People wonder how it is that I wrote 14 unpublished books over the course of 20 years and didn’t give up.  I hear mostly from mothers in this regard.  Mothers who are balancing careers.  How do we get the kids to school on time and try to maintain some level of physical health, never mind regain the body we had BEFORE the kids came, create some level of parking lot social life with the other mothers, inevitably holding homemade vegan cupcakes for their child’s classroom, just “because,” remember to pick up toilet paper and toothpaste and maybe even some food for dinner at the market, glean some wisdom from the self-help cds in our cars on the way home, run a load of laundry with some level of commitment to actually putting it in the dryer only to discover the load we threw in yesterday was abandoned and is now moldy…all this hopefully with a bra and underwear on and a charged cell phone in our pocket (that is, if we can  FIND our cell phone, but we probably can’t because it only had one bar the last time we looked, and now we can’t call it because it’s lying dead somewhere under a couch or car seat…ALL THIS…and take a consistent whirl at career success???  Run-on sentence.  Run-on life.

This woman is NOT tubing, but selfishly fulfilling a dream.  Therefore she sucks?

If you’re a writer, then you likely work at home.  And if you’re a mother and a writer and you work at home, that means that your morning jog might just be on a treadmill in your bedroom.  Your creative warm ups:  throwing whatever you can find in the fridge in a Crock Pot.  Your business clothes:  flannel pjs and a holey T-shirt.  You go like this all school year, unwitnessed, breathing the air of your home from 8:00 to 3:00 and sometimes you have pretty good days.  You get a lot done.  Your kids have no idea what your work life looks like.  They just are mildly aware that you do something in a small office behind the stairs.  That’s fine.  You still pay some bills.  Maybe you pay lots of bills.  Maybe you don’t pay any.  But it’s what you do.  You write.

And then summer hits.  And there are children lurking in the lurches.  If you’re a mother of teenagers, you go from being unwitnessed to VERY witnessed.  In fact, you get to have critical reviews of your work life.  If there’s a dad involved, he’s probably at an office somewhere.  They’re used to that.  He’s in that sacred unknown business space where important deals go down.  Never mind the fact that you’re about to complete a NOVEL, or the piece you are sure is going to take you all the way with that one connection you have at that one major glossy magazine.  You are insufficient and interruptable, because you are supposed to have come up with some summer activity like Mrs. So and So did yesterday when she took all the neighborhood tubing on her ski boat.

“Mrs. So and So doesn’t WORK,” you say.

You are met with eyeball rolls.

You want to fight and defend and accuse and guilt them into apologizing.  You want them to recognize that you are modeling passion and dreams and work ethic and you are one amazing woman to have made them a chicken sandwich and given them things like “My Antonia” and a newly hung hammock to read it in, swaying in the summer breeze on the porch.  But no.  You suck.  Because you are not taking them tubing.  You are writing.  You are writing without any promise of being published.  You are not the lady who wrote the “Twighlight” series.  All you did was write 14 unpublished books, and oh yeah—that last one which ended up on the New York Times bestseller list– but it’s about “Marriage.”  Why can’t you write about vampires!

And you want to remind them that for years and years you played Lego with them and dolls and games on your stomach on their bedroom floors and sang them lullabyes and then… when they were fast asleep…you ran like an addict to your writing desk and you wrote.  And just when you got to the divine intersection of your scene– the characters all reaching epiphanies or orgasms or both:  waaaaaaah. And happily you went off to change their diaper and fix them food they wouldn’t choke on and drove them to the park to push them on the swing.  Happily.

You love your kids.  You love your characters.  You don’t give up.  Because somehow, without your characters…you don’t know how to be a mother.  You don’t know how to be a mother if you give your kids everything.  You need to start with you.  And go from there.

Please…give yourself permission.  And if need be, let them lie in their cribs and play with their feet for fifteen minutes.  Or lie on the couch and watch that Disney program even if it’s yes, Hannah Montana.  You are teaching them what it is to be a working mother at home.  They will remember it when they’ve got their own moldy laundry.  Just not now.  Right now it’s their job to sometimes UNwitness you, and other times be your worst critics.  But you…it’s YOUR job to be your BEST critic.  Go easy.  Do good work.  Be kind to yourself.  Don’t give up.

Laura Munson is the author of the memoir This Is Not the Story You Think It Is:  A Season of Unlikely Happiness (Amy Einhorn Books), which you should absolutely read if you haven’t already.  Just to refresh your memory, here’s what ad hoc MOM had to say about it.  We LOVED it by the way.  This Is Not The Story You Think It Is was called “Quirky and surprisingly wise” by VANITY FAIR in case you don’t believe us.  And ELLE said “Munson captures, with deepening poignancy and surprisingly good humor, the practical impossibility of remaining jujitsu-cool—denying anger and self-doubt—when her world appears to be coming apart at the seams.”

Laura blogs at http://lauramunson.wordpress.com/.  Pay a visit!  Leave a comment!  You know you want to!

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Who’s the fairest of them All?

Most days my mirror says it’s me. Ok, maybe not the “fairest of them all” but it usually responds with “Eh, you look as good as possible, perhaps even attractive… maybe. Well…you’re clean so that’s a plus.”

And then I believe it and actually go out in public.

Getting ready to leave though goes a little something like this:

Turn on green, fluorescent light in coffin-sized space that also holds shower and toilet.

Begin washing face.

Child needs juice ASAP. Defcon 5 People!!!

CRAP CRAP CRAP!

Soap in eyes.

Make way to kitchen with touch and feel.

Give child juice.

Back in bathroom.

Try to salvage eyesight.

Brush hair as best as possible but peripheral vision now totally gone.

Start to put on makeup.

Child screaming.

Only one eye with mascara/eyeliner.

Find toddler stuck half in and half out of crib.

Disentangle child.

Give child a muffin and set him at kitchen table.

Back to the bathroom.

Start on other eye.

Too quiet.

Put down makeup go check on child.

Toddler smearing cat with muffin.

Clean cat. Clean toddler. Clean floor, wall, table. Put on TV.

Back to bathroom.

Can’t remember what I was doing.

Apply handfuls of concealer to huge dark circles under my eyes.

Mirror says it worked.

Realize I look like I’m winking.

Remember I never finished the other eye.

Hear a thump.

Go running into living room.

Child diving head first off couch into precariously placed pillows.

Say “screw it” and take child out in public.

I have wonderful childhood memories of my grandparents.  There was always a full supply of miniature candy bars, potato chips, crackerjack and cold Pepsi.  They had the warmest most comforting house and I had the feeling that all was right with the world every time I walked through the front door.  And since I grew up just a few blocks away, that was quite often.  I had lots of cousins and aunts and uncles who lived close by too, so it wasn’t unusual for a quick visit to grandmas to turn into something more like a small party, with everyone seated around the small kitchen table that had hosted birthday parties, Christmas celebrations, and various random gatherings.

My grandparents Glenn and Emmarie.  Don’t they look like awesome fun?

June’s grandparents just left after a quick visit, and I sometimes worry what it will be like not growing up surrounded by extended family like I was.  Will it be detrimental only seeing her grandparents a couple of times a year at best?  And probably not even during major holidays like Christmas?  What if her grandparents never see her blow out the candles on her birthday cake?  I have happy memories of celebrating all of my birthdays surrounded by grandparents, cousins in various pizza joints, ball crawls, etc.  How much does it really matter?  Am I making a horrible mistake by staying away from family because we love this city so much?  And we can find work here?  Or should we be moving back even though the truth is. . WE DON’T WANT TO.

My mom reading to me when I was three.  Am I a selfish whore for moving 1,800 miles away from June’s grandmother?

My husband’s family is far away too, but luckily we’ve met lots of people we now consider good friends – and hey, wow, all of our kids were born within two weeks of each other, so that takes care of the birthday thing right there.  But when June woke up the other day and asked “where’s grandma?”  It was kind of hard to explain that she had “gone home,” and that we wouldn’t be seeing her again for awhile.  Luckily June hasn’t quite gotten to the “why” stage yet.  I guess I’ll deal with that one after the next visit.