Mamaphonic

In May of 2007 my husband Cedar was hooded. He had finally completed his doctoral studies. His graduation day was a proud, emotional, and bittersweet one for us. That he was finished was an enormous relief and cause for celebration, but it also meant that life as we knew it would change. Cedar, our three children, and I would be leaving our beloved Charlottesville, Virginia, moving across the country so he could take a job at a small liberal arts college in Oakland, California. I would no longer be able to use the circumstances of his being a graduate student and our living in a small city with limited career opportunities as an excuse for not finding and doing my dream job, whatever that was. Now that he would be earning gobs more money as an assistant professor (she says with sarcasm) it was my turn to figure out what I wanted to do.

Seven years ago, a psychic told me that my firstborn would inspire me to write. She didn't actually specify writing, but speculated it was something creative to do with paper. I was too shy then to fill in the blanks, though thrilled inside that my writing was showing up in my aura or whatever. Back then, writing was my private craft that I held close to my heart, my artist-self too fragile to expose to the elements or the critics.

It was the first day of school in seventh grade -- French class. I am enjoying the simple pleasures of bare thighs on cool seats and the sight of my now-tan crush from the sixth grade. I consider whether to pronounce my "r's"correctly, when I see a finger launched in my direction. There is violent laughing, a spasmodic hyena attached to said finger. She is Danielle O'Connor, a girl who let her black bra strap show. Born a non-virgin, she was going no where in life, making her a menacing force in the seventh grade. "Look how HAIRY," she gasped as she let her head fall to her desk, laughing and shaking with enough condescension to make a super model self-conscious. Each student in my row, and the row next to me, and the row next to them, arched over the sides of their desks to point at the object of Kim's ridicule, the bulls' eye of adolescent recrimination -- my legs. After a long summer of swimming, hanging out at the beach, and clearly hair growth, Danielle was kind enough to point out that I had shown up without my pubescent homework -- cleanly shaven legs. I didn't know how to use a razor so my mother shaved my legs that night in the bathtub. I sat there naked as she mothered me, not out of the croup or chicken pox, but through a changed landscape of junior high femininity. I needed a new uniform: cleanly shaven legs -- and I was willing to go back to early childhood to get them. Now, as a mother myself, I realize how funny and sweet this must have been -- enough self-conscious anxiety met with motherly duty to slay whatever junior high demons may come.

I have the most beautiful writer’s loft. It has wide windows on two walls and cream carpet so thick that my toes sink into the pile as I walk. Because it’s so high in the house, the air is always warm with dusty shafts of golden light. Cardboard boxes line one side, contents marked by black Sharpie on the exposed ends. Galleys, manuscripts, rejections, acceptances. File cabinets on another, filled with collected bits and pieces waiting to turn into stories. On one wall stands a large desk, its surface littered with pens and papers and half-drunk cups of coffee. A battered laptop sits in the middle, hedged by a family photo and a wilted tropical plant.

For a moment there -- no more than a flash, really -- I resolved to be Ani DiFranco. My daughter was with me at the time; we were sharing a chair. It was late on a fall afternoon. Ani’s face loomed large in high definition; her sexy, block-toothed mouth sang "Hypnotized," softly, to my girl and me.

In the background, the bathroom sink kept gurgling like a fish was living in the pipes. It had been doing that for weeks. I almost didn’t notice it anymore. But right then, I resolved to finally do something about it -- even though I had no idea what. Ani would snake that drain, I thought, whatever that meant. Ani would command that plunger.