letter #53: How joy evolved for me as a new parent
Becoming a mother has simplified joy for me.
If you’re too tired to read, listen below.
I wrote this poem in my phone last week. I love to write poems in my notes, never finish them, write them as I pause on my evening bike ride and scribble a feeling into the blank, narrow white page. They are not good. They are not bad.
This poem is what I want to write about today: How Lila sees and shares the world differently; how that morphs into how I see the world. And, moreover, how that joy looks, smells, and feels. I want to spend some time with that joy; look at what life looked like before her, and what life looks like now.
Also, I don’t want this place on the internet to be about the confusing, all-consuming, guilt-ridden feelings of being a parent. I want it to capture the beautiful things, too.
I hope Lila reads this one day. In a hologram or on her liquid glass screen phone or maybe inside a book or a flat, sleek computer that’s the size of a half dollar. I hope she reads this and knows how much color she splashed on my life. And how that color started blooming as an uncovering. The joy has always been there. She, simply, reveals it to me.
Joy before having children
It’s hard to think about what joy felt like before Lila. Now, I feel so internally different. The only (cheesy) metaphorical thing I can think of is a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Before Lila, I felt warm and safe and a bit crawly and slow (a great feeling, honestly). Now, I feel like I’m always too high and subject to falling FAR from the sky, and migrating all the time.
In that case, joy felt very homey before having her. Joy was safe and comfortable, and often spent in selfish, beautiful ways. Joy was spending a long day at home after a busy afternoon day-drinking or wandering aimlessly through thrift stores. Joy was broadly external: a good book, a song I loved that I heard for the second time, a beer after a bike ride, seeing the ocean. Joy was (to put it un-poetically) joy. In its most simple form, joy was a quote on a TJ MAXX slate board. Joy was everything I ever expected it to be. Joy was a over-executed beacon of hope (see below photo). It was as common and as expected as the sun coming up every morning.
Joy wasn’t excruciatingly planned or nuanced. Joy didn’t show up in the little things for me. Joy was in grand gestures: Big trips, promotions, elaborate dinners, milestone birthdays. Before children, I didn’t find really simple things joyful. Binge-watching a show or sitting down to eat breakfast was normal stuff. But now, those things are new … as grandiose as a road trip. Joy seems to have morphed itself. And newness is fresh, uncharted, wide open. Joy is a green pony now.
Which, brings me to my next point: Joy before Lila was harder to find. And I don’t mean that in a rude way to non-parents. It’s simple. Doing the mundane things I used to do when I had the time are so joyous and explosive now. It’s like being a parent made me a gratitude buff, a happiness junkie. I’m like, I get to go out to dinner and EAT SLOWLY?!! Without panicking about a BUSY TODDLER?! The magic!!! I’m tickled!!
Joy seems to have multiplied in size, while also slowing down enough to catch it. The net just got a little bigger and I‘m catching more fish.
Joy after having children
What is joy with her?
What isn’t joy with her?
Joy is tucked in the folds, a little sprout in a crack of cement. Once minute, I’m having the biggest existential crisis of my life and the next, I feel a love so overflowing, I want to consume it like cheesecake.
When she looks me right in the face, I feel such a flood of pinks and yellows and glory, that I want to cover myself with it. The other day, I walked into her bedroom and she said, in a clear, encouraged voice, “Mama, my binky is on the ground, under the bed,” like she had been talking for ages. She’d never told me explicitly anything — especially while using a prepositional phrase — and I ran to my husband to share the news. The little girl merrily talked, and suddenly I wanted serve her praise on my rambler rooftop.
That’s what joy has become now: a landslide of discovery and surprising jubilation. Sometimes I am physically startled by the elation I feel in very simple moments. This fervor lasts for mere seconds, sometimes, but I feel it. Tiny moments uncover themselves and move me deeply.
I also see things I didn’t before: My own hands; how aged they look, the incline of a hill, the busyness of a street, how many words we can use for one thing, things she loves (buses, trees, wee-ooo-wee-ooes i.e, ambulance, fire trucks, the moon, planes).
Having her makes me more appreciative, cognizant of time, how close we are to dying, how immortal I am not. In a way, having her makes me more fearful, so perhaps I appreciate things I merrily couldn’t before. I recently took a trip to Big Sur (an annual trip my mom, sister and I take every year). I’ve never been afraid of the height and the mysticalness of the sharp coast and water. This year, however, my first year visiting Big Sur as a mother, made me anxious. Not that I wasn’t slightly afraid before, but there was so much more at stake in my life. I was someone’s safe haven. Life felt a bit more fragile. And the water down below sent a gust through my chest I’d never felt before. And the joy I felt surviving that drive, felt nearly unearthly.
I love this quote (about motherly fear and joy) from Leila Mottley’s novel, “The Girls Who Grew Big.”
“Loving them kids was like holding my breath. At first it almost hurt but now it was simply how air moved through me, held me in place while they was sleepin’ or screamin’ or slippin’ in the bath bucket.
And then there was times when they knocked the wind outta me, when a sizzling laugh or a sticky kiss or a lopsided jump could plow right through me and unleash breath, and that release was enough to sustain through the continuous tight clench. They changed the very way I sustained life, right down to the brilliant gnaw of breath.”
I also notice things I never noticed before: how the moon follows our car when we drive, giant ants, bumble bees carrying their heavy butts all over pollenated flowers, what it feels like to run everywhere, the density of clouds, the absence of buses during the summer months, how poetic a park on a Saturday can be … the list goes on.
The way she’s starting to process things gives me joy, too. When we’re at the park and she tries to climb something, or makes it to the top of the stairs, I always tell her, “You’re such a big, strong girl now!” And the other day, when I climbed a small flight of stairs at the park, she exclaimed, “Mama, you are BIG!” Coming out of her mouth, it sounded like a bit of an insult, which made Jake and I laugh. But, I knew what she meant. For her, “big” meant “encouraging, good.” That simple thing, how she sees the world with her miniature lens, was joy to me.
Joy comes in many forms, I suppose. As a parent, joy is flickering in the underbelly of fear, silver leaves, the sky. Joy is all over the place, and your eyes are open for it. And with Lila, she opens a new window for me to look through. She changes my breath. A window I avoided before, didn’t pause to consider, or was too routine to notice the glory of a simple thing (like a peaceful bath or eating a meal without standing up).
The little things that bring me happiness are so easy to uncover now, simply because they are right there in front of me. And Lila paints the prettiest picture.
This gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous article in Byline about how running for figurative finish lines is no longer relevant. Specifically, the direct lesson that stillness and slowness are the most important things. This quote: "Stillness meant accepting the quiet solitude that settles in when any race is over and falling into the subsequent spiral of thoughts around what I’m lacking. It meant withstanding a barrage of beliefs around not being enough.” And the quote below.
I just recently discovered Spread the Jelly via
and WOW is it perfect. In short, it’s a motherhood platform. But, it shares conversations with women about pregnancy etc., while also opening up space for mothers to talk about more than just …. being moms. This interview with Ty Haney is a delightful read to get started. The quote below **chefs kiss**“I think the coolest thing to do is to be able to start from zero again. It's sort of like having a kid. First, you give birth to the kid, and I’ve found that most women have some sort of traumatic situation. It's wild and dramatic. Shit goes wrong and yet, you have a kid, and somehow your body chemically blocks out the trauma of that so that you consider having another one. It’s totally insane.”
I just read “Heartwood” by Amity Gaige and it was such a relentless, gorgeous novel. It describes motherhood with impeccable prose, like this line from the main character to her mother: “Your love dug me a kind of trench, a groove in the universe where I still go to mourn.” Will also leave you with one of my favorite underlines from the book.
Did you know? The Beverly Hills hotel sells a $48 peanut butter sandwich? I think there’s comedic relief in this, I’m just not sure where yet.
I just ordered Molly Young’s 80-page zine about pregnancy (something I want to create someday).
Love this take on how Gen Z are using Instagram now; how that group is not using the algorithm to post aesthetic photos at all (what the platform was originally created for). This quote from Simon Meyers (26) is so intriguing to me: “There’s a fear that if you show too much of your own life, you’re just opening up yourself up to being taken advantage of,” he said. Another snippet is below. (New York Times)
A gorgeous mood board for the Hudson Valley hotel, The Six Bells.
These really cute (and cool-mom-chic) sticker activity books for kids.
Things I’ve loved on TV lately: Sirens (Netflix), *Love Island, Season 71 (Peacock), Tires (Netflix). Quick note on Sirens: I’ve gotten a million messages that I am Milly Alcock’s doppleganger and honestly, it FREAKS me out. We look identical. The show is also absolutely and metaphorically perfect. There is nothing wrong with it. There’s color, greek goddess metaphors, female power … go watch it. El fin.
Something I want to listen to: How the Attention Economy Is Devouring Gen Z — and the Rest of Us, with Ezra Klein.
I loved this interview with the duo behind the newest mommy blog Spread the Jelly — Lauren Levinger, 40, a creative director in Los Angeles and mother of a 3-year-old son, and Amrit Tietz, 37, a New York DJ and mother of a 2-year-old daughter. (The Cut)
Ordered this purse from BAGGU and I’m in love. They have a horse-girly line (western Appliqué meets kitschy cowgirl) of purses and makeup bags. It’s PERFECT.
I’m a bit tickled with scrolling through pictures from Huma Abedin and Alex Soros’ wedding. Thier home in Water Mill is giving “Sirens.” (Vogue)
Love Island is a masterpiece. A bunch of HOT people feening for attention and influencer fame. It’s a colorful mess of tears, ridiculous behavior, and honestly (perhaps) what happens when a dozen people experience Stockholm syndrome in a perfect mansion? I don’t know.