Last week, Smartmom tried to wean herself from writing about her children — but it was just hopeless.
I mean, how do you stop fixating on the people with whom you share a rather cramped Park Slope apartment?
For one thing, they leave their clothing like a Hansel and Gretel trail from the front door to the bathroom to their bedrooms.
Smartmom is so sick of tripping over the Oh So Feisty One’s Uggs,
her silver Pro-Keds, and her black rubber boots in the hallway that
she’s thinking of leaving them on the street with a “Free Stuff” sign
when she’s away at school.
She knows she should write about the weightier issues on her “To Do”
list like the local group, Parents Against Climate Change, or whether
kids should wear helmets while sledding.
After all, when The Brooklyn Paper wrote a story
about Smartmom’s “To write or not to write” dilemma, almost two dozen
people wrote in (mostly telling Smartmom to stop writing about her
kids!).
She’d love to “move on,” as RK from Park Slope suggested, but
Smartmom gets creatively mugged when she sees what the kitchen looks
like after Teen Spirit makes an elaborate sandwich.
Look, she’s happy he didn’t ask her to make him “a little midnight
snack,” but couldn’t the kid learn to put away the Applewood Monterey
Jack cheese and the Trader Joe’s Not Mayonnaise?
Or how about Sunday night, when OSFO was making a photo album for
her Facebook page and she turned the apartment upside down looking for
her bright pink wig, kooky sunglasses and a pocketbook so she could do
a photo essay posing as Hannah Montana’s fictional cousin?
Sure, that OSFO is one heck of a comedienne — and those pictures are a stitch — but it’s really distracting.
After OSFO went to bed, Smartmom sat down at her computer fully
intending to write about something, anything, but her children when
Teen Spirit came home from who knows where.
No doubt she was miffed when he had no explanation for his lateness.
But it was the clip, clop, clip, clop of the black boots he bought at a
thrift shop on the hardwood hallway floor that drove her to
distraction.
Ah, inspiration! She began typing an ode to the annoying sounds
one’s teenager makes. But then she remembered the gag order and she
deleted all the words that had anything to do with Teen Spirit’s black
boots. Instead, she stared at a blank page on her trusty computer.
Nothing.
Nothing.
More nothing.
There was a Zen-like purity to the whiteness of the screen.
It made Smartmom feel calm, miles away from the chaos of her Third
Street apartment. Staring into that white screen, Smartmom felt like
she could reinvent herself. She could reinvent her children. She could
even reinvent her husband.
Why, her kids could be fictional characters with names like Phoebe
and Jasper. Hepcat could be a millionaire inventor named Zebulon and
they could all live in a huge house in Marin County, where Smartmom’s
writing room would have views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Mount
Tamalpais.
There would be no clothing in the hallway, no clutter on the dining
room table, and no makeshift wall separating Hepcat’s workspace from
the living room.
They’d have no money troubles and no arguments with Teen Spirit, aka, Jasper, about homework and college.
OSFO, aka Phoebe, would have as much space as she needed for her
imaginative art projects and clothing. And Jasper, would have his own
out-of-the-way wing of the house with a recording studio.
In Smartmom’s fictionalized world, Jasper would have rubber soles on his boots.
And Smartmom could have different name, too (and maybe a more
attractive illustration next to her byline). She would be 15 pounds
thinner and 10 years younger. She’d be a critically acclaimed — and
best-selling novelist — with two, maybe three, movie deals in the
works.
These characters would have to have all-new back stories, too. No turquoise turmoil, agita about a gap year, blues about leaving PS 321, angst about turning 50, ugly red chairs and trips to Babeland.
Smartmom liked the idea of creating a new life: a new self. New
kids. A new husband — and this one wouldn’t need to save every issue of
Wired Magazine since its inception in 1993.
But it made her feel sad, too.
Smartmom’s eyes fell on her messy desk, the El Pico coffee can full
of sharpened pencils, and the web of wires on the floor.
Fiction is one thing. But it’s the trials and tribulations of her
life as a parent in Brooklyn that she gets paid the big bucks for.
Sure, she could just make it all up. But what fun would that be?
Dear Louise,
I don’t know you, but I’m a regular reader and admiring of your blog and since you’re laying it all out here, I’d like to comment.
I believe that you are now actively showing a lack of respect for your kids. I get it, I’m a parent too, and when kids are younger its a different story. But at the moment when a loved one tells you that they don’t want you writing about them anymore, I believe you need to reassess what you’re doing. They deserve privacy, and they have directly asked you for it. And you are telling them they don’t have a right to that because you get paid to talk about your kids and you don’t know what else to write about. But I have been reading this blog for over a year and know that you write very well about the community you live in and all sorts of issues.
Every right that one has has an equally compelling and competing right that someone else has. Is it your “right” to write about your kids? Well, yes, its your life too and they’re a big part of it. But when your right comes smack up against theirs you can’t automatically say that yours is more important.
You will always be a parent and I’m sure you can continue to write about parenting issues without presenting the details of your children’s private lives. Its time to let this go, or pay the consequences of dealing with their anger and lack of trust in you. I can’t imagine that you want that.
This was meant sincerely and I hope it does not offend you.
I can live with you writing about the kids if only you would STOP writing in the third person. It drives me crazy. What are you, royalty?