Eat the Damn Cake

This is so incredibly awkward.

I just typed a sentence and backspaced it. Typed it again. Backspaced. Now you know I’m on a PC. What is with the Mac not having a backspace key? Does anyone know why they decided not to? I think it’s a design flaw. I don’t find the design “intuitive.” Someone told me it was more intuitive. Is that code for “women are supposed to like it”?

OK, OK. I’m stalling. I’ll just do this:

I want to have a baby.

Is there a way to make that sound less…like I want to have a baby?

I am thinking about wanting to have a baby.

There. Better.

I have written about this before. But I feel it is my duty to report that the condition is worsening.

(source)

I had a terrible scare recently. I thought for a second that maybe, somehow, I was pregnant. I had managed to mess up my birth control and simultaneously gain like ten pounds. I took a pregnancy test. And for a horrible, shocking moment, I wished that it would be positive.

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I am almost twenty-six. One week left. It’s coming up fast, like a velociraptor. I am running, but you know it’s gonna get me, and those things are wily. They’ve practically got hands. With giant claws.

(see?? source)

Twenty-six. That’s on the other side of the twenties. More towards the thirties, where all sorts of secrets about life lie. Where I think they’ve put adulthood, at least temporarily.

Anyway, I found a WHITE HAIR. Yesterday. Which is not such a big deal. People have been known to find those before the age of twenty-six. But it just seems symbolic, or something—the timing. The timing feels a little harsh. Like, yeah, this time next year, they’ll all be white, honey. Just so you know.

That’s OK. White hair is nice. I knew a girl with white hair in college. It was gorgeous until she dyed it.

But twenty-six? How much am I supposed have accomplished by now? I think probably more than I have. Maybe a Pulitzer? A Nobel? An Oscar? Some other kind of giant prize? Something gold and shiny, triumphant and permanent that I can stick on a pedestal in the middle of the room and everyone can think, “Well, she’s amazing forever.” And then they will stop asking me questions like, “So…you write? That’s fun. Anything else? Still looking for a job?” If not a prize, at least a six-figure book deal. I would accept that. “Young Author Catches Literary World By Surprise With Sheer Brilliance! Is Declared Greatest Writer Ever.”

I’m not going to get started.

I’m not going to retell the story of the college girls my friend overheard on the elevator who were like, “What is she, like, twenty-six?!” “No way! I thought she was young!” “No, dude, she’s like twenty-six.” “Shit…well, she looks pretty young for her age. She’s still cool.”

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First I go on Facebook. I always look at the same three people’s profiles. I disagree with their life choices. I shake my head and sigh and roll my eyes and feel superior. Seriously? You call that a status update? Are you insane? But I can’t stop checking. I know the inner working of these people’s lives better than I know anything about the way my own country’s government functions. Better than I know how to bake cookies. Better than I understand basic biology. Not as well as I know New York real estate, or grilled cheeses, or the game SET, but pretty close.

(they may call it a “family game,” but there’s nothing familial about the way I play it. I am ruthless. I take no prisoners. source)

Then I check Twitter. Two more people have followed me. That’s good. I think I have a reasonable number of followers. I’m not sure it’s the right amount. I check to see how many followers The Bloggess has. Holy shit. 215,301. I click over to her blog. She is being funny, in this sort of complicated, dry, extremely clever way. How does she keep doing it, all the time? Who else is a famous blogger? I locate a few. Damn, here’s a post with three-hundred comments under it. THREE-HUNDRED.

Who else is famous in general? There’s always some really young writer whose book just got an incredibly favorable review in the Times. I check out the review. Really? “Frolicking, phantasmic prose”? Can that be a thing? God. I am so lazy. My prose almost never frolics. I don’t have a chance, do I? Probably not.

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This is a topic I try to avoid.

This is what my mind did just now, to arrive at it: OK, let’s see…what have we got…did bras, don’t have enough belt pictures yet to write a post about how much I love belts, Bear will kill me if I write another post about our relationship, food could be good, but I’m full…a post about how cute my cat is? No? OK…then God.

But reader AT asked me about belief and spirituality, and I’m gonna answer, damnit. Because that’s the kind of person I am (a person who occasionally answers questions).

I don’t believe in God. It bothers my mom. It bothers a lot of people, actually, who don’t even know me.

I don’t believe in God, but it’s not because I never tried.

When I was a kid, my best friend was born again. It happened very suddenly. One day, no one was talking about God, and the next, she was telling me that I was going to go to hell, because I was Jewish. My parents were going to go to hell. I remember her words. “It’s a rocky road to hell.” I don’t remember the context. I just remember thinking of ice cream. And also being offended. There was no way she was right. I was pretty sure I knew just about as much as she did about the world, and pretty sure someone had been telling her lies.

But she swore that there was gold dust on her hands, at her bible camp. God had done that. And that sounded really cool.

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This post is for Cate, who commented here. 

I am a dreamer.

I want big things. I want gorgeous settings. I am idealistic. I am impractical.

I am old enough to know better, so I don’t think I will ever know better.

I am fragile. I want to be famous. God, that’s embarrassing. At least there’s this: I don’t want to be famous and get invited to all the best penthouse parties and know all the names of the owners of the sexiest clubs. I don’t want fame to follow me outside, into the street. I want to be a famous writer. I want people to read my words and disappear briefly inside them. That’s what happened to me, as a kid, reading fantasy novels. I slipped inside another world. I want to do that for people.

I am a failure. I tried being practical. I tried growing up right. At fifteen, I got my first serious job. I worked through college. For a while, I was making more money than all of my friends. I was a little smug about it, when a guy who liked me bragged about how much he made at his job, repairing computers, and I made more. Don’t say anything, I thought. Don’t you dare say anything. I really wanted to say something. I only let myself get A’s, and I only considered Ivy League grad schools-- I got into the one my professors wanted for me. There was this straight, groomed path, and I was on it, and I was going to take my degrees out into the world and knock on a bunch of impressive doors with them (they make a more important sound than just my bare hand), and things would fall into place.

And then I couldn’t.

(that’s my backpack. And my chocolate milk. This is where I was writing yesterday)

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I saw Amy Chua, the Tiger Mom, last night at the 92nd Street Y. Actually, I ran into her on my way to the bathroom, before her talk started. I wasn’t positive it was her, but I had a feeling. She was wearing a hot pink dress under a fitted leather jacket. Her hair was perfect. I looked at her and she looked at me, as though she was waiting for me to say something (like “Oh my god, I LOVED your book!” or “It’s women like you who are ruining this country.”), but I didn’t, and we awkwardly squeezed by each other in the narrow hall. The sleeve of her jacket brushed my arm.

Like a lot of people, I didn’t read the book, I read the Wall St Journal excerpt. Like a lot of people, I joined in conversations about parenting styles and whether “eastern” or “western” parenting is better, and how much tiger is too much. Everyone was shocked by her. Everyone was horrified. “This is why kids kill themselves,” people said. “Because there’s so much pressure to succeed.” “Her daughters will have eating disorders,” people said. Everyone was defensive.

In her talk, Amy Chua was funny and a little overeager. She kept starting thoughts and switching over to something else, so that her sentences tumbled together, breaking off and beginning again in crisscrossing excitement. She had so much correcting to do. The book was supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be a confession. She was shocked by the response. She would much rather her children were happy than successful– what parent wouldn’t? And can we not call certain things success? How about we just say “overcoming challenges,” because that’s what makes life fulfilling. The book, she said, was a celebration of rebellion, not conformity. Her youngest daughter rebelled, and she was forced to reexamine the parenting style she’d adopted from her incredibly hardworking, poor immigrant parents. But she did reexamine, and she changed.

The Tiger Mom came off as earnest, humble, and extremely loving. Not at all the way she’s been described. She came off just like most of the parents I know and have known, growing up. She was just trying to figure out what was best for her kids.

If this is the Tiger Mom, then where are the real tiger moms?

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Dear Marius,

First of all, welcome. Hey. You don’t know me yet, but I’m a friend of your mom and dad.

I am a little in shock, about you being here. I mean, it’s like the best magic trick ever. Something out of nothing. Not just something– you. I saw the YouTube video your dad made. I watched it six times in a row. You appear to be perfect. It’s bizarre. It’s possible that you are the most adorable thing in the world.

For you, being born is something that you’ll only have to think about later, when people show you the pictures. And then you’ll probably make a face and be like, “Come on, guys, I was NAKED.” And go back to whatever you were doing.

But you being born is ridiculously awesome.

I had a moment. I was looking at your tiny face, in the Youtube video, and you scrunched it up for a second, like you were thinking about crying, and then you changed your mind and went back to looking around  with big eyes. And suddenly I got this urge to tell you stuff. Even though I’m twenty-five and what do I actually know about stuff. Twenty-five is a lot older than you. Maybe I’ve picked up a few things along the way.

Stuff:

Sometimes it doesn’t hit me until I see the sky. Like, a lot of the sky. Most of the time, I actually just forget to look up. But walking back from the A train the other day, I remembered, and for a block or so, between buildings, I could see a sizable chunk of sky– clouds and everything. And I realized that I’d been thinking about deadlines and whether or not she meant to sound so irritated when she said that in the meeting and, of course, dinner. But then, when I looked at the sky, I was suddenly thinking about how perfect it is, to be alive. Being alive is this crazy, ridiculous, utterly ordinary gift. You were given it. Make sure you look at the sky.

(you never know what you’ll see up there! source.)

You are loved. A lot. Which you should probably try to remember as much as you  possibly can. Because it is the thing that matters most. Really. You and I are both incredibly lucky to be born to parents who will love us no matter what. Sometimes I call my dad at work, and I’m like, “It’s so weird–this cream sauce is all clumpy.” And he says, “Lower the flame, stir constantly.” And then we talk about life for an hour. Sometimes the only thing in the world I really need is my mom. That still happens. Just so you know.

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