July 25, 2024

San José del Cabo

In bed with a hot cup of coffee and a good book in my hands. Well, a new download on my kindle. The Women by Kristin Hannah. At the rate I’m going, I borrow them from the Coral Gables Library on the Libby app, to save money. It’s pages like this that send chills throughout my body: It’s 1966. The whole world is changing.

It’s 2024. The whole world is changing.

My son is in camp, and my life is changing. I’m crying. Tears mixed with joy and dread. Dread that the three year bond between me and my first born will soon come to an end. Happy that I’m getting glimpses of myself back. I haven’t seen her in so long. She’s there — patient, happy, full of life. I’m here — tired, grateful, full of thoughts. About the boy who went missing in my hometown, the assassination attempt on the ex president, the text I received at 3am from someone who loves me deeply and pops in to remind me, by reading my work. Wanting to know what’s going on in that brain of hers. Or what’s left of it. I’ve been trying to write a new piece called “Mom Brain” about how we quite literally lose our minds in motherhood — by forgetting, disassociating, isolating ourselves to survive. A play on my last essay “Mom Talk” which was a play on the online world of motherhood, #momtok. The piece feels forced and what’s coming out is much darker. So far both pieces I’ve published revolve around motherhood, with a sprinkle of darkness, ultimately leaving the reader hopeful. The reader who might not have children yet, those in my family who are mothers, or anyone else whose heart I may have touched. I worry about hurting them with my words, in some distant unpublished future.

I read Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter over the weekend and watched the film on Netflix, while I drank a glass of red wine and cooked filet mignon for dinner. Ferrante remains seared in my mind. Leda’s regret of having been a cruel mother. Impatient, full of her own unexplored potential, with no outlet among her two young daughters. They deserved more from their mother and their mother deserved more from the world.

Everyone’s mad at Ballerina Farm’s husband. Before the piece in The Times, they were all mad at her. It’s fascinating to read in a larger publication, the same thing I wrote about a month ago, from the opposing perspective.

The current narrative of saving women from the imprisonment of their families neglects the importance of The Family. What is more important? That Hannah Neeleman remained in New York, twirling and shining and starring in Swan Lake, or that her 8 children are safe and loved? Should they have never existed so their mother could have fulfilled her destiny? Does it matter? Her husband moved her pageant dresses to the garage, to make room for their family and their stuff — does it matter?

Marcello is in the kitchen, drawing. He paints the world around him in color, and I work out the world around me, with words. He’s frustrated at the dimensions of a drawing, of me. He wants to rip it up and throw it out. Leave it alone, let it remain as it is. Your kids will love to hold a book of drawings you deemed unworthy one day, I tell him.

What about me and my words? All the journal entries I deem unworthy. Like this one.

I have to go pick up my son, the 4 hours are up, and I can’t wait to see him.

---