I'm experimenting with the format of this newsletter, inspired by Maggie Frank-Hsu's delightfully honest newsletter, Momsplaining. I don't really have a plan for this, so here's the concept of an essay.

I’ve been wondering since we moved here if it matters, the 25ish minutes a day I spend walking to and from the bus stop waiting to send off and receive my child for the day. Does it matter when I wave to the bus with an army of other parents? Does it matter that I am there after school to walk him home, fix him a snack plate, and hear about his day

When I was a kid, I got myself on and off the bus from day one, and I may well have been left home alone by the time I was in third grade. My offspring has successfully made the trip on his own, and even when I accompany him, he often leaves our building without waiting for me, secure in the knowledge that I’ll catch up.

When I think back on last school year, when I chose to stay where my child was even though that meant extending the time and cost of my education, sometimes I wonder if it mattered. Did my commitment to farewelling and greeting him matter, when he got off the bus to his dad’s house alone? Did my proximity matter when he wasn’t with me half of the time?

It would be easier for me, perhaps, if my presence didn’t matter.

I could use those 25 minutes every day to study, or turn over the perpetually overflowing dishwasher-sink ecosystem, or even just enjoy a mug of tea by myself before hurtling off to my day. I could even argue that doing those things might make me less snappish later in the day. But what if I am fostering too much dependence on me? Also but what if he will be less secure if he, like I was, has to be too independent before he’s ready? Too many buts. (Also, too many butts when raising children.)

The energetic calculus of my motherhood–where I do the work of two parents five days a week–never ends.

Do I be the cool mom and take the flips and acrobatics class while he does parkour, at the risk of being too damn tired to function at bedtime? (And also the risk of breaking a limb/my neck lol)

Do I spend an hour playing Stardew Valley and tending our silly little digital farm instead of gathering up the very real books and papers strewn all over the 1,000-square foot apartment we share?

Do I invest in more occupational therapy to help him (and me) enjoy meals together more at some unknown point in the future or do I take the path of less resistance now and heat up a frozen pizza for him and eat whatever I want?

Do I give him time with his loving grandparents, of which I got so very little, and spend all of my energy managing the equivalent of 3 children, or do I go it alone and have just one child? (I made a similar calculation choosing whether to stay married and essentially care for 2 children, and y’all know how that worked out lol)

For now, I choose the bus stop. This is the first time in our dyadic existence that we have been more than 5 minutes apart on a daily basis, and now he spends weekends a good 130 miles away. So I can give 25 minutes a day, even if I’m mostly giving it to myself.

Does my presence matter? All I know is that he woke up in my bed every morning the first 30 days we were here, before wordlessly staying in his own bed when he was ready. I trust he’ll tell me when he doesn’t need me at the bus stop anymore.

What I'm Reading

​Let's be friends on Storygraph, the non-Amazon version of Goodreads that comes WITH CHARTS ABOUT BOOKS!

Since my last email, I've finished:

• A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata. It's about Japanese courtesans in the post-Meiji restoration era and was inspired by a real-life courtesan strike. Tonally, it's not dissimilar to Memoirs of a Geisha and doesn't have the, ah, authorship and Orientalist issues that Mr. Golden's book does. Most of what I know about Japanese storytelling comes from Miyazaki films, but I do think this book is an example of that tradition's emphasis on atmosphere over Western plot progression. I liked it! If you're looking for a Book Where Lots of Things Happen, you may not!
• Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. To be honest, I struggled to understand the narrative structure of this book, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the characters and themes. I think the screenplay structure works well for depicting how Asian Americans must play their roles every day. I was just confused as to "what's actually happening," but perhaps that too is an appropriate departure from Eurocentric story conventions.

I'm now revenge bedtime procrastinating with A Thousand Steps Into Night by Traci Chee, who as always delivers fun, fast-paced YA fantasy.

Acknowledgements

I'm drafting the acknowledgements section of my book little by little every week.

Thank you to Maggie Frank-Hsu for inspiring me to write and for 5+ years of virtual mutual adoration.