Lauren Grodstein's Tumblr @lauren-grodstein - Tumblr Blog

On climate change and my only child

Anyone who knows me knows about my siblings: my sister Jessie, who's almost three years younger than I am and yet who is so much like me people often think we're twins. We don't really look alike - she favors our mother and I look just like our dad, except with a slightly less bushy mustache. But we think alike and speak alike, or at least other people think we do, and it's probably true, since she so often reads my mind.

As for my brother, Elliot, who's almost nine years younger than I am, he's basically my bragging rights for the rest of my life. Oh, Elliot? That handsome surgeon over there? I used to change his diapers.

I talk to my siblings every day or every other day; I fly to Seattle to see my sister so often that the city, 3000 miles away from Moorestown, feels like my second home. I have a drycleaning account there and a guy who knows my coffee order. My son will be attending JCC camp at a facility overlooking Lake Union.

So okay, I value siblings more than just about anything else I can think of. And yet my son is an only child. I wasn't able to give him a brother or sister for a combination of emotional and biological reasons. When I ask him how he feels about that - I ask him all sorts of inappropriate things - he says, oh man, a baby in the house? No way! And he really loves having us all to himself. So I guess that's a relief, that he doesn't want what he can't have.

Anyway in many ways, if you've got to have a kid, I think it's the responsible thing to have just one of them: our earth is on the brink of environmental collapse, and it's quite possible - maybe even likely - that by the time he's grown the earth, and his life, will be a place of hunger, warfare, and desolation. I hope he'll be insulated as best he can be from the environment in which he's likely to spend his adulthood, but I do feel ferociously guilty about this earth we made for him.

(Most of me actually thinks the right thing to do is not have children at all. Children were a luxury our grandparents were right to spring for, or maybe our great-grandparents - but since then, we've destroyed the only valuable thing we had to give them. Of course people are greedy when it comes to resources and self-propagation).

Anyway I'm such a hypocrite; I might have had another kid if I'd been able to. The earth's destruction is hazy in the distance, while Nathaniel is right here and perfect and next to me and I wanted to give him everything. Today he and I are going to take the ferry to Hamilton, eat lunch, get on a plane back home. Watch USA-Portugal at a Portugese bar in Newark with my folks. His life is a good life, I think, for a five year old's. He doesn't miss the siblings he doesn't have. If he'd had a brother or sister, that would have been two people I would have spent worrying about in the middle of the night. For now, it's only him, and I hope he forgives me.

#climate change #only children

Come on pretty mama

I am in the most beautiful place, or one of them, that I have ever been - far from home but not as far as it seems like I should be. I have no idea what the national dish is here. I know nothing of the ferry schedule. I have a dim idea that they play cricket here, but where they play or who they play or even what cricket is? I'm blank. From where I type I can see a broad terrace carved from stone and beyond it the seafoam harbor. This place is probably a haven for - something. Tax evasion, shipbuilding, conch chowder, rum. I asked the sweet teenager sitting next to us on the plane how her family got here and she said, well, the usual story. And then I wondered what kind of asshole I was, because the teenager was black and the usual story in the Caribbean (is this even the Caribbean?) is slavery. I said to the sweet teenager, right, I'm sorry. She said, my grandmother's from St. Kitt's.

I got to Bermuda in the usual way I get anywhere, gravity and luck. My old friend Val, one of the best people I know, who I hardly ever see - she lives in Idaho - had recently teamed up with a lovely man who had a family place on Tucker's Town Road, St. George's Parish, and did we want to spend a week with her and him and their new baby in June? Of course we did. Tucker's Town Road, it turns out, is the same road on which Michael Bloomberg and Ross Perot have manors. Our manor is called Fiddler's Green. Val's partner hasn't spent much time here since he was a child, back when the place, and perhaps Bermuda, was rustic. It is no longer rustic. Nathaniel and I have spent our mornings poolside and our afternoons lazing at postcard beaches. You can snorkel here just by looking down through the ice-clear water. The waves are just punchy enough to be fun; the water is warm.

And Nathaniel is here and I am here and Val and Tim and their baby are here, and once again I am trying to figure out how I got so lucky, what kind of fucking Mother Teresa I must have been in a former life to be this lucky. And then to ward off the evil eye, kinehora, I keep reminding myself about the car accident in April, and how I could have died, and how, even worse, I could have hurt Nathaniel, and how we weren't hurt, which is one more sign that in a former life I was Mother Teresa. But still I so deeply hate myself for that accident that keeps me rooted to this earth - the earth that otherwise, in my own tiny experience, is too blissful for anyone to deserve. But the sun will set soon here in Bermuda and it will be magnificent.

On anxiety

I've spent an awful lot of my life The Land of the Horrible What If. Perhaps you know it? Vacationed there once or twice? The ground is rocky and dangerous, with criminals lurking behind the rubble; the water looks clean but is actually full of leptospirosis, and the air is thick with typhoid mosquitoes and some kind of marshmallow smell that's probably poison gas. The food makes you fat when it's not giving you botulism, and if you try to drive on its slick, rutted roads, you will probably get into a severe and stupid accident that will maim you and others. You will, however, survive that accident so that the people in the other car can sue you.

Also, in your expensive, very mortgaged house in the Land of the Horrible What If, you left the oven on and the faucets dripping, the candles burning and the window open. After the accident you parked in the driveway but you didn't lift the parking brake which is why your car rolled backwards and killed someone's grandmother.

Your kid is unhappy. Your kid is unsuccessful. Your kid is built like a football player but you won't let him play football because of the concussion that will give him Alzheimer's and now he hates you.

You ran out of money because you were profligate. There's nothing to buy in the Land of the Horrible What If but you bought stuff anyway and now there's nothing left to send your kid to college.

You can't bear to call the doctors in the Land of the Horrible What If even though that thing on your neck is always cancer and your hand is always shaking because of the incipient ALS.

Nobody sleeps in the Land of the Horrible What If. Valium kind of helps but you become addicted very easily and your life is never the same after that kind of addiction. So instead you watch reruns of Thirty Rock and cry.

If someone does you a favor in the Land of the Horrible What If he regrets it soon and you regret it sooner. You shouldn't have said what you said over lunch. That person you said it to thinks you're stupid and is also going to tell the person you were talking about that you were talking about that person.

You got the date wrong. You got the time wrong. You wore the wrong thing.

That person you thought you saw going through your garbage was trying to steal your identity so he could gain access to your bank accounts. On the upside - even in the Land of the Horrible What If there's an upside - when he finally gets into your bank account, joke's on him: it'll be empty because you lost your savings in the lawsuit.

I hate this place, I really do. I've got to get out of here soon.

#Valium #concussions #ThirtyRock

What We Look Like

It's been a long time since I've written anything for this (or any other) Tumblr. I haven't really touched it since the book tour ended and I was able to return to my life, my job, the book I've been working on piecemeal for two years. I wrote most of my Tumblr posts this past fall from hotel rooms, which are particularly conducive to the form: up early, a pot of hotel room coffee, nothing good on HGTV, what else was I going to do? My book tour took me to New Hampshire and Miami, San Francisco and Chicago, Arizona, Seattle, Portland, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, and probably other places too, and in many of those places I was too exhausted to even think but when I was able to think, I Tumbled.

And now I'm home again, and I have a hard time knowing what else to write about. For a writer and a blabbermouth, I'm actually pretty protected about a lot of things, and I don't want to write about some of the stuff, good and bad, that's happened in my life since I last Tumbled. First of all, I don't yet know what to say - there have been deaths and an accident, and there have been lovely backyard soccer games and family vacations, and life just seems to be coming at me harder every day but I haven't gotten better at it. We have new friends in our town but I'm scared of losing older friends in our town because we don't have enough time to see everyone, but holding on to people is precious to me. People are precious to me. I keep being reminded of the fragility of people.

And I'm older. Lately I've just been feeling just infinitely extraordinarily old. I look old, or older. I know I do. There are lines near my mouth now and silver threads in my hair and I stoop when I don't mean to. I think I'm at the outer limit of what life expectancy was in the Middle Ages. Even though I could live for another fifty years doesn't mean I'm supposed to.

My son's body has changed, too: he started kindergarten with a remnant of his toddler's potbelly and it's gone now, he's taller, he needs new pants, he wants to play hockey, he knows how to read, he's a Flyers fan. Every day my heart expands with even more astonishing love for him and I think that's the thing I'm always writing about, even when it seems like I'm writing about other things. Even before I knew him I was writing about how much I loved him. It's there in the books I wrote before he was born: the crushing howl of love parents have for their children. That's my topic. That's what I've got.

Anyway. I'm looking forward to being more cohesive or coherent in coming posts. I should keep writing, and maybe I should even keep sharing what I write. Maybe I need a hotel room. Maybe I need to stop holding it all in so tight. Maybe it's time to finish that short story instead of being envious of all my students who have finished their short stories. Maybe it's time to turn off the computer. Maybe it's time to be grateful.

On Meeting Dave Barry

When I was a kid, we'd visit my grandparents in south Florida during all those weird, not really real school holidays: President's Day, Teacher's Inservice Training, April Recess. Man, how I loved going: a quick jaunt on People Express (the aerotransport equivalent of the Greyhound bus) and then the arrival in Boynton Beach, where alligators might climb out of a passing sewer grate, the favored mode of transportation was the golf cart, and, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, I was allowed to eat Taco Bell.

I remember, too, the small but endearing cult of Dave Barry at my grandparents' house. Barry, the longstanding humor columnist at the Miami Herald, wrote hilariously about the size of the south Florida cockroach or the tendency of south Floridians to shoot their way out of traffic disputes. My grandparents had all his books of collected columns, and I'd spend half my Florida vacation chuckling through his essays, even though I had no idea what he was talking about a lot of the time.

My grandparents are long gone now, but this weekend I'm back in south Florida, at the outstanding Miami Book Fair. Last night, I was drinking at the fair's hotel bar with a friend, just next to a makeshift stage where Dave Barry, Mitch Albom, James McBride, Amy Tan, and other assorted famous writers were playing an encore session as their traveling terrible band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. They played keyboards, guitar, and accordion. They played "Under the Boardwalk." They played "These Boots Were Made for Walking." They were bad, but the key to the Rock Bottom Remainders is that they are famously very bad, and anyway, who cares? Everyone was having fun.

When the concert was over, Dave Barry passed by my table. "I know you, right?" he said (this happens to me a lot. I have a very familiar-looking face, and people often think they went to college with me or that I used to babysit their kids. Generally, I just agree with them that they know me and soon enough we both lose interest).

But in this case, because I was drunk and it was Dave Barry, I said, "no, I don't think we've met." What I wanted to follow up with is: but you mean a lot to me, because you meant a lot to me when I was a kid, and my grandparents loved you and they're dead now and I miss them, especially now, especially here. My grandparents would have been very proud to see me at the Miami Book Fair, and they would have loved the whole scene, and if I told them Dave Barry mistook me at a hotel bar for someone he thought he knew - they'd never get over it.

But again, I was drunk, and also I was tired, so didn't say all that. Instead I said, trying to be jocular, "I know your work, though, and I love it. And I guess I know your music now, which I don't think I like much at all."

And Dave Barry, who is nothing if not jocular, put his arm around me, said, kindly, "well that's nice of you but also fuck off," and we both chuckled, and I think he half-hugged me, and then he went on his way and I went up to my room and wanted to tell this story to my grandparents, and also to you.

#Dave Barry #MiamiBookFair #drunk #People Express

On the rewards of book tour, from a tourist's perspective

According to my calculations, and keeping in mind I've never been too good at math, I've visited seventeen cites across the country since the end of August . Yesterday, while getting the knots in my travel-weary back worked out at Lily's Foot Massage (see below) I realized that I've experienced more than a few delightful surprises in various place, and seen a few things worth recounting. I thought I'd attempt a little "retail journalism," Budget Traveler style, by sharing these delights with you now. Below, find six of the best things about America, in no particular order, from the point of view of a deeply jet-lagged woman:

1) The lobsters at Brown's Lobster Pound in Seabrook, on the New Hampshire Sea Coast, just as fall is starting to settle in. The guy behind the tank (by which I mean a set up the size of a kiddie pool, not your usual aquarium of death at the Shop Rite) lets you pick out your lunch via the point-and-steam system. He lifts the little bugger, you wave good-bye and mutter a guilty "thank you," and then, twenty minutes later, you're eating a two pound crustacean ($8/lb!) on a picnic table in view of an estuary, seagulls, the whole off-season shebang. After, if you feel like it, there's ice cream across the street.

2) Lily's Foot Massage, Mercer Island, Washington. If you've ever been to Thailand and had a preposterously cheap hour long massage while feeling a bit weird about the third-world economics of the thing, this is just like that, only without quite as much weirdness. Lily's Foot Massage's signature Foot Massage is, surprisingly, not a foot massage at all, but rather an unbelievably relaxing seventy minute neck, back, arm, scalp, and leg massage which costs all of THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS. Every time I'm in Seattle, I'm afraid this place will have either a) realized it could charge twice as much and still be considered cheap or b) have gone out of business. But thankfully, during the two years I've been visiting (my sister lives nearby) it's been going strong. If you find yourself there, tip well. I mean honestly. Thirty-five dollars.

3) Fronteras Mexican Grill at O'Hare International Airport. No airport restaurant has any business being this delicious. From now on I will deliberately schedule stopovers if I possibly can at O'Hare, a place I previously compared negatively, in terms of ambiance, to a public restroom. I will do this for another taste of the glorious garlic-mushroom torta,a Negro Modela, and a dream.

4) The Brown University campus, Providence, Rhode Island. I've been rejected from Brown University various times over the years, and I think, during the long years surrounding those rejections, that it might have been a little hard for me to walk through this beautiful campus (especially on a perfect fall morning, when the preposterously attractive Brown undergrads were just rousing themselves into their designer jeans to make it to Aesthetics of Gender on time). But on book tour, you're beyond feeling academic rejection. On book tour, in fact, you're beyond feeling much of anything. Which is why a stroll across the Brown University campus on a sunny October weekday is about as perfect a way to send 45 minutes as anything else in this glorious country of ours.

5) The ferry ride from San Francisco's Ferry Terminal to Sausalito. First, the market in the terminal: HOLY COW! It's a festival of pretentious amazingness, from the $18/pound goat cheese made from the milk of thoroughbred goats to the delicate undergarments woven miraculously out of recycled tires. After gorging yourself, you board your ferry, enjoy the salty spray of the San Francisco bay, gaze at the various bridges, curse yourself briefly for living anywhere else, and then disembark in Sausalito, where you can have a cup of coffee while watching San Francisco do its vaguely annoying/ seductive thing from a distance of several miles, and know that it is beautiful.

6) A stroll long down Broadway in Nashville at ten in the morning. It doesn't matter how overplayed it is; it's an amazing thing to peek into the honky tonks at an hour when everyone you know is at work to see country singers strumming their guitars at local drunks and drunk tourists. Stop in at Hatch Show Print, watch a set at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, and remember that no matter what happens at tomorrow's reading, today you're just another American with a rental Hyundai, a headache, and a dream.

On San Francisco with my dad (or Book Tour Revisited)

Because we know we're tourists, we decided to take the Powell Street Cable Car from our hotel up over those beautiful hills and down to Fisherman's Wharf. There we said hi to the barking loafing sea lions, then walked back up through North Beach, grabbed some coffee and took a bus back home. Later we had dinner at an Italian place that was just as good as we remembered it. We shared a bottle of much better wine than I ever drink anymore.

Today I'm up early doing work. Later I'll be doing a reading at Google. (Google!) (This was the only way I was ever going to set foot in Google).

Then tomorrow a book party. Friday a reading. A book festival. Another reading. Home.

I know I've mentioned the hard parts of book tour, and they're still hard: I still miss Ben and Natey, and I'm still filled with anxiety about crowds that might not come. But the good stuff remains really good, and I've realized it outweighs the bad. For instance, I've met booksellers from across the country, including one who's been the mayor of his town for seven terms and milked cows through high school. I met another one who worked as a physicist in Paris before returning to Connecticut to pursue his other passion: books. I met one who sells books to New York State legislators and another who sells books to people who mostly come in for the cigars. You want to meet America? Meet its independent booksellers!

And you want to feel lucky? Ride a cable car with your dad and hold onto his sleeve as the thing seems to want to plunge into the bay. Listen as he reminds you about the first time you two were in San Francisco, when you were three years old and he bought you a pin shaped like an ice cream cone. You still have that pin. You never knew where it came from. Check the forecast: sunny straight through the week. Turn off the news when they say the word "Republican." Figure out how to use that dippy hotel coffee maker. And meet your dad downstairs for some excellent San Francisco breakfast.

#Cable Cars #Zinfandel #Google #Citybythebay #book tour

Highway Run

After a month on the road, my life has started to feel annoyingly like a Journey song, complete with the Steve Perry hair. Touring for The Explanation for Everything has been full of thrills and miseries, high notes and low growls, laughter and tears, and a certain amount of airplane-induced irritable bowel. So as the sun rises on another day of shameless self-promotion, I thought I'd enumerate some of these joys and woes from my hotel room in Chicago, because, as you'll see in #6, I still can't sleep past 5:30 in the goddamn morning.

#1 HIGH NOTE An hour-long interview on your favorite radio show http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2013/09/30/a-conversation-with-local-novelist-lauren-grodstein/

#2 LOW NOTE An hour long drive to a Barnes and Noble where NOBODY COMES to see you, not even your usual crowd of crazy people and the homeless.

#3 LOW NOTE And then the apologetic Barnes and Noble clerk says "it's really weird, cause this never happens."

#4 HIGH NOTE But then you get home early enough to see your kid before he falls asleep, and he's so excited to be Darth Vader for Halloween that he falls asleep in your arms mumbling about light sabers.

#5 HIGH NOTE Also, frequently you get big enormous hotel rooms all to yourself with HGTV and hotel coffee shops that sell those tiny tubs of coffee-flavored Haagen Dazs.

#6 LOW NOTE But you still can't sleep past sunrise.

#7 LOW NOTE And according to Amazon, nobody's buying your book

#8 HIGH NOTE But according to the wonderful booksellers you meet on the road, people love your book.

#9 HIGH NOTE Your amazing review in The Washington Post: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-27/entertainment/42454977_1_andy-s-novel-melissa

#10 LOW NOTE All this time in transit affords you way too much opportunity to read about your gruesome House of Representatives, again in The Washington Post (but also Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, the NYT, etc. etc.)

#11 LOW NOTE And though you've always considered yourself an open-minded sort of girl you just can't believe these assholes.

#12 LOW NOTE Or the asshole who suggested, on an Amazon.com review, that Jesus Christ, upon reading your book, decided to renail himself to the cross.

#13 HIGH NOTE Seeing beloved family members across the country, including your sister in Portland, your cousins in New Brunswick, and your cousins - and their beautiful children - right here in Chicago.

#14 HIGH NOTE And also it turns out your hotel room in Chicago is very near an outlet mall

#15 LOW NOTE Which is fortunate because it turns out everything you packed makes you look like you're trying out for The Biggest Loser or, even worse, The Walking Dead

#16 LOW NOTE And holy cats do you miss your husband and your kid

#17 HIGH NOTE But still, you've got this nice big hotel room all to yourself. Enough with this listmaking. I'm going back to sleep.

On saying yes

My mother is frequently late. I remember, as a kid, watching wistfully as the other kids got picked up on time (there were moms who were early, even) from kindergarten, Hebrew school, gymnastics. I would look out hopefully into the dim reaches of the parking lot, perk up upon seeing the boxy outline of a Country Squire station wagon, only to realize, a few moments later, it belonged to someone else. I would sag. Twenty minutes later, my mom would appear, indignant at my indignance. What, she would say. I was busy!

And it was true, she was busy. My mom did and does a million things: she's a mesmerizingly good painter (see her stuff at adelegrodstein.com), she's a devoted friend (probably the most popular person I know), a terrific cook, a Bikram yoga devotee, a crossword-finisher, a Scrabble addict, and a superb wife, mother, and grandmother. She also lives a life that most people would envy - in part, because she's always saying yes. Want to visit a friend two hours away? Yes. Want to learn how to sculpt in marble? Yes. Want to fly to Seattle to see your grandson's soccer game? Yes. So she's a little late sometimes. It's the cost of saying yes to so many things, to so many good things, to life.

I, on the other hand, tend to me much more cautious. I leave for airports three hours early, I try to restrain myself from getting too excited about too much, and I get tired. In my heart I think I'm like 90 years old. But I'm trying to learn from my mother in a million ways, and one of them is to stay enthusiastic, to keep saying yes.

Last night I read at KGB in New York. Out of nowhere my folks showed up. They had shlepped from New Jersey to the East Village, and then after they were going to eat at a cute Italian place they knew down the street. It was Sunday, late, and they both had big weeks coming up. And let's be honest, they've seen me do this like one million times already. Yet there they were. I was so thrilled. I can't believe you came, I said.

What, like I would miss this? said my mother. How could I miss this? Do I want to see you read from your new book? Do I want to be in New York? Do I love you? Yes.

On hotel rooms and being alone

The Explanation for Everything, my new novel, publishes in three days. Two if you don't count today. Right now I'm in a hotel room in Decatur, Georgia, all by myself, coffee brewing in the weird hotel mini coffee maker, thinking about all the things I have to do to get ready while breathing in my neurotic mantra: low expectations. Low expectations.

It doesn't matter how Explanation sells or gets reviewed. I have done what I can do.

It doesn't matter if I don't work out today. I'll walk somewhere at some point and that's exercise, sort of.

It doesn't matter that I left the author party after half a drink last night to get back to my amazingly big hotel room, complete with HGTV and a great novel and nobody else. Who missed me? Nobody missed me.

It doesn't matter if I don't write any fiction today. I didn't write any yesterday, either.

Oh! But I'm no yogi, and mantras have never worked too well for me. I want The Explanation to do well. I want to be the kind of person who's a total blast at parties. I want to be in Montana again, hiking those glorious mountains. I want to kiss Ben and Natey. And I want to have this hotel room forever, the quiet of it, so I can write.

On jet lag, only children, and time

We got home from Paris late Monday night and I spent yesterday in the same protective fog that got me through the 12 hour shlep home, checking things off my list (passport control on Monday, the post office yesterday) in a zombie-like, foot-ahead-of-foot fashion. Today I was up again at four, yanking Natey's birthday presents from the trunk in the dark. I promised him weeks ago that when he came downstairs on his birthday, his presents would be wrapped on the kitchen table. He's an only child and gets indulged like this. I really never thought I'd have an only child. I found the tape and the scissors and was about to get to work when I heard a creaky "mommy?" from an upstairs bedroom. For five years now I've been listening for "mommy" or one of its variants in the night. I raced upstairs. "I need to go pee." He went to the bathroom and then I brought him into our bedroom, where his father was still fast asleep. "Scratch my back." I scratched his back, and the mosquito bites on his arm. When I looked at the clock it was 5:22. This is about the same time I showed up at Englewood Hospital to have Nathaniel, the same time on the clock, five years ago. Time is arbitrary and years are a manmade way to keep track of it; I know that. Every single day is another day further from the day I met Nathaniel, the day I met his father, the day my parents met me. My son's birthday doesn't connect me in any true way to the day he was born. But it does bring me back. He arrived at 12:50 in the afternoon. He weighted seven pounds and thirteen ounces. When I saw him, small and blue-eyed and dark-haired, I was surprised that he looked like me. Sometimes I think that people assume that parents of only children don't love their kids as much as other parents do - I guess I used to think that myself. If they loved their kid more, loved being parents more, wouldn't they have more kids? Oh, I was an idiot when I thought that. Because now sometimes I think that my love for this kid is so crushing I will barely survive it. How could I love somebody else like this? Then I wonder if he'll be lonely when he's older. Then I think that he can never be lonely because he will always have my heart. Then I think that's completely bonkers. Then I remember I won't always be around to fix him. This morning he fell asleep in my arms like he did the day he was born. The presents are wrapped on the table. A Razr scooter, a Playmobil firehouse, a piggy bank, Star Wars legos, Star Wars Play-Doh, and a Darth Vader candy dispenser. I told you this kid was indulged. When he wakes up we will commence with whatever it is he wants to do today. I'll need a nap at some point. Sometimes, when I need a nap, he tucks me in.

#only children #Razr Scooters #Legos #Star Wars #Playmobil #birthdays

On Paris with Nathaniel

Since 2006, I've spent my July in Paris, teaching at the Paris American Academy. The only summer I didn't was 2008, and that was because my due date was July 30. If my due date had been, say, September 30, I know I would have figured out a way to get here.

July 2009 found me alone on an airplane with my 11 month old son on my lap, too cheap and too dumb to have bought him his own ticket. We checked into a ridiculous apartment (floor to ceiling windows he could have toddled right out of, a loft bed and a family of shouters next door) and we both sobbed until midnight that night out of exhaustion, jet lag, and panic.

The next morning, refreshed, I stuck him in his Bjorn and carried him out into Paris for what would become a ritual for us: a few weeks, every summer, of mother-son alone time in France. I have babysitters to help me, and Ben comes for some of the month, and occasionally other family members have shown up, but an awful lot of every summer is me and Nathaniel, doing our thing. This summer we:

bought a croissant every morning and had the same fight over why Nathaniel could not also have a large can of apple juice.

played iPad chess every night before we fell asleep. I always lost.

went to Disney World and rode "It's a Small World" twice to identify all the countries. (Tibet! Japan! IT'S AN ANIMATRONIC DOLL IN A PHILLIES JERSEY!)

ate ice cream constantly.

fought over whether it was a good idea to have more ice cream. I always lost this one too (I tried to be on the side of responsible ice cream consumption but in this regard it was clear I didn't have my heart in it).

slept in the same small bed, since it was "too scary" to sleep alone in a weird place

had Bey Blade battles, which I describe to friends who don't know any four year old boys as bitter wars with attack dreidl weaponry. Nobody knows what this means either but I love to say "attack dreidl."

had lunch with French cousins and dinner with French cousins and Nathaniel was so sweet and polite I almost wept with relief.

talked about his upcoming entrance into kindergarten and how excited he is that I might cry when I drop him off. I have no idea why he finds this idea exciting but he sure does and likes to bring it up a lot: "And on the first day of kindergarten what are you going to do again?"

saw Monsters U with an audience made up entirely of French adults.

used a scooter to motor almost everywhere in Paris, dodging death to the point where I just got used to the taste of my heart in my mouth.

peed in the bushes three times.

talked about everything else in the world: drawing and murderers and why there are murderers and why scooters are so awesome and Disney World and whether or not Disney World is for babies and why the French don't eat more bagels and the pebble beach at Etretat and how I almost choked on my steak that one time but he knew I wouldn't die.

Man is it exhausting being here with Nathaniel. But of all the gifts being in Paris has given me over the years, this time with him has by far been the greatest. He's sleeping now in the other room, and he looks like a little boy now, not at all like the baby he was four years ago, and yes I will cry when I drop him off at kindergarten, but for now we're in a place where he's still mine.

#Bey Blades #Paris #Disney World #Etretat #Paris American Academy

On that kid sobbing in the courtyard

Oh honey, I know. It's so hot here, and you miss your family - your husband is in New Jersey, which is six hours away by direct flight, which you didn't spring for, so instead you're going to be stuck in Dublin for four hours with your four year old, trying to fool him into thinking that watching the arrival board is entertainment. You've been feeding him too much candy, too. And you haven't worked on your novel in three weeks and that flickering light inside you - more flicker than light - that convinced you it might be good is starting to sputter. You might be sputtering. Also you've been eating nothing but croissants during these past three weeks, and drinking nothing but rose. There's no way you're going to fit into your skinny jeans when you get back home. Possibly not even your less skinny jeans. You miss your sister. You miss your brother. You bought a whole bunch of sweaters for your husband on sale at the Monoprix - six euros! - but you have no idea how you'll fit them in that suitcase. Just the idea of that suitcase makes your back hurt. You've let people down. You'll let them down again.

Oh little girl wailing in the courtyard, it's enough to make me want to cry right along with you. But instead I'm going to drink my coffee and take a cold shower. My day too will come.

#Aer Lingus #chronic back pain #Explanation for everything

On animals

I wouldn't say I'm an animal person, necessarily, although I have nothing against a nice petting zoo and seeing a deer in the suburbs still fills me with more wonder than irritation. But I've never been one to post pictures of pets on various social media, or treat them like they were beloved family members with Christmas presents and etc. For fifteen years I had a cat, and after that cat died, when asked if I missed him, I could honestly answer no. He was a seriously crabby cat. He scratched me, scratched my furniture, scratched my kid. When I was pregnant he treated me with such resentment that one night he wouldn't stop shrieking til I got out of bed and slept on the floor. The hard wood floor. While eight months pregnant. You try it.

But lately I've been blue and of all the things I could long for, weirdly, I long for that stupid crabby cat. He was fat and gray and his favorite thing was to sit on my lap while I tried to work, putting his stupid head on the stupid keyboard until I had no choice but to stop working and scratch his head, and then he'd fall asleep, and I'd fall asleep - this usually happened while I was sitting in my big red chair - and we'd wake up together a few hours later, both a little confused. Often we'd share a can of tuna fish. If I had a little extra cream from a recipe I'd give it to him and that's about the only time he started to purr.

I rescued that cat from the ASPCA on the Upper East Side almost twenty years ago. He was with me on 9/11. He was with me the day my son was born. He needed to cheer the hell up in a serious way but sometimes he cheered me up despite himself.

#cats #pregnancy #ASCPCA #depression

On the guilt

From my teensy apartment in Paris, where my husband sleeps on a "double" mattress fit for a person and a baby, or a person and a large pet, and my son sleeps on the pull out couch, and I have shuttled between them throughout the night for reasons that not even a professional somnambulist could put together, I have finally given up sleep for the illusion it is and shuttled to my desk. There, while gazing blearily at the morning internet (all the coffee in France wouldn't do much for me this morning) I scanned a New York Times headline called: "Draft: A Writer's Mommy Guilt." I did not click on the link. Of all possible guilts, I think "mommy guilt" sounds the most despicable, followed two seconds behind by "writer's mommy guilt." (I mean first of all, "mommy guilt?" What are we, in kindergarten? And what the hell is a "writer mommy?" Cover your ears and close your eyes cause you know I'm going to say it: has any man in the world ever called himself a "writer DADDY?" Um, no.) (I mean doesn't that whiff gently of porn?)

But that's actually not the problem here, or it isn't my problem. My problem is that there are so many things I feel guilty about all the time and being a writer just cannot be one of them. For instance: I feel guilty that I shlep my kid to Paris so I can work when I know he'd be happier with his friends at home. I feel guilty that I let him eat too much sugar while he's here to keep him occupied and compliant. I feel guilty that I tune him out while I'm online. I feel guilty that he goes to sleep too late. I feel guilty that I don't keep my promises. I feel guilty that I make promises I can't always keep. I feel guilty that I bought him one of those little French razor scooters, even though he loves it, because now it seems he's permanently one errant scoot away from being flattened by French traffic.

I feel guilty that he's an only child.

I feel guilty that I'm depressed around him sometimes.

I feel guilty that I let him draw at night instead of reading him award-winning children's books.

I feel guilty that I curse around him.

I feel guilty that Ben and I seriously considered letting him watch "In Bruges" to prepare him for our recent trip to Bruges. (He's four).

But it never occurred to me until I read that headline that there's something out there called "writer mommy guilt," and it's something I might need to have or have already. I'm sure "mommy guilt" is about how, you know, writing takes me away from my kid and I love him and love to write and balance and money and time and blah blah blah. Sure. Fine.

But please don't make me feel guilty about having these two things in my life, raising my kid and raising my books? I love them both too much. I know I don't give one the all when I'm giving the all to the other. I know it's impossible to be perfect at everything. But I feel so lucky to have these two great loves in my life. And I just refuse to feel bad for that.

#New York Times #Paris traffic #Mommyasdescriptor #Guilt

On the end of Barnes and Noble

This morning, while perusing the morning Internet, I read yet another mini-article (I often think of them as texticles) about how the end of Barnes and Noble is nigh. This news makes me feel terribly sad, as I've always been a sort of unimaginative consumer, and Barnes and Noble, with its Starbucks and its magazine racks and its huge spreads of bestsellers, has always felt like a true pleasure to me. I mean I'm one of four people who actually owns a Nook!

And of course I love the independent bookstores, and whenever I'm near one I make a policy of buying something in hardcover (this serves as a sort of superstition; if I buy somebody else's book someone will almost certainly buy mine). But where I live there are no independent bookstores. There are no used bookstores. We don't - and I find this amazing - we don't even have one of those adorable kids books/ wooden toys/ overpriced beaded necklace stores. What we have is Barnes and Noble. Other than that, as far as bookstores go, we have the Internet. And while the Internet likes to scream at me about all sorts of garbage, rarely does it let me run my hands along the shelves, or pick the books up and hold them for a while.

So now I guess it's time to add something new, once again, to my list of favorite disappearing things (#1: Shiseido lipstick in Miel, #2: Diane's step class at the Mt. Laurel LA Fitness, #3: affordable Metrocards, #4: full-proof Maker's Mark). Take your place at #5, poor lovely Barnes and Noble. I remember fondly the days when you were the Big Bad Wolf of bookselling, the days when bookselling could support a Big Bad Wolf. You sold a lot of my novels, gave me a nice air-conditioned place to study, let me use your bathrooms dozens of times. (The internet has never once let me use its bathroom).

While you're still here, I'm going to go buy a few hardcovers from you, and maybe a Frappuccino. And then, months or maybe years from now, I'll sigh at the mall space you once occupied, and wonder how it is this country can support yet another Urban Outfitters, but has so little money left over for books.

#Barnes and Noble #Urban outfitters #Makers Mark #Shiseido #End of Days #Step Class

On the supermoon

This is not really about the Supermoon, but I did love seeing it the other night. Plus the rainbow outside our house, which actually disappeared into the clouds exactly like it does on the box of Lucky Charms (or at least the Lucky Charms boxes I coveted as a kid). Plus I love seeing my tomatoes grow and the potatoes and zucchini in our three foot square patch of garden. And my poor dying cauliflower. And all the herbs.

But the other night I was in lower Manhattan and I was walking up the street and walking toward me was a famous writer who I very much admire and her partner, a famous playwright. And we talked for a while and this summer I'll see his new play and if I'm lucky maybe I'll bump into her one more time. Also in Manhattan we ate Israeli food and considered going to an Amadou and Mariam concert and I saw the beautiful Mary Cassatt prints at the Public Library. This stuff just doesn't happen in New Jersey, where I live. And I think I'm going to spend the rest of my time here wondering if I make too much of the pleasure of my small patch of garden, or if I need to be back in Manhattan, where you can see the Supermoon any time you damn please.

#New York #New Jersey #Lucky Charms #Supermoon #Angst

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