Here’s how you confirm your status as an adult: you continue to squeeze the nearly done tube of toothpaste even when the shiny new tube sits seductively in the drawer.
At times, I’d have to admit it feels as if I’ve poured every fiber in my body into parenthood. Fortunately, this is not actually the case (some days, though, close). At all times, even the ones when I have given over more of myself to parenthood than I somehow meant to or whatever, I feel absolutely solid in my feminism. I feel so rock steady about it that I don’t even want to give that stupid TIME cover the time of day, but Lisa Belkin barely did–perfectly. I did learn that when you’re a feminist mom blogger, even if you don’t feel like this is your primary identity, a lot of people ask you about that stupid TIME cover.
I nursed one kid till he was weeks shy of five. The last child was bottle-fed and received breast milk from four other mothers (not to mention she received life from another mother; it so takes a village, people). TIME, you got nothing on me.
Way more than enough said.
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Of other things that happened this week, I want to say YAY, sure, Barack Obama you can call me your best friend; Hillary, I like you very much without makeup (let’s start a club, and also, I wish we didn’t lump celebrities and politicians together in stylin-ish, gawkerish ways); and how cool that a tweet of mine landed in the NYT (if you got lost on the tweet thing, hit the link).
Because it’s Mother’s Day weekend, I want to point out that I wrote an essay posted last week on Role Reboot about how a book about adoption (that she’s in) offers my daughter a ready segue into conversations about her story.
Although I am not yet finished with it, I already can recommend Anne Lamott’s new memoir, Some Assembly Required. Now a grandmother, this is a book about that. Two things I already love: the word, snorfle—brilliant; the notion that if you unplug pretty much anything that doesn’t work for a couple of minutes it may just work again and there must be a metaphor in this. My shorthand for Some Assembly Required is Operating Instructions 2.0.
I got to hear Nerissa and Katryna Nields perform their Mother’s Day anthem Your House is Strong this week. It makes me cry (you should totally listen to it—didn’t I make you want to?). The chance to hear some of the new work—their most recent CD just came out last month; it’s called the Full Catastrophe (ah, that sums up parenthood pretty darn well).
Lastly, in terms of Mother’s Day, my husband’s sparkly friend Kat Kinsman wrote a piece about not-motherhood that is really, really gorgeous and true (and I hope she’ll take our teens on walks; she describes another wrinkle on the all-important village).
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Also, I read a bunch about Maurice Sendak this week, and thought about his work and reread some books. Then, as if she read my mind and wrote this in honor of a blog post that begins about adulthood, I have to say I LOVED this one by Laurel Snyder about the importance of picture books and the magical ways they differ from all other (more adult) narratives. One of the best reasons to have a dozen-year span between all your children is to keep picture books front and center in your household for an awfully long time. Given our ties to the Carle Museum, may that awfully long time be extended all the way to forevermore.
