My Jenn-eration

You really ought to check on your Gen X friends. It is difficult to articulate what this middle is like right now for us. We are caring for the parents above us, watching this pandemic ravage their mental health as they stay isolated inside, but simultaneously worried that if we try to hug them or comfort them or encourage them to leave they will catch a deadly disease. At the same time we are trying to shepherd our kids through this thing too, somehow ensuring that they don't grow up to be permanently scarred and weird because all they know are screens and adult conversations and that is not a childhood. We are doing all of this while we hold the line on businesses and jobs and careers. We are twenty years in. We are the ones with enough institutional knowledge to keep the office or that business afloat right now. We are 15 years into a marriage and at best, two away from needing a new roof. We are holding ALL of it up. But watching everything unfold yesterday just about nearly br...

I wanted to write a special note to the parents out there and just let you know that you did such an awesome job this year. This was the year where we couldn't hide from our kids who we really are anymore, or what we really feel. 2020 was a brutal reminder to parents everywhere, that one of our core responsibilities to our children, is to live and feel and experience this world in a way that is authentic. To model for them what it means to feel happy and sad and angry and hungry and weak and overwhelmed. You did such a fantastic job this year, modeling and giving them permission to be a feeling person in this world.    Parents of 2020: take a bow. What a phenomenal job you did trying and failing miserably to homeschool them. It was genuinely awesome the way you lost your temper again and again, and had to figure out how to constantly keep composing yourself. What a great job you did showing them that all teachers are special, magical creatures akin to unicorns. I love the way ...

I know that other people developed hobbies and stuff during quarantine, but I spent my time doing extremely important things like conjuring up a fake relationship with someone who accidentally used my email to order DoorDash. Please enjoy this 1,800 word description of this alternate reality. Also, if you know Jenn in California, tell her I say hi. 

  I remember the very first moment I knew I was pregnant. I hadn’t taken a single test yet undeniably, this was a thing that I knew. I felt different in a way I had never felt before, in a way I couldn’t even articulate. My husband didn’t believe me and of course who could blame him? I was being silly. Why did I think I was pregnant? Because I had slept a little later that morning, or had devoured that cheeseburger at the airport? Maybe. But I was different. I was changed. And six different home pregnancy tests later he believed me. Indeed, I was. We were expecting our son. The thing is that women always know. We know our bodies, we know our children before we even know them, we know when people are trying to lie to us, or intimidate us, or control us. We know what it feels like in our gut when someone comes for one of our children, that feeling when our minds go blank and all we can think of is the feeling of hot rage and mixed with the cool steady calm that guides us toward that ...

As I approach my 43rd year, I have to be honest and tell you that I’ve been struggling lately. That for most of my peers - those parents that in every way possible are in the trenches right now, it is genuinely hard. In the spring, I felt like I could get through this thing. And maybe in the summer too. But as I watch all of us scrape the very bottom of whatever we’ve got left in us to parent and teach and work and just generally survive but also put on some sort of moderately positive face for our children and parents, well honestly that’s been hard lately. One of my all time favorite quotes is from Leonard Cohen's 1992 song, Anthem. In it, he describes: Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in As I close out 42 and look ahead to 43, it's requiring me to dig deep this year, to ring the bells I still can ring. And looking back over the past year, it seems indeed there was so very much to celebrat...

It is summer. The woman, mid-life, bathing suit at mid-calf, emotionally deadened enough to her bizarre current state of reality where she really feels nothing beyond the mid-point of her still beating heart, climbs slowly into the lake. The water is cool but not cold. It soothes her hot, pale skin and surrounds her fully. Here in this moment, there is not noise or Twitter or barking candidates, global pandemics and recessions and worries and constant planning. In this moment, held by nothing but the arms of the lake’s ripples and her own weightlessness, there is nothing but the glorious silence and stillness of the water. As she comes up for air, the silence is punctuated by reality. The beach is full of wet sandy feet. The water is full of noisy children. Her own children tug on her suit and she scoops them up, big and small alike. She reminds them that no matter how big they get, they will always be her babies. Besides, in the water we are all weight less. We are not weighed down...

Come join me and the Today Parenting Team where I'm talking about my deepest wish for all of us moms this Mother's Day...