The Slowdown
My kid was sick for six days last week. It wasn’t covid, but it was during the biggest rush of positive cases NYC has seen, and so it felt like it was covid-adjacent, like it was somehow related, somehow a part of the math that has gotten us here.
Seriously. How have we gotten here?
Anyway. My kid was sick and it was the week I was supposed to get All The Work Done, do All the Writing, as penance for the way I have struggled to keep up with my formerly fast and furious work-pace. I was also supposed to do All the Christmas Shopping and All the Christmas Planning and many other lofty and impossible goals that linger on the left hand margins of my paper planner— the list of things I need to do but that I can also put off. Things that haunt me like little guilt-ghosts, but do, usually, end up getting done somehow anyway.
My kid is like me. We are active. We don’t really stop. We get bored easily, we have to listen to audiobooks while we eat breakfast, while we brush teeth, while we sleep, even, because eating and brushing teeth and sleeping are honestly so BORING, aren’t they? We like plans and we like projects and we like to DO.
Except suddenly, she didn’t want to DO anymore. She wanted to lie down. She wanted to stop. She wanted to listen to audiobooks, yes, but not while doing anything else. We laid in bed. We laid on the couch. I have not rested with my daughter for so many consecutive hours since she was a newborn, and even then, it wasn’t really her thing, to just sit with me, to just be.
I don’t want my kid to be sick. And I wouldn’t trade her for anything. But. But. I had missed the lying on the couch, the doing nothing, the laziness of Saturdays that I used to vaguely know. I was in pajamas still at one in the afternoon. I had ask my husband to do all manner of tasks, since Fia wanted to lay on top of me and not have me move an inch. So I couldn’t put away dishes or grab myself socks when my feet got cold or find the exact book she wanted on the shelf in the other room.
And in that forced stillness, in the weird anxiety of covid and illness and holidays and the crashing-feeling of the world right now, I found a thing I had been searching for— focus.
I managed to write a thousand words in the mornings before she woke up, just like our last period of forced-stillness in early 2020. I picked up— and actually read— a third of a novel (this so far very good novel that engages with generations of moms and daughters just as my upcoming novel does, so the perfect read for the month before release) after a looooooong reading slump. I could be present in the lying around and doing nothing and in the short, urgent morning writing sessions, all because we had been allowed to stop.
We are back to business as usual today— at least for now— and I am trying to hold on to what those long and sort of awful and exhausting and also slow and cozy sick days gave me. The kind of purpose that only comes from rest. The focus of a person who is allowed to take a break. The promise to myself to be present in my work for an hour in the morning, and then letting the rest of the day being what it needed to be.
I wish I knew the path to this balance in regular life. It was there with me in the newborn days, too— the forced pulling inward, the need to be present and to be still and to embrace the schedule of a tiny child who needs naps and to be held, rather than my natural schedule, of a person who needs to be distracted and busy and hard on myself.
I guess this is just my life’s work— to try to find the stillness when it isn’t forced upon me by a needy newborn or a sick kid. To search for the balance of doing and not-doing. To remember, again and again and again, that my best work, my best focus comes not from beating myself up and spiraling into to do lists, but from the gentle balance of writing and life, the elusive space where I can work hard in a quick burst and spend an afternoon on the couch listening to Frog and Toad and Dory Fantasmagory with my kid.
Maybe she’s left the six days of not-covid-but-panicked-it’s-covid more ready to have that balance too, more enamored with moments of stillness, more open to the idea that not every second has to be filled.
One can only (delusionally) hope.
Stay safe friends— it’s hard out there, and the panic, the echo of March 2020, the nostalgia of holidays past are all real, are all right here.
Do something creative when you wake up. Then let the day be what it’s going to be. And please remind me to try to do the same.
Wishing every one of you health and happiness in the new year, and moments away from the worry, however you can find them.
Some Book News
ONE JAR OF MAGIC was chosen as a School Library Journal Best Book of 2021! I’m honored to be on this lovely list with so many other great novels.
LAWLESS SPACES, my upcoming YA novel-in-verse received its second starred review, this one from Publisher’s Weekly, calling it a “powerfully told verse novel”.
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books also gave LAWLESS SPACES a beautiful review noting, “With an aching clarity, the interwoven stories show how trauma breeds further trauma, and the messy breakdown of relationships between mothers and daughters is a searing reminder that we often soothe our own pain by downplaying that of others.” and calling the book an “elegantly crafted”.
Lastly, I will be doing a VIRTUAL LAUNCH EVENT for LAWLESS SPACES! It is January 25th at 6pm EST and I’d love to see you all there. Details to follow, but it will be through Books of Wonder (please preorder— I’ll offer signed copies through the bookstore as well!) and I will be in conversation with the magnificent JoyMcCullough, whose BLOOD WATER PAINT remains of my personal favorite YA novels. Her work is really superb and I can’t wait to chat with her!
Some things I’ve been loving:
If you can’t get enough about cult documentaries (I can’t), I recently really liked this one, on HBO Max, that spans religion and diet culture.
For our anniversary, Frank and I took a day off and had a Manhattan day and night, and got to catch this exhibit at the International Center of Photography. It’s still running through January 10th, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It combines visual storytelling with audio, the political with the familial, and was excellent. The museum is overall really special, and deserving of a trip. Or even just a perusal of the images online.
I was lucky enough to get in a brief girl’s trip right before the surge, and the company we used is one I’ve used three times— you tell them what you’re into and they plan a trip for you…. and don’t tell you where you’re going until right before you leave. They book hotels, restaurants, and other activities, and for their road trip options even give you fun places to stop on the way. I can’t recommend it highly enough. (Our surprise trip was to Portland, Maine, and was perfect).
Sending all my hope for a new start in 2022 for us all.