"Landing Page"

Hi! I’ve been meaning to do this for a while—not because the world needs more newsletters about the intersection of writing/publishing and parenting, but because I do. And when I say that, I mean the intersection itself. You’re not going to find much in here that’s purely about parenting—I’m committed to my kids’ privacy, have no interest in inviting people to scold me, and find most discussions of parenting techniques eye-scorchingly dull. Nor will this be craft-centered, because what I know about craft would fit onto, like, a single Post-it note. But I am infinitely interested in talking about the experience of the writer-parent herself: the complications and sacrifices, the unexpected rewards, the messy feelings we can only talk about in the group text. (Part of why I’m here is that I’m severely lacking in group texts.)

I have three kids and a full-time job in a non-creative industry. I wear those facts on my face like under-eye dark circles. So when people learn that I also write books, they often have questions—the most common one being some variation of “When do you sleep?” I hear this one a lot, so often that I’ve developed a whole taxonomy for its possible meanings. Most of the time, I think the question is neutral; the person asking doesn’t know many people who do all three things at once (in fact, where I live, it’s not uncommon for moms of three kids to stay home full time while the kids are small), so they’re just seeking information. Some small fraction of the time, the person’s tone or expression tells me they mean it as a compliment—That’s so cool! You’re juggling a lot of things—and I take it that way. Not infrequently, though, it feels more like a judgmental accusation. I’m alive, so they know I must sleep, and so they want to know where I’m cutting corners instead. Or maybe they think I’m being misleading: I must be outsourcing the childrearing, or my full-time job must not be that hard, or my books must not be very good. Sometimes the person cocks their head or narrows their eyes in a way that says they’re onto me!

Just to cut to the chase, a lot of the answer to that question lies in the fact that I’m about five years behind on laundry. I could send my husband and kids away for a three-day weekend, spend the entire time washing and folding laundry, and still be surrounded by piles of undone laundry when they got back. It is what it is: Sisyphean. And of course it’s not just laundry; like all moms, there are areas where I try to maintain really high standards, and others where I can’t. Working-mom life is, of course, about juggling lots of balls and making sure that when inevitably some get dropped, they’re the plastic ones, never glass.

Okay, so there’s that. And then here’s the other part of it, which is what I hope to explore in this newsletter (and where it gets its title): the concept of taking the red eye.

Last spring, a few months after my first book came out, I got invited to be a table host at the annual Poets & Writers Gala. Honorees that year included some serious luminaries, and a bunch of very cool people (a few I would consider peers, and a bunch I’ve looked up to for a long time) would also be table hosts. Poets & Writers! Gala! Cocktails! Pier Sixty! Literary legends! Also, I got a plus-one, and my brother (who’s also a writer) lives in New York. I was flattered to be invited and thrilled to look forward to doing my first cool event like that as a published writer.

But—shit. The event was in New York on a weeknight in the middle of the school year. (I live near DC.) In my six-plus years as a parent, I’ve learned to treat my PTO balance as a mirage—the next school closure or episode of projectile vomiting is right around the corner, so treat those vacation days like they’re already accounted for. I could afford, I figured, to take half a day off work, but not a full one and certainly not two. My husband, likewise, could probably cover me for a day, but more than that would be a huge thing to ask of a fellow exhausted person. The kids, then, were five and newly three (times two—twins); our daily life was (and still is) filled with midday dropoffs and pickups. They ate a thousand pounds of food divided among a hundred meals per day, and they had a very cozy but very elaborate twenty-step bedtime routine. The twins (whispers) weren’t completely weaned yet.

It didn’t make sense to go, so I decided I wouldn’t. I’ve responsibly turned down lots of fun stuff, so no biggie. I sat with that decision for a couple days without responding to my hosts, and then I got very grouchy about it. Full of anticipatory FOMO. I’ve responsibly turned down lots of fun stuff! I started working through scenarios that would get me to New York and back with the least disruption to my kids. I found a train that would get me to New York 45 minutes before the gala started, and then another that would depart half an hour after it ended, stopping in Philadelphia for three hours after midnight, then depositing me back at my local train station around 6 AM. (Others would have gotten me back to DC sooner, but more expensively; plus, I didn’t want to drive home in the wee hours after drinking cocktails the night before and not sleeping—a risk I probably would have taken with myself in another era, but wouldn’t with my kids’ mom in this one.) From my kids’ perspective, I’d miss one dinnertime. With my husband’s blessing, I booked my red eye.

How was the gala? So much fun, especially because my brother was there. In the pictures from the night, I look like someone who didn’t have time to get her hair done, whose outfit doesn’t fit, and who recently sprinted from a train—but also delighted, like someone who just met Deesha Philyaw and Sidik Fofana and Roxane Gay in person. The night was great, and the confidence boost it gave me was amazing. This was what I’d wanted: to participate! To meet other people who love to write and who care about books the way I do.

Afterward, my brother escorted me back to Penn Station, and thus began one of the longest nights of my life. For some reason my train was cold as shit, and I hadn’t thought to bring outerwear. (Or maybe I had thought to, but I’d run out of packing time while trying to pre-prepare dinner so my husband didn’t have to start from scratch while juggling the discombobulated kids.) I used my blazer as a blanket. Very early in the trip, my phone died—I’d meant to find a place to charge it at the gala, but the open-layout room at the back of Pier Sixty was too vast and I’d never been able to find its edges. So I had nothing to scroll or listen to (hell on earth), plus was afraid I’d miss my destination without an alarm to wake me up.

I had gotten some free books at the gala. I read those until I dozed off. I woke up dozens of times because I was cold.

In the pitch-dark tunnel under the Philadelphia station, the train stopped as planned. I had hoped to be in REM by that point, but see above re: temperature; also, though the train was mostly empty, someone chose the seat directly across from mine and sat praying audibly through the entirety of the stop. I couldn’t sleep through it, but I was too sleepy to get up and move. When finally the train started moving again—after sitting in Philadelphia for every second of the advertised three hours—my delirious relief was enormous. I stayed awake through the remaining stops: Wilmington, Aberdeen, Baltimore.

Finally I was off the train. As I found my way to my car, I had a very serious conversation with myself about whether it had been worth it. Picking through the chilly March air at 6 AM, I was quite sure it had not been. Once I got in the car and got the heat going, my opinion softened. Of course it had.

When I let myself in my front door 40 minutes later, my kids were just waking up; I could hear my five-year-old playing in his room, the twins hollering for someone to turn the light on. I washed my hands and brushed my teeth and changed out of my C- gala outfit, trying not to wake my husband, and then I went to start packing lunches. When the kids came downstairs, they were excited to see me, but no more excited than they usually are. From their perspectives, all I’d missed had been one dinner. Similarly, my boss at work didn’t notice how tired I was or ask about whatever I’d done the previous evening, for which I’d used a half-day; she asked how my work was going. All of which had been as hoped.

So that, in a nutshell, is the answer. For me, parenting and working are fixed, non-negotiable. Other things can be squeezed in, but only insofar as they can work around those things. A lot of it just comes down to robbing Peter to pay Paul, and I’m both guys. Do I recommend this? Oh my god no. Or, yes? Or, sometimes but not all the time. Once in a while you can borrow from your own limited store of resources to do a cool thing. I think. Let’s figure that out together.