Startting 2010 as a writer

A friend sent me this piece by Ann Patchett that is inspiring but daunting. Can I commit to a daily writing practice for 32 days, starting tomorrow. And if I do, will it stick? What if I can't sleep at 2 a.m. and so getting up early to write means I'm going to be a total mess later in the day? What if I get up early but so does my son, but not my husband?

With all these variables I shudder to think about actually trying to control, I think I will just try to work on the approach to the writing. To seriously spend 20 minutes just writing, not for a blog, not revision, and not with any audience in mind. That doesn't mean I can't also do other productive writing at other times in the day. I need to! But let's try to get acquainted with the process as a meditative, intentional and undistracted act.

Happy new year!

The million-dollar question

During our week home sick together, my son did a lot of whining and a lot of snuggling. But he also came up with plenty of interesting things to say, including this question he asked of me while I was peeing:

"When are you going to get a penis?"

My response about that he would, sadly, not be growing a uterus any sooner than I would be growing a penis did not, I'm afraid, appear to satisfy.

Cell Phone Intrusion

So I called my friend to check on her after she'd emailed earlier in the week that she thought her baby would come soon. "I didn't have a chance to write you back. How are you doing?" She's hundreds of miles and several states away now.

"I have a baby." Having given birth just hours earlier, she picked up her cell phone and gave me the skinny. I know people talk on cell phones in hospitals. But I did not seriously expect to get a new mama fresh from labor picking up like she might have been in the middle of putting away groceries like I was.

Congratulations, S!

Articles and artifacts

The contrast could not have been more stark.

Scene One:
I was standing in line at the post office sending an incredibly overdue care package to a friend who had a baby in the spring and an overdue package with a homemade pregnancy & postpartum journal to a friend who is due in just a month.

I started reading "Love with Teeth" by Adrienne Jones in the new (not even online yet!) issue of Brain,Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers. The piece explores her intensely high needs baby and her own intense reactions to the nonstop crying along with the surprise of not being a contented mother this time when she'd already done it so well before.

As someone who had an intense but thankfully social and happy baby/toddler/child, and as someone considering whether or not she is up for another, the essay had my heart pounding.

The post office was swamped, and even though I knew my parking meter outside had probably expired, I didn't want to be called up to the counter because I'd have to put the magazine down.

It burned a hole in my handbag as I did one more errand before I would let myself savor the ending of the piece.

Scene Two:
I put on my hazard lights at the curb and ran into the UPS store to drop off a fully prepared Zappos return. From the back emerged Samantha, one of my former students. I remembered her being pregnant a while back and asked, "Did you have a baby?"

"Yes I did! He's three months old and it's going great. It's the best thing you could ever imagine!" She could not have gushed more genuinely if she'd been a geyser. I didn't have my son or any kind of mommy gear with me except the magazine in my purse. I smiled, "That's great. Congratulations."

"You have a great day!" she told me, adding my teacher name.

Epilogue:
It's not easy to read about someone else's pain, but when they write about it as well as Jones, it's profound. Especially when you're essentially smacked in the face with an example of what that described experience is decidedly not.

Thank you to Jones for writing about something so important and raw and also to my student for providing such a ridiculous and yet also real counterpoint.