“Mommy’s here?”

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I inevitably hear his little voice confirming my presence, right as I’m about to leave – at daycare dropoff, at bedtime, before running an errand. And every time, it squeezes my heart just a little, both with its sweetness and its sadness. Because in those moments, I am about to not  be here with him, at least physically, and because in the coming years, he probably won’t ask that as often, and I won’t be able to confirm that “Yes, my pal, Mommy is always here.”

In the past few weeks, it’s become so much more real how much he’s growing up. He went back to daycare after a year and change away, and now happily bounds inside without even a look back. He gets himself ready for bathtime, flipping his shirt way up to push his tiny little athletic shorts down, yanking his arms out of his sleeves, and climbing into the big tub in the bathroom we share (he and Mommy get to share the nice one with more storage and a window overlooking the backyard). He opens the fridge to get snacks and asks for the music he wants in the car by name. He climbs ladders at the playground and helps pick up after dinner so that “robot vacuum” can do its job. He grows and learns so much every day – I know he still needs me, but sometimes he doesn’t need me, you know? 

And with a new baby on the way, I really struggle with this. Will he need me more when his baby sister also needs me, because he’ll feel I’m slipping away? Or has he already started to adjust to his mom doing less with him because I feel more physically limited right now? Is bedtime now Daddy’s domain, when it was once our special time to cuddle and sing together? Parts of me just want it all to go back to how it was 3 months ago, when he was still my sweet baby, and I didn’t feel like I was saying, “Sorry, bud, Mommy can’t do that right now” every single day, pushing him away from me, just when I’m trying to cling to his babyhood the most. I love the little person he is becoming, but all I want is to sit still and soak up his smallness, his softness, all while he runs wildy ahead, racing toward the point where he doesn’t need me to snuggle him to sleep, to kiss his cheeks and his forehead and his nose before bed, to sing his favorite songs, and hold him after every minor bump or bruise. 

In the final weeks before the baby arrives, we’re trying to do more special things with him – trips to local farms, going to the playground as much as he likes, special days with just Mommy or Daddy – but it doesn’t feel like enough. It feels like too little, too late, though he seems more than happy to take advantage of our guilt if it means he gets to do a lot of fun stuff on the weekends or get extra strawberry ice cream. With the clock ticking, it feels like I miss him more than I ever did when I would go away on work trips or girlfriends’ weekends, even when he was a tiny baby, not an actual toddler with opinions and big feelings and an ever-expanding knowledge of the world around him. I’ve never missed someone who was right there, someone I spent every waking day with, as much as I currently miss the three-feet of questions and demands that I only drop off at daycare for 7 hours a day. Does he miss me as much? Does he miss me at all? Is that selfish to wonder? Is that what parenting is about, finding the balance between selfless devotion to your kids and selfishly wanting their love and devotion right back? I don’t have the answer, obviously, but for now, I just really want him to know that Mommy’s here.

Something Like Normal

Heather1 Comment

Yesterday I forgot to check the number of new COVID cases in DC until 6pm. And before that, I forgot to check for a whole long weekend.

I go for walks now without putting on a mask, even if it is wadded up in my pocket, or wrapped around my wrist, just in case.

Our son has been back in daycare for 3 weeks, happily making friends and walking straight into our provider’s home without even a wave goodbye, as if he never left, as if the pandemic never happened to him and he didn’t have excessive screen time over the last 14 months. I stand on the porch, masked, waving at the door.

A few weeks ago, we took our (vaccinated) selves out to dinner for my husband’s birthday, and because it was raining, we sat indoors. After I got over my initial panic and realized we were still near multiple open windows, I began to relax. I enjoyed my French bistro meal and even savored a couple ounces of red wine over the course of our evening, letting the dim, quaint interior, a black dress, and the space between patrons shelter my third trimester belly from judgement.

We had friends over for brunch, and I held a baby, who I had attended a virtual baby shower for. I just looked at her with wonder, wonder that a whole new person had been created and birthed and raised by two people I love (but hadn’t seen), all during this strange year.

We’re currently planning out how to take advantage of our parental leave after the new baby is born, plotting out which new restaurants to try while the baby naps on us or in her stroller, figuring out what’s within walking distance in our new neighborhood and in this brave new world of relaxed outdoor seating.

We’re making plans, which in and of itself seems pretty big these days. We’re looking ahead, but I can’t help but glance back, to make sure we’re really, truly in the clear, that the virus, the dread, the uncertainty, the loneliness, the smallness of that life is no longer nipping at our heels.

Things are not normal yet. I don’t know what normal even is anymore. But we’re getting there, or to somewhere close.

On Writing About Not Writing

Heather1 Comment

I haven’t been writing anything lately. My brain is too full and too empty. I have nothing to write about and everything to write about. I’m caught between two thoughts – “I must write” and “How could I possibly write now?” I understand the feeling people have when they say they’re feeling unmoored. I am, as they say, adrift.

There has been so much change and so little time to reflect. And more change is coming, so perhaps it’s time for me to find time to think before I get dragged under by another riptide of upheaval in our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s all good change – we have a baby on the way, we just moved into a new home, we’re vaccinated, our son is going back to daycare. All good things that I still have so many emotions about. That I also feel nothing about – well, not nothing. But more anxiety than I thought I would, so it feels like a big, dark cloud that is covering what should be a brightly shining sun, finally coming into view.

So that’s why I haven’t been writing, because it feels like pulling a thread on a sweater, and if I tug too hard, it will unravel and leave me naked. And after an unimaginable year – for everyone – I’m just not ready to get out of my cozy clothes.

Favorite Recent Reads: February and March

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I don’t do reading roundups super often because 1) there are people out there who read so much more on the Internet than I do, and they’re so much better at compiling interesting, relevant reading lists, and 2) because I am a mom, and my recent reads are…probably not that recent. 

That being said, as we’re coming up on a year of this pandemic and potentially, maybe, possibly seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, there has been SO much good stuff to read online. Without further ado, the things I have really loved reading lately (like, in the past month or so): 

Speaking of Britney … What About All Those Other Women?: The 2000s were tough on young women, and this really dug into our obsession with seeing famous young women fall apart, physically and emotionally. Somewhat related: this TikTok on why Millennial women don’t want low-rise jeans to come back. 

Millions of Americans Qualify for the COVID-19 Vaccine Based on BMI. Why Should We Apologize for It?: I think by now we all know that BMI is an arbitrary, BS measurement, but I guess if it’s going to be used to judge someone’s health status, it might as well be used to the advantage of folks deemed “unhealthy,” no matter how healthy (reminder: a lot of folks with BMIs in the overweight/obese categories are really healthy!) they actually are.

How a Soft-Food Diet Inspired Intuitive Eating: A little less than a decade ago, I went on my own intuitive eating journey to break some very restrictive eating habits. It didn’t really stick though, until I moved to DC in the middle of the summer, and it was SO HOT. And do you know what I lived around the corner from? A frozen yogurt shop, which I visited almost daily, and where I discovered that if I had frozen yogurt for lunch the world wouldn’t fall apart, and neither would I.    

How Philadelphia Cream Cheese Took Over the World: This was fascinating, only partially because bagels have been a major pregnancy craving over here. 

Office Workers Fuel D.C.’s Economy. What If They Don’t Come Back?: DC is a weird place to live and work, but the pandemic has made it weirder – and has had a bigger impact on the city than one might realize. 

Go ahead, turn your camera off. Video calls are breeding ‘Zoom dysmorphia’ and hurting productivity: I was remote a lot pre-pandemic, but the expectation was never so high to have our cameras turned on, so this rise in on-camera meetings has me stressed out. I look at the facial expressions I make constantly, adjusting my contemplative face every five second to look like I’m focused, when that’s pulling my focus from the meeting more than anything else. Cameras have been off in a few recent meetings, and I have been so much more attuned to the task at hand. 

Why Do We Write Poetry In The iPhone Notes App?: This reminded me of my own Notes App poetry that I worked on for my 100 Day Project last year. Sometimes the best things I wrote came to me when all I had on me was my phone. 

The Dolly Moment: A great long-read on why we love Dolly Parton, even when the idealized model she stems from is more problematic. 

Opinion | Taylor Swift Is Singing Us Back to Nature: I have more recently become a TSwift fan, and while I’m not a diehard like so many, I do appreciate her songwriting, and this was a beautiful opinion piece – from an unlikely source – about why it matters. 

#1318: “Pissed off during the post-pandemic party because nobody kept in touch.”: Whew, I was this person’s friends. I barely kept in touch with anyone regularly. If that’s you, too, I get it. 

People Said I Was Special. Really, I Just Had ADHD.: This was super heartbreaking to read, especially as I learn more and more about how many mental health diagnoses are missed in women, especially ADHD, which can have a  severe impact on self-esteem and the narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves. 

Hope you read some good stuff this week!

Little Daily Miracles

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March has us all feeling some type of way this year. Tired, hopeful, bored, in disbelief, at our wit’s ends.

I personally feel all of the above. And while I’m trying to get past these and through them and acknowledge them and absorb all of these feelings, today I am also trying to find the glimmers of beauty and wonder in the mundane.

So today, I am grateful for our coffee pot that keeps the coffee warm without burning it.

I am thankful that Zingerman’s cinnamon raisin bread freezes so well, allowing me to pull out the loaf my in-laws sent us a few months ago to experience a little novelty in my breakfast routine, when nothing else feels new.

I am grateful for 60-degree weather that has my two-year-old running up and down the street and across our tiny city yard, chasing after bubbles and chalking our entire front porch in thick layers of blue, pink, and purple dust.

I am thankful for open windows that let the neighborhood sounds float in, even if they also let ants in.

I am grateful for books that zoom across the Internet and onto my Kindle as soon as another reader is done with them at the library, giving me a place to escape to when the outside world and social media are what I need escaping from.

I am thankful that the songs my son likes to fall asleep and dance to are not annoying (yet), and I don’t mind when they get stuck in my head when he’s not around.

I think sometimes the big things we’re thankful for – health, family, friends, jobs, roofs over our heads – are easy to rattle off and then ultimately take for granted. So today I’m attempting to see the trees rather than the forest, the drops rather than the ocean, the crumbs rather than the whole (Zingerman’s) loaf. I hope as you’re slogging through this home stretch, you can find the little miracles for yourself, too.

Lonely

Heather4 Comments

How are you? I mean, really, how are you?

In between all of the “I’m fine” and the “You know, as well as can be expected” responses, how are we all truly doing?

I’ll tell you how I am.

I’m lonely. I’m not alone, as I have my husband and very cool two-year-old to hang out with, but I am lonely. I crave seeing my girlfriends for an occasional wine or coffee date. I want a hug from my sister who lives an hour away. I’m even desperate for annoying coworkers, so I have something to talk to my husband about that is not “this thing I saw on the Internet.” I am so very, very lonely.

And my loneliness is what makes me scroll endlessly, looking for community on the Internet, staying up too late to read or watch or comment on just one last thing to make me feel connected. It’s what makes me prod my husband into saying he’s not bored or annoyed with me, even though we spend literally 24/7 together, and I am sometimes annoyed with him, despite the fact that he is the type of person that literally no one has ever called annoying (me, on the other hand…). It’s what makes me talk and talk, hoping for a response from someone, anyone, even though the only someones in my house are my husband and the aforementioned two-year-old, because I just can’t stand to hear myself think about this pandemic and the state of our very isolated world and how long this has been going on anymore. It’s what makes me want to write, but also not write, because maybe I don’t want to put pen to paper and let all of this come out, to admit these things to myself. Instead, I shall admit them to strangers on the Internet, dribbles here, drops there, but never the waterfall that probably needs to flow freely to just get. it. all. out.

I’m lonely. How are you?

Five Unexpected Things I Did During the Pandemic

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These past 11 months have really shaken things up for everyone, huh? Obviously, this has been an incredibly tragic time in the nation’s and the world’s history, but it’s also just been…weird. On top of finding ourselves doing things we never thought we would have to do (homeschool/supervise distance learning, set up makeshift offices, keep face masks on us at all times), I feel like we’ve found ourselves doing things we never thought we would want to do. People across the US became bread bakers, interior designers, amateur mask makers…the list goes on. We found our worlds turned upside down and adjusted and coped as best we could. I know I, for one, did a lot of things I never expected to in a million years.

To start…

  1. I cut my own hair: Full disclosure, I had totally trimmed a split end here or there, but I left the big cuts to the pros. About a month ago, though, I got really desperate as my hair was unintentionally reaching mermaid territory, and not in a cute way. I was looking…is feral the right word here? I’m not sure. But it was taking forever to detangle and dry this mane, so something had to be done. So I found a random video on YouTube, and cut several inches off my hair, and even added layers. Is it a professional cut? No. But does it look pretty good when curled? Actually, yes. 
  2. We got a TP subscription service: Like, toilet paper wasn’t something I really enjoyed shopping for, but it was an afterthought, something I picked up at the store when we were running low. But right before the pandemic started, I decided to get our household on a greener path, and looked into bamboo toilet paper. I signed up for Reel TP, along with Blueland hand soap, in probably late February, and boy, am I glad I did! Knowing TP and soap were going to be delivered to me, and I wouldn’t have to fight someone at Safeway for them was a real relief. Still, I didn’t expect I would ever get literally everything delivered to my door.
  3. I took up a bunch of creative projects (like, more than normal): I’ve always loved to write nonfiction, and always have a million other ideas floating around in my head, but this pandemic, I actually started a novel (then started another after I scrapped the first idea), wrote 100 poems, and even contemplated starting a TikTok (I legit have a video script written out, we’ll see if I work up the courage to do it in the next 5 years). Follow-through rate is not super high, but actually starting some of my more random ideas is new for me.
  4. I went on a podcast: I joined Jenn from the “How Did You End Up There?” podcast to talk about my career in PR and communications, which, funny enough, had just come to a screeching halt. (I laugh to keep from crying at what the pandemic has done to women’s careers over the past 12 months). So we talked about my job, less than a month after I quit, but we also had a great conversation about the sacrifices women have had to make – both with their families and with their careers – during this really strange time.
  5. I quit my job: Speaking of which…I’ve talked about this before, but I had been looking to make a change, to see what else was out there in the field of communications for a while. I did not, however, expect to completely quit my job with nothing lined up because of a global pandemic that left parents the world over scrambling for childcare (or attempting to work while watching kids and overseeing distance learning). It came down to feeling like a good mom or a good employee – and at the time, I felt like neither – so I picked being a good parent, who wasn’t constantly so stressed and anxious that she also started to layer on the worry that she was missing out on so much, not only because of work, but because her stress was messing with her actual long-term memory. Permanent SAHP life (or even part-time freelance like I’m doing now) is probably not for me, but I am really glad I made this decision. 

What have you done this pandemic, whether you wanted to or not, that you never expected to in this lifetime?

How Did I Get Here?

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Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels

You know the Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime?” I’ve been thinking a lot about the lyrics for pretty much the entire last year, because I often ask myself, “well how did I get here?” And logically, like stepwise, I know exactly how I got here. But when I zoom out, I am still stunned, and a little confused, at where I am. A little over six years ago, I was a single grad student who was a year from turning 30, cobbling together an income so I could live in a rowhouse in Columbia Heights with 3 other people, trying to date and find my person among a lot of self-important consultants and Hill staffers, and figuring out what exactly I wanted to do next. Would I stay in DC? Would I work for a big company? A nonprofit? Would I settle down with someone? Become the cool aunt? Should I meet friends for drinks or actually work out after my 8pm class ends?

Fast forward to now, and my life looks very different. I’m a married homeowner, I’m a freelancer for a large PR agency (formerly a Director, but…COVID made me re-evaluate a few things), and I HAVE A CHILD. I’m not going to pick up and move, I’m with my person for the long-haul, clearly I already committed to the kid thing, and if something starts after 8pm, there’s no way I’m going. Those big questions I ask myself are fewer and farther between. But once again, I am trying to figure out what I really, truly want to do for a living, how I want to spend my time and energy outside of my family.

So while I barely know how I got here, I also don’t know where I’m going. 

But here’s the thing – as much as I want to feel like I have a unique perspective, I know that this feeling, this sudden rocketing forward into adulthood and then standing still, bewildered about how you got here and what comes next is really common. Many millennials spent most of our 20s trying to make the best of a bad situation, taking the jobs we could get in a not-so-great economy and trying to find love (or whatever) on dating apps. We worked hard, paid our dues (and the minimum payments on our student loans and credit cards), and laughed when anyone we knew talked seriously about buying a house. All while hearing how much society hated us and how self-involved we were in pretty much every major media outlet. People talk about millennials and our delayed adolescence, our earnestness, and our eternal quest for comfort and coziness, but we also have lived through our share of not-so-great historical events (and now two recessions, cool), so can you blame us? 

That’s all we see and hear about, though. The flaws of millennials and how we can’t just grow up – even though there are a lot of us who are very grown up (some of us are almost 40!). We don’t hear about or see in popular culture the millennials who struggled hard in our 20s, and remember it keenly, but suddenly (at least it feels sudden to me) find themselves thrust forward into what looks like legit adulthood, all the while panicking that they are about to be found out. The ones, like me, thinking, “wait wait wait, what is this place? Do I belong here? Where did my entry-level job, my crappy apartment, and my questionable dating choices go? Is this my real life?” The ones who are incredibly fortunate and happy with where they ended up, but still feel a little lost. 

I’ve struggled to find a perspective like my own, in what I read and watch – I don’t identify with the messy 20-something love stories involving either angsty artists or people about to make partner at a law firm at 25 (how? in what universe?) or the GenX 40-somethings going through mid-life crises. Where are the 35-year-olds who seemingly have their shit together, but are internally screaming because time is moving so fast and they want to make a decent living so they can pay down student loan debt but are also inundated with “follow your passion!” messages on a daily basis? Or if they do appear, why are they so often the annoying side characters, who are written to contrast the main character whose life looks a little messier from the outside? Where are the main characters who have finally passed the “just getting by” phase of their lives, who then start having existential crises about it? Look, this isn’t me starting a crusade to see representation of the millennials who made it after having a weird time in their 20s. I get that that might not always make for riveting story lines. But sometimes, I just wish I would see someone like me, who was the messy friend a few years before but now finds herself blinking in disbelief at the life she finds herself in now, the life with fewer material struggles than in her 20s, and more nebulous ones. I just wouldn’t hate having a guide is all I’m saying.

Like I said, I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how I became a fairly successful corporate person with a happy, stable marriage, a child, a mortgage, and a financial planner today. It feels like I went in fast forward, like I got on a speeding train without knowing its destination. And then when I got off, no one would tell me how long we’d been traveling or where we’d landed. I like it here, but also…how did I pick this line, and when did I buy a ticket? This metaphor is getting pretty strained, but… I think you get it. How did I get here? How did any of us?

Writer to Writer: Finding Your Niche

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Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

I love writing. I love getting the words, the stories, the thoughts out. I love writing the things that I wish I could have read at a different time in my life, that I could have related to, that would have made me feel more understood and less alone. I love working out the tangled ideas in my head and putting them down in a coherent way on paper. 

But I don’t really have a niche. I don’t have one thing I like writing about a ton, and every time I try to narrow it down, I start feeling claustrophobic. I feel scattered, even though I know what I want to say when I sit down at my computer. I’m a mom, but I’m not a mom blogger. I like clothes and beauty but I’m not a lifestyle blogger. And I don’t feel like an expert in anything – I couldn’t tell you how to become a PR pro or how to organize your life or even how to write a blog post. The only thing I have become an expert at is abruptly changing my mind about the direction of my life, and somehow sticking the landing, even if it’s really ugly. Though I can’t tell you how I do it, so maybe I’m not an expert, and it’s just privilege and luck. 

Anyway, I’m struggling to find my niche and to establish my “personal brand” as a writer, because, honestly, I’m a dabbler. I have a lot of random interests, and I like to talk about a lot of different things with different people. With some friends I talk about skincare, with others I talk about books, and with others I talk about mental health. And with strangers on the internet, I talk about pretty much everything. 

So if you have a niche, how’d you find it? How did you decide that you were an X writer or blogger? Share your secrets!