There were a bunch of things I’d been vaguely planning to write about this week (small talk, gift-giving) but I’m clenched up like a fist, feeling vile.
(Pictured, me, crumpled, crumpling up everything I️ try to draw)
It’s the beginning of two and a half weeks of no childcare. I’d arranged things months ago: a week when my son and I would stay at my parents’ (they are angels and watch him all day while I work), then a week and a half of the backup care we get through my husband’s insurance (I’d put in the request months ago, and the agency assured me our favorite babysitter—the coolest, kindest professional soccer player who’s shown up multiple times at 6 AM on the dot, gotten Jamie dressed and walked him to school—was available). Then school would start. This is the kind of mundane logistical thing I take care of in my household because my husband would put it off until it got a lot gnarlier, and for now I’m OK being that person: the bill-payer, form-filler, phone-caller, appointment-maker. The problem with my handling all the logistics is that if something does get gnarly, and things do, I’m the one who has to degnarl it. Heed my tale.
The first thing to go gnarly was this. We found out a couple weeks ago that the first week and a half of preschool school are just a kind of getting-to-know-you period (two two-hour days the first week followed by five six-hour days the second week – saying “six hour day” makes me feel the need to defend myself: IT’S NOT ENOUGH FOR A WORKING PARENT UNLESS THEY’RE DIVIDING THINGS SUPER-NICELY WITH THEIR PARTNER) which meant that we were looking not at two and a half weeks of major disruption, but an entire month. So I mended together, if you will, an imperfect quilt of little snippets of babysitting and grandparent help for those seven partial school days.
The next thing to go gnarl was this. The babysitter we’d requested through the insurance-sponsored agency texted me to say her phone had been disconnected while she traveled for the summer, and no, she wasn’t available, she’d told the agency long ago that she wouldn’t be, they’d goofed (they often do). By the time this happened, it was a week before vacation and it was too late to find someone new through the agency because no one has childcare this month and everyone hires a babysitter. That’s when the month ahead tipped over from disruptive to nightmarish. I sacrificed a big chunk of time last week (and a larger chunk of my soul) to rally and plead with all the babysitting options we know of (long phone calls with the insurance-funded agency, must have sent pleading texts to fifteen people ranging from daycare teachers to high school-age neighbors, asked friends for recommendations, got on a list with a new babysitting agency), and had some success, but very complicated. I spent a morning drawing it out on a piece of paper and it looked like this:
Where is my husband in all this? And why is it standard that there’s a month with no official childcare? I’m not going to answer these questions. I’m just asking them.
To make things worse, my husband had a hard week at work and couldn’t be home in the evenings, so I couldn’t stretch my workday at all. Um we’re also planning to move, and I’m taking chunks out of my work time to deal with that.
After you have a kid, you get used to there being certain times in your life when you’re just going through the motions. Inside you the image shifts from tempestuous despair to anger to a hard, closed blankness to other things, unrecognizable and unmanageable, but it doesn’t matter what’s going on inside you because you’re going through the complex, consuming motions required of you. Caring for (by which I mean wrestling and yelling at and playing with and pushing food on) your child. Handling dog, food, apartment, social plans. Getting in the bare minimum of deadlines. Phoning it all in. Appearing fine.
It's not that I was always fine before I had my kid – far from it. I just didn’t need to appear fine all the time. And to be fair, there’s something to be said for appearing fine when you’re not.
(But nothing beats being truly fine).
I’m writing to you from a locked room in my parents’ house. Jamie is downstairs with my parents, but I heard him figure out that I’m in here, and I’m holding my breath hoping he doesn’t come find me. I’ve finished my bottle of water and I’m thirsty and I have to pee. This is the good week of the four – and it’s sweet and magical – but disorienting for me from a work standpoint (I have time, which I’m so grateful for, but haven’t quite figured out where to put myself). I’m having trouble getting things done.
Making my weekly batch of New Yorker cartoons felt like pulling teeth. In my experience, cartoons come most easily when you’re in a certain confident mood—and when you have time to be creative (the main ingredient for creativity, I now understand, is time). Can I add that when you don’t bring your best self or compensate with hard work for not bringing your best self to your cartoon batch, you DON’T SELL A CARTOON AND DON’T MAKE MONEY THAT WEEK AND SPIRAL.
Anyway, whining is the nicest luxury. I️ wouldn’t be doing it if I️ didn’t have…the time. (Still, I feel like there’s something under my whining – I’m trying to get it out). I’m going to work a little bit on my comic now. I haven’t worked on it in a week and a half. Sometimes you need to force yourself to do the joyful thing, even if joy is scary (to me it really is! Why!).
The other day, though, walking Jamie to the playground, I looked at a pile of rocks and saw a clear, roundish, smoothish, transparent, palm-sized hunk of quartz with a glint of red inside. Sitting there, covered in mud, among the gray by the walking path. It’s a really good rock. I’ve been carrying it around for days in my pocket (OK, OK, my fanny pack).
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An optional, for-fun prompt: Draw a six-panel grid (two across, three down). If you’re a ruler-user and you want specifications, I use a 2.5 wide x 2.75 tall box (so – the horizontal lines are 5 inches and the vertical lines are 8.25 inches) but I encourage you just to wing it free-hand.
OK here’s the prompt: tell an illustrated story in six lines (one for each box) about a should-have-been-romantic situation you were in once. Your words can either be narrative, at the top of the boxes, or dialogue, in speech bubbles.
For paid subscribers, SEND ME YOUR 6-PANEL COMIC and I’ll CRITIQUE IT. You can send me a photo or a scan to this email address:
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