savagemama

There are days I feel exceptionally greedy.

Today is one of those days.

I want and want and want for no other reason than I want. I want Eliza to take a nap. I want to eat three meals today and to not have a gnawing in my gut or the head-spinning anxiety that hunger brings. I want a long, hot bath without the dog scratching at the door. I want to sit and read something for longer than five drowsy minutes before I fall asleep at night. I want the bills to pay themselves.

I want a close relationship with my happy, well-adjusted child and I want it to be easier. [Read more]

When I landed in Eugene, Oregon at 23 ready (I thought) to embark on graduate school I wondered what my classmates might be like. Here’s what I knew to be true from the information packet I’d received: there would be six of us, all women, from all over the country. One woman had been a teacher in Samoa, one had an English degree, one was moving from New York where she’d worked as a book editor, one was coming from the best journalism school in the country and one worked with at an alternative high school.

As a whole they seemed like world traveling, smarty-pants and scary deal makers, far older than me, and, I was sure, wiser. I was a newspaper reporter from the South with an affection for southern literature. On paper, they terrified me. The morning we were to meet I was so nervous that I went for a 10-mile run before orientation to try and quell my nerves. When I arrived I saw four other women about my age who looked as uneasy and uncertain as I felt. I quietly matched their faces to the bios I’d read and stopped holding my breath. About 15 minutes into a speech from the graduate school director everyone turned to the creak of the door opening. A tall woman with wavy hair and stood to face everyone. She was late and she looked a little taken aback by everyone staring at her. After a few uncomfortable seconds we realized she was our sixth. In a pair of Patagonia shorts and a t-shirt, our book editor had arrived. This just might be okay, I thought. [Read More]

Eliza has never been much of a sleeper. I think she considers it overrated, the hours and hours of lying quietly, sewing together the loose threads of a busy day, letting her body settle into a deep place of restfulness. I think this because at a year old she still hasn’t slept through the night.

I have friends who have newborns, babies just barely six weeks old, who talk about six, seven hour stretches of sleep. At night. I wonder what that feels like. [Read More]