When an Essay Idea Simmers...and Then Moves to the Front Burner

For about two years, I knew I wanted to write something about the day my family and I tried to take my aging mother to see a play in New York City, and things didn't go as expected. I knew it was about: Mom, thwarted plans, a bit of sadness or regret….and, well, something else I couldn't quite name.

So the idea/itch resided where so many similar ones do – in my notebook, in the farthest back of my brain, maybe a little bit inside my heart and—in limbo. So many of the essays and short memoir pieces I write start there. Some spend more time there than others. Some end there too.

Unless, or until, something happens.

In this case, it was a theme call I noticed for a planned essay anthology, about "the theater" that jolted me into action. Suddenly I realized, while my story was about all of those things I mentioned above, what it was truly about was my mother's relationship to the act of going to Broadway plays, what that meant for me, and her bittersweet quest to see just one more.

While the piece I eventually wrote wasn't accepted for that anthology, "Jersey Nights on Broadway," found a lovely home this past winter at a wonderful site that features quirky, sad, funny, unusual, and everyday true stories about New York City.

If you've ever stopped to consider how something a parent began for you at a young age has threaded through both of your lives, you might like to read it over at Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Here's a tiny excerpt: 

…When my mother aged, and even after she lost my father after 59 years of marriage, and her visits dwindled, and she found it hard to walk too far, she still asked, "What's good on Broadway?" Around 2009, on a springtime visit, she wanted to see Jersey Boys, and told me to buy good seats for us all – Frank, me, and our sons, then about 16 and 12….

 What do you do with your embryonic story ideas while they take their time growing into something?

Why Am I (still, again) Writing About Postpartum Depression? Because 21 Years Later, It Lingers

Twenty-one years ago at this time, my first child was 10 months old, and I remember thinking, it's got to end soon…but it didn't: "It" being postpartum depression. 

I've written before about how PPD disrupted my early mothering, but today I have an essay at Brain, Child which addresses an aspect of PPD I've become significantly more interested in as my two sons have grown—the effects of PPD on a mother as time passes.

For me, and I suspect for many others, PPD didn't just disappear and leave no scars behind. 

Here's an excerpt:

"Because here’s the truth about what comes after severe PPD goes away: the deepest, darkest clouds may wash away in a few months, or a year, or in my case, about 22 months. Your therapist may wean you off the anti-depressants which saved your sanity (and probably your marriage). You may have more good mornings, and eventually only the kind of mornings when you wake up and you are no longer already crying. You may not any longer be overcome, hourly, with feelings of guilt, shame, hopelessness, and fear. All this may happen, and you may begin to enjoy your child (or children), sink into your role as their mother, relish your little family—but. That will never feel like your right or your natural state, and you may, at any given stressful mothering moment, think you certainly are going to drift away, back down that hole. The truth about having survived severe PPD is that it is incipient. It lingers. There is a legacy. Its shadow, the fact of its presence in your history, never goes away.

And you are a different person for it. You are a different mother."

To read the full essay, please hop over to the Brain, Child blog. 

If you're a frequent visitor here, you know that I don't do much advocacy in the pieces I publish, but this one is important -- to me and maybe to a lot of other women. I believe it will resonate for many mothers who don’t feel comfortable talking about PPD's after-effects. I'd love to start a conversation about that, and I hope you'll pass the essay link along to anyone you know who may be affected by PPD. Wouldn't it be great if it also sparked some discussion among those who study maternal mental health?

As always, thanks for your support. 

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - miyukiutada

The Odd Timing of an Essay about Good Timing

Earlier this week, I talked here about why I hadn't written a Mother's Day essay this year. What I didn't say is that I had written something about my mother late last year, which was published, coincidentally, just before Mother's Day, in a new collection. I didn't think of it as a Mother's Day essay, and I still don't.

The timing, however, is interesting, as the piece is titled "All in Good Timing," and pivots on something my mother taught me that's applicable to so many areas of life—the kitchen, workplace, family life, even the bedroom: Timing is everything (though she never said it quite that way).

She taught me that strategically timing requests, demands, suggestions, and advice, will skyrocket your chances of success. In the essay, Mom's own impeccable timing is on display, as well as her timing advice for me.

 Here's an excerpt from the middle of the piece, which appears in Only Trollops Shave Above the Knee: The Crazy, Brilliant, and Unforgettable Lessons We've Learned From Our Mothers.

"…What she had to teach me about timing had more to do with timing what we can control.

Besotted with horses practically before I could talk, my pleas for a pony, from age 10 to 13, only made my father smirk (Are you crazy? Where would we put a pony? Do you think I'm made of money?). But Mom was on my side (and knew we could afford it). She told me, with a wink, to drop it, for a while.  

Then I signed up for a summer acting camp that my father had found and supposedly vetted, one that cost a bundle and was such a bust, I left, along with dozens of kids, on the first day. The parents would all wind up in small claims court in September; but I arrived home in early July downtrodden, a vacant summer sprawling ahead.

That first night home, while eating out, I asked for a dog. Both said no, but when my father went to the men's room, Mom leaned in.

"Now," she said. "Ask for a horse now. The timing is just right."

One horse turned into five, into 10 years on the horse show circuit, into blue ribbons, into my parents both beaming from the bleachers. 

When I was 24 and my on-again, off-again boyfriend…"

I'll leave it there. Suffice to say, Mom's advice worked that time too (he's now a husband of 27 years).

The Mother's Day Essay I Didn't Write

Unlike many writers, I did not write an essay timed for Mother's Day, though I read many. Some were achingly beautiful, others funny, or sad, or interesting in novel ways. I'm glad to have read them, but surprisingly not upset that I didn't have one among them. 

I thought I understood the reason for this; that I was busy doing other things, things I was happy to be doing. (Isn't this just the flip side to my belief that If you are going to write, you are going to NOT do something else?)

Lately, my calendar awareness has shifted to teaching markers. When is the class proposal due? When must the syllabus be turned in? When is the first day of class? Spring break? End of the semester? Which is fine. The work energizes me at the same time it leaves me scrambling for the mental energy for personal writing projects keyed to the calendar. It was understandable that I hardly noticed the closing window to write and submit a Mother's Day essay. I simply needed to get more accustomed to balancing teaching (and editing and coaching) with writing. 

Yet many writers with much heavier teaching loads than mine still managed to write that Mother's Day essay, and come to think of it, I did write other essays that were time-sensitive in the not-so-distant past, as well as many other pieces too. So the teaching calendar can't be to blame.

Finally, on Mother's Day, as I was posting a photo on Facebook, of my mother and I on my wedding day, I discovered the real reason I didn't write a Mother's Day essay.

Mother's Day, I noticed, was only a week before what would be the third anniversary of my mother's death. I had skipped writing a Mother's Day essay for…three years.

What makes us write? What makes us not write? The answers are complex and complicated, even, or maybe especially, when we think they are simple.

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - Dave Bleasdale