Not Tired of London, Not Tired of Life

This time last year, we had a trip to London felt like a weeklong date with the city, and was also one of the first moments I noticed that I had a big kid, and that we could simply take off for a day of sightseeing with minimal prep or gear. It felt light and lovely, and I loved it! 

Dash and I spent a few of those days mostly on our own, as James had some work to do, and we did things like spend an entire day in the Science Museum. We had fun together, and it wasn't a struggle. 

I have to admit, I have some very big feelings about sacrificing that ease to embrace another baby. The wallop of exiting toddlerhood with Dash into a pandemic and having to work so goddamned hard for years to hold things steady for so many lives really took it out of me. From Summer 2022 to Summer 2023, it finally felt like there was room for a fully-fledged version of life for me to emerge again. 

My paradigm for this postpartum and beyond is not to say to myself, "This part passes quickly"--because, for me it did not--but rather to establish a new rhythm where love and joy and fun are back in the equation as fully and quickly as possible. I'm not interested in straddling mom guilt and being subsumed into some version of early childhood where help is a treat. I cannot wait another five years for life to feel good again. I am not interested in narratives of maternal sacrifice. 

So, I look back on this trip a little wistfully, and resolve to pour that yearning for a life that finally feels like it has balance back into the efforts at hand. Honestly, I imagine picking up Muffin like a quarterback and hauling that baby into a life I want for me, and being extremely low empathy about interference and attempts to intercept my plays at my own self-actualization. (The latter is aimed at the adults in my life; honestly, Dash was never the problem.)

With Dash, at this point in pregnancy, I stood prepared for a paradigm shift (as much as that’s possible), ready to give up what was necessary to clear the path for this great leap into the unknown. Now, it's different: I've tasted the sweetness of life where there's more teamwork and competence under my roof, and I'm not going back.

Baby Island and Big Kid Town

There is something really magical that happens with getting settled into a school community, and this is a gift that I'm reminded of from a conversation with another parent today. 

For years, Dash was kind of the only kid around, unless we were hanging out with folks from our birth classes or preschool friends. We were really blessed to have a small preschool through COVID, which was a de facto pod and never had any outbreaks while we were there, thanks to the watchful eyes of the teachers and the care the three or so families involved were taking with regard to each other. However, small it was, and during that lockdown time our whole world was, too. 

But now, I find that we're spending more of our time with so many parents of Dash's school-age peers, and there's just this understanding. Sometimes, kids are not at their best. We can't actually control them, only guide them and get them out of situations that are clearly not working. And everyone is working on stuff, whether they are 6 or 45. 

It's just such a different vibe than being bold enough to take a kid into a mostly-adult setting, where there's more of a presumption that I can perfectly anticipate a little person's behavior at all times, or say the magic words to rein him in when he's not perfectly on track. There's a degree of relaxation that comes into things for both me as a parent and Dash as a kid, where his natural exploration of the world around him as well as the world within of social development happen with less pressure. 

This is different than any of the mommy-and-me groups, or other (very important and useful!) early socialization experiences. We have friends in the neighborhood in a way that we never have before, and many of them! There are accidental play dates that turn into dinners together, bumping into pals at weekend breakfasts out, getting the kiddos into other fun classes and simultaneously bemoaning the chaos we're unleashing on teachers by enrolling them along with buddies. 

Now, I am pregnant again. I had a lot of fear about getting marooned on Baby Island with the new little one, especially now that I’m enjoying having a bigger kid in school. So many moms get stuck with help only as a treat, and mostly doing the work of raising infants in daytime hours (and beyond) alone, and the days are often long and exhausting. That certainly was my first two years with Dash. I felt a visceral resistance to doing it again, and heartbreak at the loneliness to come. 

While I still don't know how the picture will look once we've got a fresh baby in tow, a lot of these families of Dash's peers are already stepping up in ways that make this journey feel different. They are already showing up to have him over when we have appointments, or standing ready with practical support as we need it, or even just expressing excitement about having a baby around again. 

This is just how it's supposed to be--we were never meant to raise our babies one-on-one, boxed away in houses and trying to fit babyhood in around the margins of an individualistic idea of adult life mostly in a workplace. We're social animals, and our kids in a pack teach each other so much, allowing more space for the adults to hear each other and work in tandem, too. For the moms still in the trenches with babies, toddlers, and even preschoolers--it truly can get better. Your world can grow along with your child. There is this magic that gets unlocked when we are suddenly spending more time in spaces that are built with regard to children, instead of merely accommodating them. 

Somehow, we have established a modern world that makes just existing with kids in public a constant gauntlet of ill-fitting environments that seem to assume we were all born adult. Thankfully, some of that falls away when we find ourselves working in community with folks that have similar needs and fresh ideas about where we can all go to enjoy the time we have with these small humans.

Drifts of Leaves and Sheaves of Notes

At any given moment, I have approximately 200 tabs open in my browser. My desktops, both literal and digital, are strewn with notes about countless projects in process: Design drawings and details, shopping lists, shipments in progress, travel itineraries, to-dos for days and for TODAY... 

This is an extremely accurate reflection of what it feels like to have this bunch of very different irons in the fire at all times, and to try to hold the line against or amid the chaos, so that basic household functions and beyond keep moving forward without disruption. 

I'm very blessed to have a partner with whom I have a lot of overlap in terms of attention and ability. To an extent, we have our specializations, but we also frequently have to hand the reins over to each other to focus on something more singularly. He has his own stacks of scrawled scraps of paper, calendar reminders and commitments that somewhat resemble mine and also push forward things that remain on the margins of my own consideration. 

And, still. As I try to organize this to aid a sense of clarity as my brain struggles to resettle into this time zone, I'm a little awestruck by the receipts and what they reveal about how broad my focus has to be and how attentive to the details I have to somehow remain. Make sure the renovation proceeds roughly in budget, but also make sure the kiddo has a Halloween costume that fits. Coordinate a busy holiday season, and be sure that the dog and everyone else gets their vaccinations on time. Pay the normal bills, and all of the irregular ones that can lead to losing the house if they are forgotten. Order school pictures, make sure there are lunch supplies, and don't forget to feed yourself. 

Adulting is entropy. Or at least this stage of it, with a young child and a dog and a marriage and a house to keep up, is. It doesn't feel like chaos all the time, but there are certainly moments when I'm trying to organize it all, like redirecting the tide, where I sit back in awe of how far beyond looking out for myself I have gotten. 

Last week, I had a small hotel room to myself. Keeping it tidy with just me in it felt remarkably effortless. I am a maximalist and a clutterbug, and yet, on my lonesome, everything finds its right place by the end of the day, even when I'm thoroughly occupied with business in two time zones across the world from each other and a very full schedule running around a city as big as London. 

I'll admit to looking around at the situation at home and wondering why it isn't cleaner, smoother, more refined. But the truth is, there is a lot of life going on around here. A lot, a lot. There's no way to focus on everything 100% at all times. Balls get dropped; some bounce, some roll away under furniture and emerge covered in dust bunnies, and others manage to be juggled no matter what other parts of the act descend into disarray. And some shatter--rarely, but it happens. 

Like leaves in autumn, these notes and reminders fall at my feet as I keep up the juggle. When I look closely, I can see so much hiding in them: The incubating interests of my growing child. The continued cultivation of curiosity and adventure with my husband. The commitment to building a safe and healthy world that can expand to hold others. The hibernating hopes of old dreams, and the gently composting substrate of countless ideas that often surprise me by providing fertile ground for new possibilities. 

I sweep the path a little here and there, physically and psychically, clearing space for things to grow. On and on it goes...

Thoughts on a Saturday

When it comes to babies, like dating, if it's not a "Fuck yeah!!" then it's a no. 

I didn't used to believe this. I myself was not particularly into babies, though I did feel my son's spirit out there calling to me, and had felt with my husband nearly from the beginning a primal sense of our child's possibility. I was very into *my* baby, but I'm not really the person who feels an overwhelming need to hold anyone else's baby. 

But I also felt like there were so many people in my life who didn't want children who would make excellent parents. I wished, for the sake of humanity, that these fantastic people would be at my side in the endeavor of parenting. I wanted the club to be full of my favorites, and for us all to plot a new course together. 

Now, having a real, human child, I deeply appreciate the fact that the majority of abortions are had by women who are already mothers. The bones-deep understanding of the commitment, the risk, and the paradigm shift of parenting that comes only after a child's arrival is at least as primal as any urge to reproduce, and I think actually a lot more. 

So, kudos to those that realized a lot of that even without the experience of bringing a person into this world. It's major, and if you're not into it, I'm absolutely with you that you shouldn't sign up for it. 

The problem is that we have built so much of our culture up into grooming girls and women to subvert their own instincts around mothering--instincts which, by the way, do not dictate that they should want to have babies when every condition is set against them. The knee-jerk reaction is to minimize concerns, talk up how adorable babies are, hint at some otherwise unattainable fulfillment, and generally ignore the needs of the fully-formed human in front of us. 

I can tell you personally that the falling birth rate in the US is a function of the incredible risk the endeavor entails, where we have neglected maternal mortality to the point that it's actually rising, where we value the mass hallucination that is the economy over the very real animal needs we have to not just survive but thrive in a healthy environment, and where the answer from rightwing male politicians about this is not to correct any cruelties but in fact to enslave women to misogynistic pressures with no prospect of escape. It's absolutely suffocating. 

I say this all as a corrective to my prior doubts, where I often thought that some folks were hesitating to become parents partly because they were so present in their assessment of the situation that they were selling themselves short in terms of rising to the challenge. 

Several years into being a mother, I can tell you so much more about the systemic pressures to always be selling oneself short in ways that are very physical can be very dangerous. I hear so differently the doolally optimism that is reflexively trotted out when a woman expresses doubts about motherhood. 

I actually know now how discussions about a second child will never, ever hold me at the center. It's all about some fantasy of what siblings might be like, or what my husband wants, or some extrapolated sense of my own regret that fails to account for holding together what I already have. People occasionally ask me what I want, as if I consistently get the opportunity to consider that or was taught to value those impulses. Women in this culture are given very little scope to identify their own happiness and desires without guilt, to be ambitious and be praised for it, to thrive in their own lives. The pressure is to always be of service.

But I'll tell you something: Turning the other cheek only works for men, and not even all of them. For women, it's part and parcel of the erasure, the exclusion of one's own screaming instincts that this whole thing is not working well at all. And in the face of very reasonable doubts about our most essential act, entailing one's own ability to survive the risk, the answer should be to ease the way, not expect compliance and resilience in place of actual process improvements. 

So, if it's not a "Fuck yeah!!," it's a no. We need abortion access, bodily autonomy, mandated maternity leave as well as paternity leave, time to recover and bond, universal affordable childcare, reasonable prospects to safely school the children we choose to have, and a society that prioritizes living like the social animals we are so that the project of raising our high-demand offspring well is shared among many enthusiastic adults. 

Neglecting the outcomes and issues faced by living people in the now in favor of obsessing over pregnancy is abuse. Believe women, and do not turn the other cheek.

The Prophecy Fulfilled

In assuming the promised mantle of the DGAF manner of fucklessness prophesied in passing out of one's 30s, I am finding it particularly easy, useful and fun to fully shed the weight of other people's judgments. 

Like, I dress to delight me, so that when I catch a glimpse of myself, the image bouncing back to me is festive and ready for this daily party of life. And when I go to bed, face scrubbed and hair bound up for bedtime, the last thing I say to myself is often, "You are so beautiful." I say it as lovingly as I would to my own child. 

It's not about vanity--and who cares if anyone thinks it is?!--but about honoring myself in this mortal moment, in this body that has done miracles and still carries me through the sensory pleasures of being momentarily alive. 

I don't owe anyone trendiness, or their idea of how I should age, or whatever they think is the right amount of nudity or coverage. My hair is wild, my body still works, and I carry the peace of self-compassion into whatever battles may inevitably lay before me. 

I am aging, and I am changing--admittedly gently, but all the same. Those changes are written into my face and flesh, and I find that the more I move forward with a sense of relishing the moment rather than "fixing," the better the result. I’m trying to keep worry off of my face and out of my heart. I don’t always succeed, but that’s the goal. My smile lines are well-earned, and my tired eyes reflect creative wee hours at odds with the early wake-ups of my most delightful creation: a small child who grows bigger every day, and who is a living timeline of my passage out of youth and into a different kind of adulthood. 

But my own girlhood is still within me. That girl's imagination, wild dress sense and love of performance still inform my daily decision-making. This body I care for was once hers, a gift from my own mother, and though the vigor of childishness has somewhat left me I do insist on keeping the playfulness as much as possible. Janelle Monáe recently talked about entering a new season, and not clinging to the idea of remaining a past version of herself, no matter how celebrated. I thought it was such a beautiful articulation of growth, evolving within ourselves to embrace what's new and lovingly set down what doesn't fit anymore. 

So, I don't give a fuck. I'm not going to meet expectations. And there is a great, fertile bounty to be had in that.

Disarming Narratives

A quick story about a knife-wielding tech bro that is top-of-mind for me at the minute thanks to today's arrest: 

Several years ago, James and I were partying with some friends at a fancy underground venue that regularly hosted events that were lots of fun and legally dodgy. Shhh!! Come and go quietly, don't be an asshole, etc. 

Except, of course, assholes can show up to any party. And, on this particular night, a guy was acting like a creep and making a lot of women uncomfortable. 

So, James and a friend of ours bounced the guy, who was very wasted. Once they got him outside, this trashed idiot tried to pull a knife on our heroes, and James quickly disarmed him before sending him around in circles so he couldn't find his way back inside. 

Imagine James's surprise when LinkedIn suggested the next week that the knife-wielding perp was someone he might know, and might want to have in his professional network. The guy was a web developer for one of the other major tech companies in town, and also the kind of asshole who brings a butterfly knife to a party and raises red flags for all of the women there. 

Firstly, thank goodness James and our friend listened to women and got this guy out of the scene before he hurt anyone. Listen to women, and take action!! 

Secondly, this scene was exactly the kind of place where a whole mix of people would mingle, including rich tech execs who like an underground party. 

I didn't know Bob Lee, but there is for sure overlap in our circles, and a lot of that overlap lands squarely in the realm of hard-partying rich tech and tech-adjacent folks who end up at hidden soirees of questionable legality with DIY security. 

I'm a little amazed at how quick so many figures of that description have been to mobilize a narrative of San Francisco as violently dangerous, without any knowledge of the details of this murder. But, based on my previous experience, I am not all that surprised to learn that the picture emerging is more likely that two guys in tech who were driving around together earlier got into a fight in the middle of the night that escalated badly.  

San Francisco has its problems, for sure, but it is broadly on the safer side of crime statistics for a city of its size or larger. There's a lot of visible homelessness and suffering, and a lot of our most visible homelessness also entails mental health problems and substance abuse. Trying to navigate this misery is dehumanizing for everyone in the city, as those in the most danger are treated as pariahs and the more privileged de-tune their empathy in an effort to manage daily life. 

However, narratives that imply that violent crime is out of control and escalating, regardless of data, are generally used as a cudgel to mobilize votes based on fear and policies that put pressure on the poor and marginalized. Those fears offer cover for "tough on crime" approaches that result in quick action against people sleeping rough, who frequently have their medications, legal documents, and most precious remaining possessions thrown away when rich residents complain about their presence. 

A whole bunch of super rich, very entitled people were extremely quick to spread a similar story here with zero regard for facts after Lee's death. A lot of the disdain generated falls heavy on the shoulders of vulnerable, suffering people who have never been helped one bit by the tech elite, a group that despises them and has taken out full-page ads decrying the impact of tents on their property prices before they scarpered off to countless other cities that felt like their next easiest buck. 

Let me be clear: Homelessness is not a crime. Rich people do drugs, too. (Though I have read nothing about Lee's case so far that indicates that was a factor in events leading up to his death.) Mental illness makes self-harm much more likely than murder. San Francisco is a relatively safe city, as American cities go, and unfortunately American cities generally are more violent than those in many other parts of the world. 

And anyone could be the victim of violent crime, whether rich or poor, urban or rural--though you're a lot more likely to experience violence if you are poor, female, trans, black or brown, and your murder is a lot more likely to be made into a nationwide, classist "law and order" argument if you are rich, white and male. 

..... 

For a good read on today's arrest, check this out: https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made-san-francisco/

Morning View of Tennessee from London

Some quick thoughts on gun violence from overseas: 

Today, Dash and I had a lazy morning. We both slept in a bit, though he snoozed even longer than I did, and while he was cuddled up next to me I shared some photos of our fun times around London yesterday. 

And, of course, going online exposed me to the news that, yet again, a bunch of American children and their teachers were shot to death in their school. 

When Dash woke up, I showed him the photos I'd shared of him being silly, then we watched a video on Instagram, and the next thing in my feed was this courageous woman speaking out against America's gun insanity. 

After we watched it, I explained that the United States is different than a lot of other countries, because we have a lot of guns around, that guns are extremely dangerous and kill people, and unfortunately a lot of kids in the US die because of guns. 

I left out the part that kids can get shot in school, because I am not ready for that part of the conversation, and probably never will be, but coming up with age-appropriate ways to talk through the above was about enough for my pre-caffeination parental brain in one morning heart-to-heart.

I did explain that other countries, including the United Kingdom, used to have this problem, too, but when a lot of kids were killed with guns, they quickly took away a lot of weapons and made it very hard to get more. I also explained that our city and state (San Francisco, California) are trying to fix this, and because of that we are broadly safer than lots of other cities, but that it is hard because so many people in our country think that is against the rules to restrict access to firearms. 

Now, yesterday we visited the Tower of London, which was both a medieval war machine and the storehouse of weaponry for the crown. Dash did the things that lots of kids have done before, including ogling armor and seeing a vast array of sharp, pointy and loud, blasty things that were used to suppress and kill people. We got a direct look at Britain's violent past, and we could also talk about what has changed and why we don't do those things now. 

One of the things we noted as we came into the Tower was the London Wall which used to enclose the city. And, so, Dash quite naturally suggested that we should build such a wall around San Francisco. We talked about all the reasons that would or wouldn't work, and he eventually conceded that probably isn't the best solution these days, even though it worked pretty well a long time ago. 

Then he said, "It's a good thing that we're in England right now." 

Kid, I have to agree. Before his time, I lived here as a university student and beyond, and I gradually set down my worry about being shot in public. Cars backfiring stopped making me jump. Police here generally don't shoot people, and mostly don't have firearms. Despite moving here literally on the day of the most deadly terrorist attack on London in recent history, being here provided me peace that I hadn't experienced in the States. 

And, once we moved back to San Francisco, I had to educate my British husband about what you do and don't do when you hear gunfire, and which parts of a wooden Victorian house are safest when bullets are flying out front. A low level of hyper-vigilance re-entered my life once more. 

As Dash's school days crept closer, and school shootings continued, I mentioned to James that the US might not be the best place to raise a child. The UK has plenty of mess of its own these days, in no small part thanks to a rightwing faction that is similarly disinterested in human well-being as its American counterpart, though honestly nowhere near as advanced in its depravity as the GOP they seem to be aping of late. 

In the US, Republicans both demand that women be enslaved to childbirth, but also that our children being mown down in school should be accepted as the price of freedom. Dunblane at least ended the latter half of that discussion here in a swift fashion, even under Tory leadership. The protracted suffering of Americans because of gun fetishism is unimaginable in most other countries that we would consider our allies and peers. 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: It doesn't have to be like this. I went to high school near Columbine, and was in lockdown for hours in a trailer on the day of that massacre with reports that the gunmen--boys, actually--were en route to our school next. How that wasn't the end, I'll never know. Why I have to explain this to my kindergartner now despite having lived through that then is impossible to understand. 

Thank you to Ashbey Beasley for jumping into this press conference and speaking directly about your action. Over 20 years of uselessness since Columbine, and actual loosening of gun safety regulations in the interim, leaves me angry at America's continual failure and unwillingness to do what is right. 

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/03/27/shooting-survivor-mother-jumps-in-nashville-presser-vpx.wsmv