The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

That line leapt out at me when I had the privilege of seeing Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz at The Public last week. In it, ERS performs the entire text of The Great Gatsby. It’s an eight hour evening altogether and I’d sit through it again right now if I could. While I was watching, I shifted between getting swept up in the performances and marveling at the text itself, the gorgeous glittering sentences.

That particular line sums up the way I always feel when I’m taking a cab into the city from JFK. On the one hand, I’ve seen it a million times before. On the other, it’s always new. I’m always a little girl, looking at the New York skyline and wondering what magical possibility is there waiting for me.

In an hour, I head home to my boys. I miss them something awful and at the same time, I have enjoyed the big lonely bed and the experience of waking up and facing no immediate responsibility other than getting some caffeine in my system. I admit that part of me is always longing for the freedom I used to have, even as I’m living a pretty free kind of moment. It seems a waste of a beautiful morning, this longing. But nevertheless, there it is.

We’re doomed to be like sailors. We survive months at sea, driven only by thoughts of home. Not long after we finally reach shore, we find ourselves gazing at the ocean again. But none of this gazing negates the fact that my family gives me all I’ve ever known of any real kind of happiness. So now I gladly go pack my suitcase to return to the chaos that almost certainly awaits me.

It’s been a wonderful trip, overall. There were stories told and words read and meetings had and dinners eaten and babies cuddled. There were late nights crying with old friends and late lunches at Barney’s (best people watching in all of New York). All the stuff I’d never do at home. Plus, a friend of mine must have bribed the president, because he somehow scored tickets for us to The Book of Mormon and I’m certain it’s the funniest show ever written.

I’m always sad to leave. I always can’t wait to get home.

Here’s my perfect soundtrack for a midnight ride over the Brooklyn Bridge. I get along without New York just fine- except perhaps in spring…

I’m in New York right now for some meetings and events, so I spent Mother’s Day away from my son, which felt like spending it without one of my arms. Something essential was missing. I was vaguely blue all day.

But the picture above is of my run this morning in the Catskills, so that was kind of amazing. As a child, I spent my summers in these mountains. Dredge that lake and you’ll find all my kid firsts and kid fears. The light through the leaves, the particular purple of the shadows the clouds cast on the mountains, the softness of the air in the early morning- all these things feel as familiar as the lines of my palms. I’m not sure if it makes me want to run away or move back here for good.

As I was running, I thought about the mothers in my life: my mother, my birth mother, all the women that have nurtured me in various ways. And I thought of my son’s birth mother and of the women that cared for him in the orphanage before he could finally come home. I thought of the mother I’ve managed to become, finally, and of the mother I haven’t managed to become, in spite of my best intentions.

I let all these thoughts rattle around in my head until the last leg of the run came and I tried to imagine that I was T when he runs. Because he doesn’t bother with some big reverie- he runs with nothing but freedom and joy.

PIL’s “Rise” started playing on the shuffle just in time for my final sprint. So, as John Lydon says, May the road rise with you today, my beautiful mommies.

Also- fuck Time magazine and all the corrosive perfectionism we’re called to embrace as mothers in this culture. Fuck the seeds of divisiveness that article sows. We’re stronger when we’re kind to ourselves. We’re stronger when we stand together.

I imagine that Maurice Sendak‘s spirit rose so fast, so high, buoyed by the collective love of the children in all of us.

My grandmother, a children’s librarian in the Newark, NJ school system, knew Sendak a bit. I took the signed copy of Higglety Pigglety Pop! that has followed me since my own childhood off the shelf this morning.

I have so little family right now and I often feel rootless, cast adrift. As if I’m still sailing in and out of weeks, somewhere in between the place where the Wild Things are and Home. But I held the book in my hands, a corner of it chewed by a much-loved puppy years ago, and thought of the moment it passed from Sendak’s hands and into my grandmother’s. The man who wrote the book passing it to the woman who taught me to love reading. And now it sits on my son’s bookshelf.

I have these books to give. I never need feel rootless at all.

I saw this video a week or so ago and it keeps coming back to me in flashes. I love these women.

A couple of weeks ago in the NY Times there was an interesting debate about the legalization of prostitution. For the record, I stand firmly in the legalization camp. But this video reminds me that while legalization is a fine place for the discussion to start, it’s hardly where it should end.

Healthcare. Safety. Trafficking. Indeed, these are the most pressing issues.

But I’m also interested in shining a light into the soul of the thing. Bodies as currency, as communication, as electrical conductors. Bodies as objects, as vessels, as recording devices. Bodies as rentals, as shrines, as homes.

I used to be one of those anti-gun moms. No weapon toys. Ever. You know- only developmentally appropriate wooden toys made by totally-not-oppressed elves, who live in a socialist eco-village in Vermont.

Tariku is four now and he wants guns and swords. He wants knights and pirates and battles. True, I do expose him to media like Puss in Boots, which features sword fighting. Maybe if he had never seen a weapon he wouldn’t want one. He saw that movie once and has been mock-fencing ever since. But I feel the instinct is more primal than that. He bit a piece of toast into the shape of a gun last week.

I make up stories for Tariku all day long and lately he’s been requesting stories of battle. I tried to tell him a story about how Puss in Boots walked him to school and they met a Tyrannosaurus Rex, who seemed really scary. But when they talked to him they discovered he actually was friendly and just roared so loudly because he was insecure about his little arms. Puss and Tariku and the dinosaur became friends and he let them ride on his back down Colorado Blvd.

And T said- that was a great story. Now can you tell me a story where Puss fights?

And here’s the thing- as a storyteller, I naturally gravitate toward stories of battle. Because all good stories are about conflict. And heroic stories often have sword fights. And if you’re going to tell a story, why not make it heroic? Tariku struggles with a lot, frankly. He has tremendous fears and challenges to face. Maybe battle isn’t such a bad metaphor for him, if I can place it in the appropriate context.

What broke me down finally? We were at a friend’s house the other day and Tariku got in a water gun fight. His friend had a WAY better gun than him. T had some lame foam shark thing that he had to reload every two seconds and he got massacred. That was all it took. I strapped him soaking wet into his car seat and promised him a better weapon next time.

It’s liberating to shed my big assumptions and theories- to open myself up to this aspect of parenting a boy. I’m curious see where it leads and if it can be channeled positively. I marched into Target the next day and bought the most bad-assed water gun they had. Actually, I bought two. One for me. It’s so on.

I’m not sleeping much. I keep waking to a sharp clarity at 4am or thereabouts. It’s a non-specific kind of clarity. Not the kind that brings answers, but rather the kind that makes the room feel brighter than can be explained away as moonlight. I turn away from the window. I put my hands over my eyes, but the light isn’t really the problem.

I try to fight it, knowing it will have a price later- yet more of the same brain haze I’ve been grappling with for the last three years. I keep waiting for the fog to lift, but it hasn’t yet.

I can’t explain it. The months leading up to Tariku’s adoption were nearly as sleepless as the ones that followed it, yet I remember them as being fantastically inventive and engaged. Maybe the most alive I’ve ever felt creatively. Since returning from Africa, I search too long for words. I find it hard to follow anything but the most linear narrative. I can’t remember names of favorite books, of friends’ spouses I’ve met time and time again. It’s unlike me.

Somehow, these recent early mornings have been as close as I’ve come to reclaiming something recognizable of my brain function. 4am is too early to go for a run. Too quiet to start banging dishes around. Too precious to start in with the emails. So I make some tea, go to the upstairs den, open the shutters that face east and I read as the sky shifts from black to cobalt. A few days ago I moved the coffee table and I unfolded Anne Carson’s Nox along the carpet. Yesterday, I sunk into Bolaño’s Tres. Maybe it’s the unchallenged quality of that particular early morning solitude, but it seems I’ve found a brief window during which I have my attention back. Of course, the pendulum swings the other direction and I pay for it with bleary afternoons. For now, I’ll take it.

Rebecca Land Soodak
Jillian Lauren
Kaylie Jones
Sheri Holman
Martha Southgate
Rachel Zucker

The Strand
Thursday May 10. 7-9:00
http://www.strandbooks.com/

(Then it’s back to dear old Happy Ending Lounge one week later on Wednesday, May 23rd! …I know all of this is a lot to process, but it’s all here in this very informative email, so, whatever you do, don’t panic.)

***

The How I Learned Series Presents
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DOUG MOE
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ANDY ROSS
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JILLIAN LAUREN
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Wednesday, May 23rd, 8pm
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***

BROAD CITY, the collective brainchild of Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, is a wildly popular web series and live show that has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The AV Club, and many others. Broad City is also currently in development for a TV series on FX. Ilana is a stand-up comic and Abbi is a writer, actor, and illustrator.

CHRIS GETHARD is the author of the A Bad Idea I’m About To Do, which was featured on This American Life, and Weird NY, a book detailing the ghost stories and urban legends of New York. He is the Chris Gethard behind The Chris Gethard Show at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre, and the monthly series The Nights of Our Lives.

JILLIAN LAUREN is a multitalented performer and the author of the novel Pretty, and the memoir Some Girls. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and several others. Jillian recently performed a one woman show called Mother Tongue in New York and Los Angeles.

DOUG MOE is a comedic actor and a member of the legendary improv team MOTHER, and you probably see him on your television a lot. His latest solo show was the long-running and well-received Doug Moe is a Bad Dad. He teaches at the UCB theatre and blogs at manvchild.com.

ANDY ROSS is a writer, storyteller, and comedian who has contributed to The Onion News Network and MAD Magazine, among others. He wrote and performed his one man show, Melancomedy, in both New York and Chicago, and has appeared in the Moth GrandSLAM, The Liar Show, TOLD and many others. Andy is also the founder, producer, and host of Real Characters at McNally Jackson in Soho.

Authors’ kids took over the green room this weekend at the LA Times Festival of Books. Here’s T-Bone with Claire Bidwell Smith’s Vera and Samantha Dunn’s Ben. They’re starting a band, which is way more sensible than a literary journal.

There was a party on Saturday night at the Main Library downtown. Scott and I made a date night out of it and went for oysters at The Water Grill on the way. In front of the Biltmore Hotel, we passed a bunch of kids on the way to their prom. The girls swished by us in sequined mermaid skirts, teetering on their heels and hanging on the arms of rented tuxes. It occurred to me that the Book Festival is like a grown-up nerd prom, with less slow dancing and more panel discussions.

It’s kind of nice of the world to give me a second chance at this prom thing. I’m doing much better this time around. Here I am at the awards ceremony with Rachel Resnick, Janet Fitch, Elissa Schappell and Carolyn Kellog.

It’s heartening for an author to spend a couple of days in this swirl of enthusiasm for books. I felt grateful for the chance to mingle with readers and colleagues.

And for the last dance of the nerd prom, I got to see Amanda Fletcher, my mentee from the PEN Center Emerging Voices fellowship, kick so much ass at her reading at the Hotel Cafe that I got a little tear of pride in my eye. Watch out for her. She’s about to conquer the world. Or at least make homecoming queen.

Check out my fucking awesome post about swearing (mine and his), up now at TODAY Moms.

Leave comments and all that. Really filthy ones.