Posted in motherhood, motherhood bliss, motherhood sux, preschoolers, Uncategorized on September 29, 2016| Leave a Comment »
About Helen Garner’s grandson, aged four.
At two in the morning, Ted, sleeping in the spare room, has a bad dream and creeps into my bed. He flings himself about diagonally for the rest of the night, cramming me into a tiny corner. God damn it, I think at 5 a.m., this is worse than being married.
From the section titled “While not writing a book” in Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner.
Posted in arguments with your partner, babies, fatherhood, feminist motherhood, motherhood, motherhood bliss, motherhood sux, preschoolers, Uncategorized, work and family (im)balance, writing on June 24, 2016| 4 Comments »
These are difficult questions for me to consider. I am proud of being a mother. I love my two children. I love them so much that it hurts to look at them and I am pretty sure they are the best, smartest, scrappiest, funniest boys in the world, and having them changed my life. My life before children was selfish and bland, all feelings and no grit, just a drifting miasma of mood. To go back to living like that seems like hell. I get annoyed when women’s magazines try to edit my motherhood out of my work. I get depressed when they won’t run a piece unless I take out any mention of my having children. I firmly believe that having children has made me smarter and better and more interesting, and fuck you to any women’s mag that doesn’t think so too.
And yet, I am profoundly unfree.
I have a ten-month-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old. The three-and-a-half-year-old goes to preschool for a good portion of the day, but the preschool isn’t state-sponsored, so it eats our entire childcare budget. That means I am home with the ten-month-old full time. This is a luxury. Many women would kill to stay at home with their babies. I am fully aware of this. I try to write when the baby is asleep. He sleeps for about two hours in the morning. Otherwise, throughout the day I do housework, cook, try not to go insane. My husband leaves at five in the morning and gets home at eight in the evening most days, so I am short on adult conversation or help. There is a deep, almost suffocating solitude to my days, and yet there is also the California ocean, the flowers, the breeze. It is lovely; it is intolerable; it is both.
I am tethered by many things: the baby’s nursing schedule, the three-year-old’s attention span. To read an adult book is out of the question. To sit quietly for a moment with no one touching me is out of the question. To poop alone is out of the question. Showering is something I have to ask my husband for time to do each night. A lot of nights I am too tired to even think about showering and I just go to bed dirty. I do not brush my hair every day because what does it matter if my hair is brushed? It is possible I am clinically depressed. It is also possible that taking care of small children is just really hard, and in the last six months we have had a move across country, a baby in the hospital for a week, and my new book come out. Maybe I am just frazzled and it will get better on its own. Or maybe it won’t.
From Rufi Thorpe’s “Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid” in Vela.
Posted in babies, motherhood, motherhood bliss, preschoolers on September 26, 2015| 3 Comments »
Posted in preschoolers, thinking on September 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »
ME: I need you to buckle up back there, buddy.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
ME: I just do.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
ME: Because I want you to be safe.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
ME: Because I care about you.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
ME: Because you’re my sister’s son. And I care about her.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
ME: Because I just do.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
ME: Because, I guess, when I was born, she was three years old and, like any younger sibling, I put her on a pedestal.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
ME: I probably idealized her, which is strange considering that your mom was not very nice to me.
MY NEPHEW: Why?
From Jesse Eisenberg’s “My nephew has some questions” in The New Yorker.
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Posted in art, motherhood, motherhood bliss, preschoolers, race/anti-racism on May 23, 2015| 1 Comment »
Posted in arguments with your partner, book review, fatherhood, feminism, motherhood, motherhood bliss, motherhood sux, preschoolers, school kids, sex of the icky parental kind, single parenthood, thinking, this moment, writing on January 12, 2015| 7 Comments »
I was very flattered to be a guest writer for Meanjin this week for their series on writers reading. I was told to be very reflective on my year and.. I was that. Eek.
There’s a small child in the bed with us. I hold the sheet over me and reach down blindly to find clothes on the floor. Under the sheet I slip my underwear and t-shirt back on. So, this is dating now.
