Monthly Archives: October 2024

Books, babies, and doing everything and nothing all at once

The baby's first flight was, fittingly, to Iowa, where I'm from.

The baby’s first flight was, fittingly, to Iowa, where I’m from.

Much of writing, at least the writing I like to read, is about that which changes you. As a longtime autobiography and memoir reader, the range of the genre is wide, but change underlies nearly every title within its grasp.

Which is perhaps why I felt it odd that upon becoming a first-time parent, I had nothing to write, of this Earth-moving, body-morphing, all-consuming experience and new identity. Recently I started reading Splinters, Leslie Jamison’s new memoir about motherhood and her divorce from her daughter’s father shortly thereafter. Twenty-four pages into the book, she somehow managed to capture the sentiment I felt, a sentiment that evaded my repeated quests to describe it, to make that which is intangible more tangible: “Those early days with my daughter felt like excess and hallucination. It was all too much, but when I tried to find language for it, it was nothing at all: milk and diapers, milk and diapers, milk and diapers.”

When I was on maternity leave by myself with my small son after my husband returned to work, I told him when he got home from the office one day that I felt like I did nothing and everything at the same time. Time ceased to exist in any kind of linear fashion. It really was milk and diapers, milk and diapers, milk and diapers, but it was also so much more. Continue reading