Three Things That Made Me Think of You

1. This snippet is from a much longer article (that I didn't fully read) in T Magazine. I'm fascinated by this idea (fact?) that the West is filled with people struggling with self-judgment and self-hatred and then you go to the Dalai Lama and he's like, "WTF is self-hatred?"

2. I rarely make it to the "Bookends" section of the Sunday Book Review, but this time, by golly, I did. I liked the question (above) and found part of James Parker's answer interesting. Since you used to work in a bakery, I also (see subject of this post) immediately thought of you. 

Parker writes:

"And finally, bakers. Nothing is more nobly nonliterary than manual labor, and the years I spent baking at Clear Flour Bread in Brookline, Mass., were sky-blue. What a great job. Startlingly physical, to begin with, with plenty of hauling and swabbing and rushing around; the bakery itself was like a ship in a Patrick O’Brian novel, fierce and insular, microcultural, every moment accounted for, every inch of space pressed into service. You sweated and clanked, and the flour flew up in slow clouds, until everyone’s face had received a kind of aristocratic powdering. The rewards were enormous: the fine, fuse-like crackle of a rack full of handsome brittle baguettes, which you have just pulled out of the oven — that’s a beautiful sound. Television’s “Marquee Moon” coming out of the bakery boombox at 1 in the morning, with your muscles so warmed up they seem to act as vibrational channels for the music — that too is a beautiful sound... 

From my fellow bakers, those yeasty intellectuals, I learned about industry and cohesion and the moral obligation to be cheerful. The last lesson was the most important, and extended out of the bakery and into life. If you’re depressed, maimed, crocked in some way, fair enough — let us know. But if not, then in the name of humanity stop moaning. Keep a lightness about you, a readiness. Preserve the digestions of your co-workers; spare them your mutterings and vibings. It’s highly nonliterary, but there we are: Be nice."

What do you think, Kara? (And what does this mean: "To preserve the digestions of your co-workers"?)

3. Full disclosure: when I first saw this video, which I found via Megan Mayhew Bergman's blog, I didn't immediately think of you. But then, when you sent me a recent photo of Samantha with MMB's book in the background, and I knew I was about to post something on this site, well, THEN, I thought of you. Point being, isn't it great? I love what she writes about the video and song too.

Sending love (and not self-judgment) from the West (coast),
Amerzzzz



12.1.14

Dear Amelia

I managed to re-read all of your post, three other Megan Mayhew Bergman blog posts, and the T magazine article before my baby woke up, which just happened and which will make this overdue response, well, short!  In that case, I'm going to list things, a handy trick you have perfected. 

I am also going to thread Garrison Keillor pictures throughout my response, not because it relates exactly, but because I found this book on a shelf of ours in August and the cover is too great not to share. 


1. The article above refers to American teachers of Buddhism like Jack Kornfield who, in the intro to his beautiful book A Path with Heart, wrote the following lovely words:

"In the stress and complexity of our lives, we may forget our deepest intentions.  But when people come to the end of their life and look back, the questions that they most often ask are not usually, "How much is in my bank account," or "How many books did I write?" or "What did I build?" or the like.  If you have the privilege of being with a person who is aware at the time of his or her death, you find the questions such a person asks are very simple: "Did I love well?" "Did I live fully?" "Did I learn to let go?"

(Side-note: my baby was just stuck under the living room chair with only her head and shoulders poking out, as if the chair fell from the heavens and pinned her to the rug.)


2. That James Parker passage about working at a bakery is brilliant.  I could not agree more with the virtues of physical chores and personally find such drudgery the perfect compliment to writing.  However, "yeasty intellectuals" are not the words that arise when I think of my co-workers.  Sadly, "potheads" and "juvie" are. 

I do subscribe to the be nice philosophy put forth by Parker's co-workers, however, and often wonder if my insistence on manners makes me a bore or, worse, a hypocrite when I fall short of my own standards. 

3. In a total Megan Mayhew Bergman love-fest, I also love what she says about the Cat Power song in the video you posted, so much that I am going to quote her here: 

"I imagine playing it for my daughters - over and over - and they're going to be like - Mom - what IS it with this song - and I'm going to be like:  You will understand one day how easy it is to lose yourself as a woman. To give too much away."

On the heels of a Thanksgiving holiday, I cannot identify with this sentiment enough!  It is essential to save secrets for yourself; secrets or pleasures or miracles of ritual.  Otherwise you will have nothing to feed yourself when the going gets tough. 

I can't believe I just wrote the words when the going gets tough.  A child of the 80s for sure.  Did you read Lena Dunham's book, by the way?  In it, she writes about the comic strip Cathy, and I remember as a child totally not getting Cathy's obsession with weight, her shopping panics, and all other cliches of womanhood.  Ditto some of the stationary in our kitchen, writing pads printed with sayings like, "When the going gets tough, the tough eat chocolate." 

Here's a different piece of stationery, a glorious Post It note I discovered one morning when my parents visited this fall: 

5. Finally, I have a little thing for Davy Rothbart, who wrote the wildly entertaining collection of essays My Heart Is An Idiot, which I consumed in a fit of pregnant concentration last Christmas at my in-laws.  This discussion of it kind of takes all the fun out of life, in my opinion, but it's also a smart analysis of the ways fiction has schooled modern non-fiction. 


6. I'm going to order MMB's new book now, the divinely named Almost Famous Women.  I feel the need to point out that this post was not sponsored by her, however, if her next book is anything like her first, I'd like all my thoughts to be sponsored by her prose.

XOXO 

The Right Kind of Obsessed

Dearest Amelia,

I tried really hard not to bring this up on the internet, but the subject of infidelity is impossible to ignore.  My friends are talking about it.  My husband is talking about it.*  And listening to an episode of Other People podcast with the author Austin Kleon of the book Steal Like An Artist, I heard the line, "The world needs a decent human being more than it needs a great artist." 

It made me think of two things:

1. Our ongoing conversation about how to balance raising babies with the inevitable panic we feel that we aren't doing enough to advance our careers.

2. The prolonged media mess that is Woody Allen's life these days.

My argument against Woody Allen goes thusly: where there is (a ton of) smoke, there is probably fire, and where there is pedophilic/oversexing fire, I draw the line.  Without getting into the nitty gritty of the sordid Allen legal stew, or dragging Grizzly & Golden fans through the gravel of politics, legal teams, and he said/she said headaches (too late!), I want to recap what I have learned over the past few years of personally reacting to this stew:

I guess I am "a family man," above all things.  I'm not saying bad stuff never happens, or every relationship deserves to be seen out, but I do think there are consequences in the adult world, and I feel like this fact is one that Woody Allen's movies alone want us to ignore.  Few of his characters are ever moved by anyone else's pain.  They occasionally wrestle with guilt, but that is not the same thing as being compassionate or considerate.  One might argue that guilt is a sign of transgressing one's own value system, so the fact that these characters are often dissuaded from taking their guilt seriously is its own verdict: the world of his movies is, essentially, an amoral one. 

In case I don't sound blow-hardy enough, I balk at artists who give that calling a bad name.  Of course, as Austin Kleon talks about via a George Saunders anecdote in the podcast mentioned above, being a good person and being a good artist are not mutually exclusive endeavors, and this is, I think, why I get so worked up about Woody Allen.  I'm not saying the man did or didn't do something.  I'm saying, if he did, that matters.  I oppose deifying anyone who is famous for or in spite of behaving badly.  Bad behavior causes suffering, and I make art to alleviate suffering. 

There, I said it.  Phew!  The other thing I want to tell you is that in listening to a different Other People podcast, one with Joshua Wolf Shenk, I had my tail sufficiently "cranked" as we say in our house, a throwback to our late, great, and hyper-active Border Collie, may he rest in peace.  Joshua Wolf Shenk is the author of a book called The Powers of Two which debunks the myth of the solitary genius.  I haven't read the book but I love this man's message, which is that there exists electricity within creativity, electricity that is, in fact, activated in the right company.  I.e. the most prolific artists are often ones who have found their ideal collaborators. 

To which I say, hi!!! 

Mr. Wolf Shenk also sounds like Jeff Goldblum which, if you ask me, is reason enough to listen to anyone. 

Thinking of you!  Relying on you?
XOXO
Kara

* I just threw that line in there about Tim thinking about infidelity as a joke.  He does talk about the reasons marriages - and people - fall apart in our ongoing time-waste-activity of being two people who posit ideas habitually and live together under one roof, chewing on them, often together, sometimes separately.  This chewing on ideas is one of the things that brings us together, but if you get a desperate call from Tim that he "can't take it anymore" or that the girl who sells hotdogs and Cheez Whiz in his workplace lobby looks appetizing, please feel free to tell me.  The first person to divorce is the one who has written a book on marriage, you know?  I don't want to be that person.


---


10/12/14

Dear Kara:

First of all, thank you for getting me to open up a new Word document. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written anything other than email responses.

In a way, I could respond to the above post with a simple: I agree! But I’m afraid (very afraid) it’s not that simple.

You see, on first read, I took no issue with that line you shared about the world needing a decent human being more than it does a great artist. But then, I thought about some of the pieces of art that have touched and inspired me, and how I don’t know anything about some of the personal lives of the artists behind these works. Or perhaps more importantly, I don't care to find out. Just by way of example, in college, I fell in love with the poetry of E.E. Cummings—so much so that I included Estlin (what the second E stands for) in a list of possible girl names that I had going in my journal—as a twenty-year-old. (I know, hilarious.) I pulled out this list when I was pregnant and briefly considered Estlin (before I knew Teddy’s sex), but then Matt remembered not liking something about Mr. Cummings' personal life. So we gave it a quick Internet search, and sure enough, we discovered that, according to Wikipedia, Mr. Cummings was a supporter of Joseph McCarthy. (The name was probably too weird for us anyway, but this personal factoid put an end to Estlin even as a middle name.) What’s my point? My point is that I’m glad I found Mr. Cummings’ poetry first before his political leanings. I’m glad that my experience of reading his work hadn’t been sullied. Furthermore, even now, I feel guilty for taking Wikipedia at face value, for not doing more research to try and confirm what kind of a person the poet really was before casting him off as someone I might not have wanted to be friends with.

As an even weirder (and possibly just plain stupid) example, let’s take the world of gymnastics. You know that I love watching this sport and follow it quite religiously. Well, sometimes, when the gymnastics news cycle is slow, I go to the Twitter feeds of the gymnasts themselves to see if they’ve posted a video of a new skill they’re working on or something like that. This is always a mistake as I am instantly reminded that these women whose work ethic and determination and skill I admire so much are teens, and if they aren’t posting selfies, they are posting something about the Kardashians or a fairly cheesy inspirational quote. It’s a rude awakening, and as I close the Internet browser, I do my best to forget what I’ve just seen so that I can go on loving the sport and admiring its competitors.

All that said, in terms of my own personal battle between caring for Teddy and getting any writing done at all, I quite like the idea of the world needing a decent human being more than it does a great artist.

If only Mavis could actually babysit...

I also quite like the sound of Joshua Wolf Shenk’s book, The Powers of Two. I had never listened to that podcast before either, so thanks for the introduction!

So now: what should we collaborate on next? More Bolognese? A new title for Mommy & Me classes? Finding a way to really stick it to Amazon for being so unfair to Hachette authors? Whatever it is, I’m looking forward to it.

Decently,  ;) ;)
Amelia

Pitta Vata, That’s Me!

Dear Kara,

Thanks so much for the impromptu, mini Ayurveda lesson over the phone the other day, which included a (cautious and disclaimer-filled?) diagnosis of me as pitta vata. And now that I’ve done some Googling (and even took an online quiz), I believe you were quite correct. To take it a step further, I then searched: “How to balance pitta vata” and a few of the suggestions I found really resonated with me.

1. “Look for opportunities to create rhythm and routine in your life”

2. “Finish things once you start them”

3. “Eat with full awareness”

4. “Get a freaking massage, you stoop!” (I may be paraphrasing on this one.)

My response to the first two directives goes something like this, “akdjfkladjf;kdakldjfadlkfjadkaf I knowwwww! I want tooooo, but how can I now that my life and schedule is barnacled to the life and (constantly-changing) schedule of my 7-month-old?”

In the past few months, I know I’ve been particularly unsettled about not finishing things—namely, that I still haven’t found a firm foothold in any of the new writing projects I’ve begun since completing my food memoir months ago. I want to fully blame Teddy for this and I know that I technically can—that my life has changed and of course, so will my productivity levels. But at the same time, I know myself, and I know I’m happiest when I’m consistently writing, and I think it’s something else that’s keeping me from moving forward.

I’m reminded of that piece of writing advice: write through the middle. I’m also reminded of the advice I’ve given my own writing students: sometimes you just have to write it. As in, you can’t fast forward through the slog of writing it to the future to see if it was “worth it.”

Everything that interests me of late seems to be somewhat related to the idea of allowing ourselves to get lost. It began with this amazing essay, “Open Door” by Rebecca Solnit. And then there was this article in the New York Times about how, basically, we are filling up any potential quiet moments in which we might get lost in thought with checking our phones/the Internet/Instagram/etc. And then, there is my day to day life, in which while caring for Teddy, I sometimes feel like I’m losing myself entirely, not coming up for air until he’s asleep for the night. Which brings us back to Virginia Woolf by way of Ms. Solnit!

In the abovementioned essay, “Open Door,” Solnit quotes a long passage from To the Lighthouse:

“Out of the blue, May sent me a long passage by Virginia Woolf she’d copied in round black letters on thick lined paper. It was about a mother and wife alone at the end of the day: ‘For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of—to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless… Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless.’”

In an effort to finish this post, all I can say, in terms of any sort of conclusion, is that I’m going to keep striving to find those moments to be silent; to be alone. To get lost in thought. To possibly put some of those thoughts down on paper. And then maybe, just maybe, to finish something I started.

Much love to you, friend!

Amelia




8/25/14

Dearest Amelia,

Well, here we are. "We" being Samantha and I, "here" being inside a new house in a new state.  As you know, my family and I recently "relocated," a word I'm trying on lately to sound both in control of my life and very adult.  And you know what?  I'm pretty close to both those things, I'm proud - and lacking in humility enough - to say.  That wasn't always the case, something I'm not ashamed to admit, so I feel particularly proud of this fact now. 

Speaking of pride and shame and humility and adult womanhood, I am reading Roxane Gay's collection of essays, Bad Feminist, and appreciate her spirit, her generosity, and of course her intelligence.  In fact, I just wrote you a letter about some of my more squirrelly thoughts about this book and, in a modernity ad nauseum where this space mimics our paper exchanges across the country, I want to reiterate some of my thoughts here. 

But first, just one of Ms. Gay's contributions.  Of Amy Winehouse, she says: "She was a mess.  So what?  We are all stinking messes, every last one of us, or we once were messes and found our way out, or we are trying to find our way out of a mess, scratching, reaching." 

This is the Roxane Gay I love.  On the back of her book, a tag attributed to no one says, "One of our most indispensable writers...on everything that matters."  That's one heck of a thing to carry around.  And while I'm 100% certain Gay lives up to it, that kind of pressure would send me to the hills to live out my hermit existence forever.

Speaking of hermithood, above you talk about the dangers and sheer disruption of crowding out the silences of daily life - how Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other digital facets of our life clamp down on deeper rhythms that (can) carry real life purpose.  I appreciate that Virginia Woolf-by-way-of-Rebecca Skolnit quote you shared, in particular the ringing words: To be silent; to be alone. 

As you know and alluded to in your exploratory Ayurvedic Quiz anecdote above, I am a student of healing.  Art, Yoga, nutrition, scholarship - all are variables in my wholly unofficial, working dissertation.  As such, when I read the words, To be silent; to be alone, I couldn't help but think of what I have learned about masculine and feminine properties in yoga, specifically that silence and stillness are properties of the feminine (where feminine is a collection of attributes, rather than a gender construct or identity).  When you go to a Yin Yoga class and hold poses for long amounts of time and let your spine unfold languorously in a three-minute forward bend, this kind of spacious non-agenda is what you explore. 

It's also what I'm experiencing to the hilt with our new move, while I stay at home with Samantha and have few(er) responsibilities.  And while I have several long-term projects keeping me anchored, I love the stillness that prevails when keeping this babe and myself happy are the driving ambitions of the day.

I guess my point, if I have to have one, is this: I am a Kapha Pitta.  This means I'm pretty laid-back, prone to weight gain, and sweet-tempered until I'm not.  Colorado exacerbated my Pitta dosha.  The summer of wildfires in Northern Colorado decimated any moisture my Kapha nature brought forth so I was a raging mess inside (and sometimes, though rarely, outwardly).  There are major upswings to having a Pitta nature: it means, as is your case normally, you know how to get stuff done.  In fact, once my parents arrived for a visit this week, my Pitta disposition accomplished in two hours what my Kapha nature had been procrastinating about for two weeks.  It also kicked to the curb the hoarding tendencies of a Kapha, the unwillingness to weed out or organize clutter.

About having Pitta in my doshic makeup, there is also this: I have to be careful how much spice I put in my system and this means mentally as well as nutritionally.  All of the essays in Bad Feminist are thought-provoking, and I am truly grateful for the education Gay's criticism provides.  I appreciate her quest to understand popular culture and her ability to call certain policies, works of art, and opinions racist, misogynistic, and downright dangerous.  And yet.  (This is a sentence she writes a lot.)  After reading the essays in just a few days, I found my Pitta nature revving up.  I grew irritated by some thoughts and found myself feeling like I should be doing more, being more, and somehow performing greatness.    

This, as you know, is pretty much the opposite of what I preach.  I believe in stillness, in listening deeply, and a gentle approach to almost everything.  On the phone recently, I said that, of all my accomplishments, every single one stems in some way from a spiritual approach.  And while Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses often asks, "How does newness come into the world?" and the book seems to suggest, Only by violence (since giving birth, I ponder this question a lot), I find myself struggling to make sense of being culturally relevant, a responsible citizen of the world, while caring for my needs for stillness. 

In short, is there salvation in haiku?  That's what I really want to know.  I sometimes feel like my greatest work is being done in these quiet hours at home, when I carry my baby from room to room.  All the work I did to get here where I can be present with her and learn from her, while having patience for my own eternal mess, feels pretty worth it. 

Can you tell yet from this post that Samantha sleeps well? 

In gratitude to your formidable Pitta intellect, dear friend!
XOXO

P.S. On the (excellent) topic of slogging through the writing hours, Steve Almond has this to say.  I like Steve Almond.  He's smart and funny and in this article sounds about a hundred years old, which makes me happy for some reason. If he's old and wizened, does that mean more room for you and I and other young whipper snappers who are, shall we say, still figuring "it" all out?  I hope so.  For now, I'm working on my Problem of Entitlement, one white-girl MFA-holding day at a time.  

Queen Bee

Hi Amelia!  This post isn't about Queen Bey, although we might be overdue for a post about her, too. It has been so long since I've posted on G&G, I almost forgot my way around, which is sad.  But I have been thinking about this space and all our chats about motherhood, creating, and staying sane lately, and I want to tell you about the bees in our backyard.  

This post will be complete with photos that make it very clear why I use Tim's photos on Sut Nam Bonsai.  But he's at work, so I am all we've got (oh dear), and there's no one here to tell me I can't include a photo of a squirrel.

As you know, in April I added to the world's baby arsenal by having a plump little girl.  Yesterday, I put out my daughter's cloth diapers to dry in the early sun then went about my morning.  Around 10am, I went to check on their position, to make sure the trees weren't interfering with the sunlight, but I didn't get the back door open more than a crack before I slammed it shut, terrified by the sound I heard.  The yard buzzed with the work of hundreds of bees, and I since I am quasi-allergic (hospitalized when a child, though my throat never swelled) I was not going anywhere near that stuff.

The bees have been in our yard for a few days now but, Doubting Thomas that I am, I didn't worry about it when our neighbor mentioned them.  Now that I have seen them myself, however, I am obsessed. 

Not wanting to chance one stinging Samantha or, even worse perhaps, one stinging me and leaving my poor daughter without a conscious mom for some time, I sprung into action and called a beekeeper to collect them.

The collection of bees is not the point of this post, however, and they have moved to a neighbor's property where I can't control what happens to them anyway.  But have you ever seen a swarm of bees on a tree?  Holy cow.  It is a fascinating, buzzing, creepy crawly thing.  I get chills looking at it.  In fact, I took the above photos an hour ago and those two clumps are no more.  The clump on the left has now glommed on to the one on the right.  That something with so many pieces can take the physical form of a sphere, but then shift itself into different cylindrical variations, like a murmuration of starlings in the sky, well that just about blows my mind and makes me think of every quantum physics diagram I've ever seen.

In a detail that renews my faith in the fly-over states of our country again and again, Tim's family raised bees when he was growing up, so I pumped him full of questions before bed last night, including why the heck bees behave this way.  Why are they all attached and hugging onto each other? I asked.  He said they are all there, protecting the queen.   

As a new mother, someone who spends her days mostly topless, feeding the babe in her arms, the beauty of this matriarchy is not lost on me.  That's how I want it to be in this house, I thought, i.e. I Am The Queen.  Hahaha!  But really.  My next thought was, how radiantly beautiful.  No wonder bees are so tied to the fertility of the world.  No wonder a flower can only become its fullest self by the work of a culture that protects its feminine reign. 

Hell yes. 

I have much to say about motherhood that will have to wait for a different post, but I will say how PHYSICAL the work is!  First there are all the physical facts of pregnancy (miraculously expanding uterus, milk-ducts gearing up, etc., etc.) and then it all comes together in motherhood: nursing all the time, holding, cradling, rocking, strolling.  It is an incredibly physical thing, motherhood, something I did not understand at all as I watched it from my mind before.  It makes me realize how much the movie Eraserhead, which was David Lynch's first movie and supposedly a student film of his, gets it wrong.

In the movie there is a hilariously grotesque infant thingy that is swaddled and essentially only a head.  When Samantha was first born and swaddled and gurgling like a mewling cat, I would often think, Damn that David Lynch!  He makes me think of his black-and-white grotesqueries when I look at my sweet, innocent child.  But in the movie, a couple whose relationship is destroyed by the stress of this child often stare at it from across the room.  Now I think: that would never, ever happen in a conscious setting.  It is impossible to separate my daughter's body from mine, and I wonder what in the world that movie would look like if a woman wrote it.

That didn't happen, I realize, so maybe that's a silly thing to ponder.  But I just think, yes, what a concept!  Except, in real life, that woman and that baby would be so inseparable it would be hard to see the baby for the mother's body covering it, sheltering it, protecting it like a queen.

After all that bee talk last night, I of course dreamed of black bees swarming my ankles like small bullets, and my childhood friend with whom I played on summer days.  I also had to take off the necklace I was wearing because I jumped sky high every few minutes, feeling something trace my neck.  I love when a topic so possesses my mind, but isn't it interesting how linked pleasure and horror can be sometimes?

I hope you and Teddy are having a wonderful, miraculously alive day!
XOXO,
Kara

---

6/9/14
Oh, how do I love this post? Let me count the ways!
1. I seem to have an affinity for bees as metaphor.

2. I think I could go on for days ranting about how our modern-day culture seems to have a knack for telling us women that "we can have it all" but then seemingly does little to support this (grand) notion. (I just spent ten minutes trying to find something I read, I believe in Harper's, about how back in the 70s, either congress or the senate was faced with a bill to enact a national daycare system--perhaps something akin to France's “crèche”--but was shot down by a male politician (can't remember his name!) on the grounds that it would lead to a deterioration of the family unit or something like that.*)

*I am going to work really hard to find exactly what it was I read because I realize my lack of specificity is hurting my argument, but ironically, Teddy has been stirring from his nap for the past five minutes, and so I felt like I had to give up my search or else I would have basically accomplished nothing during his nap. Presently, he's actually propped up sitting in front of me, staring at the computer screen (not great for him, but oh well!), held up in between my biceps as I type this, which is funny because without even trying to, I'm now addressing your observation about how physical motherhood is. (In case it's not clear, this is NOT a fun position to type in.)

OK, an hour later, and I found some evidence of what I was talking about! Turns out, the bill was passed and then vetoed by Nixon, who, indeed cited, that it would have "family-weakening implications," to which I would say: "Want to talk about family-weakening implications? OK, let's talk about the current maternity and paternity leave situations, or rather, the lack thereof, here in the U.S.? (If you want to be depressed, go ahead and spend some time here reading about how other countries support their young families as compared to us.)

3. Back to the physicality of motherhood: I would say that this stage of mom-dom, what with all of the breast feeding and car seat carrying, has been much harder on my body than pregnancy was. In fact, the other day I said to Matt, "Putting that car seat in and out of the car is the bane of my existence."

But I don't want to end on such a negative note. After all, I spend much of my day singsonging, "I love my baby!" So, I will (kind of abruptly) leave you with this photo from a month ago.

All our love!
Amelia and Teddy

All Joy and No Fun?

Dear Kara,

I'm writing this post while sitting on the right side of the couch with the laptop on my lap and Teddy (my 5-week-old son, for the people who aren't you reading this) lying to my left, tucked between my leg and the back of the couch. It's a great position for us because while he sleeps, he writhes around, inevitably knocking his pacifier out of his mouth, resulting in a piercing yelp of discomfort followed by crying. However, in this position, I can beat him at his own game; I can hold the pacifier in place while his hands thrash around, which typically results in him going right back to sleep. (Yay!!)

Burping, Part 1

Point being, as you know (since you're about 8 months pregnant), there are a million books on parenting, and I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in most of them as I feel like they're just going to stress me out about how I could be doing things much better, how I could be molding my offspring into an award-winning specimen of humanity(!). That being said, I came across a review of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, which focuses on the effects of children on their parents instead of the much more common book about the opposite. It sounded interesting, and I made a mental note to possibly purchase it. Then, I discovered that my dear friend Terry Gross recently interviewed the author, Jennifer Senior, so instead of ordering the book, I listened to the interview.

Truth be told, I still may order the book. I'm not sure. Some of what Senior had to say I didn't want to hear: how hard it is to be a parent, how marriages typically take a hit, etc. But then some of the things she said made me excited about the road that lies ahead. For example:

Senior tells Terry:

The adolescent brain is this really interesting thing. First of all, the prefrontal cortex is not quite done developing. And the prefrontal cortex is what is responsible for kind of rational decision-making and planning and impulse control. So there's a reason that, like, teenage kids, like, take dumb risks. You know, I mean the mechanism that actually should be functioning as their break pedal is not fully developed; it's a rather weak break.

They also tend to sort of overestimate the reward that they will get from taking risks, which is interesting to me. Their brains are just awash in dopamine, which is the feel-good hormone, so they feel everything very, very, very intensely - and that's everything from crushes to, you know, rejection. It's the good and the bad. So it's a real adventure having been in the house.

Awash in dopamine! Crushes! Rejection! Doesn't that just remind you of high school? And won't that be fun/fascinating to witness?

This section of the interview I found to be equal parts scary and fun-sounding:

Again, here's Senior:

Toddlers do not have the machinery to reason. They live in the permanent present, they barely have any prefrontal cortex to speak of. But all of us seem to make the same mistake. We argue with them as if logic played - will have any sway over these kids...

It's one of the hardest things for parents to do, but... if you can live with your kid in the permanent present, it's a lovely place to be and it's why people, when they meditate try and be in the permanent present. I mean there's a lot to be said for living right in that moment right there with your kid, eyeball to eyeball. They also they live tacitly, you know, they live like through their senses, so they're all about, like, kind of getting their hands gooey, playing with Play-Doh and mud and stuff like that. And, you know, they like building things and making snow forts. And if you can just suspend all that noise, if you can just ignore that running endless tickertape of concerns that's just looping and whipping through your head, it is glorious.

OK, this nap of Teddy's is definitely winding down. But what do you think? Does this book sound like a winner to you?

Burping, Part 2

I'm currently following the guidance of Harvey Karp's The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep: Simple Solutions for Kids from Birth to 5 Years, which has you swaddling your baby for all naps and nighttime sleeping, and sometimes, mostly when Teddy is fighting the swaddle for access to his hands, I wonder if these books are part of that noise Senior is talking about in the above section. I mean, people have been parenting since the beginning of time without all of these books, just intuiting their babies' needs by simply observing them. OK, he's basically awake.

On that note, I must go and observe him!

xoxoxo


2/25/14
Dearest Amelia,

Well, what excuse can one make?  That it is winter, that I'm 35 weeks pregnant, that I really like to sleep?  The week-plus-four-days it took me to write back might be some indication of my schedule of late, as in, WTF, World?  Could you slow down for one measly minute?  There's a pregnant lady here.  Thank you.

But wait!  You were talking about being present.  Sinking into the noise, embracing the chaos, letting go of logic.  Right?  Let's just say, the noisemaker my friend gave me for when my baby arrives is already being employed nightly, because nothing sounds better to me than its fake waves crashing against its speaker.  I need a lot of presence right now.  In fact, I'm starving for it.

I am also glad you brought up this book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, because someone close to me recently referenced this idea of the teenage brain, and while this person was horrified by the lack of teenage brain cohesion, all I could think was, That sounds awesome!  I can't wait to have a teenager!!!

And it's true.  I've always liked teenagers because of, I suppose, their raw transactions with life, their lack of inhibition when it comes to creativity, and their rad bed-head. 

In your last Grizzly & Golden post, you wrote, ...what I'd rather be is the mom who, while she may not be doing everything the way she'd hoped, or perhaps with as much grace as she'd have liked, can stop the spiraling down, forgive herself for not living up to her expectations, and move on.

Therefore, in a year, you report back about how being a graceful mother is going.  In 12 or 13 years, I will report back about living with a teenager.  Specifically, which of us - the child or myself - is daily consuming more sugar.

I stumbled upon a review today of a book called Raising Happiness, which I will not be reading, mostly because my brain is fried from birthing books and I need some fiction and/or memoir to retreat to my beloved, dreaming, right-brain happy space. 

I have heard about the book Raising Happiness but, as you say, cannot bring myself to read many parenting books.  (This reminds me of the time I told my boss I wanted to have kids "just to see what happens."  He found this a terrifically bad idea but I stand by it.  I want to see what the little souls will dream up.  I want to egg on their wildness and see what they discover without maniacal coaching, grooming, expectation, etc.) 

What I liked about the reviewer's blog post, however, was the following excerpt she highlighted (and yes, I'm quoting a blog quoting a book.  English professors everywhere may now throw up):

According to Carter, “emotions in general are just plain contagious.”  She goes on to tell us of the various studies that demonstrate the link between depressed parents and “negative outcomes” in their children – and of evidence that shows that kids “reap the benefits” when their parents are happy.   

I was thinking this morning what attributes might possibly benefit someone as a mother.  One I could point to and feel somewhat good about was knowing how to take care of oneself.  I don't know how sustainable self-care habits are once a babe actually arrives, but I do know the value of them, and believe in tending to them stubbornly, above all else.  The excerpt from Raising Happiness made me feel a little better about all the plans I have to keep my writing habits and baking sprees and to get boat loads of fresh air.  Is it possible my journaling-with-headphones-on happiness will be that contagious, that my child will "reap the benefits" of some mild but pleasurable forms of neglect?  I sure hope so!  If not, we might all be screwed. 

XOXO & Thanks in advance for all the parenting advice you'll soon supply!
Kara
 

A Humbling

Dear Amelia

Is it unhumble to talk about a time when you've been humbled, do you think?  Well, nuts.  Either way, I have some things to say:

1. One awkward part of being an artist / introvert is having the urge, when talking to other people, to reference your own art or previous articulations, rather than just have a normal conversation.  It's almost a form of deja vu, listening to someone talk about a topic you've maybe written an essay about, and having to restrain yourself from saying, "I've written an essay about that very thing!"  Usually, only another artist can relate in that moment, but these references are something you manage seamlessly in your conversations, and I envy that about you. 

All this is to say: I once wrote a blog post and included Rumi's poem "Dissolver of Sugar" that concludes with the line: I need more grace than I thought. 

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and how true it is, which brings me to lingering embarrassment about my response to your last Grizzly & Golden entry, about the pristinely talented Vampire Weekend.  I feel like my reaction to your story about experiencing monkey mind was a little dismissive or know it all-y.  Like, even though I haven't found meditation to be my thing for the past two years, and more prefer running and writing to sitting alone on a cushion in silence, I could have been more inclusive about the topic.

Also, lately I've been thinking: Wow, I really need meditation.  Not only do I want to slow down my mind, but the reason I want to slow down my mind is so I can hear what my heart is saying on a more consistent and receptive basis.

2. In June, The Atlantic published an article called The Secret to Being Both a Successful Writer and a Mother: Have Just One Kid.  The article made my blood boil before I read a word, because it pictured Susan Sontag, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, and Joan Didion across the top, and at least two of those people make me want to throw up in my mouth if I think about them as role models. Therefore, Jane Smiley's entry in the comments section of that article made me inordinately happy.  Here is what she wrote: 

I am Jane Smiley. I have written 23 books. I won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. My last novel, Private Life, was named best novel of the year by the Atlantic in 2010. I have been short-listed for the Orange Prize (Horse Heaven). I have three children of my own and two stepchildren. The key is not having one child, it is living in a place where there is excellent daycare and a social world that allows fathers to have the time and the motivation to fully share in raising kids. Ames, Iowa, where I lived for many years was just such a place. I thank you, Iowa State University and the Ames Community Pre-School Center for enabling my career and my life as a mother.

Jane Smiley, knocking her bio pics out of the park.

Remember when I thought being able to say, When I was young and knew Virginia Woolf would be the coolest thing ever?  Perhaps, I am Jane Smiley.  I have written 23 books, is a nice runner up.

I also love that Ames, Iowa is held up as a supportive locale for a woman's career.  Take that, coastal cities!

I attended a leadership conference last week called the Women's Success Forum.  (Naturally, Tim kept calling it my "Women's Victory Summit.")  My favorite part of the Summit/Forum was seeing so many women who believe in being yourself in work and family. This Jane Smiley comment does the same thing for me.  (Actually, it probably does a lot more for me than the 8 hours I spent in a conference center.)  I'm not someone who always wanted a family, or even to work very much, if I'm being totally honest.  But I want a family now and I am happy working my tail off career-wise at the same time. 

I just want to do whatever I choose to do for my life, however I choose to do it. Maybe it's because of the women who have come before us, some famous, some not, but this thankfully feels possible.  Do you agree? 

xoxo
Kara



11/1/13

Oh, Kara, how I love this above post! (And not just because you threw me a compliment, a compliment, which, while I accept, I can't recall an example of! But, don't worry, I will take your word for it!)

1. Another awkward part of being an artist/introvert is not wanting to talk about an experience too much because you want to turn it into an essay and you fear that talking about it may somehow ruin what you have to say before you've properly said it. Specifically, this is how I feel about my 95-year-old grandma's recent weeklong visit.

2. You have more grace than you think you do. I did not feel like you responded to my monkey-mind post dismissively at all! Which brings me to the fact that I'm in my 31st week of pregnancy and seem to see everything in terms of becoming a parent in the next two months. As you know, I'm reading Bringing up Bébé, which I'm very much enjoying. I may feel differently about it once I have a kid or two, but right now, there are certain sections I'm very glad to be reading now. One of which is the section about the American mom that kept calling herself a bad mother. And how she said it so much, it almost seemed like a comfort to her. In short, I could see myself as that mother, the one who is constantly apologizing and feeling like she's doing things wrong. But what I'd rather be is the mom who, while she may not be doing everything the way she'd hoped, or perhaps with as much grace as she'd have liked, can stop the spiraling down, forgive herself for not living up to her expectations, and move on. (Which--to come full circle--I hope you don't take as me dismissing your feelings that you your post was dismissive. (Ha!) But do you see what I'm saying?)

3. Let's talk about Jane Smiley! Who knew that an Internet comment could be so awesome? And to answer your question: yes! I do think that because of the women who came before us, we have so much more freedom in the way we want to live our lives in terms of our careers and family life. However, your question immediately brought to mind this great interview Terry Gross recently did with Debora Spar, the president of Barnard College, in which Spar discusses the state of feminism today. Here's a quote:

Just pick up any magazine off the shelves: Women are expected to be beautiful and sexy and to revel in those things really from the time they're quite young to the time they're quite old. That expectation is just out there. It's in the ether; it's in the music we listen to; it's in the books we read. I think it's unrealistic to assume that just because a woman shows up in a business school or on a trading floor or for an internship that somehow those other pressures are going to go away. So women really are feeling the pressure to be hugely successful professionally, and really sexy and attractive, in addition to being good mothers and everything else.

Ms. Spar references this old ad campaign as one that "conveyed this image of this sort of effortless combination of work and motherhood and sexuality and professionalism and ease."

I don't know about you, but I feel this pressure. I want to have this kid (uhm, I don't have a choice at this point), but I also don't want my relationship with my husband to change. I want to have this kid, but I also want to continue to have time to myself to write and go to yoga and be myself. I want to have this kid, but I also want to fit into my old jeans at some point in the near future, etc. etc. But realistically, I don't think this is all possible. In terms of Hollywood movie titles, something's gotta give. Right? I'm going to have to find a new normal. Right? I don't know! I guess I'll have to report back in a year or so.

In the mean time, however, I'm going to try and summon as much grace and forgiveness for my lack thereof as possible.

xoxo
Amelia

All Beings Want to be Happy

Hi Kara!

I think the technical term for what I've been experiencing is monkey mind. Yep, that's it! I just looked it up and wikipedia tells me that it's a Buddhist term meaning: "unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable."

So, I just made myself listen to a guided meditation I used to do/listen to almost once a week. (Over a year ago now, I was trying really hard to make meditation a habit, but alas, it didn't stick. And so now, I go to it sporadically, you know, when I'm desperate for my mind to calm the EF down.)

I forget exactly how I came upon this grouping of guided meditations by Sharon Salzberg, but I did. I particularly like the breathing one and the metta meditation. I love her voice and subtle encouragements. 

So I finished my metta meditation and then sat down to do some work. I put on the new Vampire Weekend album, which I love and which is very Buddhist-y itself. I suppose spiritual is a better word for it than Buddhist-y. But point being, if you listen to it from start to finish, I think you'll agree with me that the album is on an inward journey, a seeking, searching journey. For what exactly? I don't know. But I'm left with the impression that they're working it out through their music. 

I bring all this up because I didn't used to love Vampire Weekend. I mean, I liked their music OK, but my adoration was held back as I was under the impression that they were a bunch of young privileged kids from Harvard who hadn't necessarily made it big on their own. This was basically coming from a place of jealousy (duh), a place of: I could do that too if I had the connections and money! (This is also, obviously(?), embarrassing to admit as I've never truly had ambitions to be a pop star, so my jealousy must have stemmed simply from all the recognition and critical reception they received at such a young age.)

One of the things I love about the guided metta meditation Ms. Salzberg does is that she repeats over and over again how, "all beings want to be happy." She tells me that though we may not understand or agree with other people, we can recognize that they too want to be happy. It's so simple and yet, it opens my heart right up. 

Point being, I want to rid myself of this way of thinking, of this chip on my shoulder. 1. If I like the art, why should I need to like the artist? (And if I'm really going to cast judgment on the artist anyway, I should really at least do some proper investigation to see if my assumptions are even accurate.) 2. We can never really know what other people's experiences are, what they've had to endure to achieve their goals. And of course 3. We're all doing the best we can with what we were given, aren't we? All beings want to be happy. Particularly Mavis.

8/26/13

Dear Amelia,

1. Holy coincidence, batman.  I was just journaling about meditation this morning, and got dressed for work afterwards listening to that very Vampire Weekend album.  Freaking jinx already!

Do you want to know what I said about meditation?  Of course you do! 

 

2. Look, I wasn't going to quote from my journal on the internet today when I woke up, alright?  It's just that, this seems to be a good time for it. 

Ahem:

It's funny how judgmental we all are, and how aware of my mind I am.  I can't say I fully transcend it - and I'm not sure I'm interested in meditation anymore.  Is that bad?  Should I tell anyone?  Nah, but if people ask, I do.  I have meditated, I have been to therapy, and I have analyzed myself ad nauseum.  The biggest tool I find is being in the present moment: asking, what does this moment need, and attending to it. 

3. Do you think I'm fooling myself?  Should I be googling Sharon Salzberg and searching out a cushion right now??

4. I love what you have said about everyone wanting to be happy, about being upset with young, successful artists, and about everyone doing their very best at every moment.  According to Garrison Keillor, a man named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said:

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." 

I believe that's true. And you know what?  You ARE a hit pop music star, Amelia.  Just turn to the evidence, when haters raise their hands.