Last week I went to New Orleans on a 3 days business trip. Just when I was about to depart Michael Stipe (the lead singer of R.E.M) posted his personal guide to New Orleans on Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog. I checked out a few of his digs, but overall it did not correspond to me at all. So here is my “guide for a business trip to New Orleans”.
My 34th birthday came and went… The remaining two posts were written (in draft form) before my birthday, so it’s all good…
Novels are delicious. I have relishing them since I was a little girl. Here is a brief biographical essay in novels.
When I was pregnant with my first child I went through a brief attempt to watch all movies that had won the Best Picture Oscar. I made it through a few, and Antonia’s Line was among them. In this Dutch movie there is an amazing mothering scene, where a young girl realizes soon after giving birth that she would rather spend her time solving mathematical puzzles than raising her baby. So her mother and grandmother take over. Everyone is happy, including the child. And the mother spends lots of time with her child, just not parenting time.
She’s an unusual mother figure and I have spent a lot of time thinking about this story since becoming a parent. Truth is, I’m not shocked by the young lady’s choice. Parenting is just one piece of me, and the other pieces are just as primal. There’s the cerebral piece of me – the one that likes to solve hard conceptual problems. There’s the explorer piece of me – the one that likes to wander in new places and find something new or unnoticed previously. There’s the quiet piece of me – the one that loves being alone. And there’s the partner piece of me – the one that thrives on companionship with my college sweetheart. These facets coexist, and parenting has enhanced many of them. But I’ve also needed to protect them from my parenting duties and emotions. Here are a few things I do to give wings to all pieces of me:
1)Sacred Monday mornings: funny how the emotional quality of time changes depending on your life circumstances. I used to resent Monday mornings – the shock from having to adopt weekly rituals after the week-end’s amorphous flow. Now I love them. Both kids are out of the house by 9:00 and I work from home – to relish my quiet adult space. Before I sit at my computer, I do a few stretches, tidy my room and office, and brew a slow cup of tea. I then jump into the most challenging quantitative or conceptual work I have for the week, leveraging my appetite for serious stuff after two days of laughter and funny business with kids.
2) Piles of novels: to wind down, my husband likes to watch T.V. at night. This does not work for me. I read books, novels preferably. My bedside table is a mountain of books , as my son curls up in bed with me for his bedtime story, and I slip back under the covers a few hours later when it’s time for my dance with words. My love of novels and short stories dates back to my earliest memories, and I’m amazed at this consistency. I have favorite bookstores in every city I’ve lived in.: I always find the store where the owner writes little hand written notes about recent novels she has enjoyed. Doesn’t have to be a big bookstore, or even particularly intellectual. Just has to be small and personal. Here they are:
3) Walk to work: when I moved to the United States to honor my husband’s desire to live in the Silicon Valley, I lay down two rules. We visit France twice a year and I will never drive to work. I’m a terrible driver and I hate being in a car. Conversely, I love public transit and walking. San Francisco is a lovely city for this – it’s usually crisp and sunny, and the streets are animated and quite green. It’s not as beautiful as Paris, nor as perfectly landscaped as London (my favorite walking cities) but it’s great for regular day dreaming – which is what I do when I walk (don’t listen to music, don’t talk on phone, don’t rush).
4) Saturday night date night: I have written about this already here.
I have a dear friend who started a nutrition consulting business several years ago to help busy bodies find a healthy diet. I signed up for her class when my first child was nine months old: I wanted to rebuild my body and energy, recover from childbearing, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation and pretty radical changes in my lifestyle. She customized a “rebuilding” diet for me and I have stuck to most it for three years. I changed my breakfast menus to include much heartier meals with lots of protein (I eat eggs, beans, cheese, and occasionally rice, sausage and veggies); I eat seasonally (fruits and veggies are delivered to our door from a local farm, once a week) and I take vitamins daily (or as often as I can recall, mostly vitamin C+D).
Recently, my friend wrote a humorous account of the various types of food personalities she encounters in her clients. I read along, looking for my “type” : instead I found that she should expand her list to include the working parent. I described this person (myself) as “on her feet all day long; doesn’t eat much junk food because she has banned it from the house and from her handbag; can’t recall the last time she had a two course sit-down meal in peace because she is regularly interrupted by children, colleagues, teachers, baby-sitters, laundry, delivery men, the urge to get to yoga class etc… As a result, the busy parent doesn’t prioritize chewing!!!” You can see the blog post here and my comment here.
This got me thinking: what are the things I do to bring good food to my mouth and my family’s belly every week? Read on for three habits that work really well for me.
Week 29: enjoy some adult time with your infant. Now that my daughter is eight months, we go on expeditions together a couple times a month when I take some time off work (I have been taking one day off every other week for several years now). Museums are our favorite outing: together we have been to the Asian Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and in two days, we go to the Jewish Museum.
Several months ago, a friend asked me what I missed most from my life before children. I was able to answer that question really fast: sleeping in, not being interrupted and travel to off-the-beaten path locations. She didn’t ask what I had gained from having children, maybe because she expected mention of love, fun and cuddles. Yet, had she asked that’s not what I would have said. My answer would have been considerably more pragmatic. My children have greatly increased my quality of life.
Pregnant friends ask me what I find most useful to have on hand for babies. As I am a minimalist I think this list may be of service to those who’d like to keep it simple… though, even then it’s a handful (see my earlier post on keeping things tidy).
I have made it through two children with no automatic swing or rocker, no big clunky plastic toys, no wipes or bottle warmers, no sterilizers…. In my experience in the first year, children want to interact with adults and play outdoors - everything else, is just a prop!
Full disclosure: my husband maintains this list, he’s totally on top of what we need, and what we don’t!
I have got less than 10 posts left to write in fewer than 10 weeks. I have been back at work for nearly two months, and am steadily gearing up to full time.
I need encouragement and your feedback on posts you have preferred. Which category has been most entertaining, enjoying, interesting?
Minding the Mind: ways to keep your brain ticking while you tend to little ones;
Body Builders: ways to strengthen your body and steady your energy while you balance family and career;
Family Life Savers: things I do to offset chaos;
Matters of the heart: how I make parenting fun, sometimes often!;
Now that baby is starting to roll around and will soon crawl, we have set up a play area in our living room for her to be busy and active while we do our big people stuff (cook, eat, read books, talk, play piano). The key to letting colorful, sometimes awful plastic stuff into your social space is to have a rapid clean up routine. I’m a big fan of nice baskets, woven or fabric, which I scatter across the house to make sure that there is always a place to put toys away.
If you live in San Francisco, you can buy my favorite cloth baskets (left picture) at Lotus Bleu in Hayes Valley. The woven baskets come from West Africa: I bought mine in Oakland.
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