Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category:

It’s mid-May and spring has finally arrived in Minneapolis. We are high on the weather here, having been deprived of warmth for so long. So in celebration, I’m going to take another snapshot. Here’s a list of some of the things I did yesterday.

Just in time for Mother’s Day, here is an interview my publisher did with me and my mom, the incomparable Jane Meadows. Read on for her thoughts about my novel, our evolving relationship, motherly advice, pie for breakfast, and a hockey player named Moose.

Sarah Jio’s debut novel, The Violets of March, was just released and it has garnered tremendous praise across the board. One of the things I love about Sarah is how nice she is to other writers—and I am so happy for her success! Below my Q & A with Sarah about what it’s like to have her first novel come out, how she did it, and how she manages it all with three young children.

With the launch of Mothers and Daughters, I have been talking a lot about how much becoming a mother influenced the writing of the book (tons) and how it affected my writing process (turned it upside down).

We have never taken a vacation that wasn’t to visit family. So this year we did. We spent a week in Florida, in Coconut Grove outside of Miami. We stayed in a guesthouse, or more likely the maid’s quarters, of a faded, 1920s Moorish mansion. The pool was too cold to swim in, but it looked great—a huge original concrete pool from the period with steps down into the water. Cue flappers lounging at the water’s edge, sipping champagne. Our week wasn’t quite that glamorous, but it was a success. It actually felt like a vacation. (Being the pessimist that I am, I had predicted a C+ for the trip, but it turned out to be an A. That’s one nice thing about being a pessimist: one’s expectations are often exceeded.)

I’m so happy to have my friend Lynn Kilpatrick here as a guest writer. Lynn is the author of In the House, a smart, funny, and razor sharp collection of stories. She’s also a teacher and a mother. Below is her insightful and inspiring essay about the elusive quest to find time to write as a mother. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

What Children Make Possible

I am one of the people most prone to use the excuse that I don’t have time for this or that (usually something healthy like yard work or flossing my teeth). And when my son was born, I often said I didn’t have time to write or cook healthy meals. So I ended up reading Cooking Light and eating those processed chicken parts that come in the shape of dinosaurs (which really are delicious with ranch dressing). But the truth is, I did have time, just not in the long stretches I had before he was born. In fact, one of the favorite activities I indulged in after my son was born was staring into space trying to remember what I had done with all my free time before he was born. I mean, seriously. What did I do with those long expanses of time? Was I watching movies, writing novels, reading The Iliad? Maybe a little bit. But more often, I was sleeping in, watching “Elimidate,” and drinking beer with my friends.

One of the things I miss in the winter is being able to walk. So on Saturday, we did something I never imagined us doing. We went to the Mall of America.

I told myself I wouldn’t do it, but here I am writing about vaccines. I glanced at the comments on a Slate review of Seth Mnookin’s book The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear, and I felt compelled to chime in. I have not read his book, though we all know by now how that link between thimerosal (a preservative made with mercury) in vaccines and autism has been thoroughly debunked. To me the issue is parental choice.

When my sisters and I was young, on particularly gorgeous spring mornings, my mom would fling open the windows and say, “Remember this day, girls!” My mother is an optimistic lover of life, and, the older I get, the more I appreciate her indomitable attitude.

So on this random, winter-dragging Tuesday in March, I thought I’d follow her example and remember this day:

When I was a kid, I loved to tumble. My friend Denise and I took gymnastics class on Saturday mornings, and we perfected our round-off back-handsprings in the front yard. I competed in high school, and floor exercise was my favorite. There was never a question of whether I’d be that good at gymnastics. I’m tall, for one, and I wasn’t especially talented. Given what can happen to girls who are hardcore gymnasts, it’s probably just as well. (For a glimpse into the harrowing world of elite gymnastics, read my friend, and 1986 National Champion, Jennifer Sey’s moving memoir Chalked Up.)