Anyhow, I remember my mother patted me on the shoulder. Then she turned and, very slowly, very purposefully, gave my teacher a look. I will never forget that look for as long as I live. It held fury and pride and a rapidly brewing thunderstorm of words. Heavy words. Dangerous ones. Over the years, I’ve been grateful that, no matter how much stupid shit I pulled, my mother never looked at me with that look. And it wasn’t until I became a parent that I truly understood its magnitude.
Three decades later, as a teacher myself, I think about that teacher making such a snap judgment about my reading ability. Her assessment could have changed my life completely; at worst, I could’ve been held back, and at—not best; no, a different kind of worst—I was being labeled: Can’t Read. Granted, labels can be helpful, offering much-needed support for a myriad of challenges kids are up against, but they also have a lasting impact on a kid’s psyche and should be treated with care. Can I tell you how many college students come to my classes with horror stories of What Teachers Told Them? You can’t read, you can’t write, you’re dumb, you’re bad. And then teachers tell parents, and sometimes parents believe it because teachers are the experts, right? And the parents—they’re tired, overworked; believe me, I’m a parent. I know tired and overworked.
But I’m also a teacher. I know tired and overstuffed classrooms. I know too many students and too much student work. I know too many hours and not enough to pay my mortgage. And how do you manage it all? Do you take shortcuts? And what might those shortcuts do to the student in the long run? What I’m trying to say here is that my teacher screwed up, yes, but to say this is entirely her fault is a whole other systematic problem that needs to be addressed. It’s not as easy as, “Some teachers are good and some are bad, and let’s make these oversimplified judgments by testing students on reading comprehension when maybe, just maybe, kids are filling out those multiple choice questions without even reading about the fucking frog!”
Imagine where my life might have gone had my mother not been the woman she is—my advocate, my watchdog, my parent. And FYI, I’d like to include the idea of “significant adult” in this discussion because I’ve known many awesome kids raised by aunts, grandparents, foster parents, friends, or any number of amazing, selfless people who want to make this world a better place for their kid and everyone else’s, too.
I write stories because I love reading, and I love reading because my mother put books in my hands, read them with me, asked me what I thought about them, listened as I told her, and gave me other books to read based on my replies. She did this for years—she still does it—so imagine, after all of that, being told by some teacher who barely knew me that I couldn’t read? I’m not a religious person, but Lord Almighty! What would you have done, sitting in that little-kid desk as someone told you something untrue about your very own child?
My mom is a dignified lady. I try very hard to follow her example, and more often than not, I fail. I tend to turn red, fly off the handle, and let the words out of my mouth before thinking them through. Over the years, I’ve learned that this approach doesn’t do anyone any good, and there’ve been many times when, on the edge of exploding all over the place, I’ve summoned up the memory of my mother on that day. She smoothed her skirt over her knees. She smiled. Then she said, “As you can see, my daughter can read just fine.” My teacher must have said something here. Or, maybe she just took off her foot and stuck it in her mouth? I don’t remember. What I do remember is my mother calmly explaining, in a voice that offered no room for discussion—a voice not unlike the Book of Genesis—that this teacher would no longer have anything to do with my English education. I would come to class every day and do math and science and social studies with everyone else, but when the rest of the class did their reading and their workbooks, I would be doing assignments that she—my mother—would send to school. Then she—my mother—would grade those assignments, and she—my mother—would share that grade with her—the teacher—and if there were any questions about all of this, perhaps they should set up an appointment with the Superintendent of Schools?
For the rest of the year, when everyone else would read about frogs and fill out their multiple choice, I would read the books my mother gave me: Charlotte’s Web; The Great Gilly Hopkins; Bridge to Terabithia; Where the Red Fern Grows; Ramona Quimby; A Wrinkle in Time; Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth; The Egypt Game; A Cricket in Times Square; Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM; Jacob Two-two and the Hooded Fang; The Pushcart War; Island of the Blue Dolphins; and on and on. I had lots of spiral-bound notebooks full of questions, and not multiple choice questions, but questions—ones I had to think through and explain; ones that brought me to new questions that I had to think through, explain, and often talk about with my mom and dad. And, look at that! Now we’re talking about the world!
Suddenly, reading means this whole other thing to me: I’m not just watching the characters of Karana and Rontu and Rontu-Aru running around on the island of blue dolphins, I’m imagining myself there with them. I’m seeing it all from their point of view, and for a little girl growing up in small-town Southeast Michigan, seeing the world through the eyes of a little girl growing up in Ghalas-at on San Nicolas Island was a gift. What a profound introduction to literature! I remember reading about Karana and wondering why the things she does after her father and brother die, things like hunting and fishing, were traditionally only tasks for men. My dad took me hunting and fishing, and I was a girl! I look back and laugh at this childhood outrage, but I’m grateful for it, too. There I am, eight years old, starting to think over some pretty fucking big truths. Here’s another truth: I didn’t know what foster care was, or that some children didn’t have parents, until I read The Great Gilly Hopkins. The kind of kid I was back then lived in a sort of bubble: your own home and neighborhood and school. I remember that book changing the way I thought about gratitude and survival and perseverance, and it started a dialogue about privilege that I’m still, to this day, trying to work through and learn about. I’ve had that experience with a lot of books over the past twenty years. Through reading, I learn about points of view that are different than my own. It starts the dialogue. It opens my eyes to things I haven’t seen before. It inspires me to share this gift with others.
That’s why I write.
That’s why I teach writing.
It’s how I was taught.
JUGGLE WHAT?
What is the rudest question you can ask a woman? “How old are you?” “What do you weigh?” “When you and your twin sister are alone with Mr. Hefner, do you have to pretend to be lesbians?” No, the worst question is “How do you juggle it all?” —Tina Fey
I AM OFTEN ASKED how I juggle it all. This can mean many things, depending on who’s asking: How do I juggle being a writer and a mom, a teacher and a mom, a working mom, and a mom, period?1 Submitting my writing, marketing my writing, performing my writing, writing? Teaching students, teaching teachers to teach students, learning from these teachers and students and writers and moms—’cause, really, what the hell do I know?
I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is: I’m lucky. My husband is a total hands-on dad and 100% supportive of my work. He even taught our three-year-old to ask, when I get home at the end of the day, “How’d the writing go, Mommy?”2
I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is: I’m lucky. My kid is spectacular in a thousand ways that, like any parent, I could go on about forever,3 but what’s pertinent here is that he’s a great sleeper. Eleven hours per night and a two-hour nap. Everything I’ve written since he was born has happened during these two hours. He conks out and I get to work. There are dishes and toys and laundry everywhere; a hundred new emails marked priority; the house is on fire, burning to the ground as I type; and none of it matters. These are my two hours. I am able to exist as an individual independent of my role as a mother because of them. I guard them. They are precious, the last canteen in a
barren desert.
Here’s how I used to write: My workspace had to be clean, notes organized, a certain kind of coffee, what music would best suit my mood? I’d read a little, stare at the wall, go to the kitchen for more coffee, and—Whoa, look at how gross the oven is, better clean it, and—Shit. The fridge is nasty, too. And the floor. And of course, the kitchen floor is connected to the rest of floor, and by the time the whole apartment is spotless, I’ve given up on writing for the day because I don’t “feel inspired.”
Fuck waiting for it.
Sit down and make it happen.
I am often asked how I juggle it all, and what I say is, “It’s how you use the time you’ve got.”
Do I sound like I know what I’m doing? It’s not altogether true. I feel a bit fragile about my writing, actually. Here are some reasons why:
1. Sometimes, I can’t write during those two hours because I have to be at work.
2. Sometimes, I can’t write during those two hours because I have to nap.
3. Sometimes, I can’t write during those two hours because my brain hurts and the only way to fix it is to watch Jack Bauer on Netflix.
4. Sometimes, when I can write during those two hours, I don’t know what to work on. A short story? This essay? A blog post, or two, or five,? That interview that was due last week? My journal? What I want to work on is my novel, but to tackle something so big with only two little hours… it just seems impossible.
5. I’m ashamed to admit that; my students might be reading this.
6. What I want to work on is my novel. I walk around thinking about it, and sometimes I run into walls or miss my L stop. I’ve written short stories for a decade, but this—there are so many characters! Recently, I was talking through some dialogue to keep them all straight in my mind, and my son looked up from his Legos and said, “Mommy, are you talking to yourself?
7. I thought of the scene in The Hours when Virginia Woolf is going insane, and her niece asks why she’s talking to herself, and her sister Vanessa is all, “It’s okay, honey. Aunt Virginia’s a writer.”
8. “Yes,” I said to my three-year-old. “I’m talking to myself.”
9. He hugged me. Have you ever been hugged by a three-year-old? It’s the greatest feeling in the history of the universe.
10. He pulled free of the hug and put both little hands on my cheeks. “You don’t have to talk to yourself, Mommy,” he said. “You can talk to me!”
I try to juggle it all. I have a very complex system of color-coded Google calendars: caleb, christopher, writing, teaching, cite, 2nd story, and life (for example: “Go to the dentist”, “Buy groceries”). In fact, I just added a new one! It’s called self-preservation.
This week, there are three things scheduled under self-preservation: Murakami’s IQ84, yoga class, and Have a Good Cry.
Recently, when complaining to my friend Amanda about how I can’t juggle it all, I started to cry. We were driving somewhere with my son in the backseat. I went on and on about the pressure, the exhaustion, the mortgage, how I’d cut off my left arm for an uninterrupted week to write. “… And to top it all off, fucking Halloween is coming! When am I going to find him a costume!? Let alone fucking make one! Some mothers go to JoAnn Fabric and get the patterns and fucking make jimmy into a penguin. who has that kind of time!?”
FYI: I didn’t really swear in front of my son.
That said, I wanted to.
Sometimes, it’s all too much.
Amanda listened to me explode all over the car and then, calmly, she got out her cell phone and turned to the back seat. “Caleb,” she said, dialing. “What do you want to be for Halloween?”
“Light-up Batman!” he said, which made me cry harder ‘cause it’s so totally adorable. And while I sat there unable to control my gulpy, gaspy sobs—my sweet little boy asking if I was okay and could he please unbuckle his car seat and come up front to hug me—my friend Amanda got on the phone and ordered a Batman costume. Size 5T.
“And if it could light up somehow, that be great.” Then she hung up, looked at me and said, “What else?”
I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is: it takes a village. As I type these words, my son is with his Uncle Jeff. Jeff is a bartender at a fancy French place and wants his godson to be educated in high-end cuisine. To that end, they take a monthly tour of Chicago’s best gastropubs. My son comes home stuffed and excited, toddler-talking a mile a minute about riette, cornichons, and haricot vert, and I get new pages of my novel. Maybe an essay or two.
Jeff is also a writer. He understands my need to get the words out of my head and on to the page. He knows it makes me… calmer.
It is rare, if ever, that I feel calm. I drop my son off at school and am floored by all the mothers, so put-together, so sophisticated. I am exhausted from teaching ‘til ten the night before. I have probably, recently, spilled juice on myself. A good day is when we leave the house on time with the necessary stuff: Caleb’s backpack, and my backpack, and student work, and books, and my computer, and keys, and the avocado plant for Show’n’Share, and coffee, and did I walk the dog? Did I make my deadline? Did I write down the idea I had in the middle of the night about how to transition between chapters 3 and 4 of my novel? It was a great fucking idea! what was it!? We get everything in the car, Caleb’s strapped in, I’m strapped in—and then I just sit there. I breathe. It’s 8 a.m. The day hasn’t even started, but already, I look around for applause.
Recently, when complaining to a friend about how I couldn’t juggle it all, a woman I’d never met leaned over from the next table and said, “Tina Fey has an essay about parenting in this week’s New Yorker. Maybe you should read it.”
I love Tina Fey. I have always loved Tina Fey. She’s on my list—the one my husband and I made, prior to getting married—of people we’d be allowed to cheat with if ever the situation presented itself (Tina Fey, Idris Elba, and PJ Harvey from the “Rid Of Me” video circa November 2007). I admire her humor, the doors she’s opening for women in Hollywood and hopefully this country—life follows art, right? Most importantly, I’m grateful for her honesty about how being a working mom is hard even when you have help. See how she does that? Admits having help, so legions of us working moms don’t compare ourselves to the impossible model of Tina Fey producing a television show, writing a bestseller, dressing up in designer duds, and fighting twenty times a day with a toddler about putting chocolate sauce on the broccoli?
How do I juggle it all?
I have help.
Dear my cousin Aaron: thank you for helping me take care of my son. Thank you for picking him up from school when my meetings ran late. Thank you for taking him to the park so I could finish that grant application. Thank you for reading him a story before bed on those nights I passed out on the couch at 6 p.m. Thank for appearing out of the clear blue sky the moment my family and I most needed you.
Did you hurt yourself on your fall from heaven?
Not gonna lie: when that woman—that stranger—told me that Tina Fey’s essay could help with my parenting, I wanted to stick a fork in her eye. I was eating a very gooey Danish with a fork, and I imagined reaching across the table, plucking her eyeball right out of her face, and flinging it across the coffee shop.
Giving unsolicited advice is never a good idea.
Especially when it’s about parenting.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I feel a bit fragile about my parenting. Here are some reasons why:
1. As a college writing teacher, I read a lot of My Mother Screwed Me Up Good stories.
2. There are so many My Mother Screwed Me Up Good stories, many of which feature women who are artists but stop making art when they have kids, and then blame the kids, and then the kids go to therapy and grow up and write books like Running With Scissors.
3. I didn’t stop making art when I had a kid, nor have I stopped helping others make art, in part because I love my job, but also
because I need it (Hi, Fannie Mae!). And no matter how fast I run, no matter how much I write, no matter how much permission I have to be a Working Mother in the Twenty-first Century, I still feel guilty. Last week I got an email from school about which parents would help the kids change into their Halloween costumes and which parents would buy juice. I had two meetings, a four-hour workshop, and an annual report due that day, so I bought the juice.
4. I am the mother who buys the juice.
5. I sat on the kitchen floor and cried about being the mother who buys the juice. I vowed to quit work immediately. We’d pay our mortgage somehow, right? And if not, who cares? We’ll mail our house keys to the bank, pack up the dog, and go live in a cabin. Preferably one with a goat. I’ll help my kid change into his Halloween costume every day, and we’ll only drink milk. Never juice. Fuck juice.
6. This cry had not been scheduled on my self-preservation Google calendar.
7. My three-year-old came into the kitchen wanting to know why I was sad.
8. I said, “Because I bought juice.”
9. He put both his little hands on my cheeks and said, “Mommy, I love juice!”
10. Then he said, “Can you be done now so we can play?”
I am often asked how I juggle it all, and the truth is this: I can sit there crying on the floor, or I can get up and build a super-ramp with my kid. I can worry about what and how and when I’m writing, or I can put my ass in the chair and do it already. It’s how you use the time you’ve got.
Once I Was Cool Page 8
