reading woolf

It’s been a melancholic week, even with the serious basement cleaning that D and I accomplished last weekend. (I’m still on my mission to de-clutter.) Stella started back to school on Monday, and she is thrilled to be a second-grader. Thrilled. She comes home full of stories about her day and her new classmates, and I love this. But I can’t help that tug of emotion: She’s growing up too fast! There is nothing we can do to slow the onward march of time! I have also been missing my grandpa a lot this week. At the beginning of each school year, we would figure out which day would be my grandpa day, the day I would take him for errands, get groceries for him, or later, just visit him and make him lunch. This year, Wednesday is the day I have alone with Zoë, and it would have been my new grandpa day, and all day I felt heavy and disoriented knowing that those days are no longer a part of my life.

It doesn’t help, perhaps, that I’m reading Virginia Woolf’s The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. As I make my way through the collection of essays, I keep thinking of my need to make connections, to share experience. But it seems so futile sometimes. Or maybe it’s just that it’s so much work—it takes so much effort—to continue to move forward, stay open to new experiences in the face of the challenges that life provides. Does it sound like a need some kind of renewal? I do.

My goal for the weekend is to sneak away a few times and sit outside, reading Woolf. Her prose. Oh her prose. I love this:

The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it.

What’s not to love about that?

I’m wishing you all a lovely, relaxing long holiday weekend. 

a double life: discovering motherhood

I’m so pleased to have another author interview to post this week. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing Lisa Catherine Harper, whose debut memoir, A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood, won the 2010 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize.

This is a lovely, meditative memoir that takes the reader through Harper’s first pregnancy and early motherhood. The book blends narrative and research, and, for me, is a wonderful reflection on the complexities of life and celebration of fully living in the moment. I won’t say too much more about the book here, because I’ve written a full review of it for Literary Mama.

So without further ado, please welcome Lisa to Mother Words!

KH: I’m wondering if you can talk a little about the process of writing this book. Did you know when you began writing that you were working on a memoir?

LCH:  I did. I began writing nearly as soon as I became pregnant. I have a PhD, and one of the things I do as a matter of course is research. I realized almost immediately that my body was changing in ways I hadn’t anticipated and which no one had told me about. I researched extensively in OB/GYN textbooks and medical journals and soon began to understand that the biological changes of pregnancy were just the beginning of the enormous emotional and psychological changes of motherhood.  I wrote the book because I wanted to translate the experience of a very ordinary pregnancy for a general reader.  I believed that becoming a mother was an interesting category of experience—not an isolated experience for women only, but an experience tied to life at all corners.

KH:  One of the things I love about A Double Life is your essayistic style. You ponder concepts like movement, dance, pain (to name a few), and circle around and around each of these, really trying to search out meaning and figure out what you really think and believe. I’d love if you could talk a little about the construction of the book, and whether this essayistic circling was a conscious choice or if it’s just how the narrative emerged in the writing process.

LCH:  The style was a conscious choice. I love the essay form.  On the one hand, I wanted to write a book in the very American tradition of long form journalism, which can take the form of (personal) narrative supported by research.   I intended from the start to support my story with research and the kind of rigorous reflection I was trained in by my doctoral studies. On the other hand, I wanted to write a story that was more than my own.  I aspired to write a story that investigated the universal changes of maternity. The essay form was perfect for both of these ambitions.

KH:  Another thing that I really love about the book is how you so deftly wove research into the narrative. Can you talk a little about the research you did in writing this book? Is there anything that surprised you as you began your research?

LCH:  I read everything I could get my hands on:  every book in the bookstore, all the material from my own doctor, pregnancy websites, etc.  But it wasn’t enough, so I turned to medical textbooks, OB/GYN textbooks, and medical journals. I did a lot of research in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).  I read extensively about all aspects of the evolving pregnancy. Some days the research itself was so interesting I had to make myself stop to get to the writing. I read a lot more than I had to (which is so often the case with research!). Only a small fraction of my research made it into the book. I had to translate all this sophisticated material for a general reader (and check and double check my facts). I also spoke extensively with my own doctors at UCSF and with a good friend who was a labor & delivery nurse.

Everything surprised me—but most especially the totality of the changes that occur in pregnancy.  The fact that your lung capacity changes, that you have more blood in your body, that your brain is washed by hormones that can cause you to have an orgasm in your sleep –those things seemed to me astonishing and deeply weird.  They still do. It’s not just your reproductive system that changes. Your entire body is transformed. This, of course, is a metaphor.

I was constantly surprised by the metaphors I found in the research. This was one of the most rewarding aspects of writing. In researching, then writing the morning sickness chapter, for instance, I understood for the first time that pregnancy overtakes your whole body in much the same way just as the nausea can: completely and without warning. Working on the sciatica chapter I found the biological explanation for how we experience pain to be the perfect explanation for some of our most cherished notions of identity (I think, therefore I am). These things helped me understand my own maternity better.

KH:  I love the way you write your relationship with your husband, Kory, and this part of the book really feels like a wonderful love story to me. How did you handle writing about your relationship? Did you get his approval before you went to print? How do you balance your need to create as a writer with your family’s privacy?

LCH  I am, however, in everything that I write constantly balancing the true facts of the story (personal details, revelations, confessions, etc.) with the real demands of the story.  I ask myself: is this fact really necessary? How much do I really need to tell? And in the telling, am I really saying something new? I’m even more conscious of this now that my children are older.  I won’t write a story that involves personal details unless I feel I have something significant to say, it does not violate their privacy, and I am not telling it simply to broadcast a seemingly interesting experience. There must be something more at stake when you write about personal history.  For me, restraint must always temper the use of personal facts when important relationships are at stake.  However, I also believe that if you have to tell the story, you also can’t avoid the hard facts for fear of hurting someone’s feelings.

 

KH:  Lisa, you are a mother, wife and a full-time professor (and dancer, friend, etc.). How do you balance writing, your career, and your family?

LCH:  Over the years I’ve learned to accept and embrace the changes that being a parent brings to my work life. I’ve learned to cultivate discipline and silence in my work life, to work very hard during my work time and to set my work aside completely when the kids come home.  (Though I am not always successful at this latter task.) These things, of course, took years to figure out. The most important practical things I’ve done to protect my work life include: 

·      Cultivate discipline: write during the children’s naps, every day.

·      Before my children were school-age, I took Grace Paley’s advice and resigned myself to “writing at different paces.” It was okay if I worked more slowly some weeks or months. I knew that would change.

·      Don’t stop writing until you know where you will start the next day.

·      Give yourself small, specific assignments: one scene, one section, one chapter revised.

I still use these precepts, even though my writing life has changed enormously with the book publication and the beginning of kindergarten for my youngest.

KH:  What was the most challenging part of writing A Double Life? 

LCH:  Getting published.

Writing the book joined my geeky commitment to research and my lyric love of narrative. It was a joy to write. I found it interesting to dive into the material, investigate the story, and tease out the larger meaning. 

But I had a long road to publication.  Motherhood journals/sites often asked me to take out the research. Literary journals were not so interested in the story of motherhood. And the first publishers we approached didn’t know where it would be shelved: memoir or parenting? It’s both, of course, and readers understand that now, but it took years of perseverance.

KH:  Can you talk a little more about the process of finding a home for A Double Life? What would advice would you give to other writers as they embark on this process?

LCH:  In addition to the where-to-shelve-the-book problem I mentioned above, I had editors who loved my prose but found the book too quiet. There are a lot of stories about motherhood that are sensational or exceptional, but this was not my story. But I had a deep belief in my approach and my book, and I worked very hard to write the most incisive, compelling narrative I could, and then I knew I just had to be patient.  I actually got to the point where I was convinced I would have to publish another book first, and then A Double Life would come out as my second book once I had a better platform. But then I submitted the manuscript to the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, and won, and with that award came the publication deal. Most gratifying was that the Prize series editors understood the book’s mission and ambition completely—as have the readers since publication.  Since then, my agent has been able to sell foreign rights in Taiwan, Brazil, and Italy, so it’s been incredibly satisfying after such a long wait to have readers who understand the book as I envisioned it. The thing is, in spite of the challenges writing this kind of a book posed, in the end the it just took that one editor saying “yes” at the right time. This is always the case: “right editor, right time, right place.”

My advice is always to perfect your craft and write the very best story you can. This is the first and paramount responsibility of any writer. Then the writer’s job is to figure out how to enter the conversation.  To whom are you speaking? Seek out publication in the places having the conversation you want to be part of.  These might be local, regional, online, print, niche markets. There are many ways to begin.  Expect editors to say no, but don’t take that no personally. Be brutal and objective about your work, revise if necessary, and persevere. I often think of the opening lines of Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Well Dressed Man with a Beard”:

After the final no there comes a yes

And on that yes the future world depends.

No was the night. Yes is this present sun.

KH:  I love that, Lisa. And I love how the message of perseverance is echoed among so many of the writers I know and love. Don’t give up, writers. And never let the “no” stop you. 

Lisa, thanks so much for taking the time to be here at Mother Words! 

on being a writer

I haven’t had much time to sit down and really write these last weeks. Between my grandpa dying, a trip up north, a non-writing related freelance project, and limited childcare, I just haven’t had the time to spirit myself off to the coffee shop.

And this bothers me. It makes me feel unmoored, as if there is nothing holding me in place, keeping me from scattering here and there with the details of my life.

It’s interesting, then, that in the last few days, three friends have e-mailed me essays and quotes about being a writer. It’s as if they knew, somehow, that I needed that reminder.

This is the first. It’s an Ira Glass quote from Sally McGraw’s blog Already Pretty. Sally takes the quote and writes a wonderful post about how style evolves. But I love it for what it says to beginning writers:

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me —  is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

You’ve gotta fight your way through. I love that, and it speaks to something that I often say here and to my students: don’t ever give up. Keep writing. Even when it’s hard. Even when you get rejected. Even when you don’t have time. Take an hour or twenty minutes and sit down and put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

The next piece sent to me was a link to M. Molly Backes’ post on how to be a writer. A mother, whose daughter wants to be a writer, asked Molly what she needed to do to help her daughter. The mother was looking for some formula, some camp that would help her daughter realize her dream. I love Molly’s response. And it reminded me, as a mother, how I can best support my daughters’ dreams: love them, support them, and let them see me following my own dreams--working hard, never giving up.

And the last piece, also sent by one of my wonderful former students, was Jhumpa Lahiri’s recent essay, “Trading Stories: Notes from an apprenticeship,” in The New Yorker. I love Lahiri’s stories, so I loved reading about her journey into writing, her determination, the way she found a home at her desk.

Each of these pieces buoys me, and each reminds me that I am, indeed, a writer.

I have cleared my morning today, and will make my way to the coffee shop after I run and after I drop the girls at their 2-day-a-week summer program. And I will sit down and write the piece for my grandpa’s memorial service (which is Saturday). And I will let the words that emerge ground me in my dreams once again. 

in iowa

I’m sorry I’ve been quiet the last week or so. Life has gotten in the way of blogging (and writing in general). Hopefully I’ll be able to return to my computer with new vigor when I’m back home. But right now I’m in Iowa City at NonfictioNOW, soaking up as much as I can.

I love writing conferences. I love to listen to other writers’ perspectives on form and narrative, voice and time. I love to walk away with new insights on how to frame my own work and where it fits within the genre of creative nonfiction (though over-thinking the latter can paralyze me, so I try not to think about it too much).

I’ll post more about the conference next week after I’ve had a chance to reflect and digest. Until then, I’ll take notes and try not to freeze my butt off. (I forgot my warm coat on the porch in Minneapolis, and it is COLD here.)

mother words week at cribsheet!

I'm thrilled to announce that it's Mother Words Week over at the StarTribune's Cribsheet blog. I know many of you are regular readers of Cribsheet. If you're not, you should be -- May and Kay are fabulous!

This year's Mother Words week features essays from my online Mother Words students, and it's being kicked off with a lovely piece by Cecilia, who writes the wonderful blog, Only You.

Please check out Cribsheet each day this week for a new essay. And congratulations to my wonderful students!

happy father's day!

Just a shout out to all the dads out there. Happy Father's Day!

There are some really wonderful Father's Day pieces up at Literary Mama this month. I especially love Sheila Squillante's "All Things Edible, Random, and Odd."

Enjoy!

for the running mamas

I spent last weekend at my mom’s cabin in northern Minnesota with my family, and it was just what I needed. The weather was gorgeous on Saturday (think mid-July heat and sun), so I decided I’d take a day and not work at all. (I clearly have an unhealthy relationship with my computer if it’s that remarkable that I didn’t open it for one day.)

Instead of work, I went for a too-long run around the lake (on a combination of country roads and small highways) without any water. That wasn’t such a good idea, but I did end up making it back to the cabin without passing out. Then I ate a big lunch and collapsed into bed for a wakeful sort of nap. Then there was the pontoon ride and white wine and my brother-in-law’s ribs on the grill. The kids were outside for 12 straight hours. It was perfect.

And this week I’m excited to post about a new book for mother runners by Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea. Run Like a Mother contains alternating essays by McDowell and Bowen Shea that detail what it’s like to be a mother runner. They offer encouragement, practical tips, and basically make it seem possible to get yourself up and out the door for an early-morning run even when you feel sleep deprived and over-extended. I especially like that they make this seem possible even for those of us who aren’t hardcore marathoners (which of course you know I’m not.)

But while I’m not signing up for a marathon anytime soon, I am ready for a 5K, and that’s what I’ll be doing on Saturday morning. Dimity will be in the Twin Cities promoting Run Like a Mother this week and she'll be doing a number of readings and fun runs.

Thursday, June 3, she’ll be reading at The Bookcase in Wayzata at 7 p.m. On Friday morning she’ll lead a 5K fun run followed by a short reading at Title Nine in Edina. On Friday night at 7:30, she’ll be reading at Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis, and on Saturday morning, June 5, she’ll lead a 5K around Lake Calhoun from the Running Room at 9 a.m. Strollers and walkers are welcome on the runs, and apparently there will be lots of prizes at the end!

So if you’re a local mama runner (or if you want to be a mama runner, but need a little motivation), come to the Running Room on Saturday morning. I’ll be there plodding along in my slow, happy way.

happy mother's day!

I had some quiet reading time this morning when D took the girls out to track down some fresh strawberries and a vanilla latte for me. Then with strawberries and coffee in bed, Stella presented me with all the Mother's Day cards and stories she had written. (Some were collaborations; Zoe contributed scribbles and swirls.)

Then after a quick dance party, we walked around one of our lovely city lakes (the girls jostling for position in the wagon and calling to the ducks the whole way). The sun was glinting off the waves, tons of people were running and walking, and downtown Minneapolis was sparkling in the near distance. What could be better?

Back at home I was able to read more on the porch--an engrossing novel that I don't even have to review! And soon we'll be heading off on bikes to my mom's house. A perfect day.

I hope you've all had a lovely day, as well. I'm so thankful for all the amazing mothers in my life. You inspire me each day. Thank you!

Please check out this really beautiful Mother's Day essay by Jeanine DeHoney over at Literary Mama. Also scroll through the rest of the site. There's been some wonderful material published recently.

a week of readings

I’m coming off an awful case of strep throat, which turned me into a serious whiner last week. But I’m back to normal now—with only an occasional whine here and there—and I’m excited about a couple of readings I’ll be going to this week.

On Thursday evening, I’m going to take my mom to the Eye of My Heart reading downtown Minneapolis at the Central Library. It’s part of the library’s Talk of the Stacks reading series. Barbara Graham, Sandra Benitez, and Judith Guest will be reading pieces from the anthology. (A great Mother’s Day treat to share with your mother!)

And then on Saturday morning, I’m going to hear the amazing Bonnie J. Rough read from her debut memoir, Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA. I’m in the middle of Bonnie’s book and it’s stunning—stunning. I will be posting a review and interview with Bonnie later this week, so stay tuned for that, but if you’re in the Twin Cities, please also come down to The Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 8th. The Loft will be having an open house that day in celebration of ten years in the Open Book space, and Bonnie will be reading at 11 a.m. This is free and open to the public. I hope to see some of you there!

by heart

Thanks to everyone who submitted a haiku for the Annual Mother Words Haiku Contest. Laura has a challenging task ahead of her! I’ll post her choice for winner in the next day or two.

On to books: I just finished Kathleen Melin’s lovely book, By Heart: A Mother’s Story of Children and Learning at Home, which tells the story of her family’s journey from public education to home schooling. But this book is about more than mothering and home schooling; it’s about the kind of life a couple chooses for their family. (Instead of a bustling urban life (mine?), Kathleen and her husband embrace rural living—wood burning stoves and maple syrup collecting and all.) This collection of essays explores how one family navigates the choices they make, choices that are sometimes outside what society considers “normal” and “expected.”

Melin questions what socialization is and who it serves. After an encounter with a neighbor who thinks Melin’s three children are missing out because they don’t “go” to school, Melin writes:

It was my first encounter with the question most often asked of home school families: socialization. […] Our (society) accepts as natural rather than strange that the proper socialization for children is institution-based rather than home-based.

We’ve come to doubt that a family, regardless of its plunge into the society around it, can pass on the necessary values and behavior modifications in order to ensure the stability of the social group. We’ve come to suspect parents, the indoctrination they might execute, the things they will do to their own children in their private homes. This frightens us.

Melin dives into history and research and discusses how compulsory school attendance began and to what effect. This aspect of her book was particularly fascinating to me.

Her prose is also lovely, and I found myself wanting to linger with her story. I wish it had been 100 pages longer, so I could have immersed myself more deeply in scene and character, so I could steep myself in her lyrical language.

In my favorite chapter, towards the end of the book, after a fight between Melin’s son, Jack, and her husband, Cy, Melin tries to comfort Jack. Jack says, “Dad hates me. I know he hates me.” And Melin writes:

I want to remind this child of the days he cannot remember, of the days when Cy carried him newborn through the winter woods in the South, showing him the trees, the red clay creek, and explaining the sudden neighing of horses. I want to tell him about the summer I lay in bed two months during (my second) pregnancy and watched as Cy guarded his son’s climb up the ladder in the old orchard where he picked cherries, and how afterward, they swayed in the hammock and feasted on the red fruit.

Lovely.

I am not a home schooler, nor do I want to be. I am a much better mother for the hours I have at my computer, away from the girls I love so dearly. But I love to peek into others’ lives, into other ways of being in the world, other ways of mothering. And for that I’m very grateful for Kathleen Melin’s book.

Kathleen Melin lives on her ancestral farm in northwestern Wisconsin, where she operates a retreat for artists and is at work on a young adult novel series. If you’d like more information about Kathleen and her work, you can contact her at kathleenmelin{at}centurytel{dot}net.

a work in progress

I love the latest Literary Reflections essay, up now at Literary Mama. "A Work in Progress" is about learning to balance motherhood and writing, and about the author's realization that becoming a mother did not squelch her need/desire to write. Jennifer Itell is lovely. She teaches creative writing at the University of Denver and is at work on a series of short stories about motherhood. Check out "A Work in Progress."

teaching, writing and lee

The other night I went to see Chang-rae Lee read and talk about his new novel, The Surrendered. I haven’t read much of his fiction, but I absolutely love his essay “Coming Home Again,” which he was gracious enough to let me use in my Introduction to Creative Nonfiction class at the Loft.

I like to use this essay when I talk about character development because it’s such a lovely portrayal of his mother, a first-generation Korean immigrant, and of Lee’s relationship with her. The essay describes the last months of Lee’s mother’s life and her quarrel with herself over sending Lee away to Exeter for high school. This is one of my favorite scenes:

I remember washing rice in the kitchen one day and my mother’s saying in English, from her usual seat, “I made a big mistake.”

“About Exeter?”

“Yes, I made a big mistake. You should be with us for that time. I should never let you go there.”

“So why did you?” I said.

“Because I didn’t know I was going to die.”

I let her words pass. For the first time in her life, she was letting herself speak her full mind, so what else could I do?

“But you know what?” she spoke up. “It was better for you. I you stayed home, you would not like me so much now.”

I suggested that maybe I would like her even more.

She shook her head. “Impossible.”

On Tuesday night, Lee read the beginning of The Surrendered, which is stunning, and then spent over a half hour answering questions. I asked him, as I am wont to do, how he balanced teaching—he teaches at Princeton—and writing and family. (He has two young daughters.)

He admitted that it was challenging, especially when his daughters were very small. But he said that because his teaching predated his publishing, he’d always been a writer who taught. But he also said that it’s difficult to teach when he’s writing and write when he’s teaching. He needs to compartmentalize these two things because writing involves turning inward and teaching involves turning outward, being empathetic and supportive. (I’m paraphrasing badly here…)

I guess I agree with this, though I don’t know when I’ll have more than a month at a time when I’m not teaching, when I can really immerse myself in my own prose. Maybe I'll never have that kind of time.

And maybe that’s okay. What I like about teaching and writing simultaneously—juggling the two—is that the elements of craft I’m discussing with my students are then at the forefront of my mind when I’m writing. As I sit down for my twenty minutes here or an hour there, thoughts about craft are swirling in my busy brain. I like to think it makes me a better writer.

And there is no doubt that teaching energizes me. Oh, the prep and getting myself in my teaching frame of mind can be exhausting, but it also feeds me. When my students have break-throughs or get a piece published, I take great pride in their work and the part I’ve played in it.

And that brings me to Brain, Child. One of my lovely and talented students has a wonderful essay in the latest issue. If you don’t already subscribe to Brain, Child, you should. And when you do, check out Andrea's “Raising Private Milo,” which she started in my online Mother Words class last year. Congratulations, Andrea! You can also read Andrea’s writing online—she writes the wonderful blog Remains of the Day.

Now, I'm off to write for twenty minutes before I start my teaching prep.

retreat recap

I wrote about arriving at Faith’s Lodge on Friday, about the feeling of that place, the incredible energy there. This energy only intensified, crystallized, as the weekend progressed.

The weather was perfect—in the 40s, bright sun, blue sky. (Don’t be afraid of Wisconsin in February!) As we sat in the top floor meeting room, sun streamed in the windows, melting snow dripped from the roof.

Of course, it wasn’t just the weather that filled us up. I have never been in a room full of women with such powerful stories; women who were willing to share these stories, grapple with them, write to the heart of them.

We talked about craft, about writing and publishing. We wrote. We listened to each other read what we’d written. We cried—a lot. We laughed—a lot. We drank a lot of wine. And by Sunday afternoon, everyone had made major breakthroughs with their writing: rethinking structure, making discoveries, focusing in on scene, reframing.

It’s amazing to be part of a writing breakthrough. There is something incredibly powerful in asking the questions, making the suggestions that help someone crack open a piece of writing and take it to the next level.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something that Kate St. Vincent Vogl mentioned in her interview a couple of weeks ago. She alluded to something I’ve heard writers—and especially writers of creative nonfiction—say before: that writing isn’t therapeutic. So many writers balk at this idea.

I think the reason they balk is because they want their work viewed as art and they think if it’s tied in any way to “therapy,” this will somehow undercut the work they’ve put into crafting their story.

I’ve talked about this with both my classes in the last weeks and I talked about it on the retreat. And this is what I think: if you are really diving in and fearlessly searching for your story in the material of your life, it’s impossible for you not to make discoveries, to gain perspective on the life you’ve lived.

I love what Philip Gerard says: “[A memoir is] not simply a scrapbook of memories to brood over or cherish, but a reckoning. That’s the reason to write a memoir: to find out what really happened in your life; to drive toward the fact behind all the other facts, and come to some understanding, however limited, of what it means—and accept that truth.”

But if you are really doing this work of “reckoning,” you will change, you will be able to make sense of the life you’ve lived in a new way. What’s not therapeutic about that?

Now, that the thing that differentiates writing for yourself—journaling—and successful memoir and essay lies in craft. Is it crafted? Has the writer been able to craft the raw material of his/her life?

But you can experience a transformation in the writing process and still end up with art.

It’s my job to help my students craft their stories into art, to find the best way to tell the stories they need to tell. And I hope—I really do hope—that in this process they make discoveries, process the material of their lives, let go of what they need to let go of.

This is the kind of thing that was happening all weekend—this kind of tremendous and important work. Maybe it was therapeutic. It was definitely the work of artists.

Now I’m home, and I’m filled with gratitude for these fine women with whom I spent the weekend, filled with gratitude for D and my girls. (Stella made me eight presents while I was gone—paper flowers and bags decorated with glitter, drawings of our family. And when I pulled the car up in front of our house on Sunday, she and Zoë were waiting on the porch, waving, smiling.)

And now I’m ready to write. I’m ready to walk bravely into words, just as I witnessed these fine writers do all weekend long.

(I’ll post photos in the next few days.)

an honor

I have been reading Brevity for years and I’ve dreamt of being published there. The first two pieces I submitted (one in 2004 and one in 2005) were both excerpts of Ready for Air. In each case, I tried to condense a scene or chapter from my memoir into a 750-word essay. It didn’t work.

Then last spring I spent a lot of time reading and re-reading Brevity’s past issues, and I finally felt ready to submit again. I felt ready because my writing had improved immeasurably over the past years. I felt ready because I was armed with images that had been floating in my head for over a decade, images that I knew could hold together in one short piece. So I sat down and I wrote an essay, a very short essay. It was not something that I chopped and manipulated from long to short. It was something I wrote for Brevity.

I’ve posted before about patience and perseverance, which I believe are necessary if you want to be a writer. And I really do believe they are necessary. I believe that you should never let a rejection stop you. You shouldn’t even let fifty rejections stop you. You must—always—keep writing. You will get better. The market will change. And someday, you’ll get the thing you’ve been dreaming of. And then you’ll feel honored and you will have energy to write even more.

I am honored: Brevity #32.

two essays

I have to post links to two wonderful essays:

I love Victoria Patterson's "Writer Duck," up now at Literary Mama. (It was also the first essay I worked on as a Literary Mama editor, so, well, there's that.)

And then this wonderful short-short, "July 3rd," by one of my lovely students just won honorable mention in MinnPost's Short-Short contest. I swell with pride. Way to go, A.D.!

a nod to father writers

In preparation for my Writing Parenthood class last Saturday, I thought I should shift my gaze (at least for a few minutes) from motherhood literature to fatherhood literature. I designed Writing Parenthood, after all, because I had received a few (subdued) pleas that I include men in my Mother Words classes. But you see, I can’t do that. Stories by men about fatherhood don’t seem to be clumped together (and discarded) in the same way that women’s stories about motherhood routinely are. Men are often applauded for writing about parenthood, while women doing the same literary work are met with a shrug. So while there *is* quality writing out there about fatherhood, I generally do not read it, and I reserve Mother Words for mothers alone.

But then I had this class coming up, and I knew I needed to include some male voices, so I reviewed essays I’d read before (some of my favorites: Philip Lopate’s “Delivering Lily” and Scott Russell Sanders’ “Beauty”) and I went out and bought the new anthology The Book of Dads: Essays on the Joys, Perils, and Humiliations of Fatherhood, edited by Ben George, which is full of literary super-stars, writers like Charles Baxter, Richard Bausch, and Nick Flynn.

I adore Charles Baxter, as you know, so I read his essay, “The Chaos Machine,” first. It’s about Baxter’s trip to pick up his son, Daniel, at college, and woven in is the story of Baxter becoming a father, the insecurity and struggle of trying to navigate fatherhood without a role model. (His own father died when he was eighteen months old.) This essay contains everything that I love about Charles Baxter—wry sense of humor, self-deprecation, stellar characters—and Daniel himself has added footnotes, commenting on his father’s narration, making corrections when the elder Baxter takes liberties or goes astray. (You can read the very beginning of the essay here.) I loved it. And overall, this is a really wonderful collection of essays. (Seriously, Richard Bausch? What’s not to love?)

So I opened my arms to father writers, organized my thoughts, planned my class, and then, wouldn’t you know, I showed up on Saturday and THERE WERE NO MEN! I wasn’t terribly surprised, and really, it didn’t bother me. Convened was a wonderful group of mother writers—smart, thoughtful, interested women—and it was so fun to be a classroom again.

Because I’ve been teaching online so much lately, I had forgotten (well, almost) how energizing it is to share a physical space with a group of women interested in the same things. I love teaching online, as well, but I do miss the spark of a classroom. I miss watching people’s faces. I miss the back-and-forth, the way one question builds on another.

And despite the fact there were no fathers in the class, I’m glad I read The Book of Dads. It would make the perfect gift for the literary dads in your life.

weaning and weeping

I went cold turkey on Zoë on yesterday.

On Monday I went to the acupuncturist to help with my general malaise and to get an immune system boost, and the acupuncturist reminded me (as her husband had back in February) how hard breastfeeding is on our bodies, how much energy it takes. I nodded and agreed. Let me explain: I have been sick more in the last year than ever in my life. I am well—breathing freely for a week (maybe two)—and then I’m sick again, coughing until I puke. And I’m tired all the time.

Part of this is not the fault of nursing, of course. It’s me doing what I do: too much. It’s the master juggling act that, even on the days I feel I have perfected it, takes its toll. But with nursing, it’s as if I can feel the energy just draining out of me.

The acupuncturist told me her own story—similar to mine—about the exhaustion she experienced while nursing her second child. She said that in the end she weaned for self-preservation. I nodded again. I know it’s time.

Then she asked if I was still eating a lot of sugar. (It’s in the notes from several months ago.) I said I was, and she reminded me that sugar is an immune-system depressant. (Had I blocked this? I knew it was hard on the sinuses, but had I forgotten—not known?—that it actually made your immune system less efficient.) So much for the 3-pound bag of gummy bears I just bought. (It’s true. I really am in my late-30s and buying gummy bears in bulk.)

“There’s also a lot of sugar in wine,” I said with a grimace.

“For now, why don’t you wean Zoë, wean yourself from sugar, and keep the wine.”

I love this woman. “Deal,” I said.

Deal. I had my coffee without sugar for the first time EVER in my life yesterday. And guess what? It was fine. At the coffee shop I put in a little honey, and I actually liked it! Mikey likes it! I didn’t shove a handful of gummy bears into my mouth after lunch, and I was still fine. I didn’t even want a bowl of chocolate ice-cream when D dished himself one after dinner. The sugar, I guess, will be the easy part of this deal.

The hard part, clearly, is weaning Zoë. I made it through yesterday. When she pounded on my chest in the afternoon, I distracted her. We had dinner at my mom’s and she was up later than usual, so when D put her down to bed, she was fine—so tired she didn’t care about her milky. And even early this morning, when she cried out at 4:45 am (yes, I’m serious), I just nudged D and told him he was on. He took her downstairs and fed her some banana and a little bit of a smoothie.

But when I got up at 7 (7!) and Stella came upstairs talking about her new feather collection (we have to drive all over town looking for the dirty things), Zoë heard my voice and immediately started to keen mamamamamamama. She crawled up the stairs, grabbed my legs and pointed to the bed.

When I said, “milky all gone,” she began to wail. And I mean WAIL.

In the bathroom, she threw a tantrum of which I wouldn’t have believed a 15-month-old capable: she upturned the basket holding extra rolls of toilet paper; thrashed around the plastic step-stool, slapped Stella, and banged her head against the door. The only reason that she didn’t hit her head, hard, on the tile floor was because Stella was there to catch her, cradling Zoë’s skull in her hands.

“Just feed her, Mom,” Stella said.

It crossed my mind for a moment, and then D was there: “You can’t feed her forever.”

This thought is usually the most helpful for me to remember. I have to stop at some point, and it will be hard for me no matter when I do it. But maybe I could do it in a way that would be less hard for her? I had started on a slow-wean process, cutting out a feeding a week, and I had successfully eliminated the bed-time nursing. But then Zoë got sick and I got sick again. And the thing about the slow wean is it’s still hard for her, but it’s hard for a longer period of time. And if I just cold-turkey it at this point, my thought is that it will be difficult for her for a few days, and then it will be done.

But the “you can’t feed her forever” wasn’t actually helpful this morning, when my heart was breaking because I wasn’t giving Zoë what she wanted and needed. My eyes filled with tears. D apologized and herded the girls outside with the lure of a dog sighting for Zoë.

If I could go out of town for three days, and then come back, it would be easier, but that’s not in the cards, and I am convinced it *is* time to wean her. But still, I feel so sad that I won’t nurse Zoë—or any baby—ever again. It’s so final, a part of motherhood that is over for me.

You see, I love nursing. When I’m lying down with Zoë before her nap and she is nursing away, I slow down. It’s just her and me and the rhythm of her gulping. Even if I feel hectic and stressed, for the moments I am lying there with her, brushing away a sweaty curl from her forehead, I am calm. When she glances up at me with her eyes wide, I think, this is the most amazing thing in the world. When she pulls my shirt over her face and twists its edge around her fist, my heart could break with love. When she peeks out from behind the shirt, I smile. “Where’s Zoë?”

I have been looking forward to the new anthology Unbuttoned: Women Open Up About the Pleasures, Pains, and Politics of Breastfeeding, edited by Dana Sullivan and Maureen Connolly, for a couple of months now. I’m planning on reviewing it for Literary Mama, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. But this morning, before I walked out the door to the coffee shop, I grabbed it from my stack. I clearly needed some nursing/weaning mama power.

Of course I wasn’t able to read the whole thing this morning. I jumped around, skimming the essays for words of wisdom, and it worked; I did feel a little better. What I love about this anthology—aside from some really stellar writing—is that it includes so many perspectives. Sometimes people get up in arms about breastfeeding, whether they are arguing for or against it, or have a strong opinion about how long women should nurse. But from what I read of this book, none of that proselytizing has a place in Unbuttoned. And that’s what I need right now—to feel a sense of community, to know countless women have been through what I’m going through, and to not be judged for how I’m weaning Zoë. And this is exactly what I got from Unbuttoned.

These are going to be a difficult couple of days for me and my little one. I’ll report on our progress (and also on my heart health—thank you for your kind words and blessings). Until then, send good weaning vibes, please.

i guess that's life

It’s been an odd few days. I had a lovely birthday on Saturday—a really perfect day with breakfast in bed (strawberries doused in sugar and a vanilla latté). D and Stella and Zoë all piled onto the bed and I opened presents and the adorable card from Stella and Zoë, “I LOVE MOM” carefully spelled out by Stella. Then my dad took us out to lunch, we went to our nephew’s birthday party—a picnic at a local lake—and then we came home, dressed up, and D and I went out to a wonderful restaurant in St. Paul. The food was amazing, and we sat outside. It couldn’t have been more lovely.

Then Zoë got sick again—fussing, coughing, reversing the slow progress we had been making with weaning. Finally yesterday I took her to the doctor, and we were handed masks as soon as we walked through the door. I didn’t realize that Minneapolis is now a hot spot of the H1N1 pandemic. I also didn’t realize that a 5-year-old girl had died in the connected hospital the day before. I slipped my mask on and tried, unsuccessfully, to keep Zoë’s mask on, as well.

Luckily (luckily?), Zoë only had another ear infection—the second in a month. We left the clinic as fast as possible and picked up a prescription for a big-gun antibiotic. It was only last night after she received her first dose that I read the pamphlet of warnings: RARELY CAUSES TOOTH DISCOLORATION. WTF? I prefer to *stop* worrying once I begin my kids on antibiotics. Instead, I am doing constant teeth checks.

Then this morning, I was at the coffee shop, and when I checked e-mail, I discovered that a short essay I recently submitted to one of my favorite online journals was accepted! Accepted! I turned to the man next to me—another regular—and I was going to tell him my news, but he was intent on his work. So I waited until I got into my car, at which point I let loose, hooting and hollering. And when I walked in the door and told D, he hugged me and we rocked some high fives. I love that guy.

Then I put poor Zoë down for her nap and turned to an essay that one of my former students recently sent me—Sharon Solwitz’s “Abracadabra,” which is about the death of Solwitz’s son to cancer. (Thank you, Marilyn!) Marilyn told me it was amazing, and it is. It SO is. But reading it is like being repeatedly kicked in the stomach. (And of course I mean that as a compliment.) I have never read anything that does grief this well.

(“Abracadabra” has appeared in In the Middle of the Middle West: Literary Nonfiction from the Heartland and more recently in Creating Nonfiction, but you can read it online here. Brace yourself.)

So I guess that’s life—a wonderful birthday and a thrilling acceptance mixed right up with the death of a little girl and the raw grief and brilliant writing of Sharon Solwitz.

mama phd

Over the last couple of months I have been slowly making my way through Elrena Evans’ and Caroline Grant’s Mama PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life. Anthologies are a perfect fit for my life right now. I don’t need hours at a time of quiet (clearly an impossibility) to immerse myself in a complicated plot. I can put an anthology down for a few days and come back to it without having to reread for the narrative thread. Mama PhD was just the kind of anthology that I love, the perfect book for me to pick up in the evening when I’m tired and need something to savor and/or stew about.

And savor and stew I did. I savored the actual writing, and loved the moments of tenderness that exist in each of these essays. I savored that feeling of relief I so often experience when I’m reading—that oh, I wasn’t alone after all—feeling. But I also stewed. To read that Elrena Evans, after a complicated pregnancy involving a pulmonary embolism, was refused extensions on final papers by her two professors, who gave her final grades of a “C” and an “F,” well, stewing doesn’t begin to describe what I do. Reading “The Wire Mother,” in which Susan O’Doherty’s female colleague is forced into attending school half-time, “a netherworld populated entirely by mothers,” after her husband passed away and she became sole care-taker for her two children, made me fume. O’Doherty wonders how this would have played out differently had the wife of one of her male colleagues taken ill: “I imagined mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, cousins, aunts rushing to the rescue. They wouldn’t be expected to handle their children alone, especially with the pressures of graduate school.” Oh the lovely double-standards.

For me, powerful writing connects people, creates a space for us to contemplate our own experiences. And I often feel my writing is most successful when, after I’ve shared it, people come up to me and tell me their stories. This is what the essays in Mama PhD made me want to do. They made me want to tell Elrena and Caroline my story:

When I was in the middle of my second year of the three-year MFA program at the University of Minnesota, I discovered I was pregnant. D and I had just started trying for a baby, but we didn’t think it would happen so quickly. (I give you permission to laugh at me now.) Clearly it wasn’t the best time for us to get pregnant. I still had a year and a half left in my MFA program. D was finishing his Master of Education, but he didn’t have a teaching job for the fall. And we were still care-taking for Mimi.

Over the summer, we bought and moved into a small house, D graduated from his program, and, at the last minute, landed a position as a science teacher in a public school. (He was doing all of this as he finished his last year playing professional soccer.) I tried to write as much as I could that summer, knowing that the baby’s due date (November 5) was the deadline for a draft of my thesis, a memoir—sort of—about the years I had spent living and doing research in a small Costa Rican village. That summer I also was jumping through hoops at the University, trying to figure out how I could get six weeks of paid maternity leave. People seemed to think this was scandalous. You’re trying to do what? But as a teaching assistant, I was employed by the University. Wasn’t I entitled to paid leave?

Luckily, another graduate student in the English Department was also pregnant, and she had begun to make the same inquiries, and discovered that in order to get paid maternity leave, you had to first apply to the department and be denied leave. Then you could take this denial to the University at large and be eligible for leave as part of the Family and Medical Leave Act. When I spoke to a few other students who had had children, they didn’t seem to realize that this was even an option, and hadn’t even pursued paid leave. Some gave up after the first rejection.

I got my papers in order and sat down in the office of a woman in an administrative position in the English Department—she will remain nameless, and just so no one wonders, she is no longer at the University. She told me that she couldn’t believe I was going to try to juggle writing and a baby. “I would never do that,” she said. “My writing would suffer.” I smiled and bit my tongue. (As neurotic as this sounds, I was worried about her powers to sabotage my chances at paid leave.) But I also left her office feeling a little like a failure. Clearly I wasn’t taking my writing seriously enough.

Finally, after the rejection, came an approval: I would receive six weeks of paid leave beginning November 5. The wonderful program coordinator for Creative Writing (hi, Kathleen!), found someone to fill in for me while I would be gone.

But I never made it to November 5th. The first week of the semester, when I was seven months pregnant, my doctor told me that I was showing signs of preeclampsia: I was swelling and leaking protein into my urine. She told me to take it easy and come back in a week. But how could I take it easy? I was teaching Tuesday and Thursday, and I needed to schedule meetings with my thesis advisors. Hell, I needed to finish my thesis, which was going nowhere. I was exhausted and so swollen that I hardly recognized myself.

A week later, I was leaking so much protein that my doctor ordered tests: a non-stress test followed by a biophysical profile, followed by a 24-hour urine test. The baby was okay, and my blood pressure was normal, but she said it was time for bedrest, and that I’d need to give up teaching.

I was petrified that the director of Creative Writing would be upset, but she wasn’t. She was a mother herself and also British (I think they’re better at this than we are). She and Kathleen said they’d figure out how to make it work.

The next day, as I waited for the doctor to call with results of the urine test, I began to feel light-headed. D had taught all week at his new job, and now was in Seattle for a play-off game against the Seattle Sounders. When my doctor finally called, she told me I was leaking so much protein that I could be characterized as severely preeclamptic. She said I should go to the hospital for bedrest, so they “could keep an eye on me.”

When I arrived at the hospital, my blood pressure was 170/110 and I was completely effaced. I was started on magnesium sulfate and labor was induced. I called D, who was in a van, headed to the stadium. (The first available flight wasn’t until later that night, but he was at the hospital by 7 am, at which point I was so sick from the magnesium that I thought I could die.)

Stella was born via C-section at 8 p.m. that night, weighing 3 pounds, 6 ounces. She spent a month at Children’s hospital and five long winter months at home with me, quarantined from the world.

When I was discharged from the hospital, five days after Stella’s birth, I arrived home to find a slew of e-mails from the English Department. Kathleen had arranged for me to have two weeks of sick leave plus the six weeks of maternity leave. After that I could take a leave of absence. I contacted the professors with whom I was to do thesis credits and they—both women—were incredibly supportive, and told me I could take incompletes. I thought everything was settled—um, I mean everything was settled with the exception of having my tiny newborn hooked to a ventilator and baking under phototherapy lights miles away from me. But at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the University.

A month later, Stella was finally home, and I spent all day, every day, rocking and bouncing her and trying, unsuccessfully, to nurse her. One day in October, I opened the mail to find a bill from the University for over $1,000. Apparently, because I was taking leave from my teaching responsibilities, but was still signed up for thesis credits, I owed them money. I made call after call, and ended up having to go to campus—my sister came over to hold and rock Stella—to run from office to office. I needed to withdraw from my classes, but I needed at least two credits or I would lose my health insurance, my health insurance that would cover my almost $20,000 C-section and hospital stay. I tried to get the class I was supposed to teach back, but the person who took it over wasn’t willing to relinquish it (and realistically, I don’t know how I would have handled teaching—my brain was mush). Finally, after two days spent trying to explain my situation to unfriendly administrators—I was in tears, and one higher-up couldn’t have been more impatient with me—it was settled. The director of Creative Writing agreed to do a two-credit independent study with me so I would retain my insurance. I dropped my thesis credits, and took a leave for the rest of the year.

This is a long story, I know. And it easily could have ended differently. If the creative writing department hadn’t been so understanding, I would have been screwed. (Thank you, Maria and Kathleen!)

I returned to my program in the fall, began writing Ready for Air, my memoir about Stella’s birth, and finished the program in the spring of 2005. And the woman who initially told me I was crazy to try to have a child and be a writer couldn’t have been more wrong: Stella was just what I needed to make me realize the power of words, the importance of stories. I am a better writer because I am a mother. And I am a better mother because I am a writer.

Mama, PhD contains essays that will make you angry and frustrated. That’s true. But sometimes we need to get angry in order to make things right, in order to make things change. And under each of the essays in this collection is also something else, something stunning: the power of women. Whether these authors decided to stay in the academy or not, their paths required them to be brave and tenacious, to believe in what they were doing. What could be more inspiring?

the personal, the political

There is something that’s been bubbling under the surface these last few weeks, something born from a combination of anger and fear and hope. I’ve been reading Shari MacDonald Strong’s The Maternal is Political and Caroline Grant’s and Elrena Evan’s Mama, PhD. How amazing to read these books side by side. There is power there, between them. I can almost see it, like a charge of electricity, reaching from one anthology to the other, bridging distance and time and experience. And as so often happens to me when I’m reading, once thoughts begin to percolate, more writing pops up to speak to me, and connections are made. I want to direct you to a friend’s blog. A couple of days ago, Lynne Marie wrote a post called “Mind Body Mama: Get Your Self Defense On.” This is how her post begins:

“I’ve been thinking about instincts this week. And how mine are fundamentally altered by my twenty-one year practice of self defense.

It wasn’t long ago that I congratulated a sister martial artist on practicing “kick-ass self defense” when she stood up for herself in a professional situation. I don’t know her well enough to interpret her surprise at that nomenclature, but she did sound surprised. I fear she shares the misapprehension that it doesn’t count as self defense unless there’s some kind of physical beat-down, or at least a physical threat. I hear that a lot.

Self defense is what we do to take care of ourselves and the people we love. In the very best cases it’s what we do before or instead of getting hurt. Lots of times it’s what we do in the midst of being attacked—emotionally, spiritually, sexually or physically. And too often it’s what we have to do after we’ve been hurt: the long road of healing and taking action so that the same hurt doesn’t happen again to ourselves or others.

Twenty-one years studying martial arts and self defense in a feminist, social-justice, anti-racist and anti-violence context has changed me. I don’t think like normal people any more. That’s a good thing.”

A good thing, indeed. If you want to read Lynne Marie’s full post, visit her blog, Mind Body Mama. I’ll be writing more about The Maternal is Political and Mama, PhD in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, I’m going to get my self-defense on. How about you?