Women Who Dared = Every Single One

Dear Amelia,

Hi!  It's been approximately I-can't-do-math since you wrote about Cheryl Strayed's wiz-bang Oprah talk.  Holy shnikes, do I love that talk as well as Cheryl Strayed herself. 

Your catalogue of areas in your life that could benefit from surrendering to a little mediocrity moved me.  It also impressed me, as I came out of the womb having given up on making delicious and interesting dinners.  The fact that you still have designs on delicious meals right now, as you mother a newby son and his wizened older brother, pretty much blows my lid. 

That part where you wrote about needing to shower and eat while your baby naps, despite your great desire to write, really struck a chord with me.  And frankly, that chord has been ringing ever since Samantha grew tall enough to climb on the dining room chairs, reach across the table and take my pen out of my hand.  (Her next move is usually to write, herself, all over my open pages.  It is a testament to the insanity of parenting that I find this amusing.) 

Your Do-I-care-for-my-body-or-Do-I-care-for-my-artistic-soul? dilemma makes me think about a book of postcards I own and kinda hate.  It's called Women Who Dared, and it's full of striking black and white pictures of mostly-famous women who did awesome things, people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, and Marie Curie.  These women are amazing in their own right, but I have never really connected to most of them.  I mean, in terms of women who inspire me to be the biggest and best versions of myself, the models fall way closer to home. 

Some of these women are writers, like Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Zora Neal Hurston - about whom, it's true, I once wrote a college entrance essay. Others are just plain remarkable human beings, like Abigail Adams, Rosa Parks, Dian Fossey, and Rachel Carson. 

So I'd like to say here and now: it isn't the women in this book that bother me.  The book itself bothers me, suggesting as its title does that the lives of non-famous women are themselves non-daring.  I take umbrage with this because overemphasizing any kind of achievement can be dangerous for the soul, and also because sometimes it takes a whole lot of guts to put your head down and just take care of sh*t that's never going to get you into history books but may go a long way to healing your life.

Case in point: I just finished Porcelain, a memoir by Moby about his original obscurity making music while living in poverty in suburban Connecticut.  The book then moves on to early DJing days in New York City and records his breakout experience and the start of his travels around the world, and ends just before Play comes out.  I'm not saying you should run out and read this book - there's a looooot of debaucherous exploration in the latter half especially - but I do appreciate almost any look at an artist's early days and I especially appreciate the author's willingness to talk about his panic attacks, his loneliness, and his confusion when it came to relationships. 

I know celebrity memoirs are made of these cliches, but it doesn't mean they also aren't true, that what can be seen on the outside, and what is celebrated about our lives, doesn't always line up with the internal experience of it.  I'm sure all the women in my dumb book of postcards had great days and bad days, and part of the fun of memoir and biography for me anyway is hearing people explore their times of doubt.   

Maybe what I object to most about Women Who Dared is that it asks me to make these people who did amazing things into heroes - or heroines? - while I believe that heroes are subjective by nature.  I also don't think it's healthy to define courage as That Which Will Earn You A Side Bar In a Seventh Grade History Book, and I'm tired of the limited definition of that word. 

This is probably why I like novels so much, because you can read about someone folding socks while ruminating on their disastrous marriage.  Folding socks isn't such a hot topic, unless you're embracing the zen-like peace of cleaning or something, but hearing about inner lives is one of the hottest things in the world to me. 

We happen to be able to listen to Cheryl Strayed because after she embraced her own mediocrity she also got to work fulfilling her life's dreams.  But the wisdom came not from her success, it came from her utter failure.

But who am I and what do I know?  The answer to those questions keeps expanding, and I'm starting to care less and less about being visible or even celebrated, and more and more about what it means to be a woman, and a mom.  I know how to braid my hair.  I know that when I press my fingers to one place on Samantha's ribs, she erupts into laughter.  I also know how to make salad dressing and I try to do so once a week because these things matter to me, and I believe they should matter to our culture.  I don't know how to fly an airplane and I'm definitely okay with that.  If that excludes me from a list of People Who Dare, that's a list I don't want to be on anyway.  

With love and eternal crankiness,
Kara    

P.S. I listened to three episodes of The Longest Shortest Time and loved hearing about Trystan and John/Bif's relationship, their courage in the face of adoption anxieties, and their senses of humor through it all. 

And one of my greatest memories from becoming a mother is my mom bringing me piping hot, cream-filled coffee as I nursed Samantha in bed. 

**Insert floating hearts and/or coffee emoji here** 

Surrender to Your Own Mediocrity

Hi Kara!
Sooo, to catch people up. You sent me a link to the following Cheryl Strayed talk, which YES is technically a "Super Soul Session":

And I keep thinking about it. Specifically this idea of surrendering to my own mediocrity. There are sooooo many ways I need to do this / applications for this idea in my life. As a parent. As a woman who wants to fit into her old clothes but who has carried two babies. As a wife who wants to have a delicious and interesting dinner ready by 6:30pm. As a house-owner who wants the house to be clean, oh so clean. As a writer whose only time to write is during her 4-month-old's naps, which is also the time I sometimes need in order to shower, brush my teeth, eat food, prepare food, exercise, distract myself on the Internet. As a blogger. As a yoga practitioner. Etc. Etc.

Somewhat relatedly, at least in terms of being a person in the world trying to deal with what life hands you, I discovered the podcast The Longest Shortest Time and am now in love with Trystan and John/Bif. Please listen to their story so we can talk about it! (I'm currently on Part 3 of 4.)

Lastly, I feel really bad for the coffee-loving mom who heeds the below advice. Coffee is a TRUE joy in my life. And pumping and dumping after drinking it? No effing way. 

We Do What We Want

Dear Amelia,

I don't even want to do the math for how long it took me to respond to your bio of me because I never want to do math and also because, as you so cleverly said to me when I expressed anxiety about it: We do what we want!

Amen, amen, amen.

In your previous post about Jonathan Franzen, author and PR-accidentalist extraordinaire, I loved your spiraling way of getting at parenting and writing and bad advice. I especially, as always, loved your "npr talk," which is not even what I think of your particular habit of recounting radio interviews and internet tidbits as, but it seems like the thing to call it here, so I hope that's okay. I also secretly hope everyone in your life now has a phrase for their fleeting thought, "Here Amelia goes with her npr talk again!"

As you know, we recently had the chance to see each other on the occasion of your reading in Wisconsin. About six minutes into our reunion you were discussing Sherman Alexie, Episcopal churches, and literary submissions. As my baby toddled beside us, examining rocks, we meandered in the deliciously brisk night air and something like gratitude, but wilder, zapped my veins. You hopped along your ideas, lighting a chain of hyperlinks in my brain and I thought: Yes. This. More more more.

This seems a good time to bring in your bio, because in it I try to sum up your combo of intellectual hearth-tending and all-around heart-tending. Let's see how I do, okay?

Amelia is the author of Bon Appétempt: A Coming of Age Memoir (with Recipes!), which I almost just called A Coming of Age Recipe!, and I think that makes sense, too. She is the founder of the award-winning blog Bon Appétempt where you can find, among other things, her husband Matt's gorgeous photographs and stylish videos, Amelia's thoughts on recipes she's trying or modes of being she's trying to outgrow, disappointments she's embracing, successes she's being impressively modest about, her thoughts on parenting, her thoughts on LA, glimpses of her light-flooded home, beloved (especially by me) glimpses of her east-coast family, pictures of her ridiculously cute son, Teddy, and her esteemed, floppy-haired, first child, Mavis (who is actually a dog, not a child), all shot through with the kind of off-handed humor that you never see coming, humor that takes your breath away with its casual, pointed, self-deprecating turns.

Among the many things I admire about Amelia, like her discipline and persistent appetite for creative expression, her ability to metabolize intellectual ideas at light speed is one of my favorites. What tops that, though, is her honesty and willingness to explore the still-forming things in her life. Some days, this willingness to see out all her attempts, and to own up to the awkwardness or the tension and plain emotional duress that trying anything worthwhile entails, shocks my heart to life. I want to posit that it's this willingness to try, and effort's inherent vulnerability and innocence, that is the source of all her dead-pan humor, and that this person with an electric mind and abundant, life-saving jokes (who also sends me stickers in the mail) has one of the most open and caring hearts I've ever seen.

By the way, in your description of me, you imagined I don't torture myself about my decisions. Just to let you - and everyone - behind the curtain, I torture myself every single day. When I give advice to friends, I'm pretty passionate about the "right" thing to do. Hearing it in my own life is, of course, a lot harder. It's probably why I like giving advice to friends so much :)

Without going into a lot of boring personal data, it takes much still, alone time for me to hear the quiet voices of wisdom inside me. This is why writing is like oxygen for me and my life. Becoming a mother has compressed my time to such intense pockets of freedom that sometimes those voices of wisdom and gentleness get squashed out entirely. While I'm happy that my reputation still stands as a sane person, you are lucky that you see the end product of my to-and-fro decision process that includes plenty of hand-wringing, reading of tea leaves, and pitifully desperate offerings to the gods.

In case anyone mistakes the above photo for my total endorsement of J. Fran, I was sort of enjoying Purity this fall until I got near page 100 and encountered what appeared to be the unironic use of a phrase so vulgar my response was to automatically shut the book and return it to the library. If I do finish the novel someday, I can then listen to what you described as Roxane Gay's unimpressed appraisal of it. I look forward to one of those things!

In other news, I am excited for this fresh(ish) phase of Grizzly & Golden with some updated pictures (maybe) and two long, winding bios. I still secretly want to do a mock up of intellectual bio photos, but since you tackled that stunt so fantastically on Bon Appétempt, I'll just settle for putting up any new bio photos at all.  Deadline: December, 2016.

Love to you and your radiant ways, sister!
XOXO

P.S. Samantha ate a million Craisins while I wrote this post.

What You Want Out of Life

Hi Kara!

As you know, we’ve both been meaning to update/rewrite our bios for this very website. Well, I finally sat down to do it yesterday and this is what came out:

Kara is a writer, wife, mother, and free-ranging animal who lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Not to bring myself into this bio as soon as possible (but here I go anyway!): When I’m having a rough time with something (life?), I often think to myself: I wonder how Kara would handle this? Or, if I’m feeling particularly down on myself: I bet Kara wouldn’t find herself in this kind of situation. See, in my opinion, Kara has a really strong sense of self and seems to make both macro and micro choices that honor that self. She then follows up this decision by not torturing herself about it. Another way of putting it: when reading anything Kara’s written, a sense of calm comes over me. Speaking of Kara’s writing, you can find much more of it on her site, Sut Nam Bonsai.

Recently, I was doing an exercise in my personal copy of The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, Sixth Edition and had to answer the question: “What is it that I really want out of life?” I wrote: “I want a family that seemingly enjoys each other and loves each other. I think about big family gatherings like the one we had in Portland. It was so great to spend time together.”

I mention this because over text message the other day, I was relaying to Kara a moment from Jonathan Franzen’s interview on Fresh Air. (Kara had recently written about Franzen on Sut Nam Bonsai. Since it wasn’t the first or second or maybe even third time she’d written about him, I now consider them to be close friends.) I thought that he’d been given bad advice from his New Yorker editor who basically steered him away from having children. In Jonathan’s words to Terry Gross:

“Well, what my New Yorker editor said was many people can be good parents, not very many people can write novels like yours. So what I would've lost [by having kids] was an opportunity to really devote myself to digging ever deeper in my books. I think it would've - I would've become a different kind of person and maybe, you know, and maybe a better person.”

As I listened, I got a strong urge to call in to the show. (Fresh Air takes calls from opinionated listeners, right?). For starters, who was to say he couldn’t both parent and dig deeper into his books? And secondly: what about the idea that parenting might shake up his viewpoint and lead to even better books? Maybe fewer, yes, but also: possibly better! That said, it sort of sounds like Franzen’s editor gave him the answer he wanted or made the most sense to him and thus, he could move on in good conscience. And sure, that's fine too. (I also think that people who don't want to have kids definitely shouldn't.)

Point being: I was texting all of this to Kara who had not heard the interview but who, as part of her response, sent me this gem:

“I guess it really truly depends what you want out of life. Me, I want a pile of warm bodies watching movies on the couch with me. Under a blanket I knitted ;)”

It didn’t dawn on me until later that Kara and I had basically answered the same big question within a matter of days rather similarly.

***

What do you think, Kara? It might need some editing. ;)

Xox
Amelia

No One Who Has Ever Had a Baby

Dear Amelia,

Can you read the words in the (blurry, camera-phone) picture above?  It is from a book called 25 Things Every New Mother Should Know, by Martha Sears and it says:

"'You have a beautiful new baby.  Why are you crying?'

No woman who has ever had a baby would ask this question." 

Ha!  It made me laugh a lot, and also think of you.  I've been reading parenting/baby books lately, even though Samantha has now passed the one-year mark.  For some reason, returning in my mind to the days when she was a little bundle soothes me, and I guess I like confirming all the things I've (potentially) done right, saying, "Yup, check, good - I did that."

Why am I doing this now, instead of when I was pregnant, say, or when she was just born?  Because I seem to always be six steps behind - and really comfortable there.  In fourth grade, my art teacher called me Pokey.  It stung then and still stings now, like, aren't most artists a little dreamy, drifting along at their own slow pace?  It should be the future business majors who speed through their projects.  In fact, one of the things that makes me laugh every time I remember it is the memory of a grade-school friend - one of the nicest people you will ever meet - who finished his sixth-grade sweatshirt for Family Studies class by just sewing over the neck hole and wrist holes.  The project was due at the end of the day, so he just sewed right over what needed to be finished! 

It was a revelation at the time.  You can do that?!?  We were both in the Family Studies room at the same time, but I was there painting bunnies and grass onto the front of my sweatshirt.  (See Also: Future Perfectionists of America.) 

For the record, the Family Studies teacher was a wreck of a control freak, but she never called me names, especially not Pokey. 

All right, I am writing this in the early morning and soon my baby will wake up.  I'm off to proof read, publish, and cram whatever other panicky adult moment I can into the day before I'm needed for full-time foam-letter, cheddar-cracker chitter-chatter!
XOXO

Dear Kara:

Here's a poem I just read and loved:

Like seeing a hot air balloon.
It’s just like seeing a hot air balloon.
No helium or flame or 8 passenger basket.
No passengers possibly drinking champagne.
No pilot or ballast,
nor buoyancy, nor balloonist enthusiast
entering national contests.
No ballast, I cannot stress this
enough, no ballast,
no ballast, no ballast.
No science! No cause,
no one getting involved or getting the blues.
No weddings, engagements, company picnics
or a back yard party,
for who balloons
for a back yard party?
No one richer than me.
Nothing shaped like a monkey
or a chili pepper or a bee,
or a Volkswagen bug.
No brand loyalty.
No weddings!
No envelope roll-up,
not without help,
good help on the ground
is the most important thing.
No prior knowledge
of previous passengers,
a Duck, a Sheep and a Chicken,
nor knowledge of hot air.
No flat land to worry about,
no splash-n-dash or discreet pilots
or pilots having to act discreet,
only interfering with the hot air.
No jobs like that,
struggling to be all day out of the way.
No hot air.
Nothing in the way.

---------


Bye now!
Amelia

What Would Ronny Camareri Say? (And Other Lessons From Moonstruck)

Dear Amelia,

I've been promising you a post for awhile, but I needed to sift through some winter snow first.  It's in the "teens," in western Michigan and, according to Tim's favorite weather website, so far in February we've had six days without snow.  My baby is asleep on my lap and I'm listening to Marah, a Philly-based band that I listened to a lot when they first came out and I lived in New York.  Their first album was called Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later On Tonight, which I think is just brilliant.  This is a song off that album, which I love and which I'm now listening to on repeat.

What can I tell you?  Lately, I've been living inside a Grizzly & Golden post.  That is, I've been swimming around the bewildering waters of motherhood, trying to balance the needs of my increasingly busy baby with my quiet intellectual needs, weighing my own inner bla's against my little daughter's reliance on a strong, sheltering presence in her life.  For some reason, it hasn't been easy, or perhaps there are a million reasons for this. 

On a related note, I came across an outdated book with the amazing title, How To Be An Assertive (Not Aggressive) Woman.  Among other topics, the book gives advice for deciding whether or not to date a married man.  I mean, how desperate were women in the seventies that this was part of their life-management puzzle?  What is the quality of a dream when this is a common dilemna? 

Anyway, in the introduction, the author writes: "Many mothers and fathers make it impossible for their daughters to grow up into assertive human beings;....their daughters are rewarded for being passive and dependent."  I can say with certainty this was not the problem in my house growing up.  I was the youngest child with two older brothers.  If anything, I grew up feeling like a boy - not just a tomboy, but an actual boy. 

After a professor in graduate school pointed out that all the narrators in my stories were male, I spent a few years wondering if I was a freak.  A recent Brainpickings post, Why "Psychological Androgyny" Is Essential For Creativity, explores the non-gendered nature of creativity and made me feel better, explaining somewhat this complicated identity. 

It also got at what I've experienced in terms of politicized feminism versus the actual, physical, alchemical experience of being a woman, something perhaps best approached with a story. 

Last week, I found myself suddenly, inexplicably depressed.  It was like one day I was walking down the same road I always walk down, only I slipped and fell down a dark hole.  I didn't exactly panic, because at this point, I've fallen down plenty of black holes and lived to tell the tale.  So I tried to dialogue with the darkness.  What did it feel like?  What was its texture?  I sat in this metaphorical darkness and, well, mostly sat.  Occasionally I writhed around and got angry but that didn't help me taste the environment and figure out how to get from Point A: The Darkness to Point B: Somewhere Else.  The best parts of my days were when I stopped writhing and let my experience try to teach me something.

Two days ago it was ten degrees outside.  In other words, it was not a recommended temperature for baby wearing and walking in the woods, but that is what I did.  I put Samantha on my back, wrapped her in blankets, and hit the woods nearby.  The open paths and naked trees were my only company, save one dog who ran in front of its owner, a woman clad in a hot pink snowsuit.  (That's right, an adult-sized snowsuit on a casual Monday afternoon.  I walked around a frozen pond, listening to the Dear Sugar podcast and the snow crunching beneath my boots.  The wind bit and burned my cheeks.  Samantha's body went limp on my back as she slept, heavy and supported, while I played. 

It probably goes without saying that I felt like an animal in those woods.  Ever since becoming a mother, I have resisted squashing this wildness in myself.  But after a close call with frost nip on Samantha's face in January, I was playing it safe.  Have you seen the movie Moonstruck, by chance?  Nicolas Cage playing Ronny Cammareri to Cher's Loretta Castorini has the line: "Playing it safe is just about the most dangerous thing a woman like you could do."  That line played in my head as I circled the pond.  I had been playing it safe, far too safe for the creature I know myself to be.  To borrow another line from the movie, I think depression was my body's signal to, "Snap out of it!" In other words, to stop pretending I am a by-the-book, rule-following slave to domestic goddesshood.  I am a free-ranging animal, and I know it.  Ignoring this fact, I had gotten myself into a bit of trouble. 

It took a few more tricks along the lines of considering who I really am and how I am or am not honoring that person, but I did snap out of it, and the lesson I learned (indeed I have to learn again and again) was to stop putting everyone else's needs ahead of my own.

To return to thoughts on creativity and gender for a moment, I loved this Fortune commentary, Women Shouldn't Have To Lead Like Men To Be Successful, by Roxane Gay.  (I swear I read other people besides Roxane Gay, but she is on fire saying what I'm often thinking, so I do love to credit her.)  Just as I know plenty of males who would benefit from a book called How to Be More Assertive And Ask More From the World (You Schmuck), I am ready for skills such as patience, receptivity, and thoughtfulness to be given more than lip service in the work place.  I think we could do more to promote those skills as a culture.  What do you think?

With love,
A Wild(ish) Woman in Michigan

---------

2/26/15

Dear Kara,

First of all, I’d like to note that I originally wrote this response to you in my notebook as opposed to the computer because I recently listened to this great interview with Mary Oliver who completely rejects the idea of sitting at a computer to write. This idea really resonated with me as I’ve recently found writing anything other than email responses on my computer to be semi-impossible.

Mary Oliver and her(?) dog

I’d also like to note that I read the first half of your post on my phone while at the Korean spa—my first visit since becoming pregnant, which means it was at least two years since my last scrub. (Side note: time is gnarly.) But it felt like the wrong atmosphere to be on my phone, so I finished reading it the following morning.

Anyway, I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it: I so love your writing. It always feels reassuring and calming—even if what you’re writing about is being depressed. It’s strange. As sorry as I was to read that you found yourself in this difficult place for a week, I wasn’t as worried or concerned as I probably would have been if in the hands of another writer. You are so capable. You know yourself. Even when you forget yourself.

I particularly loved the image of you as free-ranging animal with your baby strapped to your back—both of you were getting what you wanted; both at peace.

I think that’s the constant struggle for me when I spend a lot of time with Teddy: finding something to do that pleases the two of us or, rather, satisfies each of us on some level. For Teddy and me, this activity is usually grocery shopping. Ha! Although I do worry he’s beginning to tire of it. Otherwise, we basically do what he wants, which is only fun for me when he’s doing something insanely cute or if he’s doing something that still allows me access to kissing him on the face or neck.

The other thing I wanted to say is that your snowy, cold walk inspired me to go on a sunny, warm one. And to download the Dear Sugar podcast, which I really enjoyed. (I had no idea Steve Almond was such a sensitive, caring creature!) I listened to episode 2: The Two Stories We Tell. And was cheering along with Mr. Almond when he was goading on Cheryl to reject all the Hollywood gowns-and-make-up bull shit! But I guess she’s right: it probably is way easier said than done. And at the end of the day, I relate to her desire to want to be pretty and perceived as pretty. (I have notes for an essay on this topic, in fact.) Which I think brings us back to your fascinating notion of politicized feminism versus what it’s like actually being a woman, which I would love to read/hear/write more about.

Though for now, I must deal with some real world bull shit. A representative from Time Warner Cable is on his way over. (Is there a worse sentence in existence?)

With tons of love,
A less-than-wildish woman in California