Momspreading

I have a ten-year-old. It just, sort of, happened. I was in love and then I felt the need to have a wedding and then I thought “I don’t NOT want children” and “it will probably take years anyway to get pregnant” and then I blinked and gave birth on all fours and blinked again and had a toddler and a postpartum depression hangover and I kind of felt the time passing for the last few years but it is both pedestrian and astonishing that it passed so damn fast.

I love the music in this piece, so I decided to record a reading, complete with singing. Feel free to listen to this piece instead of reading it, here: Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. A few Saturdays ago, I joined thousands of Bay Area women-of-a-certain-age at what is now generically called the Oakland Arena (formally the Oracle, one of many relics to the professional sports abandonment of Oakland) for the Boy is Mine Tour.

Last week was a good week for good news. Turning on the radio Wednesday morning after election night, and hearing GOOD NEWS??? Delight. I am still getting chills thinking about Zohran, the mayor with the most votes since the 60s, speaking of the current regime, “to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.” Who, I keep imagining, are ALL of us?

Last week, parent volunteers began patrolling my children’s Title One public school grounds, keeping an eye out for ICE agents. The instructions were simple — if you see a car that looks like it is a compensation for something, it’s probably ICE! (Think: big ass chevy SUV, Calvin pissing decal on the back window). Some parents and kids didn’t make it to the Fall Festival — they are only leaving their homes for essentials.

Friends! I launched a new podcast today, with the tremendous ! It’s about gender relations and hetero-marriage and raising sons and daughters in these weirdest of times. And I sent the first episode to your inbox last night (it was supposed to go out this morning, but every launch needs a hiccup!) Since you’re a paid subscriber to my newsletter (have I …

Friends! I now have an on-demand course about Neurodiversity-Affirming education and how to support it if you work with kids in any capacity! I’ve kinda been working on this for 20 years, nbd :) You can take it anytime and get two CEU’s if that’s your thing. Use code DRSARAH for $5 off if you do, and pretty please share with your networks if you know educators, child and family therapists, OTs, SLPs, etc. The drive to family camp last weekend was easier than ever.

This morning, a PR email arrived in my freelance-writer inbox with the subject line “1 in 3 Gen Z believe people stop being hot at 40.” Lol. This particular email seemed to be promoting a recent study, which polled Gen Zers on what they think about millennial’s sex and style lives. Why this study was conducted, I could not tell you! We have cancers to research, people. There is still not an easy way to get sunscreen on children, or to reliably send messages between iPhones and Androids. Priorities.

We all build our arsenals of experts. When I can’t get a stain out, I’m calling my mom. When I have a baking mishap, my sister-in-law Kate is getting an urgent message. And when I have a women’s sports emergency, you better believe I will be bugging the great Frankie de la Cretaz, who has been covering the topic, as well as trans people in sports, for a very long time, and, might I add, very well.

I am halfway through reading Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men (published by Transit Books, who are fundraising since the NEA took away their grant, in case you want to throw them a few dollar bucks). Without giving you any information beyond the first few pages, it’s about a woman recounting her years as a young girl in a kind of bunker prison filled with women, with mysterious circumstances and rules and a bleak existence. The weather is anything but bleak.

This Mother’s Day, I got a week plus of all the parenting while my husband went to Ireland with his own mom (shout out to MIL extraordinairess Bibi!). All the breakfast smoothies, and all the washing of the breakfast smoothie glasses and fiddly straws. All the combing of all the hair nests, and all of the not combing and wondering if the teachers clock me as an unfit mother. All the chapters of The Chocolate Touch. All the kitty litter scooping. All the one-more-tuck-ins.