Hello! Life right now looks like this: the sofa cushions have been moved permanently to the floor next to A’s cot. This is great at 3 am, but less great at 9 pm. There’s a new neighbourhood cat who can only be described as a thug, and I’ve finally started parallel parking outside my house (even if it does look like I’ve screeched up to the curb, ready to rob a bank). In other news, I had dinner with a group of women who have known me since I was 19 and it was transformative and nourishing and healing and other words Gwyneth Paltrow might use to describe a Goop serum. All this to say that life is busy and tiring and I’m extremely grateful you’ve found time for this newsletter. If you’d like to support me, I have a ko-fi (coffees are extremely welcome rn!), you can send this email to a friend or hit the pledge button. Thank you for being here.
On with the show.
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She asks if I can slip out for wine. It’s a Friday evening. E had asked if he could fishing on Sunday morning so in the constant bartering of freedom chips, I have some to play with. I cash them in and go by her house, picking her up like kids off out to play. When she opens the door, she mouths quick! quick! laughing, escaping children and bathtime and everything else and we run down the hill giggling before we make it to the bar on the corner. A bottle of wine later and we’re going to a pub called The Bell. It’s a great pub. Louis Armstrong once played there, and every time I’ve been, the DJs are white-haired, playing something they probably listened to when consuming a lot of drugs in the seventies. When we walk in, perhaps because it is a Friday night, perhaps because of the fairy lights and the young woman behind the bar with a crop top and tattoos, I instantly feel five years younger. We take our drinks and sit outside. The cool evening air is held off by the wine. I watch the groups of 20-somethings at tables cluttered with empty glasses and cigarette papers and phones pulsating with light. They are excitable and eager. Their nights, like their lives, are just beginning. We only stay for one. We have babies to tend to; we will be awake at 5, maybe 6, 7 if we’re really lucky. The night out has been a much-needed shot in the arm. It’s been a long while since I’ve cut through a Friday night as a lone figure, out in the world with nothing but a handbag. There’s a thrill of being back amongst it all, and all the memories are dancing like fireflies, lighting up my hippocampus. I remember the feeling of potential, possibility, freedom. And as we call it a night, nights in Brighton and Dalston merge with what’s in front of me, and I’m only half paying attention when I say sorry to the man blocking the stairs back into the pub, hoping to slip past. He’s a few stairs below me but he is still my height. His face is thin, eyes wide. You fucking will be. I pull back and then immediately step around him. Now he’s following us. Sorry love, it was just a joke. It was just a joke. It was JUST A FUCKING JOKE. He doesn’t stop until we’re out the door and on the street. And there it was. What I’d almost forgotten. The tax women pay to be out alone at night.
****
How are you getting on, a friend messaged.
For once, I paused and considered my response.
The first instinct is a stoic fine. Maybe followed up with something light, jokey, slightly self-deprecating: Fine. The usual - just trying to survive the chaos!! The exclamation marks are important. They mask the fact that the sentence you’ve written is startlingly accurate. But you don’t want anyone to know that you’re only surviving. You don’t want anyone to know that you can’t remember if you brushed your teeth today and you’re behind on not one, but two deadlines, that you have no idea what you’re going to do about the post-partum hair regrowth that makes you look like Doc in Back to the Future, that you’re not earning enough money, but you still can’t bring yourself to apply to those jobs on LinkedIn, which means you must be selfish and lazy; that pre-baby you clearly did not think hard nor long enough about working with a baby, and assumed you could wing it like you always have but now you’re too busy winging it with a small human to wing it with anything else. If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry!! Another one. Take away the exclamation marks and it’s all too close to the bone.
I could start my reply by saying the baby has thrown away all his good sleeping habits, the ones we went through hell to instil, the ones that allowed us evenings, time, and sleep, but talking about a sleepless baby as a parent feels very, very boring. Even with other parents. Especially with other parents. We’re all tired. By bringing it up I feel like a farmer complaining about horse shit. And, besides, I know parents who are far, far more tired than me. How can I complain? I can’t so I don't.
I could mention that I’m finding working part-time very tricky. The weeks are over before they have begun. That I’m working - when I have the work - into the evenings to catch up, which is particularly testing when you’re woken up at 3.30am for a couple of hours (don’t mention the tiredness!!). I could say that even though I have so little time my afternoons are chronically slow and unproductive. I grind to a halt. I have a craving for a swim but I sit by my laptop, achieving very little, waiting for when my focus returns. The highly productive mother that I’ve been told so much about, the one that I was meant to morph into by now, hasn’t arrived. This might have something to do with the lack of sleep.
Enjoying the sunshine!! is a pretty safe bet. And not necessarily untrue, either. The exclamation marks aren’t essential here but suggest an enthusiasm that I find hard to muster. Enjoying the sunshine!! means I don’t have to mention that I’m worried about how much TV I let my son watch or how much time I’m spending on my phone. That way I don’t have to mention that I’ve tried to start counting calories and as someone who has a deep-seated aversion to not only numbers but rules and routines, it’s really not working out for me but I’m not sure how I can make my body smaller.
I categorically won’t mention that I’m working on a new book idea. Or that we’ve redesigned the paperback for Wild Hope. I absolutely won’t say out loud the bits of my life that feel precious and exciting but oh so precarious, maybe too precious, with too much riding on it, and by too much, I mean internally not externally, things like validation and self-worth and self-belief and all the other chains that are tightly woven through your work as a writer, the things you’ll never build boundaries for, no matter how many times Brene tells you to. You certainly won’t mention all your hope and ambition, battered and bruised from the baby, from a career that has slowed to a halt. You couldn’t possibly expose all that vulnerability to the air of casual chat. It might shatter or dissolve. You certainly wouldn’t want anyone to think you were getting ahead of yourself either. Not much to report!! is a good option (here the exclamation marks helpfully suggest I’m totally fine with how little work/social life I have at the moment).
I could mention the election? It feels extremely random but that’s part of the reason why it’s a great deflector and genuinely gives me a moment of peace as I reflect how happy I am not to be Rishi Sunak (aside from the marrying a billionaire part). It’s a safe bet though as the conversation will inevitably take a massive swerve away from me. All good, getting election fatigue already!!! The third exclamation mark here is a stand-in eye roll. And now there’s no chance of anyone asking if I’m writing anything interesting at the moment.
This is definitely not the time to mention Gaza, or Sudan, or how I keep trying to avoid images of starving children. Or how ashamed I am by how quickly I look away, avoiding the stabbing sensation, the nausea, the constricted throat when you contemplate, even for a second, the lives, and deaths, of all those children. You don’t mention it because what words could you even use, but perhaps should you be mentioning it because how could you not? Fine - feeling very fortunate at the moment!! borders on the absurd, but you’re not sure if your silence on the subject is more unforgivable.
I could be honest. Tell me your headlines, I said to a friend who I hadn’t seen for a while this week. My mum’s cancer has come back she said as we walked side by side. I put my arm around her. She talked and my other friend and I listened. Her honesty was a tribute to our friendship and all we shared. I felt so honoured she’d been so candid within just 10 mins of meeting up. But that sort of honestly? That’s for the chosen few, and only on certain days.
And so I craft my reply: We’re doing okay, thanks. Muddling through. So grateful for the light evenings. They make everything a bit easier!!
Some great things: (This is thin on the ground; nothing like a sleep regression to kill off all those long read open tabs)
This short film on the NYT about working in abortion clinics is haunting. For more terror, listen to this episode of The Daily about how the evangelicals are coming for IVF.
I went to Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain from 1520 to 1920 at the Tate Britain. The exhibition showcases artwork by overlooked women artists. There is a lot of art, some of it dazzling, but I found the stories that accompany the women artists - and all the obstacles they overcame - equally riveting. Well worth getting lost in for an hour or so.
Is this the first political podcast election, and does it matter? A conversation worth having if you’re still trying to figure out how Alastair Campbell and Roy Stewart have reportedly made a £1 million each from The Rest is Politics.
Thank you for reading, as always
Marisa
❤️
The sleep of a mother is a light sleep full of thoughts and plans and ideas. Even if your children are grown and miles away.