bending time

I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, but one area where I feel most like a failure is family. I have a large, loving extended family but no meaningful contact with my four siblings, and my mother and I mostly discuss the weather. So when I’m around other people’s families, I’m not always sure how to act. I’m lucky to have friends who welcome me into their homes and treat me like part of their clan. I spent last week in Massachusetts and for the first two days, I was my usual self in spaces that were familiar to me: a college classroom, a women’s center, and a charter school. Then I took the train out to western Mass and found my identity somewhat destabilized. On the one hand, I was in familiar territory; I taught at Mt. Holyoke College from 2006-2009, and had no trouble finding my way around campus. When I gave my talk before about a dozen students and faculty, I felt completely at ease and remembered how it felt to teach at a college full of intelligent and engaged women. Then I piled into the car with my friends and their kids, and we went to school for a music recital. And I didn’t really feel out of place, but I marveled at the lives my professor-friends lead—their endless energy, their determination to be present and engaged parents, the thought they put into choosing the best school for their Black children, their sustained advocacy on behalf of their kids…I was in awe. I’ve been thinking about my own fertility lately and the rational side of me KNOWS I am not ready to become a parent (especially a single parent). But spending a couple of days with my friends and their kids confirmed that fact and quieted the irrational, hormonal side of me that still wonders what it would be like. I finally finished my letter-writing project and speaking to my child self stirred up a lot of stuff for me—as I imagine parenting would. On the train to Cambridge I started reading Robin Bernstein’s brilliant book Racial Innocence and remembered how much I like being around intellectuals. My friends with kids are also intellectuals and we had some provocative conversations while I was there. And somehow they manage to pursue their scholarship while parenting full-time, so clearly it can be done. Will I ever give it a try? I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to fail at parenting. I wouldn’t want to become a mother and then realize my writing mattered more to me. There were plenty of times when I felt like a nuisance or a burden to my single mother, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for making a child feel that way. So how do you avoid failure–by never trying? Or do you prepare as best you can and accept that you’ll always come up short? I’ve been stressed out for most of this month because The Door at the Crossroads was supposed to come out TOMORROW but a series of mishaps made that impossible. And things are still up in the air right now! Taking the train was more than a little uncomfortable because I had to endure sciatica and endometriosis pain at the same time—and there was NO quiet car! What if, in the midst of all this chaos, I also had to make sure my child’s needs were being met? I took 2 craft kits with me to MA and enjoyed sitting at a table with my (pretend) niece and nephew as we made paper cats and butterflies. The actual cat jumped on my shoulder twice and tried to burrow in my hair because that’s what she does to Renae. But I am not Renae, and I am not Robin. And after a couple of days, I came back to my life in Brooklyn and it felt SO good. Maybe it’s enough—for now—to write for and work with kids. Maybe once my novel comes out and I finish The Ghosts in the Castle and work my way through the other book projects in my queue…maybe then I’ll be ready to think about parenting. Maybe.