(file under hashtag coronavirus anxiety)

Ok. I can’t think of anything else right now. But I kinda feel better. 

Back in September, our thirteen-year-old son finally got his own room. We converted the playroom by dragging in his bed and desk from the room he used to share with his little brother. The new “bedroom” still has bins of Legos and Thomas trains and action figures hidden in drawers, and it’s still painted a cheery bright teal, and he let me keep yesteryear scribbly artwork up, and it doesn’t quite fit his current cool, detached teenager image - but it’s got a TV and it is His Own Personal Space. 

From which he hardly ever retreats.

This is the first thing. The fact that we have for all intents and purposes, momentarily “lost” contact with him. It’s normal, I know this - normal to want to burrow away and figure things out in solace, normal for someone who is 13 and looks 16 and is wracked with evolving feelings and changing body. I get it.

But this new room, and this new kid (who is now taller than me) got me missing things. Missing how things used to be before we walked around with devices in our hands. Because the truth is we are - all four us in this house - burrowed away in our own Personal Spaces. Eyes down, time wasted, hours spent scrolling, clicking, forwarding, deleting. Even the ten-year-old who doesn’t have a phone, has an iPad and access to a computer - and so while we still play board games, and eat dinner as a family, watch movies together sometimes - the cold, hard truth is that any leisure time to spare is time spent alone, in some corner, staring down at a screen.

So when I came across Tiffany Shlain’s new book “24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day A Week” it was like a plea, a dare, and an answer all rolled into one. The next day, I called a family meeting. 

“We’re going to implement a Tech Shabbat. We are going to unplug for twenty-four hours. No iPhones, no iPads, no computers. ALL of us. We will have a landline, a list of phone numbers to call people if we want, and one TV to share, in the family room.”

The ten year old was excited.

The thirteen year old cried.

He shed actual tears, and his reaction - fear, confusion, desperation, fury - further cemented my decision. 

Yesterday was our first unplugged Sunday.

And here are my take-aways.

THINGS THAT WERE SURPRISING

1. Teenagers are resistant and reluctant to use phones for anything other than texting. I had to implore my 13 yr old to pick up the house phone and call his friends (they were supposed to meet up for Superbowl hangout that evening.) “Nobody calls anybody! Nobody leaves voice messages. Nobody checks voicemail!” “They won’t know this number. They won’t pick up.” He was correct on all accounts. I had to call parents and inform them that it was, in fact, our son calling from a landline, that this was no prank. The kids who ended up calling back didn’t know to how to greet me. They stammered and hemmed and hawed. The idea that reaching out to a friend did not guarantee a direct connection with said friend, was foreign and stupid and strange. This all blew my mind.

2. The day felt incredibly long and languid. It unfolded slowly. When we get on a device, time is sucked up so quickly. I liken it to being in a casino. Minutes fly by, the whole concept of time is warped, thwarted, eradicated. Many times a day, I take my phone out of my pocket and there I am - Instagram, Facebook, Flipboard, Twitter, Matchington Mansion - and when I slip it back into my pocket, I’m unaware of how much time has passed. An hour? Twenty minutes? I don’t register it, and yet, it’s gone in a flash.

3. I didn’t miss the things I thought I would. I didn’t miss social media, I didn’t miss news notifications popping up, I didn’t even miss the Marco Polos I love exchanging with a group of close friends. I didn’t miss getting emails. I didn’t miss looking around for my phone or “alone time.” I still had my alone time except it was quieter - an aloneness with my thoughts, observing things instead of being distracted by them. I didn’t miss being available and connected to an outside world. When I started wondering about how someone was doing, I picked up the house phone and gave them a ring. I left a message and hoped they’d call back. It felt freeing. It felt authentic. My husband felt the same. However, our oldest son’s biggest worry was missing out. He still got dropped off at his friend’s house for the SuperBowl party (the only kid there without a phone, I’m sure) and he still had loads of fun. In fact, when I called the kid’s house later that night to check up on him, he sounded energetic and happy and even ended the conversation with “I love you, mom.” But later he mentioned experiencing anxiety - feeling like he was missing out on “something important” by not having access to his phone. To him, having his phone nearby means having his friends nearby. Without it, he feels lost, unmoored. That admission made me think about how hard it is for our kids, who have grown up used to being “connected” all the time.

4. Landlines are FUN. My friends called a few times, and I would slightly thrill at the sound of a phone ringing throughout the house, and I’d run downstairs to pick up the receiver in time, smiling. As we talked, one friend commented how it felt like we were sixteen, hanging off our beds, twirling our hair, talking about our crushes. 

5. My husband and I worked on a crossword puzzle over coffee and breakfast. I also finished a jigsaw puzzle in one afternoon, which I’d been working on for weeks. I read a lot. My boys lay together on the couch and agreed on what to watch on the one TV we could use. They hung out more than they had in a long, long time. We all felt relaxed. I ended up watching the Superbowl because by 9pm, I was too tired to start another jigsaw puzzle, too tired to read, so what else was there to do? I laid on the couch and learned about fumbles, and touchdowns, and cheered for the Chiefs and I kind of got into it. Who the fuck would have thunk. 

THINGS THAT WERE ANNOYING

1. I couldn’t take pictures. That sucked. 

2. Traveling was unsettling. When the boys went to SkyZone, I didn’t like not being able to get in touch with them. Granted, my sister and her husband and kid were there too, and I called her, but still. I thought about car accidents or something random and awful happening while they were out, and I worried about when they’d get home. That kinda sucked too. It felt like an old yet unfamiliar sensation - not knowing what was going on at every single moment. 

3. We couldn’t order anything online. We couldn’t use GrubHub or DoorDash, or GoogleMaps. We couldn’t just like check the weather with a swipe of one finger. Not having the everyday convenience of being online was a bit of a bother, but we survived. It made me realize that we have gotten lazy about daily tasks, and that part of our brain has BECOME our iPhone. 

4. I snacked a lot. Without my calorie counting and fitness apps to log my food intake, I suddenly found myself snacking on junk. I did work out, but eating that day became a sort of time filler, and the feeling reminded me of quitting cigarettes and turning to food. That was unforeseen, and I did not like it.

THINGS THAT WERE PROFOUND

1. All day, we felt like we were together in the same space. We retreated less often. We felt serene, light on our feet. We settled into feeling bored, or lazy, or inspired. We gave each other more attention but somehow felt less encumbered upon. It was really, really lovely and soothing. Putting away our devices felt like going on vacation. When we went to bed, I felt closer to my husband. I felt like we had truly shared the day. And both us were not exactly looking forward to Monday, because it felt like going back to the grind. Already there was a bubble of anxiety in our chests, a feeling of weight on our shoulders. Also, I had 127 emails waiting for me this morning and not a one of them was something that desperately should have been answered yesterday. So there was that realization too. The world won’t fall apart if you check out for one day.

2. Twenty-fours can change you. It is a small amount of time, yet our 24 hours unplugged felt so incredibly substantial and so behavior-altering that it made me pause and realize just how addicted we have become to always being connected to the outside world via technology. It’s fucking bizarre, if you think about it. 

3. Unplugging and reaping the benefits will only work when the adults in the house do it too. We already have a Device Free day and have had it for years, but it only applied to the kids. It has never felt as pure, and as important and GOOD, as yesterday, when the rules applied to all of us. Taking electronic away from the kids, while being allowed ourselves because “we didn’t grow up with this, so we’re not addicted to it” - is like telling someone to go on a diet and eating cake in front of them all day, because well, you personally don’t have an issue with weight. Suddenly, it became clear: to be together, we have to do this together.

Moral of the story: this was a pretty amazing experience, as trivial as it seemed to some. If you are feeling burdened, stressed out, fractured, cranky with your kids, your partner - I highly recommend investing in a landline, writing down phone numbers, picking a weekend day, and trying it out. It will feel new and beautiful, and reassuring somehow. Because while there were moments when obviously we went our own ways, did our own thing, we still felt as one. There were no walls, no apps, no texts getting in the way of figuring out and enjoying the day. We were fully present with each other, with ourselves - aware of time but not panicked or confined by it. 

In her book, Tiffany Shlain writes that her family has been unplugging one day a week for ten years now. I don’t know how long we’ll last, but all I know is this - we can’t wait for next Sunday.

Today I woke up to the sound of my two and a half year old nephew walking downstairs to the room next to our bedroom, to greet his grandmother, his Babcia, my mom.

His voice is so sweet, so small, a voice just finding itself - and it’s an incredibly soothing sound, a reassuring sound, a sound that makes me smile. 

There’s a song he’s been singing to himself every day for the whole week he’s been at our house. His little hand taps his little thigh and he stares at pictures of animals and this is what we hear, and what us adults have now been attuned to, and what we sing to each other to be funny.

“When cows get up in the morning, they always say good day, good day.”

It was a nice way to wake up to a new decade.

I told myself I would go downstairs, after reaching for my husband before reaching for my phone (something we’re both working on) and make coffee and write a short blog post. Writing first thing on the first day of 2020 seemed like a good idea.

Oh yes, we live in a time when most people need to weigh in, need to be validated, included, appraised, applauded, and heard online - and it grates on me and I think it’s going to be our downfall - but yes, here I was, fucking blogging at 9:13 in the morning. 

That’s part of who we are these days too - hypocrites, well-meaning and otherwise. I’m going to accept it as human flaw. I want flaws to be thing again. I want my kids to be offered the opportunity to make mistakes - with a high chance that their fuck-ups will be documented somehow - and be allowed to evolve, learn, and be forgiven, and to forgive themselves. It’s pressing, this yearning, because I feel like they’re growing up in an age when being perfect, infallible humans is a requisite. Kindness is the currency of the day, but forgiveness is often overlooked. So I am going to be far more accepting in general. I’m going to be open to dialogue, and realness, and I’m going to say shit I want to say, truthfully but mindfully, because it’s all in the delivery. 

Over the holidays, I strung two sets of twinkly lights in my office. I wrote NOTHING. I got sad that my novel has yet to find a home. I got angry with my sister and that wasn’t fun at all, but again, we are full of flaws, and sometimes we are incorrigible. I did not make out with my husband, or touch him enough. I did not cook a single meal. I ate comfort food. I played games with my niece and nephews. I read a little each night. I worked on jigsaw puzzles, and spent time with friends, and every time CNN or any news was on, I gave it a glance, a quick listen, and turned that shit off. I cocooned myself a bit, I barely tweeted or posted, I checked out. I laughed, and went around the house singing “they always say good day, good day.” My sister and I drove to Clifton to buy Polish ham and bread. For an hour, I lay on the rug in my office with my ten-year-old niece drawing daffodils and sunflowers, wetting the tips of our colored pencils to create watercolor effects, and talking a little bit about life. I said a super mean thing to my husband without formally apologizing. The whole family ate a big Italian dinner up in the Bronx, a dinner that ended at ten-thirty pm, and left us all feeling satiated, and tired, and really really happy to be together. I counted the days left before school started with a heavy heart. I counted down to midnight with a small group of lovely people whom I call family. And then I cleaned up and worked on the jigsaw puzzle till 2 in the morning. 

Some of this was wonderful, some banal, some disheartening. And I will forever look back on the last week with love, gratitude, and a smidge of regret. 

There are no resolutions here. There are only small, clear-eyed desires. Like staying off social media as much as I can. Like eschewing trends. Like traveling someplace new. Selling my novel. Spending meaningful time with family, friends, my children. Moving my body every day. Learning a language, or how to bake something. Not worrying too much. Bullet journaling. Reading. Writing. Letting go of bullshit, but not putting up with it either. 

I want smallness, intimacy. I want to take care of mine, by not taking what’s mine for granted. 

And when I fuck up, I will learn from it, and forgive myself quicker. A wise friend reminded me, it’s the recovery that is more important than the struggle sometimes.

So here’s to the recovery, to forgiveness, and good days, good days ahead.

Lately, I’ve been time traveling. This happens often in mid-September, when I have privately said goodbye to summer, and given myself up to the changing seasons. These days, inching into my forties, time travel is a means of survival, or resistance maybe; a kind of submerging in things I still remember. I wonder - I truly wonder - what will happen to me when I’m 65 and drenched with nostalgia. 

What the fuck will happen to a person who doesn’t want to let go of the past, when the future is knocking on their doorstep. 

Anyway, time travel is easy. 

I am usually in my office, or in the car, or on public transportation. I can be alone or in the company or friends or strangers. 

I am carrying a large watermelon in a plastic bag, down Leonard Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, headed toward the apartment we used to live in, that my little sister and her little family now occupy. It is the very end of summer and the bag holding the watermelon cuts into my flesh. I switch hands, and then I switch them again. 

I think about the summers I was pregnant carrying these same watermelons, down this same block. I think about the time before I was a mother. I think back to earlier summers, me in Poland, me crushing on a boy named Rafal, me with pimples and big dreams, feeling like a beauty queen for two months out of the year, the visiting girl from America, even though I was not American. 

Being in Brooklyn makes me remember so many things. 

The memories are crystal clear - the smell of the bułeczki my Babcia smeared with yellow butter, the texture of the frayed towels in her bathroom, the color of the sunsets, the sound of church bells.  

One memory leads to another so that in my mind I travel a well-worn path of intricate tunnels and familiar pitstops.

I think I’ve probably written that sentence before, but I don’t care. There’s no other way to describe it. I remember so much, all the time, and the memories both lift me up, make me feel ageless, and weigh me down. There is heft to them, a sweet kind of burden, but no matter what I do, I cannot stop remembering.

Standing in my kitchen, rinsing the vintage glasses that I ordered on Etsy because they remind me of the ones my grandmother had, I am suddenly in her kitchen. I am listening to her sing, hum, speak to herself.  

Waiting for the bus, I am suddenly waiting for the bus in my hometown in Poland; the metallic pungent smell, the crowdedness of it, me holding onto a black strap, wobbly on my feet, listening to a walkman, so happy, and tired in the way teenagers tire because everything is so high stakes.

I see myself from decades ago - standing in a red bus on some decades ago - and if I work harder, if I travel further inside my memory, I can pinpoint the clothes I was wearing: gray tantop, an ill-fitting bra, a denim skirt. I was probably remembering back then too - my adolescent self recalling snippets from when I was a little girl: a party, my gorgeous young grandmother in a black polyester turtleneck, swiping her hair from her forehead. When did I first remember that?

These days, my grandmother is battling Alzheimer’s - but there is little strength to fight it now. In fact, battling is the wrong word. She is dying. I say this quickly and simply, because it is the truth. I am readying myself for it by saying the words. She has long since forgotten our summer mornings, those buttered buns, the way she held my cheek. Maybe forgotten is the wrong word, too. She has been robbed of her memories. 

This past weekend was spent with my sisters. I’m sure we talked a ton about our childhoods, our youth, our old apartments, our summers with Babcia. I’m sure we talked a lot about the time we all occupied the same space, and how we long for that again. We walked from one subway to the next, and later to dinner, and it seems like the three of us held hands the whole way, but I know we didn’t. We did stop, at one moment, to hug in the middle of the street. I don’t know why. We just did. 

Time travel makes me want to be around people who know me best, who know me from before. Being around them makes me feel safe, cocooned, loved. It makes what happened incredibly, beautifully real.  

I become a quieter version of myself when I time travel. I say less, I smile to myself. I don’t get weepy. Remembering makes me feel free, if that makes sense. 

It’s a phase, of course. It will go away soon, when October arrives and there are pumpkins to carve and costumes to pick out for my sons; things that have nothing to do with who I was growing up. 

I can’t tell if my nostalgia is the Polish in me, or the writer, or the actor - or this is just who I am, regardless of my origin or career. It does not feel American, that’s for sure. But then again, I don’t know what “American” means anymore. Maybe time travel is also antidote to that - to the current events hurting at me like meteorites.

I worry that what is happening to my Babcia, will one day happen to me. That’s why I write. That’s why I tell my sons my stories, edited for content, toned down, but all too honest. I want them to remember what I once remembered. I want them to read my words, and always hear my voice. 

Before our trip to Costa Rica, there was a part of me that thought I was dying. I was rattled with pain - real and imagined - my mind overwhelmed, my body tired. I would lie awake, my fingers traveling to spine, or behind my knee, or my collarbone - poking things I was sure were dormant calamities. Is this just getting old, I’d ask my husband. Yes, he assured me. I have creaks too, I have aches. But he was able to name them for what they were - a pinched nerve, a sore muscle, a pulled tendon, a swollen lymph node because of a cold, allergies. My aches had no name. They were constant and they were profound and they were bullshit - and once we landed in Costa Rica, they all went away.

It was magic, on the heels of malady.

In Costa Rica, I shed my skin. I breathed easier. I stared out into the ocean and the waves calmed me. 

I was happy because I was surrounded by happiness. 

Pure Life was a real thing in Costa Rica, and I saw it and I felt it every day - in nature wild and undisturbed, in the monkeys in trees, in the faces of my children, in the sound of birds, in the Ticos among us, who would not only always smile at us but at each other, calling out their eternal greeting, pura vida pura vida. 

Here was place where people checked in with each other, where they helped each other, where they sunk into the moment, feet first. Never was the friendliness ingratiating or phony. It was lived in, it was pure. It was a balm. 

Each day, I woke up rested, ready to be happy again. We lounged, we sunbathed, we held hands. I was in love with my husband, truly, deeply. It was a week where somehow the five of us decided to accept one another for who we were and take solace in the fact that we were together. We milked every good mood, every adventure, every bit of laziness. 

Before our trip, I felt rifts left and right. Less communicating, more separateness, those wretched devices we are beholden to in our hands, friendships that waxed and waned, and loneliness - which is different than solitude. I finished the final draft of my second novel and sent it off to my agent and sat there biting my cuticles, remembering things like my youth and my first book. Let’s go somewhere, we said. Let’s go somewhere where there is sunshine.

There is such immense privilege in my adult life - there is the option of booking tickets five days out and paying stupid amounts of money to stay at a beautiful hotel, and taking my mom along, why not. I wrestle with this privilege and so I delve back to my childhood, to its poverty and pain, and then some of the guilt recedes. 

But then we get to Costa Rica, and we say let’s accept this happiness. We are here because of a great and powerful marriage of luck and hard, relentless work. We are here because we deserve to be happy, and we can be happy on a dollar budget or we can be happy at the Four Seasons. Happiness is a lifetime’s work, a moment’s reward, and it is up for grabs. You let go of tomorrow, you let go of yesterday and that is Pura Vida. It is difficult when one is predisposed to anxiety, or when one is mostly American, or when one falls back on the tortured soul thing. The thing is real, but it need not be everpresent. 

Watching my mother in Costa Rica was watching happiness unfold. There she was - napping by the shores of a magnificent peninsula, zipining towards the ocean, shrieking joyously at a thieving monkey, using her walking stick in a thick and muggy transient rainforest - hiking miles and miles, with her knees, her aches -  and like the rest of us, she felt no fear - only a quiet, gorgeous contentment, and gratitude. 

For six days we were a happy family.

I’m taking back some pura vida to New Jersey, I told my girlfriends. 

And I meant it. 

I sit here now, awash with memories, wanting to up and leave again; wanderlust, in spades. But I sit here peacefully. There’s excitement once again in the unknown, in what’s to come. I battle ‘what’s to come’ everyday. I worry about future battles, “real” problems again. We have it too good, for it to stay so good. That is my worst fear - and when I was in Costa Rica, that fear went away. My body healed. My mind opened. And I sit here knowing I will have panic attacks again, and I will yell again, and I will lose my fucking patience. But I sit here happily.

You can be a truth seeker, an advocate, intelligent and progressive, charitable, questioning - and you can be happy. In our modern times, when we are inundated with so much terrible information and so much tragedy, horror stories reaching us via Flipboard articles and Twitter and news outlets - it is a mighty fucking feat to just shut it off, turn the valve, and be ok with a trickle and not a flood. It is selfish and in a way, it is our survival. Maybe it is how I survived the first twenty years of my life. 

Happiness is a gift, a distraction, a journey. It is private, and yet it’s there to be shared. I will take it, value it, work hard for it. I won’t question it. I won’t apologize for wanting it, or for holding onto it. 

On the way back from Costa Rica, we flew through a bad storm. The plane shook, bounced and throttled, and it seemed like the ominous dark clouds were going to swallow us whole. Normally, I would cry and try to hide it from my kids, and grasp my husband’s hand till his skin turned white. Normally, I would think it was the end. This time, I settled into the seat and leaned my head back. I listened to Pink’s latest single Walk Me Home, on repeat. And in my mind I repeated a little mantra. We are together in this. We are together in this. My body didn’t quake, as it normally would. I was still, and I stared out the window and found peace, somehow. Somehow, even through a raging storm. 

And when we landed, a lightness, and a happiness. 

On the morning of my 42nd birthday, my dogs wake me up at half past six. They wake me up with barking - desperate, anticipatory barking. These are not the canine sounds warning of a trespasser, or to signify a need to relieve themselves. No. This particular bark I’ve come to recognize as the woeful ‘cry of the hunter.’ So I get up to let them out - because my husband is away, because the kids are still sleeping and I wish for them to remain sleeping. Because I am forty-two this morning and I had planned on waking up early anyway. So I could lay in bed thinking about life, and thinking about death, and remembering goodbyes, and feeling feelings. 

Backstory. There’s a squirrel in our backyard that gets eternally trapped under the treehouse my dad built for the boys. I don’t suppose it’s the same fucking squirrel out there daily - because how dumb and sad and Sisyphean - but this is the squirrel my dogs want to eviscerate on some mornings. 

This squirrel usually runs up our massive tree, gets a third of the way up and lo and behold, finds there’s an obstacle - the bottom of the treehouse, which winds around the entire circumference. Aside from jumping off and frantically running toward another massive tree - there’s nowhere for this squirrel to go. And so my dogs - rabid in their desire to catch her - run circles as she runs circles and eventually somebody gives up, or makes a miraculous getaway. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and on the morning of my 42nd birthday, while waiting for my coffee to brew, it seems I would bear witness to this slightly amusing - yet terribly distressing - scenario yet again.

Side note. We also have a bird’s nest in our backyard. It’s already been occupied by an avian family earlier in the summer - a mom and her five kiddos (that’s for you, Christine.)  We took pictures when they hatched. My husband tended to the babies with a watchful eye, setting up thick blankets on the patio table right underneath the nest (which was built behind a light fixture on a beam) lest one of the baby birds had tried to fly and failed, so they’d have something soft to land on. Because that is my husband, in an nutshell. My son had christened the babies (Bob, Sasha, Keith, I forget the rest) and we all kind of got emotionally invested in their journey, and one morning, just like that, they were gone. And we were sad and happy at the same time that they had literally flown the coop.

Recently, the nest became occupied again. Another bird mother and two hatchlings, this time. Maybe more. I forget. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what these birds are. What type. My husband was very…proud?…that another matriarch had chosen “our” nest. These babies were more outgoing, as I would see them crane their necks all the way from my kitchen window. They seemed eager, and assured. The previous babies just formed a kind of unified sleepy lump and rarely showed their beaky little faces.

Anyway, back to my story.

I get out of bed at six thirty five, and the dogs are on my heels - the smaller and younger one, the one on Prozac, positively dying to get outside. She’s whining and barking and jumping around, and the bigger dog is panting like she’s just run a marathon. They want out. I scan the yard to make sure it’s a squirrel they have spotted and not some innocent baby bunny, and at their signal, I open the doors and release hell, as it were. 

And on this morning - for whatever reason - I follow them.

They run like CRAZY, straight toward the swing set, but I don’t see a squirrel or any other suburban woodland creature. It’s completely muggy this morning, like Vegas or Florida muggy. My phone is in my hand - and I don’t know how it got there or why I would take it downstairs, but these are the times we’re living in, I suppose, when the phone is just always in our hands, like an appendage. I notice the bird nest and I amble over. I’ll take a picture of these guys, I think. Show my husband, so he can see I too, am an animal lover.

What happens next, happens fast.

I walk over to the bird nest. I get up close. I see two birds in there, round white belies and looking very fully formed. For a second, I can’t tell if it’s two moms. These birds don’t look like the skinny necked babies that were there just days ago - but here’s a tidbit - baby birds grow fast. Like super fast. I zoom in and take a picture. And I swear one of the birds is looking straight at the camera, straight at me, perhaps into my soul. I don’t want to say a connection has been made, but for a second, I see myself age, seven, landing in America. I fast forward through years of struggle, through escapades, loves lost. I am here now, standing in the lovely backyard behind a lovely home, living a beautiful life, and I am forty-two years old and how the fuck did I manage to get here? All of this, me and the baby bird locking eyes, in about a ten seconds. 

And as soon as I put my phone down, she takes off. I startle. She flies above my head. Only she doesn’t get far. She falls to the ground, and just like that, the smallest dog, the dog on Prozac is there, on her, so close that I know my dog is about to eat a baby bird who had felt the universe calling out to her, who had just felt the courage to leave home - this bird will be eaten in front of me, on my forty second birthday.

“Mabel! NO! Mabel, NO!” 

I yell, loudly. It’s a desperate plea, a serious command - and oh miracle of miracles just as Mabel’s snout makes contact with feathers - Mabel retreats. Both dogs follow me back into the house, as the bird tries to take off again. She  manages a few hops into the hedges behind our cabana, and then she disappears.

I tell the doggies they’re such good girls - for not starting my morning off with a literal bloody murder - and the I go back outside. I look for the bird. Her sister is still in the nest. But she is gone. Part of me worries she’s trapped inside bushes and that at some point today, one of my dogs will get her. But I look behind the bushes. I look everywhere. And I don’t see anything. 

So I choose to believe that this bird, who wanted to show me what a leap of faith looks like, knew herself well enough to know she’d be just fine. That she was ready to fly.

I sit here now, kids still sleeping, and think about my life, and all the moments in it when I leapt, and fell, and yet somehow, survived.

How do birds know that they know how to fly? I have no idea. I won’t even fucking google it. I will keep the memory of this morning in tact, as it is -  mysterious, unsettling, and kind of beautiful. 

There’s a line in the novel I’m writing where one of the main characters ruminates on the fact that when a woman becomes a mother all the previous versions of herself cease to exist. Poof, they vanish into thin air - the mother who used to be a child, a teenager, a girlfriend, a delinquent, a scholar, a dreamer, a teacher, a seamstress, a CEO. All people see when they see her is MOTHER. The rest is just curious tidbits, anecdotes from another time, fun little details or memories that don’t really matter anymore. The character finds relief in this - the fact that she has a clear-cut, definite role in life and will no longer have to strive toward impossible goals or ‘make a mark’ or prove herself. Of course, this is 1970s Communist Poland, so it kind of makes sense. It’s a relief, for the young girl - she’s twenty-one when she gives birth - to let go of her past, all her disappointments, all her secret ambitions and whimsical wants. 

Honestly, I had a bit of a hard time writing this part, but it felt like the truth.

This morning I told myself all I wanted in the world was to sleep in and spend the day not doing anything for anyone else. I wanted to unmother. I got up at 8:59 - and I suppose anything past 6:30am is considered sleeping in - but still, I felt betrayed by my body. I had imagined waking up at noon and sauntering downstairs to a clean kitchen and the boys quietly reading books or better yet, to an empty house. I think that’s the thing we sometimes don’t want to admit - that on Mother’s Day it would be terribly wonderful (selfish, indulgent, bizarre, appropriate) to stop being a mother for a bit. To be alone with your thoughts. To pretend to be another version of who you once were. To say quite happily and matter-of-factly “Just leave me alone.”

I then realized - after I had made myself some coffee and listened to my youngest son read me all the Mother’s Day poems he’d worked on in school just for this morning (you’re the most lovable person in the world, when you lay down with me you really want to unlike other mothers, I’m the luckyest person to know you, everyone thinks you’re amazing, fun facts; you wrote a book, you were in a movie, you’re in the PTA) and then retreated to my office, youngest son my heels “it would be an honor to do anything for you today, do you want some tea?” - I realized, that my sons would never know who I used to be before I became their mother. Neither would my fellow mom girlfriends, or the teachers at my kids schools, or anyone on the checkout line at the grocery store. 

It’s strange thought, but it doesn’t make me sad, or upset, or mystified. Then I decided that I would work hard to clue my children in. To remind them. I would let them know that mothers are human beings capable of being selfish, desired, confused, emotional, needy, pre-occupied, wild, determined. Why would I do this?

So they would grow up into men who don’t expect to be catered to. Men who will understand that a woman doesn’t stop being a person when she becomes a mom. It’s as simple and intense as that.

So. I will continue to burrow away in my office and write. And not just when they’re in school. I will continue leaving the dishes in the sink, for days sometimes, because I just don’t fucking feel like dealing with messes twenty-four-seven. I will continue going on dates with Patrick, and putting on make-up, and cracking inappropriate jokes, and saying what is on my mind. I will try to lighten up and lighten my load. I will show them my trove of old journals - as they grown into teenagers and young adults - so they can read what it was like to be me when I pined for boys, wished for praise, slept late, made mistakes. I will continue making chore charts, and leaving laundry unfolded, and hanging out with my sisters, and reading books into the night. I will continue to gripe about my period, and tell everyone how tired I am. I will go on auditions, and write blogs, and show off new tattoos, and cry when I’m sad and not feel guilty when I seek out private, personal space in a house that accommodates such longing beautifully.

(Now list all the stuff you do as a mother, the sacrifices! the love! the PTA meetings, school lunches, and the volunteering work, and taking them to doctors appointments and cleaning out the garage, and reading them stories and hugs! cuddles! List some of that shit so the readers won’t think you’re… - that’s the voice in my head right now but I’m not giving in to it.)

Of course, easier said than done. Truth is it’s very hard to look at my own mother as a girl who once wanted to open her own confectionary store, or who fell for the “wrong guy” or who had lovers, or who cried because she felt alone or scared, or who sits and recalls who she once was. I take care of my mother and I have for years and so there’re layers of deep deep history here - but still when I look at her I see MOTHER first - a mother who triumphed or failed, a mother who was in over her head, a mother, mama, mom. 

I have to work very hard to change my perception, to forgive, to see past the wrinkles, the smile. To see the girl, and not the mother. 

We can try though. We can try to reveal our selves in ways that will help our kids - our partners - our own mothers - see the parts of us that are complicated and flawed and full of want. To help them remember that we once had a life that had nothing to do with them; we were young once and we dreamed of so much. Those dreams don’t die. They change form, they fold up, they ease up, they take a break. They’re on call. But they are still and forever inside of us, in our fiber, in the recesses of memory. Let’s tend them to those dreams a little bit more. As a gift to ourselves.

under my skin

While the kids were away, I got a tattoo. I took the bus into the city, subway into Brooklyn, all the while imagining the letters on my wrist, on the inside, so that when I glanced down I would always see them, at least a peek, the words full of meanings, in lettering that comes from a Polish school primer, the elementarz which taught me how to write before I ever got to this country. Something for the world to help it figure out something about me.

We were together. I forget the rest. 

I wondered about commas and periods, about the usefulness of punctuation. And how any bit of ink on your skin is meaningful, or should be. Even a single dash. Or nothing at all ~ a string of words uninterrupted. A Walt Whitman quote, often paraphrased like so, until the misquote became the truth. The real words come from Leaves of Grass and they start with ‘day after day, night after night, we were together.’ I read it somewhere back in December, and it was like seeing a light in a tunnel. Something bright along the way, just when you need it most. All I care about lately - in these times - is being with people I love, and making meaningful human connection. Also, an inside joke - because I never ‘forget the rest.’ I carry the rest inside me - but this, on my arm, would be a daily reminder. (Remember, carry ~ but don’t let it drag you down.) 

It felt like spring today. Maybe that’s what did it. The morning started out with sleet, a little snow on its last legs, a measly effort to stick around, like neighbors you invite over who have trouble leaving until they finally get the hint. I decided somewhere around noon that I would go into Greenpoint, on this last day before the kids get back, to see my littlest nephew, and to get inked. 

The kids have been gone since Monday. It’s been cold and dreary, and so seeing them in photographs - California sunshine and short sleeves, their cheeks puffy, their brows sweaty - made it better, made the secret happiness of being without them acceptable. 

It’s a wonder what a person can do when they momentarily stop being a mom.

My days were busy and lazy all at once. I decided when to work, and when to sit back. Time was mine, a gift slipped into my pocket. I read two whole books. I wrote so much. I tidied up and embarked on spring cleaning even though it was so fucking cold and gray that spring in April seemed like a broken promise. I worked out and ate when I felt like it. Days were endless and then over in a flash. And then, night. 

I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed with the TV on, with three books lost in the comforter, with my iPhone and that game where I buy diamonds to furnish rooms that strange people vote on. I slept with a serrated knife next to me on the bedside table. A bowl full of pineapple chunks. A bottle of water. Night was fitful and finicky. I missed my husband next to me, snoring on and off, me telling him to please cut it out please, are you old now, Patrick? On the third night the kids were away, I meandered online and there I discovered a name - Julia Davis. She’d created a show called Camping and I watched it on my phone which was propped against a throw pillow, me on my side, one eye sinking into the matters, useless. Even in a dreamlike state, half awake and angry about it, I binged the episodes, hoping to be that bold and brave in my choices as an artist. At four am I fell asleep, dreaming of cold British seas and people who have noisy sex in outdoor showers.

What else did I do while the kids were gone? 

I went to dinner with two friends - one close to me, one standing on the horizon. Friendship is tricky, even at forty-one, and maybe especially. It was nice to talk quickly, intimately, about things women talk about. Neuroses, fears, work, marriage and sex, the despair of niceties, travel. We didn’t talk about our kids - not milestones, or report cards, or time-outs. That part I only realized in hindsight. That we didn’t really go on about our children. I’m glad. You can get to know women without having to know how they mother. It is possible. The waiter appeared at our table ~ can I top you off? - every five minutes, and at first we laughed that he fancied us. But then no, no, we didn’t need our waters refilled constantly. Just leave us in peace to discuss cunnilingus and Paris and business ventures. But he was who he was - a quiet little hoverer - and after awhile we just waved him off. Time is precious, when you find time for yourself. 

Later, I thought about men ~ and how they don’t know how to talk this way - or maybe how they don’t want to, or don’t think they need to, and that maybe if they knew how to unload, how to dissect feelings, how to verbalize the things that are hard to talk about - maybe if revealing the tender, doubtful parts of themselves was an instinct - the world would be a much different place. 

Later, I walked down Bedford Avenue to get my ink. You can just walk into a parlor and say this is what I want, on my body, like this, right now. And in a moment - in a little under thirty minutes - something imaginary becomes permanent. It didn’t hurt, but then again this was my eighth one. I stared at my knees, and nodded while the tattoo artist talked about his hometown. He had a drawl and it was soothing. 

Tonight is my last night of being alone. So, I write. I think about the noise that will come back tomorrow, how the house will not be quietly pulsing with ticking clocks and echoes and silence, but loud with feet and shouts, and pleas and bargaining. I write and glance down at my arm, and the only word visible, from this angle, at this keyboard as I type is the word together. 

This is what I did, when the kids were away. 

Before we left for Vegas, I was worried.  A hundred excuses about why this was going to “end badly.” I trudged up and down the stairs, laundry piled in my arms, half-heartedly packing the smallest of carry-on bags. There would be too much drinking. There would be money gambled and lost. My son had an upcoming test and I wouldn’t be home to help him study. What if I got the flu from traveling halfway across the country? What if the kids got the flu while I was gone? Was this trip even necessary? Were we being indulgent? 

So that’s how I got in the car to go to the airport. Laden with stupid little  fears, and wearing high-heeled boots that were already starting to hurt because I told myself that I was in my forties now and I needed to start traveling ‘in style.’ Why? Who the fuck knows. I do know there were separate texts threads I was not a part of. 

Dag is being a party pooper, Dag needs to relax, whatever Dag. 

They were right. I needed to relax. In my eyes, there is nothing as mystifying and miraculous as a woman who is able to give into the conviction that everything will be alright. Holding onto this feeling is my holy grail in life. I chase it. I was chasing it then, speeding down the turnpike on a bright Sunday morning, across the George Washington Bridge, while the driver played NPR.

Most of my anxiety dissipated when I saw my little sister at JFK. She’s recently become a mother herself. Her son is probably the most beautiful little thing I’ve ever laid eyes upon. She’s doting and selfless, and will go down in the books as Best Mom Ever. “I’m not wearing any make-up,” she said when she hugged me, and when she hugged me, my worry went slack. Her face was full of emotion and exhaustion, having just experienced the bittersweet ache of having to hug your baby goodbye. And just looking at her, a thought came to me, a thought that surpassed everything. This is important. 

Sometimes leaving is important. 

The last time we had flown together solo had been a year ago, and I had nothing but warm and fuzzy memories of that trip. Those memories helped. And as I boarded the airplane with my sister and Alice, I could feel a familiar transformation beginning. I was becoming a girl again, a girl with a room of her own. Or at least her own seat, in row 16, by the window, next to a lovely British gal who greeted me with a wide, open smile. 

The fight was smooth. I didn’t grip the arm rest. I nodded off, listened to music, read a few magazines. I stared out the window into clouds and then Rockies, and then into a desert, the topography like something from Mars. The further we flew, the more I relaxed. And the more I realized yes, this was necessary. 

You can’t wish motherhood toward you, as much as you can’t wish it away. It follows you, a stray dog at your heels, or a shadow, or a sunrise. You bask in its light, become windswept in its gales. It seeps into you, wipes your slate clean, digs in its claws, saves you, weighs you down, carries you. We become mothers and we become someone else’s - fully, a thousand percent, twenty-four seven. At least most of us anyway. 

We become drivers in the passenger seat, just like that.

Once we landed - and all at once - I abandoned my traveling buddies and took a tram to vape outside. I had a headache. It was chilly. I had never stepped outside in Vegas to be met with a brisk breeze, or the sight of people wearing coats. It was new, and oddly exciting. Vegas was usually an oven set to broil, but not this time.

In arrivals, we met my other sister - joining us from LA. She had on sequined sneakers, and also, there was a piece of toilet paper hanging from her waistband, which we readily pointed out and laughed about. She was giddy, glowing. “I needed this trip so badly.”

Later that evening Alice’s sister would arrive from Florida - and then there would be five of us. There is safety and strength in numbers, especially when the numbers are celebrating upcoming nuptials, and when the numbers are all girls. 

Before we got in the car which would bring us to the Bellagio, I bought a heavy, sexy-looking bottle of coconut vodka at the airpot liquor store. I was caving already. We were here. We were here together, and everything we loved had been left behind. And it was fine. 

Over the next two days, amazing things happened. 

I lost hundreds of dollars on penny slots, and laughed till it hurt. I napped and ate without counting my Points. I thrived in the company of females, in that warm, buoyant, beguiling company - where talking together was as exciting as watching grown men on a stage take off their clothes and dance for us. (Hashtag Magic Mike.) We talked a lot. About kids, yes - the ones we had, the ones we planned on having, the ones we weren’t sure about. We talked about careers, and weddings, and books, and more trips, more time to ourselves, time together. We talked about how in our own small ways we hated our bodies, as much as we loved ourselves. We talked about shitting our pants and we cried, over cornbread and fried chicken at a Top Chef restaurant. 

Alice was in love. Alice was getting married. Alice yelled at a dopey man in a cowboy hat who got in our faces.

Dag was writing a second novel. Dag had a flat stomach. Dag ate a whole bag of English Toffee brittle by herself. 

Marika was selling pilots and uploading Insta Stories. Marika was happy. Marika was our mastermind.

Melanie had the best hair. It was red and lustrous and almost unreal. Melanie was planning the rest of her life.

Veronika was a new mom. Veronika sat on the edge of the hotel room bed, pumping breast milk, smiling. 

There is nothing as powerful and affirming as women bonding. And how we bond - when the masks drop and the dainty gloves come off - is unrivaled. 

Over the next two days, I traveled back to my youth, to the heady feeling of feeling alive, unconquerable, limitless. I visited the ATM machine too many times. I didn’t really call my children, or my husband. I drank White Russians, without really getting drunk. I thought about how the #metoo movement would never change men, but that - more importantly - it had the power to change us. That we were awakening. Learning to say no, to meet a smile with a scowl, to talk louder, to demand, to get up and go, to fight back. We would change. Men were hopeless, even the good ones. Men would never learn to read our minds. But we would learn to speak ours. 

On our second night in Vegas, we sat on a velvet couch right by the stage, close to the men who were performing for us. Their bodies were chiseled, sure, but some had zits on their shoulder blades, and strange, bulbous moles we could make out from our seats. Some of them were phoning it in, some of them were beautiful acrobats, and when they sidled up to our hips, they whispered, is it ok, are you ok with this? I had never gone to a strip show before - and I’d arrived with a frown on my face, my legs crossed tightly, my hands folded in my lap like the schoolmarm that I was. But this was a bacheloretty trip, and Marika likes to plan activities, and so there we were. The emcee was a woman, dressed like a lion tamer, black blazer, her body strong and curvy, her voice deep and loud and reassuring. We felt safe having her up there, conducting and being boss. At the end of the show, she rode a giant stuffed unicorn into the sky, and at one point she locked eyes with my little sister and mouthed “Bye, Veronika.” And I don’t know why but it gave me goosebumps.

I didn’t want to say bye. I wanted to stay with them - wandering through casinos and talking and talking and talking - forever. 

When we left Vegas, we left reluctantly. Reality was waiting for us, waiting at the door, the door held wide open, urging us to get back inside. We didn’t want to go back. We wanted to keep pumping and dumping, and popping another can of rose, and sliding another ten bucks into a Willy Wonka slot machine, and playing our luck. We wanted to keep hearing everything back home was fine without us.

Now, we are here. We stopped texting everyday. We are back to the grind, to chores, schedules, bedtimes, meltdowns. I miss the feeling of feeling young. I miss my girls. In my mind, our trip is branded forever. Tucked inside, nestled deeply, rooted. And yes, we’ll have weddings to go to, and airplanes to board, and homework to check, and appointments to go on, and babies to calm. We’ll have fights, jobs, scares, conferences, laundry, dishes, garbage, family, diets. We’ll have days when we want to crawl under a blanket. We’ll have peaceful moments of silence. We’ll have grief, rage, love, and monotony. 

And we’ll always, always have Vegas in January. 

Bye, Veronika. Till next time.   

It’s snowing, which makes the California children staying in my house happy. Two adults have gone out on a bagel and coffee run. The dogs are already taking morning naps, and I will probably stay in my pajamas for hours. I will be engaged, and try to get my house in order for our New Year’s Eve soiree, but I will also seek out quiet moments in which nostalgic thoughts will take a hold of me, and I’ll try not to bemoan the end of this holiday season. I’ll also try not to think about taking down a hundred thousand twinkly lights and lugging that shit back up to the attic. The unfinished jigsaw puzzle will probably throw a wrench into things.

My husband got me the most beautiful vanity for Christmas. It’s mirrored and gold, a work of art deco splendor, and I become Joan Crawford or Norma Desmond just by looking at it. Last night, I spent hours going through my old vanity, worn from 11 years of smudges and spills. It was restorative to my soul - to just chuck stuff I have gathered but no longer have any use for. I separated, sorted, and wiped clean. I kept what mattered. 

That is my plan for the two thousand eighteen, in general.

WORK ART FRIENDS FAMILY

I wil allocate my time wisely this year. I won’t muck about with any of the following; small talk, stupidity, self-loathing, assholes, and artifice. Meaning, more precisely, that I will surround myself with goodness, candor, and passion, and with people who espouse all three. 

I will finish writing my follow-up novel - which is already 45,174 words strong. I will spend energy on arts related endeavors and opportunities. I will go to the theatre more. I will read more. I will seek out friends who have proved true, who have shown me not only stalwart loyalty but also unadulterated honesty. I won’t stand for bullshit and I will speak my mind.  I will connect with family in meaningful ways and I will travel to see them, and I will be more forgiving of their antics and supportive of their dreams. I will start dating my husband again. I will continue improving my body. I’ll tell the truth but be mindful of delivery. I’ll probably delete my Instagram account because I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing it for and life is too short. The iPhone will no longer be my bedfellow. I will try to disengage from the Internet. The dishes will be put away in a timely manner - unless there are more important things to focus on. I will make my bed every morning because I like the symbolism in it. I will vote when the time comes. I will give money to schools, to theaters, and to political organization that are doing the ground work, that have my back. I will support women. I will hold men accountable. I will volunteer for things that matter to me. I will talk to my sons about kindness and conviction. I will hug and hold them a lot. Oh and I’ll shop local.

Seems doable. 

Happy New Year. Take time to wipe your slate clean.