I was going to send this last Sunday and just as I was sitting down to proofread, one of my boy’s hit the other in the head with a toy gas station. An ER visit ensued, as did the glueing shut of an eyebrow gash. Suffice it to say, being a parent is so unpredictable and so real. Onward to what I had intended to tell you then.
A few of my babies went into the world this week—not fully, not forever, but the very first toes were dipped.
I’ll start with my human babies.
My boys started going to a 2s program two mornings a week. It’s a happy pre-school, the same one I went to (go figure), and walking distance from our apartment. On their very first morning of school, we loaded their backpacks with diapers and wipes, packed them a snack and a lunch, dropped them off, and walked away. It felt like a trust fall.
When we picked them at the end of their day (aka right after lunch), their noses were red from crying but they also had glitter on their shirts, and little stories to tell about their first real day away from home. I was proud of them, and proud of us.
You have a baby (or babies) and the physical closeness to a human being is like nothing else in this world. You swaddle them, cuddle them, diaper them, feed them, bathe them…everything for them. And then suddenly they exist multiple hours a day in an environment that has nothing to do with you. It was all of our first taste of them really, truly growing up. Their worlds are ever-so-slowly getting bigger.
This week my book also took some important steps into the world. It’s in a few new hands, it is getting its “legal read,” and soon will be fact checked and copyedited. It’s the first time my book has ever really existed somewhere more public than on my computer.
Writers often talk about how once their book is published, it suddenly feels very separate from them. This was my first taste of that experience. A letting go.
My book and my boys have occupied strangely parallel timelines for the past two years. I sold my book the same week my boys were born, and for the past two years all three of them have been maturing and growing up. It feels kismet that their first wobbly steps into the world happened during the same week too.
It’s strange, these first steps, this first real relinquishing of control. Trusting new people to take care of your most precious people and your most precious art. It’s scary, naturally, but a little bit freeing too—people are meant to exist in the world, so are books. My boys, my book. Off they go.
The links I actually read this week
I definitely worry about the big one more than most of my friends in California. So if you too are an East Coaster with the big one fear, this article is for you. (gift article)
Jia Tolentino is so smart and well-read it humbles me to my core. Here she is (in podcast form) talking to Ezra Klein about psychedelics, and parenting, and screen time, and what the F any of us are really doing on this planet.
Truly just gossip, but I couldn’t stop reading about the RFK Jr./Olivia Nuzzi affair—well maybe it’s more than just gossip, maybe it’s a debate about journalistic ethics.
I’ve thought a lot about the segregation of grown up life and kid life; and this op-ed makes a strong case to integrate those spaces. (gift article)
How to have a career in writing.
Two truly horrific stories out of Georgia about women who died because they could not get the abortion care they needed in this post Roe v. Wade world. Both of these women were mothers, both of these women’s deaths were preventable—it’s all sickening. We owe each other more.
What I wrote
My lovely Yahoo editor Erin sent me an assignment to speak to people who work in hospice care about the lessons they’ve learned on the job. I was a little daunted by the assignment, mostly because thinking about death makes me (and many people!) uncomfortable. I finished the piece thinking we should be talking about death a whole lot more.
I also was deeply comforted by these words from a hospice nurse:
“Our bodies are built to die. They have built-in mechanisms like shutting down the hunger and thirst mechanism so you don’t feel hungry and thirsty at the end of life. Then your calcium levels rise usually, so then you feel really sleepy. People always think it's this big, painful, awful event, but for the most part the actual dying process is peaceful and the body knows how to do it.”
A parting recommendation
This is my first time recommending kids *content* but my sons’ teacher recommended this song from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood to help with their fear of being dropped off at school. It really, really has helped. We now sing “Grownups Come Back” throughout the day. If your kid is struggling with separation anxiety, this helped at our house.
See you next week!
xo
congrats on all these enormous milestones (and glad your son’s head is okay)! oof