Those of you who have followed my journey here this year will know the name Ayelet Waldman. You'll know how I wrote about her controversial essay in the New York Times that landed her on Oprah. You'll know how we corresponded and that she was generous enough to send me an advance copy of her new book, Bad Mother. You may even have seen me read from it in my film, The Lark.
Well Bad Mother is back on my radar. It hits shelves and virtual shopping carts May 5th, and I can't wait to start talking about it with all of you.
I pulled it off my own shelf and started reading it again. It's A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. It's about how we talk about moms, with names like good mother and bad mother. It's about how when we describe a good father, the discourse is sparse. The archetypes few. But when we talk about good mothers, omigod do we have thoughts, and more importantly, names for what she should be.
It's about why that may be the case, and becomes increasingly more the case every day. It's about lots of interesting things like how we use spectacle and "bad moms" like Britney Spears and Andrea Yates to soothe our private fears of bad mothering.
It's about, mom-on-mom crime and how grown women are also guilty of playground bullying. It's about how flipping the paradigm and becoming an openly bad mom, a confessaholic one might say, isn't quite the answer, either. Though it's fun, and you've all seen me do it here and on Twitter often, and you KNOW how I love me some Bombeck, as Waldman says "there is no inherent nutritional value in the antidote to poison." God, I love this woman. One smart cookie.
Most importantly, it's about understanding that in the daily question of Am I a bad or a good mother? Is she a bad or a good mother?, we are wasting precious time looking inward, that could be spent watching our children, and just being curious about them.
This book will make you think about the way you think. And then guess what happens to all the names you've given yourself and all the selves you've become to different people at different times, and to all the names they've given you?
They . . . fall . . . away.
And you can just stand there, and say what you think. Ophelia wades out of the water. The fractured girl collects her parts—the daughter, the sister, the mother, the wife, the reader, the writer, the good mommy on the playground, the bad or sad mommy alone in her home. She gathers them all together, finds where they overlap, and says, "Yes, I like HER. Whatever her name is." And furthermore, I want my children to meet HER.
And I want to talk about that with all of you. So please, say something. Ayelet Waldman is saying something. ModernSingleMomma is saying something. Ria Sharon is saying something. Suzanne Tucker, ZenMommy, is saying something. Leigh Caraccioli, Fleurdeleigh, is saying something. Many of you are saying something on Twitter, by adding #badmother to your thoughts. You can join any of us on Twitter, by finding our Twitter links on our sites. Please keep talking.
I want to hear you say something here, too. But no name calling. Okay?
And if you want to hear us say something live, with Ayelet Waldman on Monday, May 11th, Noon EST, pop in here and watch.
Sign up below and we'll remind you that day, and send you the first chapter of Bad Mother immediately, so you can join the conversation. I can't wait to hear.
