Those of you following my blog over the past couple of weeks are probably wondering by now what the heck is going on. I started off doing a basic mama blog and now I’m posting poetry and writing about writing and… ???? I guess the best way I can explain it is like this:
When I was younger (starting in elementary school) I wrote all the time — poetry, short stories, journaling, you name it. My parents love to tell me (and everyone else) that we’d be in the car and I’d ask them for a piece of paper (which would sometimes have to be a brown paper bag) because I’d “feel a poem coming on.”
At some point, around the time I left for college, I mostly stopped. I would occasionally still feel inspired to pen a poem or a journal entry — in particular, I remember journaling in Spanish during my semester in Madrid — but for the most part I was focused on other things. (Studying? Or, more likely, guys and going to parties? Sigh.) Then I became a lawyer and I think my lawyer brain just took over my creative brain. I may have still been using the creative juices somewhat for lawyering, but there wasn’t much energy left to apply them elsewhere.
But now, post-Lucy, I find myself struck with an overwhelming inspiration to write (yes, even poetry!) that I haven’t felt since high school. I think part of it is being free from school and work and other things that might usually sap my energy and my attention. And I think part of it is that mamahood is such a hugely intense, emotional experience that in some ways mirrors being younger, when everything is felt so deeply and on such a grand scale. Drew Barrymore had a daughter, Olive, a couple of months before Lucy was born, and when interviewed she’s said that she feels like she has a crush on her daughter, butterflies and everything. (I really think Lucy and Olive could be BFFs if only I could arrange a playdate…) I totally identify with that. The way I feel about Lucy (and, I’m sure, the way most mamas feel about their babies) is so raw and makes me feel so vulnerable that it’s like being sixteen all over again, when I was constantly experiencing the highs and lows of (what I thought at the time was) love and heartbreak, before I developed a thicker skin. Maybe it just took my skin getting a little thinner again to get here.
In any event, I recognize that this blog hasn’t quite found its voice or its tone, and it will probably continue to be all over the place. But I hope that you’ll stick around for the ride!
Loving Lucy 