an explanation

Just back from dropping Hamish at daycare. He goes five mornings a week to a place we love. They have music, and art and nature day where they meet a different animal every week, although Hamish usually chooses not to touch the animal guest. Sometimes Bryan and I worry that our son's not adventurous enough, as if there is a quota for adventureousness (is that a word?) and he has yet to reach it. On the other hand, I applaud his individuality. If all his classmates opt to touch the pet cobra (for example) and Hamish doesn't, then hooray for him. There's always something I can worry about. Better to worry that he doesn't touch than worry if he'll live after getting bit. Is that profound at all? Hamish is also a little anal in his young age. The other day I threw my dirty socks into the hallway to make them closer to the hamper and Hamish walked by, pointed at them and said, "Mom. You socks on the floor," and I gulped, dumbfounded. "Will you put them in the hamper for me?" I asked and he did and I felt such an odd mixture of pride and fear.

This blog is to help ease me back into the world of writing. Star Craving Mad was published in May, 2004. Since then I've written another story, both as a novel and as a screenplay, based on my personal essay collection (links provided below). Both projects are shelved for now. Now that Stella is out in the world and almost sitting up, I'm getting itchy to start again but have no ideas regarding plot. Maybe this blog will help. Plus, I love an audience. I'm an emotional exhibitionist, and if you read my essays, you will know what I mean. And that's another source of conflict for me. My essays are racy and graphic and sexual and now I'm a mom. I wonder how Madonna resolves this issue with Lola and Rocco. The simple explanation is that the essays (and the novel, really) are my art. They were written before I was a mom and they mark a part of my life that's over now, though the work remains. My problem, if you want to call it that, which I do, since it feels problematic, is that I feel the need to justify an awful lot of stuff about myself. It's one of those childhood stigmas that has stuck around to haunt me even now in my thirty-seventh year. I work to overcome it and not to apologize for who I am. Help me Oprah.