long-lasting.

There are Feelings, too, about time. Having a baby makes the passage of time very real. Time is counted now in a way it wasn't before -- how many weeks is she? How many weeks until this milestone happens, or until we have to look out for that? Before my maternity leave, the reality of it felt distant, surreal. I couldn't even picture the springtime. Now, poof, it's over*; I am here at work wearing flats and lightweight jackets. I am here, walking past tulips and waiting for drizzle. Spring is springing, and I am back at work, and I'm sad. Not about working, but because it means time has passed. And it's just going to keep passing.

Maybe this is a treatise on our mortality. I don't know. I just know that I see infinity in my gorgeous girl's eyes. I just know that I love her and I want to spend all day with her. I just know that I love her and I don't want to spend all day with her; I'm not cut from that cloth. I love her and I don't want to spend all day with her and I don't want to feel guilty for that, but I do. And what a waste of emotion and time, two things that I'm always already nearly tapped out of.

*Only it wasn't poof. Not really. My maternity leave has been equal parts exhausting, difficult, loving, calming. (All within the same hour, usually.) In the early days of parenthood when I hated it all (sorry/not sorry) I would count on that passage of time; telling myself it would fly by is what got me through some nights. #RealTalk 

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Space and noise

My mother has begun telling me how gentle I am, how quiet. When I tap my iPad, even. When I speak, when I close kitchen cabinets. I start to take notice. It turns out I've even been saving the unloading of the dishwasher for nighttime, when I can see how quiet I can be, like it's some kind of personal goal. When I watch TV I keep the volume low, so low even I sometimes have trouble hearing it. I mute commercials. Daytimes are fine, but when the sun sets noises seem to multiply. I speak in a hush starting at 7pm. I sit on my couch, baby asleep in her nearby room, and keep the remote close, finger poised over the volume button.

We are very close here in my Brooklyn apartment, and something about that closeness makes me shrink up and drop to a whisper. There are three bedrooms here but they are small, and that is being generous. I watch House Hunters and cringe at the greedy needs of the homebuyers who decline entire houses because their walk-in closets are too cramped. I think back to Sri Lanka, where I helped build a house for an entire family. They were thrilled to be getting two rooms to share between them, to be getting one bed.

I've been pondering space lately. What we need, what we deserve. Whether. I love this city but in my long park walks with the baby I breathe in the wide roads, the stretches of snow-covered fields, the frozen lake, the geese. My lungs expand there in ways they can't just a few blocks over, where the brownstones block the wind.

Last week I visited my sister's new house and got turned around coming out of her master suite. For real. Then I put the baby to bed in the guest room (a guest room!) and even downstairs kept my voice low. "You can talk at normal volume," everyone reminded me. But I kept forgetting. Normal volume, to me, has changed.

Mirror/lines

I've begun noticing in earnest the lines around my eyes. Before, spotting them was a sign: of fatigue, of dehydration, of too many martinis, too much dancing. After a power nap, a Gatorade, they dissolved. Now they're permanent; part of the angles of my face. They out me as a 30-something. They, more than any other part of my body, remind me that time moves quickly. That time is running out. I have fallen in love with them.

In the mornings I take baby girl around the apartment to say hello to each room. Hello, kitchen. Hello, living room. Hello, office. Hello, daddy's books, and mommy's, and hello to g-mom, my baby's late great grandmother, her laughing face in a frame on a shelf. Our final stop is always the hallway mirror, where we say hello to the pretty baby and her mommy.

Looking in a mirror while I hold my baby is when I feel most like a parent, when it hits me that I have done this Thing that cannot be undone. I have built a person. We look back at ourselves and smile. The weight of her sits in the crook of my neck, in my elbow, while we make silly faces and nuzzle each other like horses, like puppies, her body still warm from sleep.

In that mirror where I stick my tongue out at my baby I spot those lines around my eyes and wait for that sinking feeling, the one where I feel bad about getting older, about not using enough eye cream, about being a feminist who cares whether I have lines.

Today that feeling didn't come. Instead, I smiled at my lines. Like my baby, they're mine. I built those, too.

On Instagram, later, I scrolled past a photo of a celebrity, an actress my age. She has those lines and she is radiant, with her white hair and red lips and floundering career. So what. She has lines, and so do I, and you probably do too, and lines means we're living. Lines mean we've laughed more often than not.

The privilege of reading

Last night we put our baby in her crib for the first time. She cried for five minutes and then dropped right off to sleep. We thought we got off easy, but then she woke up an hour later, cried for 38 minutes* (yes, we counted), and then seemed to look directly at the monitor to give us a Look. After a few minutes, she closed her eyes and slept. She slept from 9pm to 5:45am straight, which means--if this trend continues--my husband and I have been given the gift of time.

With all that glorious time, I started thinking about what I should do with it. Not surprisingly, one of the first things that I had to set aside when I had a baby was reading. I knew it was a temporary break, but it was a break nonetheless. (I keep joking that I'm mostly excited about going back to work in February because I'll have an hour of commute time...think of all I can read during that hour!) And I miss those worlds I used to visit. I miss the artfully arranged words, the universal truths, the racing action.

We all know books are a privilege, of course, and entire organizations are dedicated to helping underserved kids snatch some scraps of that privilege. (Like First Book, and Reach Out and Read, and Reading is Fundamental, in case you've got out your checkbook for end-of-year donations). But I started thinking about how reading itself is a privilege. Because, for most people, being able to read for pleasure means you have leisure time. It means you're not working a second or third job during your off hours; it means you're not taking care of someone or something. There might be chores to do or errands to run, but if you're reading, chances are they're not urgent.

I'm staying in this New Year's Eve. My husband and I will put our gorgeous baby to bed and then have a crab cake feast, shipped from Maryland, and finally open that mead we bought on our honeymoon. My sister will be stopping by on her way to a party to lend me her ereader, which is shored up with books she's assured me I'll love. And while I don't know when or if I'll ever get to all of them, I know I will have some time in 2015 to read some things for pleasure. And for that I am so, so grateful.

Happy New Year--I hope it's filled with things you're grateful for too, whether it's books or time or perfect babies or something else entirely.

* We practiced a version of sleep training recommended by our pediatrician. 

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My year in books (2014)

Ah, books. I remember those...I think. So I began logging the books I've read last year and, amazingly, stuck with it this year, too. That's the good news! The bad news is, since having a baby in October, I have read exactly one book (and, cough, I haven't even finished it yet). So when I began tallying this year's booklist I expected it to be much shorter than last year's, which clocked in at 34. But surprise! I hit 33 books this year!

Another interesting thing about this year was the Amazon issue. I mostly read on a Kindle and stopped purchasing ebooks from Amazon in the spring due to their shady activities with publishers. That changed my reading plans quite a bit! So I got a library card and made do, but there are definitely books on this list that might not have otherwise been on it had the Amazon shenanigans not happened.

Anyway, here's the breakdown: 11 Adult titles, 13 Young Adult titles, 5 Middle Grade titles, and 3 nonfiction titles. Here's the full list:

After the Red Rain, Barry Lyga, Peter Facinelli, and Rob DeFranco

Shug, Jenny Han

Counting by 7s, Holly Goldberg Sloan

A Snicker of Magic, Natalie Lloyd

Gutbliss, Dr. Robynne Chutkan

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

We Were Liars, E. Lockhart

Expecting Better, Emily Oster

Blythewood, Carol Goodman

The Last Summer of the Camperdowns, Elizabeth Kelly

Second Chance Summer, Morgan Matson

Likeable Business, Dave Kerpen, Theresa Braun, Valerie Pritchard

Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham

Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead

Family Tree series, #2 & #3, Ann M. Martin

Astonish Me, Maggie Shipstead

To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Jenny Han

The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E Lockhart

Dramarama, E. Lockhart

Confessions of a Not It Girl, Melissa Kantor

Witches of East End sequel, Melissa de la Cruz

[a lot of false starts with library books, which I'm not counting]

The Fever, Megan Abbot

The Vacationers, Emma Straub

Going Bovine, Libba Bray

I Hunt Killers 3: Blood of my Blood, Barry Lyga

Reconstructing Amelia, Kimberly McCreight

Friendship, Emily Gould

The Secret Life of Addison Stone, Adele Griffin

All the Summer Girls, Meg Donohue

Some standouts of the year: The Poisonwood Bible, Astonish Me (I read it twice, back to back, I loved it so much!), The Last Summer of the Camperdowns, and We Were Liars. I was also in love with the Family Tree series (I love Ann M. Martin so hard) and really enjoyed the Veronica Mars book, too. And, a big shout out to Expecting Better by Emily Oster for helping me survive pregnancy.

Anyway. I miss reading. Someday, I'll do it again!

Boo

When October comes I think about witches. Okay, really, I think about witches all the time, practically. But October feels like the only appropriate month to talk about them out loud, to hang their likenesses in our living rooms, to show off the warts on the ends of our own noses. I spend the month reading witchy stories (currently: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane; on deck: The Penguin Book of Witches) and Netflixing witchy movies and thinking about that witch tattoo I've been wanting for years.

Maybe what I love most about witches is the fact that, this time of year, they're everywhere, despite people's efforts to stamp them out for so many centuries now.

In my neighborhood, signs of Halloween are just beginning to peep forth the way flowers bud in the spring: first you spot one, then two, then you blink and the whole ground is covered with them. It started with a single brownstone stretching out fake spiderwebs across its front stoop; now, every third house has its own spiderwebs, and the fresh fruit stands at the bodegas have been replaced with pumpkins and gourds, and we all just seem to be waiting for the ghosts, the monsters, the magic to appear.

I'm waiting for lots of things these days--namely, my labor to begin. As much as I love Halloween, I don't want a Halloween baby, and as I wind down at work this week I find myself Googling "how to induce labor." Apparently there's a restaurant nearby that's famous for its baked ziti, said to be just the key for women past their due dates. (Let's hope it doesn't have meat in it, because I plan on trying it next week!)

I know this is all silly: the baby will come when she comes, no matter how much delicious Italian food I consume; the shining, brief focus on witches won't spur many people to consider their history, their tragedy.

But I'll still scour Google while watching Practical Magic.

The hypocritcal writer explains

A gorgeous friend of mine, an incredibly talented writer, just texted me to ask for advice on how to write what she really wants to write. "Should I pretend I'm writing a letter to my niece?" she asked, "What should be my homework? Can you direct me?" This time it's a book about living life while in tremendous pain. I have no doubts that whatever she writes will be lyrical, intense, soul-searching, important. But this is a common occurrence: people ask me for advice on writing. They want to know the tricks, the secret formula. I wish I knew it, if one exists. Perhaps it's something like one part grit, two parts free time (ha), one part outline, 17 parts passion.

I texted her back: "Remember there is no secret formula. Put your ass in a chair and write."

The thing is, I am such a hypocrite.

These past few weeks and months have been hectic; we just moved into a new place, and with it came the requisite stressors, compounded by my being in my fifth month of pregnancy, finishing up two semesters of adjuncting while also working my full-time day job...the list goes on. (Yes, we all suffer from busy syndrome. Sorry.)

I was in Florida in March to visit family, a lovely uncle who is now paralyzed after a stroke and massive heart attack, and while there had my first real writing inspiration in months. I started something new on my Notes app in my hotel room at 5am; I thought I'd come home, invigorated, and burst out a chapter book in a month. Ha, I say again. Instead I scribbled some notes in a blank Scrivener page a couple of times, and then took to the couch, napping before and after work and twice on weekends, bone-tired in a way I didn't realize pregnancy could cause. Grading papers for class took all my strength. Answering simple emails became my Everest. With pregnancy, everything takes twice as much energy, which would be okay if not for the feeling that I had only about half the energy per day that I used to. (I'm no mathematician, but that means I was doing a lot less than I used to.)

So now it's June, and I haven't looked at my work-in-progress in literally nearly two months. And my dear friend is asking me for writing advice, and I'm giving it, like I am some kind of expert.

My lesson here, a tough one, is that taking a break is okay. I am allowed to form a fortress of pillows around my body and lay down for hours at a time when I come home from work; it's okay for me to turn down invitations for Saturday nights because I can't imagine putting on clothes that aren't yoga pants. It's okay, even, to stop writing for a while, to be worried that all my creative energy is now circulating elsewhere and then to let go of that worry, because there is literally nothing I can do about it. This is who I am right now: someone who is tired, who is just trying to get through my days, who is excited and terrified and emotional and snappy and only occasionally able to see through the fog that has fallen over me like a dark curtain.

I've only just now forgiven myself for that.

Someone else I know just wrote about paring back her commitments for the summer to give herself a break; I was doing the same, subconsciously, but now I'm embracing it. Like Ross said: writing and I, WE WERE ON A BREAK. This is a time of transition, of self-care. I'm going to embrace it--or at least, not be angry at myself for it.

And I'm going to get back to writing. I will. It just might not happen this month.

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