I remember those days

For mothers with toddlers and preschoolers… “For the fuck of shit, children” at The Modernity Ward. 

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Australian Summer

By photojournalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, Alex Ellinghausen .

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Mothering in the most extreme circumstances

You cannot watch this heartbreaking video of Diamond Reynolds and her four year old child being terrorised in the back of a police van after seeing Diamond’s partner, Philando Castile killed by police, without thinking the justice system is a motherhood issue.

Also, that we expect a kind of restraint under pressure from the mother that we have not expected of police.

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On grandparenting

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.

 

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The ambiguity of motherhood and writing

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.

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Why I need to be careful around new mothers

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Why?

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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My latest article is about my extreme breastfeeding days

“All your extended breastfeeding questions answered” in Essential Baby by me.

When my son began talking to my breasts (“breastfeedings” he called them, in case you were wondering), he was being so sincere and sad I did not know what to do. Should my breasts be answering him? It seems rude to remain indifferent to someone sharing the most tragic moment of their life with you. I mean, my breasts aren’t cold-hearted. And if my breasts answered him then should they have my voice, which may take you out of the moment? Or should they have a unique voice of their own – in which case, what does a breast’s voice sound like?

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Stop now

From Hester Jones’ “Stop Now” at MaMSIE Art Collection.

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My latest piece is in Meanjin and it’s about reading and love affairs

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.

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