happy Mother's Day

I like being a mom! sorry to offend!

hi all,

today’s letter is (obviously) inspired by Mother’s Day. it’s not a super long one, hoping to write shorter letters more often — let me know what you think about that!

and as always, thank you for reading, and I can’t express enough that I am still/forever soliciting feedback on what you would like to read about! please feel free to comment here with ideas if you have the Substack app, or email me directly if you don’t, if there’s something you’d like me to write about in the future. obviously no promises that it will happen, but it would be nice to keep a little list going for newsletters TK.

and if you’d like to support my writing because this newsletter means something to you or because you understand it takes a lot of time and effort to put it together, you can do that here. it means more to me than you know!

love,

your friend Mindy 

---

I had a really nice Mother’s Day. our baby woke up at 4:30 AM — he missed the “being nice to mama” memo — and my husband blessedly took him so I could sleep in. he also got me these beautiful martini glasses (I’ve been really into martinis lately) and a heartfelt card, which is my gift of choice (much to his chagrin; he’s a man of few words). later in the morning we went to the Families for Ceasefire march, which we almost skipped because it was rainy and gross and we had already been awake for one thousand hours, but I’m so glad we didn’t because it was lovely. it wasn’t your normal activist-y crowd, there were tons of families and kids running around, holding signs, even leading chants. afterwards we had Vietnamese food with Emma and her family, who were also at the march, and then we went to this nursery in the suburbs, only because we went there last Mother’s Day, and my husband got me a hydrangea, only because he did last year as well, now making it a bit of a tradition. Gd willing, though, we’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day together for many years to come, and I am not sure where we’ll put 20+ hydrangeas, but that’s a question we can try to answer later. on the way home we stopped for bubble tea (what are the chewy balls??? I love them) and then played before bed time, at which point Arielle picked me up to go see Alison Roman give advice. she answered Arielle’s question — how to get the chicken skin crispy and make sure it doesn’t separate from the rest of the chicken (??? or something, I’m a vegetarian), but she didn’t answer mine — how do you handle getting canceled? asking for a friend, obviously! then we got dumplings and ice cream, and she took me home. it was a pretty perfect day.

I feel really lucky to have been able to spend Mother’s Day, and basically every day, being both a Mom and also a Person — a person who is not just a mom, who has other interests and hobbies and relationships outside my nuclear family (who I also love very, very much!) I’m almost afraid to say the following because I don’t want to sound smug while other moms seem to be struggling so much, but it’s my newsletter and it’s true, and I wish I had been able to read something like this before I became a parent: my life has not changed that much after having a baby. or, no, that’s inaccurate, of course things have changed, deeply, in big and small and beautiful and challenging ways! I’ll never fit into my pre-baby jeans again; my boobs are down to my belly button (RIP); waking up at 6 AM is the new normal, no matter what time I go to sleep, and no matter what time the baby goes to sleep; there is someone who basically always wants my attention and love and comfort, which is really amazing and special 95% of the time, and tiring and frustrating the other 5% of the time; and of course, especially, the love I feel for that person eclipses any kind of love I’ve ever experienced, no question, and I could happily sit with him while he eats yogurt or listen to him say “ball” or watch his chest rise and fall while he sleeps for the rest of my days.