I’m totally teen years—the biggest boy turned 16 this month—into parenting. The third guy just turned nine (!). Raising a family and being married is, on the one hand, everything I hoped it would be and completely different from what I imagined.
Truth is, I hoped that by getting married and raising kids I’d feel loved and engaged and anchored. I do. I also feel much more swamped and wiped and unproductive and generally clueless than I’d imagined. I think the truth is before having kids I just wanted my life to be like the characters in thirtysomething. I mean I didn’t want to feel unhappy in my marriage or ambivalent about work or babies or get cancer or anything else bad that befell the main characters during the show’s life. I did want the family-grade friendships and adorable, wise children and passionate kisses and pretty while disheveled style momhood.
The more pertinent truth is that I loved the storytelling on thirtysomething, which was so character-driven and which often let the mundane details of family-and-friends rise up and become the story. I longed to write like that. I totally appreciated that storytelling like this could be popular. I revered the thirtysomething team.
SO, getting to interview Susan Shilliday, who wrote some of my favorite thirtysomething episodes ever, was one of those moments in my writer life that was super-duper exciting. Exciting enough, in fact, that I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it truth be told. I am writing about writing about her because I want to make sure people read the interview and because I realize—a little ways past the geeky “wow, I got some inside scoop”-ness of doing the interview—that this particular kind of storytelling, the kind that isn’t about BIG things all the time but more about the qualities of our lives in the daily, is why I write now. It’s those kinds of stories that most interest me as an essayist, blogger and journalistic writer.
It’s also true that Susan Shilliday fulfilled one of her dreams, if a bit accidentally, when she moved to the Pioneer Valley. The Montague Bookmill is hers. It is a dreamy place, indeed.
Living my story—the harried one with four kids and a really wonderful partner-in-overload—it is totally the best story ever—for me, even with all the overwhelming, exhausting, annoying bits. In fact, I know those bits are the story, too.
Even the bit about the three year-old who snuck out of bed and hid at 10:15 Tuesday night so well two teens, one mama and one housemate could not find her for about 15 minutes until she finally offered herself up. She had created her own little “nook” behind a folded up portable crib in the back hallway. She was essentially hiding in plain sight so quietly, and with such discipline—I walked by her about five times at least—it’s astonishing. Finally, she conked out at 11:15, in her room with me sitting beside her. Was I impressed by her hiding ability? Was my blood pressure still falling at 11:15? Am I living the dream?
