Tag Archives: live shows

Mom things (Listen To Your Mother).

Recently, I had dinner with my friend Jeff. We’d been trying to schedule this dinner for weeks, but there are always things, mostly my things, the wonderful, impossible, messy juggle of my four-year-old and my job and my husband’s job, plus the art we both make when we’re not with our kid and/or working—“You’re out on Monday? I’m out on Tuesday, are you out on Tuesday?”—and there’s never any time. Inevitably, though, I hit the proverbial end of the proverbial rope. It had been building for a while, this overwhelming need to explode like a fizzed-up two-liter, and Jeff is my go-to in these situations. He knows I have to sit with my back to the room so no one else can see me cry. He knows when to ask for the bottle, instead of just a glass. He knows how to listen. This particular night we were at the Hopleaf, a delicious, edgy little bar on Chicago’s Northside full of good booze and beautiful people and swanky comfort food like duck reuben sandwiches and octopus carpaccio, both of which I ordered along with some wine.

“Actually, can you make that a bottle?” Jeff asked the waiter, and I immediately started to cry.

How to explain this? It wasn’t any one thing. I was exhausted, stretched everywhichway, too much stuff to do any of it well and in the middle of everything was my little boy. Didn’t he deserve more? Should I quit my job, mail the housekeys back to the bank, and move to a farm? With like… goats? We could plant a garden, I could finish my novel—I had a novel! Wasn’t I a writer?—and maybe even see my husband occasionally. I’d have a to-do list that read like blue light saber, red light saber, organic apples, instead of curriculum development, book contracts, student work. I’d slow down, engage fully in every moment instead of using the time I was supposed to be living to plan what happened next, but on the other hand—always another hand!—there’s the fact that I love my work. I’m good at it, too. It’s who I am, and it’s important for my son to see that part of me, right?

I went on.

I went on and on.

Jeff listened, waiting for the moment when the words and tears stopped, and when it finally arrived—when my breath came relaxed and quiet instead of gulpy, gaspy sobs—he said, “Are you talking to any, like, mothers?”

I reached for my wine.

“’Cause it seems like lots of mothers go through this. Mine did, I know, and my sister-in-law, too. And maybe if you talked to some you wouldn’t feel so—”

“Batshit crazy?” I said helpfully.

“—overextended,” he finished, leaning back in his chair. “Honestly, I don’t think any of this is a you thing. I think it’s a mom thing.”

*

Over the past four years, I’ve learned that there are many mom things [1]: indescribable love and indescribable fear; lots of laughing; lots of weird bodily fluids and bourbon and crying to our best friends about being overextended; guilt about being overextended; times of utter loneliness; feeling totally connected to any mother in Target with a screaming toddler and if anybody gives that mother a nasty look I will come over and cut you because you know what? If you have a problem with crying children, don’t shop somewhere that sells diapers! It’s common sense, people! Not to mention that no one—no one—wants that toddler to stop screaming more than his/her mother in part because it hurts us to hear our children cry but also because OH MY GOD WHY IS THIS KID STILL CRYING?!; exhaustion; crazy libidos; guilt about working and writing and going out when we should be building super ramps on the carpet 24/7; watching episode after episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer free-streaming on Netflix because killing vampires is sometimes the only thing that can quiet the noise in our heads; lots of noise in our heads; feeling what Stacy refers to as Mother-induced-anxiety; feeling very calm and level-headed in a crisis even if we’re crazy the rest of the time; knowing the U.N. should be made up of mothers ‘cause if we can balance the insanity in our google calendars, why not the f’ing world, and P.S. if I am expected to juggle raising children and educating this country’s children and keeping this country moving with my money and my vote and my hope and faith and perseverance, than you can be damn well sure I have the intelligence to decide what happens to my own body—Dear Washington: LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER!—and I’ve only been a mother for four years! I haven’t even begun to experience the mom things! I’ve just scratched the goddamn surface!

SO.

When I decided to auditon for Listen To Your Mother, a national reading series in honor of motherhood and benefitting moms in need, I had no idea what—of the many mom things I’ve felt/experienced/written about—to audition with.

Through my work with 2nd Story, I’ve been lucky enough to tell stories around all sorts of themes: heartbreak, politics, faith, sexual identity, dodging bullets, fear, marriage, fantasy, and regret, to name just a few. Usually, I’m commissioned for these shows. I’ll get the theme assignment and then, for a day or two or three, I live with it, reaching down the line of my life to find the moments, experiences, and lessons that fit the idea. I write about it in my journal, talk about it with friends, talk about it with myself when I’m stuck in traffic—

Sidebar: stuck in traffice is an essential part of my writing process. It’s when I think things through and figure out what I want the work to—as they say—say. One time, my son was in the backseat and he said, “Mommy, who are you talking to?” This was it: the moment when I explained to my child that I hear voices, not voices like Sybil Dorsett and all of her alters or The United States of Tara, voices like characters. Like, as perhaps more graspable for a four-year-old, imaginary friends. Many, many imaginary friends. “I’m talking to myself, baby,” I told him, and you know what he did? He leaned forward on his booster seat and said, “You don’t have to talk to yourself, Mommy. You can talk to me!” Imagine a huge tidal wave crashing over Lakeshore Drive and engulfing our car—that’s the pride I felt for this little boy. Pride and gratitude and awe. He is Just. So. Awesome.

—Anyhow. I’m stuck in traffic, thinking about stories. I’ll think of one or two or five connected to whatever theme I’ve been assigned, and then I’ll grab whichever one is most taking my attention, that big proverbial YOU ARE HERE sign, and on from there. But motherhood? Motherhood shook the living hell out of me, not because I couldn’t come up with anything; rather the opposite. I couldn’t stop. My usual one or two or five ideas was now twenty, twenty-five, forty, all those mom things I’ve written about in some way or another for the past four years suddenly clogging my brain: stories about Caleb’s infancy, turning one, turning two, the many times I’ve questioned myself, the many times I’ve felt literally breathless with joy. Which one to walk into the audition for Listen To Your Mother? What were the producers looking for? How on Earth was I supposed to choose?

In the end, I didn’t. Auditions were held in the back of Uncommon Ground on Clark, and I arrived with six stories in my bag. At the bar, I had a glass of wine and narrowed the six down to four. Then my name was called, and as I walked into the room, I cut it to three, then two as I introduced myself to the two lovely, hard-working, visionary women producing LTYM Chicago (Hi, Melisa! Hi, Tracey!). “What will you be reading for us today?” they asked, and I did that thing where you open your mouth without knowing what you’re going to say, just trusting that it will be the right thing, and what came out—very fast and nervous and slightly wine-induced—was this:

“Actually, I brought two stories. I’m not sure which one you’d rather hear? One of them is about this tumor I had but maybe you’ve already heard like two thousand tumor stories today in which case can I buy you a glass of wine? ‘cause that’s a lot of tumors and I don’t know about you, but I had a lot of wine with my tumor. P.S. I’m fine now! I also brought this other thing about trying to get pregnant, but I wrote it in the present tense so maybe it wouldn’t work ‘cause it’ll sound like I’m trying to get pregnant now which totally isn’t the case, thanks, I already have one kid I can barely keep up with plus our condo is the size of a closet so where would I even put another baby let alone like taking care of it? Hi. I’m Megan.”

These two lovely, hard-working, visionary women? They didn’t even flinch. It was eight p.m., they’d been there all day, had seen Lord knows how many mothers telling Lord knows how many thrilling/beautiful/awful/hopeful/hilarious stories about motherhood. They must have been exhausted. Their ears must’ve been exploding already. And you know what they said? They said, “Let’s grab some more wine and hear them both.”

I am grateful for their kindness. I’m grateful for the trust they’ve placed in me to be a part of this amazing performance, one of many Listen To Your Mother shows happening all around the country in honor of the many diverse yet utterly relatable mom things that we all experience. I’m grateful to stand on stage tonight at Victory Gardens [2] with our lovely, hard-working, visionary cast. Turns out, I didn’t need to worry about choosing a single story that would exemplify the many facets of motherhood.

All of us, together, make that happen.

I’m also grateful to have all these new mothers to talk with. About time I gave Jeff a break.

 

[1] I use the word mom because that’s what I am, but I think this can also apply to Dads and Grandparents and Foster Parents and any Significant Adult working with great love and commitment to raise healthy, happy, awesome children.

[2] The show tonight is sold out, but all the Listen To Your Mother performances both in Chicago and around the country will be filmed and up on youtube.

Best review ever

“I bought your book. The first sentence gave me a boner.” – Samantha Irby

I am in love with Samantha Irby. I wrote her a fan letter one time but I was too shy to send it. Sometimes, though, I hate her pretty, shiny guts ’cause she writes this stuff at her blog Bitches Gotta Eat that makes me pee. Like, in my pants. I’m saying that aloud on the internet. She makes me pee in my pants and then I spend the whole day with wet pants, cursing Samantha Irby and her hilarity and profundity and spot-on truth, seriously, this girl is so honest that the rest of us should immediately attend therapy and work out the things we’re not admitting, an unexamined life is not worth living, right? Right? Anyhow, I got to meet her last month at The Paper Machete and I was all, Samantha, I love you, and she was all, Talk louder, I can’t hear you over this bourbon I’m drinking, and I was like, Sometimes you make me pee, and she said, There are diapers for that, and I was like I am going to JCPenny to buy one of those heart necklaces that crack in half and you give half to your best friend and I’m going to give half to you, and she said, Or we could just make out? and I said, OMG yes.

It was awesome.

And then, then, then she wrote to tell me that my book gave her a boner, which is totally the best review I’ve ever got in my whole life except for the time I asked my friend Amanda from 2nd Story to blurb my book and she wrote, MEGAN STIELSTRA POOPS GLITTER.

That was really nice, too.

“I want to xerox this post and plaster the world with it”

Last week I did the media report for The Paper Machete, a live radio magazine podcasted for WBEZ. I talked about the recent launch of Rookie Magazine, which my thirty-six-year-old self is totally in love with in the same way my fifteen-year-old self was in love with its predecessor, Sassy. Also: kids are the shit and adults should spend more time listening to them.

This week marked the launch of a new online magazine called Rookie. Granted, online magazines are a dime a dozen, but Rookie’s turning out to be a pretty big damn deal, having been covered by countless power-punch publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The LA Times, Time, and on and on, all of them saying that what makes Rookie unqiue is that it’s aimed at an untouched demographic in the current market: the other high school girl. The girl who is not a cheerleader. Who doesn’t shop at Amerbcrombie and Fitch. Who wears excessive eyeliner and reads Sylvia Plath and very well may own a Bikini Kill album on vinyl even now, in 2011, when the typical high schooler looks at vinyl the same way a typical thirty-something looks at Beta Max.

It’s also important to note that nearly all of these articles about Rookie, including this one, are written by women in their mid-thirties. The other kind of women in their mid-thirties. The ones who are not soccer moms. Who don’t shop at Anne Taylor. Who wear excessive eyeliner and read Dorothy Allison and most assuredly still have their Bikini Kill album on vinyl even if they no longer own a record player because, really, you can get whatever you need from Pandora, am I right?—the kind of women who, in the early 90′s, were all reading a magazine called Sassy.

Sassy’s founding editor was then 24-year-old Jane Pratt, who had a staff of three that she referred to as Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. They were cool. You couldn’t decide if you wanted to hang out with them, or be them.  They wrote about things you weren’t supposed to talk about in high school, like pain, and punk rock, and masturbation. They included limited edition Sonic Youth records in the pages of the magazine.. They had an inhouse band called Chia Pet with lyrics that went like this: I was just walking down the street minding my own business/this construction worker said nice tits/cab driver asked me for a date/guy on the subway grabbed my ass/hey baby hey baby—compared to the Debbie Gibsons and Tiffanys of that time, this stuff was Beethoven.

Sassy was, according to an NPR profile, “less a teenage moment and more of a feminist movement. It was the antithesis of the homecoming queen, please-your-boyfriend culture. It published articles about suicide and STDs while Seventeen was still teaching girls how to get a boy to notice you.” It’s fair to say that thousands of the other high school girl found a voice in those pages, and when you’re fifteen, what are you looking for if not a voice? Take a sec here and think back to your own fifteen-year-old self. Who did you listen to? Watch? Read? Who spoke to the kid that you were? My dad would say Henry David Thoreau. My mom would say Simon and Garfunkel. For me—and 400,000 other other girls in the early 90’s—it was Sassy.

Sidebar: if there are any guys reading this thinking Blahblah girl’s magazines, know that Pratt also gave Sassy a brother publication called Dirt, edited by a very cool pre-Beastie Boys Spike Jonze, so rest assured, this is about you, too. This is about all of us—our crazy, lonely, longing fifteen-year-old selves.

Sadly for me and maybe for us all, Sassy went under/imploded/was destroyed by “The Man” in 1995, but its job had been done: those other types of girls grew up and started Bitch, Bust, Venus, and Jezebel—all publications that other types of women read today. But, for the past decade, the question has remained: What about the girls? The ones still in high school, with all the angst and bullying; fun and freedom; joy and crap that high school entails? Who is their voice?

Here, we jump back a few years to Oak Park Illinois, where a then eleven-year-old girl named Tavi Gevinson started a blog called thestylerookie. Jump forward to today: That blog is read by millions of people. Tavi has met Karl Lagerfield, interviewed John Galliano, and covered Fashion Week for Vogue. In V Magazine, Lady Gaga even gave her a shout-out: “If they’re not careful, the most astute and educated journalists can be reduced to gossipers, while a 14-year-old who doesn’t even have a high school locker yet can master social media engines and, incidentally, generate a specific, well-thought-out, debatable opinion about fashion and music that is then considered by 200 million people on Twitter. Take Tavi Gevinson. I adore her, and her blog is the future of journalism.”

Last year, Tavi gave a talk at Idea City called How We Can Apply What We Learned from the Teen Girls of the ’90s (More Specifically, Those Who Read/Interned at/Worked for Sassy Magazine) to Create a Good Magazine for Teen Girls Today, Also, This Is a Really Long Title.

(awesome).

She got a standing ovation. Then she got backing of, yes, Jane Pratt. And now, as of this week, fifteen-year-old Tavi Gevinson is the CEO of Rookie, where she both hired and presides over, according to the Telegraph: “A team of 37 writers and editors with backgrounds ranging from British Vogue and LA Times to Saturday Night Live and HBO” (including my friend and colleague, the very awesome Stephanie Kuehnert).

Like Jane before her, Tavi is cool. You don’t know if you want to hang out with her, or be her. The fonts on her magazine are copies of her own handwriting. At thirteen, she dyed her hair electric silver. She wears batman capes with couture free-bees. Also: she’s got some profound things to say to teenagers, and, in my opinion, human beings in general. In a recent piece on Rookie about girls hating other girls, she said, “I’m not saying we all have to be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows with each other… a good dose of angst is healthy. But hating people is stressful. Negativity is tiring. Causing drama is dumb. Some people are worth hating, but energy and time and brainpower are too valuable to waste on general shittiness.”

Based on other things happening in our country this week, there are some adults in Washington who could benefit from this advice.

In fact, there are adults everywhere who could benefit. When you read through the hundreds of comments posted to Rookie in the past week since they launched, it’s amazing to see how many adults are finding inspiration in Tavi’s words.

“Hate does not pass with age,” writes Eve. “I still see it at age 40. I want to xerox this post and plaster the world with it.”

And, from caringserene: “I just started law school at age 28 and it’s EXACTLY LIKE being a freshman in high school all over again.”

So take a second here and imagine yourself now; your grown-up, adult self. Who did you listen to? Watch? Read? Who speaks to the adult that you are? Henry David Thoreau? Simon and Garfunkel? Maybe old copies of Sassy or Dirt—they’re going for upwards of $100 these days on eBay—or maybe, just maybe, the greatest advice comes from the least likely place—a kid.

In all those articles in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The LA Times, and Time, they say Tavi is one-of-a-kind. A child prodigy, and while maybe that’s true—the girl is fucking awesome, in my opinion (TEAM TAVI!)—there’s also a profound sense of clarity and common sense in many kids today. What might happen if we took the time to better listen to their point of view?

As another child prodigy, thirteen-year-old Adora Svitak, said during her 2010 Ted Talk What Adults Can Learn From Kids: “When was the last time you were called childish? For kids, it’s a frequent occurrence. Every time we make irrational demands, exhibit irresponsible behavior, or display any other signs of being normal American citizens, we are called childish, which really bothers me. After all, take a look at these events: Imperialism and colonization, world wars, George W. Bush. Ask yourself: Who’s responsible? Adults.”