My younger sister is about to have her birthday, so lately I’ve been thinking about all the things I love about her. I know not everyone has a good relationship with their sisters, but I consider my sister a best friend. She knows everything about me. She can tell what I’m thinking before I say a word. The day she left me alone with my firstborn son, she knew how terrified I was just by looking into my thought-I-was-hiding-it-well face, and I’ll never forget her hug and that gentle, “You’re gonna be alright” for all the days of my life, because in one moment, she gave me the courage to be a mom.
My sister is kind and loving and faithful and never forgets to call on one of my kids’ birthdays even though I forget to call on hers. She loves her family, loves her nephews, understands that we are never going to be perfect at this family thing or this parenting thing or this growing up thing. She gets me. And I’m pretty sure she appreciates me almost as much as I appreciate her.
Now. That’s all well and good. I get along with my own blood-related sister.
The question is, how well do I get along with all my not-blood-related sisters?
I get so tired of the fights, honestly. It’s wearying like nothing else. I don’t feel half as tired from wrestling my six boys through a day as I do from all the parenting wars that pit sister against sister and hand out wounded hearts like they make not a difference in the world.
They do make a difference.
We are all sisters, from the very beginning. And then we have children, and our sisterhood becomes something greater (or it should). Sure, we do our parenting in different ways. My sister breastfeeds. I don’t, because I never could get enough milk out to keep my babies out of the emergency room. She’s never used cloth diapers. I used them for half my children before twins burned us out.
Some of us let our kids sleep with us. Some of us never let our babies sleep with us, unless they wake at 4 in the morning and we need another hour of sleep. Some of us hover on playgrounds, and some of us keep to the peripheries, with eyes on our children but hands off. Some of us have perfectly compliant children, and some of us have fighters who will fight about every little thing, at least until they learn that it’s possible—and more effective—to choose their battles.
Some of us have one kid, some of us have six, some of us believe that spanking is the best way, some of us don’t, some of us let our kids help make decisions, some of us would never let a kid make a decision, some of us make our kids do chores, some of us don’t, some of us let our kids watch television and play on screens, some of us don’t.
Some of us have three kids smashed into one room, some of us believe every kid needs his own room, some of us are saving for college, some of us haven’t even thought about it, some of us let our kids cuss, some of us wouldn’t think of allowing it, some of us take our kids to counseling, some of us want to make sure we can handle this on our own, some of us send our kids to daycare, some of us stay home, some of us enroll our kids in public school, some of us run the homeschool operation, some of us pick our kids up every time they cry, some of us let them cry it out sometimes, some of us would give anything in the world to be home with our kids, some of us find great fulfillment in our work (and mother hood didn’t change that).
The list goes on and on and on. The point is, we’re all different. That doesn’t mean we’re wrong.
See, here’s the mysterious thing about a sisterhood: We are as different as our faces and our bodies and the shape that our lives have taken around children. We’ll never be the same. And yet we are the same.
It sounds like a paradox, but it’s not really. We all come in different shapes and sizes and colors, and we all come from different backgrounds and beliefs and socioeconomic situations, which means that our philosophies and our choices and the lenses we use to look at life will never be the same. But our underneaths are the same. We’re all mothers trying to do the best we can for these little irrational human beings who know how to push our buttons, who cling to us some days like our childhood nickname and other days can’t stand the sight of us, who wake up different people every day so we have to constantly be on our toes.
We’re all just doing the best we can.
But what I’m not saying by doing something differently than you are is that you’re wrong. That’s because I understand that your kid is not my kid and my kid is not your kid, and people who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that when you have two 3-year-old twins who like to roam at night while everyone else is sleeping so they can ingest a whole tube of toothpaste or a whole bottle of vitamins they somehow pried open, even though I break a nail every time I try, you have to turn a doorknob around so it locks from the outside, or else you might wake up to the whole house burning down around you. People who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that working through a tantrum with the boy prone to anxiety and depression is, in the long run, way better than punishing him for something he’s done. People who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that technology turns the 5-year-old into the Whine Monster, so it’s banished from our house, for now.
You don’t know my kid. I don’t know yours. I can’t parent yours. You can’t parent mine.
So maybe we should stop trying.
Our differences are what make us beautiful. And what makes us a sisterhood is accepting each other, as is, and putting aside all the differences to acknowledge that this raising a kid thing? It’s not easy. We need each other to do it.
We’re all just doing the best we can. And that is always, always enough.
So you didn’t have a father. You didn’t have a shining example of what it means to be a man, and by the time the other one came to show you how to do this growing-up thing, you’d already lived too many years, and it was too late. You were too closed up. And sometimes you regret this. Sometimes you think that if you had just opened a little, pried those hands loose, you might have learned a little something. You might have been a little different. You might have understood more.
But, brother, I want to tell you what I see today. I want to show you how much you are loved.
We grew up together, like two twins born ten months apart. My earliest memories are of you, coming home from kindergarten, the way I felt when I saw you coming up the walk. I’d missed you while you were gone, but you couldn’t wait to teach me all you’d learned. You would read those early readers out loud and open up whole worlds to me, and you would try to help me see the letters and sound out words, a teacher even then. I remember writing a story in first grade about how if I had a million dollars, I would buy a car, but I wouldn’t share it with you because you were mean (but only sometimes). I remember how scared I was the first time you drove down that gravel road for kicks, going way too fast, and fishtailed your way into an accident.
I remember tearing across a pasture to get to our secret club house where we hung the cow skull because we were cool kids with big imaginations. I remember weeding the garden with you and running to find Mom because there was a snake on our front porch. I remember spending the night in a box in our living room because there was a thunderstorm and Mom knew we wouldn’t be able to sleep in our own rooms. I remember wanting you to like my boyfriends, even though you always thought they were punks, and I remember trying to beat you at the ACT, and of course you were more brilliant than I was (even though I beat you at the SAT—my only win in all those years). I remember listening to you play the trumpet and thinking there was nothing more beautiful in the world than that melody and no one better to play it than you.
My life is full of our memories, but mostly what I remember is loving you.
We’re adults now, with lives of our own. You’ve gone your way, I’ve gone mine, and I’ve watched, in anger, what life has flung your way.
There are tragedies in all our lives, sure, but you’ve had more than your fair share of them. So many of your children have been lost. What does a guy do with tragedy? How does he wade through it? How does he overcome?
What I want you most to know is it was not your fault. It is not because of who you are or who you aren’t, and it’s not about whether or not you were worthy, whether or not you were favored, whether or not you were good enough. It’s about our own separate journeys. And I know how unfair that sounds, but we are all made and shaped by the road our lives take, and whether we pull through or stay knocked down is entirely up to us.
I know what it’s like to wonder what might have come your way if maybe you’d done something differently, or been someone different or believed something else. Would things have turned out better? Would your life have lightened a little of its load? Would you be a business owner or a wealthy man or a loving father or a sought-out friend or a patient husband or a lifeline to someone else?
The truth is that these things come and they go and they roll over us and they bowl us over and they scrape our faces and they bruise our arms, and sometimes we can’t even find our breath after they’ve stolen that, too. That’s what pain and heartache and sorrow can do to us. It can strip us and tear us and burn us and stab us and shatter us. Sometimes it feel like we’ll surely die.
And when we’re in that place, the one that is dark and closed-off and frozen, it feels, too, like we are alone in the suffering and the wondering and the dying. But we’re not.
What I see in you is a man who desires nothing more than to be known, but he is afraid to be known because he is afraid that all those people he wants to show himself to will not love him after he bares his broken heart.
Dear, brother, you are loved. You are loved just for being you. You are loved for being wild and fierce and intelligent and conspiring and self-conscious and skeptical and sometimes weird and irreverent and all the time wonderful and loving and worthy. Yes, most of all worthy.
It’s not easy to believe it in a world like this one, because it’s hard and it’s unfair and it’s demanding with its rules and expectations and impossible measuring bars, but you are loved simply for being you.
When there are so many walls around you, raised between all the other people, it can feel like you’re a million miles away, but I’m telling you today, you’re not. It doesn’t matter how many walls you build around yourself, we can still see you. We can still see who you are and what you desire and what you dream of and where you’d like to be and how you’d like the world to change. We can still see your greatness and your spirit and your shining example of what it means to be a man—because in all your years of searching for that “definition of a man,” you have become one.
Be careful what you say, dear brother. Your daughter watches and listens and waits to be told who she is by a man like you. I know, because I was once a daughter, and the words I heard were not words that built me up but words that tore me down, and it took me years to find freedom from that. Be careful what you think, dear brother, because the minds that we have, the minds we use to go about our days, the minds we use to imagine and dream and believe are minds that can be easily swayed into cynicism if we’re not careful, and there is always, always, always room for hope, no matter how far down we find ourselves.
Be careful what you do, dear brother, because there are things that can hurt us that we didn’t even see coming, and we’ll regret them the rest of our lives. No one wants to live a life of regret.
You are a magnificent human being. The day you were born, the world gained a true man in every sense of the word. I know that sometimes you feel like you’re forging your own way, that you’re walking down uncharted territory, because there was never a person to truly show you how to do all of this, and I know that sometimes you think you’ve got it all wrong, but let me tell you something, brother: who you are today is a man, and who you are today is exceptional, and who you are today is wildly wonderful.
Sometimes we don’t need another to show us who we are or who we could be so much as we need another to believe in us, and I believe in you. Do you hear me? I believe in you. I believe in your brilliance, and I believe in your mind, and I believe in your love, and I believe in your decisions, and I believe in who you are.
You might not know it, but this is what we all see when we look at you—a worthy, significant, brilliant man. And so on the days you can’t see it for yourself, on the days you don’t believe in your own greatness, I hope you’ll let us remind you. We are your song when you have forgotten how to sing. And our song sounds a little something like this:
Who you were yesterday, who you are today, who you will be tomorrow, is remarkable. Who you were yesterday, who you are today, who you will be tomorrow is loved. Who you were yesterday, who you are today, who you will be tomorrow is worthy. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter what you think. No matter what. You are loved.
Happy birthday, dear brother. May it be the best year yet.
5-year-old: Daddy, I want a hug and a kiss!
Husband: Come to our room, then.
5-year-old: No. I stepped on a Lego in there.
9-year-old: I’m getting fat
Me: I don’t think you’ll ever get fat.
6-year-old: Yeah, like daddy.
Husband: What, you mean like daddy doesn’t get fat?
9-year-old: No, like I’ll never be fat like you.
Husband: I can’t believe you’re not full.
Me: I know. I’ve had one bowl and a little chicken and I’m full.
5-year-old: I’ve had four bowls!
Target Guy: In the future, you can go ahead and order in advance, and we’ll have it waiting for you when you get here.
6-year-old:
Husband: Okay.
6-year-old [tugging on Husband’s sleeve, eyes wide, mouth slack]: Daddy, are we living in the future?
J: we went to the counselor today a policeman came to talk. I told him I could fight he said I couldn’t fight a big guy like him. I told him I was overeating to gain weight he said that was good.
We have such a vault of stories as parents. Every day we are interacting with our kids, and we are listening in on conversations, and we are growing more and more as storytellers, because we get to be immersed in stories all the time.
I only have to take a look around at my kids to know that we are immersed in stories at every hour of every day. Not only are they constantly talking, but they are constantly telling me stories about their lives, if I am brave enough (and patient enough) to listen.
One of my novels came out of a conversation with my 9-year-old about these Power Buddies he had created. They have elemental powers, and he would play with kids on the playground, pretending to be Power Buddies, and he had all their backstories figured out, how they became Power Buddies, and then we decided to brainstorm nine of them, and write a trilogy about how they saved the world. My 9-year-old is one of the most creative people I’ve ever brainstormed with, because he had absolutely no inhibition at all. He didn’t know rules, so he would just toss out random plot twists, and I took notes on them all. It was amazing the way I could connect them after I had sat with them for a time.
Would that have happened if this amazing 9-year-old was not in my life? Would there be such thing as a Power Buddies series (still in the rough draft stages)? I don’t know.
We have all sorts of stories living inside us, begging to get out. We have stories about childbirth or child disappointment or child victory or child rearing or child struggling. We have stories about the way a boy feels about homework and the way a house smells when it’s filled with sweaty boys and the way we feel when we look at them.
[Tweet “So much of life could live in our writing if we looked at the world through a child’s eyes.”]
So much of my life ends up in my stories, partly because I write mostly kid-lit, but also because the most interesting parts of my life are the relationships my boys have with each other and the way they sometimes love a brother and sometimes don’t and the things they say to each other and the dreams they have and the imaginations they carry.
Sometimes, when I’m eavesdropping, my kids will say something that makes me want to write an essay. Sometimes they are the inspiration behind an entire book (last year’s NaNoWriMo came out of a conversation with my first-grader about a kid in his class who drools and doesn’t say much.). Sometimes they give me little snippets of real life that I’ll insert into a story to make it funny or authentic or interesting.
As parents, we are surrounded by stories, and sometimes that can get really hard to see, because of all the logistics—all the baths and all the dinners and all the caring for these children. The logistics can pulls us into that place where it feels like we’re doing nothing else but taking care of them; how could we possibly write with all these responsibilities?
But would our writing be better without our children?
I don’t think mine would.
I tried to write novels before I had my children, and, yeah, I was younger and less experienced, but children opened in me a depth of understanding and joy that I’ve never known. I learned how to really get into the shoes of another person, where before I just entertained the idea. I learned how to see the beauty of the world, where before it was clouded behind familiarity. I learned how to see from the heart and eyes of a child, and this has made my writing richer.
My children have made me brave. They have made me more compassionate. They have changed me in ways that are hard to explain. And the stories and writing I did before I had children are nothing compared to the kind I do now.
So don’t ever believe the lie that you could do more if you’d had more time to write yesterday instead of going to your son’s school play. Because the time we get to spend with our children is time that will translate into richer words and better stories and deeper understanding.
[Tweet “Our art is made richer by our children and our engagement with children.”]
We have an endless well of stories as parents, and no one else is going to tell it exactly like we would. The world needs our stories as much as it needs anyone’s.
So let’s tell them.
How to pull the stories from your life
1. Glean from journals.
I journal every day. Whether it’s a memory that has flared up, or whether it’s just a mundane writing about what we did today, I record it all. Journaling is so great for stories, because it’s authentic. We don’t even have to tell the stories as if they’re true; we can use our experience for our fiction stories, too. Just craft a story around an event, something that made an impact on you emotionally. Tell the truth and watch the world be changed by the way you tell it.
2. Sit down with children and have a storytelling war.
Kids are the greatest when it comes to telling stories. Our family has these storytelling cubes called Story Cubes that we often break out after dinner’s over and we sit around the table telling stories. Sometimes I jot down premises that I think would make great stories, and they aren’t always just from me. Sometimes they’re from my children. Sometimes I help them write their own stories.
Storytelling is a great practice for family life. Not only does it strengthen the bonds between parents and their children, but it challenges everyone to use their creativity and tell the most gripping tale, together.
3. Next time you have a late night or someone can’t sleep or a baby is demanding a lot of attention, write a story about it.
We can help heal ourselves and all our feelings—of frustration or fear or disappointment—by writing. We can share those writings we craft in the heat of an emotion, or we can keep them private and safe. It doesn’t matter. The very act of writing is a healing act.
4. Write a scene from a real-life parenting scene.
Mine would be a comedy. What would yours be?
Use your scene in a book. Some of the best characters we can craft are ones who have stories like ours, and we can use our experiences in these books to make them more realistic. When I think of Judy Blume’s Fudge books, the character Fudge was one of the most believable characters, because I had seen him in my kids a thousand times. Mischievous and lovable. Playful and matter-of-fact. Blume was clearly soaking up the children in her life (he was based on her son, Lawrence).
This week’s prompt:
Write an essay about the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word snake.
It’s time for another Dear Concerned Reader—because you know what happens when one of my articles gets popular on another platform besides my own: all the comedians start coming out. This time it was my “A Dad is Not a Helper or a Babysitter. He’s a Parent.”
So. Enjoy.
“In the grand scheme of parenting this is pettiness. Why would you worry that someone wants to praise your husband for being a good dad and doing what he is supposed to do? So he gets more credit than you…It’s not that big of a deal, lighten up. I think it’d be nice if dad’s that do parent didn’t have to feel shamed into silence about their role for fear of seeming to be too expectant of praise.” I’m Better Than You
Dear I’m Better Than You: I would like to whine and complain about how I don’t ever get any recognition for all the things I do for my kids, because, after all, I’m inherently selfish and can’t do a single thing—not even lift a finger, if you want the God-honest truth—unless someone notices my efforts. That’s why I wash forty thousand cups every day in the dishwasher, only to have kids complain that they weren’t the RIGHT forty-thousand cups. That’s why I put their school folders where they belong so that the next day they can bemoan the fact that they can’t find them, because they were on the floor last time they checked. That’s why I change diapers and wipe bottoms and clean out noses and cook dinner and wash clothes and read stories, because I want the credit. All I’m really looking for is a little affirmation, a few simple accolades, because I don’t do what I do just because I love. Who does?
Now. Is that really too much to ask?
“As a responsible caring adult of two kids (and very little to no support from my ex) that having kids and doing what you naturally feel is one of the biggest thankless jobs in the world…so just deal with it…you are not getting a pat on the back for it.” Pessimism Has Always Worked
Dear Pessimism Has Always Worked: I live for pats on the back, so I guess I’ll just…well. Keep living my senseless, purposeless life. No one’s going to pat me on the back. Poor, forgotten me. It’s not fair. Husband goes out places with the kids and doesn’t even have to try for that pat on the back. You know who deserves it more? Me, that’s who.
“So back to the author…do you want some cheese with that whine.” I’m a Clever Devil
Dear I’m a Clever Devil: Yes, please. I love cheese. Please make it sharp white cheddar. Also, you misspelled the last word. Just thought you should know. I believe the correct term is “cheese and wine.”
Wait. Were you saying something passive aggressive? Did I miss that?
“She sounds very angry to me and I personally find it insulting that she seems to group all dads together as lazy or unhelpful. I work full time and my wife is an at home mom but I take every minute I can get with my little lady so I suggest you keep your essay to yourself because there are a ton of us FATHERS who are exceptional parents.” Bone to Pick
Dear Bone to Pick: Believe it or not, there is such thing as Reading an Article, which you clearly did not do. So settle down, start at the top and read it all the way through.
“If the writer is this stressed out over child-rearing, she should see if her husband can babysit so she can have a night out.” Ha Ha I’m So Funny
Dear Ha Ha I’m So Funny: No, you’re not.
“Typical fem-nazi bs, if men were to raise children like women then we would have vaginas, want equal pay, get away from answering phones and build a skyscraper or a bridge, are there some women worthy of equal pay yes there are, but 90 percent want equal pay for doing nothing which is why we laugh at you and yes when your husband is working all day while your sitting on fb or the phone, your job is to watch the kids cook and keep the house clean, his job is to climb said building everyday for your ungrateful asses, and you wonder why your kids dads are not around. But of course you will have men who stick up for this sort of behavior they are called ‘Pussies’.” (stet, to all of it) Anti-Feminist
Dear Anti-Feminist: Wow. Rage much? Yeah, so I guess you could call me a feminist, because feminism isn’t what all you anti-feminists make it out to be (not even close to evil—it’s just about equal rights). Some men understand that. Some men, present company included, clearly don’t. I feel sorry for you.
That said, there is this neat little mind-blowing concept called Working Outside the Home. Most of the women I know choose to do it, which means they are not, in fact, sitting at home on Facebook or on the phone or not working their tails off around the house. But thank you for confirming that I sure am glad my husband is the father of my six boys and not someone like you. God help the world.
“Probably written by a woman sitting at home typing on her computer in her robe already worrying about making sure her husband can’t sit down when he gets home until 10PM because she’s had such a hard day socializing and taking care of those children for the 2 hours between school getting out and dad getting home. ‘Oh sorry honey I couldn’t do dishes or laundry in the 6 hours the kids were at school so you watch them while I sit here and pretend to fold laundry while playing on social media.'” I Make Great Assumptions
Dear I Make Great Assumptions. You sure do. You totally nailed it, because here I am, sitting in my robe, playing on my computer (mostly Facebook), scribbling down the honey-do list for Husband when he gets home (oh, wait. He works from home. So…I guess when he’s done with his workday?) so he can’t sit down for a single minute (he’ll thank me later) and I can go out with the ladies. You know, adult interaction. I’ve been sitting alone in the house all day (SO BORING!). A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? Here, honey. You take the kids. Thanks! Don’t wait up.
You missed one thing, though. Before I leave to go out with the girls, I usually sit in the car and pretend to be doing something really important on my phone when I’m really typing out a nasty comment to an essay I didn’t even read. So maybe you’re not as great at assumptions as you might think.
“There are plenty of men out there that do everything for their kids. You picked him now stop bitching and take a little responsibility for your own actions.” I Don’t Know How to Read
Dear I Don’t Know How to Read: I’m sorry you don’t know how to read. I have some great resources for mastering this important skill, if you’re interested. The first is a pamphlet called “How to Read the Entire Thing.” I think you’d like it.
“Wasn’t aware men were put on pedestals, but it is a fine idea. I’ll want a pedestal to stay above the whiny din of those that liked this ‘article.’” Witty Guy
Dear Witty Guy: May I please build your pedestal? Watch your step, now.
“No… Dad babysits while mom takes a shower or cooks dinner. I love him but he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. Lol. When my hubby can lactate and feed our baby at 3AM from his body so it not only fills her tummy but fills her heart, I’ll change my opinion. Until then. It’s a mom’s world; stop trying to act like a man can fill my shoes.” Part of the Problem
Dear Part of the Problem: Dad doesn’t babysit. Maybe your husband really does know what he’s doing. Maybe he doesn’t feel the need to, because you don’t trust him to take care of things the way you’d take care of them. Maybe he just needs the chance. I bet he could figure it out. I hope it’s not a mom’s world. I don’t want to live in a mom’s world, because I want to be more than just a mom, so I’ll let Husband fill my shoes any day. He can do it just as well as I can.
“I stopped reading before the end of the first paragraph.” Sometimes I Get Ideas
Dear Sometimes I Get Ideas: Welp. There’s 99 percent of your problem.
“It would be nice to live in a world where women quit bitching about shit.” It’s a Mad World
Dear It’s a Mad World: Well, THAT’S never going to happen. You’ll never live in a world without women bitching because you’ll never live in a world without women. In the words of Meredith Brooks: “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother…”
“Someone’s tired.” I Tell the Truth
Dear I Tell the Truth: I am. I’m so tired.
“Get over yourself.” I Heart Myself
Dear I Heart Myself: Meh. I’d rather not.
“What’s next, a piece to educate women about their proper role vis a vis burned out light bulbs?” In Vague
Dear In Vague: I don’t even know what this means. Women’s role facing burned out lights? All I know is I change them when they’re out.
Here’s a little secret: Sometimes we appear more intelligent when we speak in simpler sentences.
“Well Rachael and hubby, good luck with the double-parent burnout. Why are people so ashamed to be a stay-at-home Mom and working Dad couple these days? Do what works best for you but I would bet the husband only goes along with it because the wife will leave if he doesn’t.” What’s Your Name Again?
Dear What’s Your Name Again: Hey, man, my name is right there. It’s RIGHT THERE. R-A-C-H-E-L. You added an A. That’s, like, my pet peeve from my school days. And it was right there. You didn’t even look.
Anyway. Sorry I discredited you there for a minute. I spent a decade in journalism, and misspelled names were the mark of lazy reporting. Now that we’re past that, you’re right. I don’t know how you people know exactly what happens in my house, but it’s astounding how much you know just from an article I wrote on a whim. Husband is on a leash (and it’s a pretty short one). The only reason he stays married to me is because he’s terrified I’ll leave and his whole life will be over (you should see me in yoga pants. You’d understand). Because that’s the healthiest way to live in a good, long-lasting marriage. Isn’t it?
Thanks for commenting! If you have any personal issues with any of my answers, please email idontcare@babymakingfactory.com.
See you next time I write an article about my big family or…anything!
I’m really surprised that I’ve never read Salman Rushdie before, but I picked up his most recent book, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights because it was on the express shelf at my library. I actually picked it up by accident, because, for some reason, I read the author’s name as Sherman Alexie, who is the author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and I thought he’d come out with a new book. I know. I call it Mom Brain.
But I’m glad I accidentally picked up this book. Once I got started with it, I could hardly put it down.
It’s hard to describe Rushdie’s style. He is a masterful storyteller. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights tells the story of the djinn, which were like genies in Arabian and Islamic mythology. But the way that Rushdie told this story was like a history of sorts. You had the feeling that you were reading a true account of how djinnis tried once to overtake the world and were defeated. Not only that, but the characters were weird and interesting and had distinct personalities of their own. It was a fantastically written book, although I will admit this one took me much longer to read than most books, probably because Rushdie has a very intellectual style, which I really enjoy but which takes longer to process and fully digest.
Throughout his pages, Rushdie had passages that contributed to the work seeming like a true story. Take this one, for example:
“How treacherous history is! Half-truths, ignorance, deceptions, false trails, errors, and lies, and buried somewhere in between all of that, the truth, in which it is easy to lose faith, of which it is consequently easy to say, it’s a chimera, there’s no such thing, everything is relative, one man’s absolute belief is another man’s fairy tale; but about which we insist, we insist most emphatically, that it is too important an idea to give up to the relativity merchants.”
One of my favorite elements to Rushdie’s book was the way he interspersed it with social commentary.
“History is unkind to those it abandons, and can be equally unkind to those who make it.”
“What happens to our mind befalls our body also. The condition of the body is also the state of the mind.”
“It was the resilience in human beings that represented their best chance of survival, their ability to look the unimaginable, the unconscionable, the unprecedented in the eye.”
Not only did he give us social commentary that felt like a truth, but he also made it poetic, and the poetry made it ever more profound. Here he is, commenting on the religious world and on history:
“Perhaps, as a godly man, he would not have been delighted by the place history gave him, for it is a strange fate for a believer to become the inspiration of ideas that have no need for belief, and a stranger fate still for a man’s philosophy to be victorious beyond the frontiers of his own world but vanquished within those borders…”
“The garden was the outward expression of inner truth, the place where the dreams of our childhoods collided with the archetypes of our cultures, and created beauty.”
His work was abundant with beautiful imagery:
“Their childhoods slipped into the water and were lost, the piers built of memories on which they once ate candy and pizza, the boardwalks of desire under which they hid from the summer sun and kissed their first lips.”
“But when the light returned it felt different. This was a white light they had not seen before, harsh as an interrogator’s lamp, casting now shadows, merciless leaving no place to hide. Beware, the light seemed to say, for I come to burn and judge.”
“Above the gates of the estate a live wire swung dangerously, with death at its tip.”
“The tree roots standing up in the black mud like arms of drowning men.”
Rushdie’s characters in Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, were strange yet charming, with personalities that one would not soon forget (reminiscent of the characters in Daniel Handler’s We Are Pirates). Rushdie is a master at giving his characters distinctive voices, though the book was written in third-person perspective. I had a grand time studying his methods.
Here’s one of his characters who runs an apartment complex in a bad part of town:
“Gun crazy was normal to her, shooting-kids-at-school or putting-on-a-Joker-mask-and-mowing—people-down-in-a-mall or just plain murdering-your-mom-at-breakfast crazy, Second Amendment crazy, that was just the everyday crazy that kept going down and there was nothing you could do about it if you loved freedom; and she understood knife crazy from her you’re days in the Bronx, and the knockout-game type of crazy that persuaded young black kids it was cool to punch Jews in the face. She could comprehend drug crazy and politician crazy and Westboro Baptist Church crazy and Trump crazy because those things, they were the America way, but this new crazy was different. It felt 9/11 crazy: foreign, evil. The devil was on the loose, Sister said, loudly and often. The devil was at work.”
This was another passage that not only expertly characterized but also lent to the book a historic feel—with the references to a guy putting on a Joker mask and Westboro and even Trump. These are references that don’t feel contrived and, also, don’t date the book as some might fear (sometimes that keeps writers from putting in cultural references). It’s likely that these things—Trump, Westboro Baptist Church and the Joker mask killer—will be remembered for a very long time.
Here’s Rushdie writing about another character, Blue Yasmeen, in one of the most brilliant characterization passages in the book:
“Blue Yasmeen’s hair wasn’t blue, it was orange, and her name wasn’t Yasmeen. Never mind. If she said blue was orange that was her right, and Yasmeen was her nom de guerre and yeah, she lived in the city as if it were a war zone because even though she had been born on 116th Street to a Columbia literature professor and his wife, she wanted to recognize that originally, before that, which was to say before fucking birth, she came from Beirut. She had shaved off her eyebrows and tatted new ones in their place, in jagged lightning-bolt shapes. Her body too was a tat zone. All the tattoos except the eyebrows were words, the usual ones, Love Imagine Yeezy Occupy, and she said of herself, unintentionally proving that there was more in her of Riverside Drive than Hamra Street, that she was intratextual as well as intrasexual, she lived between the words as well as the sexes. Blue Yasmeen had made a splash in the art world with her Guantanamo Bay installation, which was impressive if only for the powers of persuasion required to make it happen at all: she somehow got that impenetrable facility to allow her to set a chair in a room with a video camera facing it, and linked that to a dummy sitting in a Chelsea art gallery, so that when inmates sat in the Guantanamo chair room and told their stories their faces were projected onto the head of the Chelsea dummy and it was as if she had freed them and given them their voices, and yeah, the issue was freedom, motherfuckers, freedom, she hated terrorism as much as anyone, but she hated miscarriages of justice too, and, FYI, just in case you were wondering, just in case you had her down as a religious-fanatic terrorist in waiting, she had no time for God, plus she was a pacifist and a vegan, so fuck you.”
There is so much to say about this passage. The repetition of the word “yeah” and all the cussing and even the tiny little references to things like, “she wanted to recognize that” and “FYI, just in case you were wondering,” gives the impression that Blue Yasmeen is speaking to us, even though a narrator is actually our go-between. It was fantastic prose.
One of my other favorite characterization passages was this one (because I’m a mom of six boys and, also, juvenile):
“He was waiting for the word from the Lightning Princess. Sometimes for a change he headed south to Calvary or Mount Zion cemeteries and blew the heads off stone lions in those locations also, and performed new changes, he could turn solid objects into smells now, one minute it was a bench, the next it was a fart, it was the accumulation of all the farts farted by old farts male and female sitting on that bench thinking about other old farts, now deceased, Macfart shall fart no more.”
I laughed so hard at this passage and even had to read it to my husband so I didn’t have to laugh alone. That one could take a book as serious and horrific as this one and infuse humor into it is astounding and the mark of a skilled author.
It wasn’t the only time Rushdie used humor in his pages, which I found endearing. Here’s another short humorous thought:
“Beware of the man (or jinni) of action when he finally seeks to better himself with thought. A little thinking is a dangerous thing.”
This book was a fantastic read; and if you’re still not convinced, I’ll close with two of my favorite passages, on the nature of love:
“At the beginning of all love there is a private treaty each of the lovers makes with himself or herself, an agreement to set aside what is wrong with the other for the sake of what is right. Love is spring after winter. It comes to heal life’s wounds, inflicted by the unloving cold. When that warmth is born in the heart the imperfections of the beloved are as nothing, less than nothing, and the secret treaty with oneself is easy to sign. The voice of doubt is stilled. Later, when love fades, the secret treaty looks like folly, but if so, it’s a necessary folly, born of lovers’ belief in beauty, which is to say, in the possibility of the impossible thing, true love.”
“‘Only with God,’ Ghazali replied. ‘That was and is my only lover, and he is and was more than enough.’”
You’ll get everything with Rushdie’s book: laughter, horror, entertainment, history, memorable characters, and, mostly, lovely language and a story you won’t ever forget.
In this episode, Rachel talks about Salman Rushdie’s newest book, an Annie Dillard memoir, the importance of making a plan for every day, her much-needed weekend without kids and how she brainstorms plot.
My kids are out of their minds about this leap year thing. A day that only comes around once a year?
Yeah.
What would you do if you had a birthday today?
Uncle Jarrod almost did.
He would only be a kid still?
No, the years still pass. Just because his birthday rolled around every four years doesn’t mean he’d stay frozen in time and quit growing.
They seemed relieved to hear that, even though they still didn’t quite get it. In their minds, a person with a birthday on Feb. 29 would stay forever young. So I showed them a picture of Dee Brown (the novelist, not the basketball player), who definitely grew older and died at the ripe old age of 94 and only technically passed one-fourth of those birthdays. All I know is that if being born on Leap Day really meant you only aged a year for every four, I’d volunteer for that.
Well, maybe not. I’d only be 8. I was pretty annoying at 8, and that was also the year I got the most embarrassing purple glasses you’ve ever seen—they took up half my face because it was the ‘80s and people didn’t feel the need to make their 8-year-old kid who needs glasses still look cool.
Anyway. I didn’t come here to talk about that. What I came here to talk about is leaping past a whole day in your life. You know, with years that are not Leap years, February has the privilege of leaping over its last day like it doesn’t even count.
What did 29 do to you, February? Also: where do I apply to leap over a whole stretch of time? Because I’d like to sign up for leaping over my kids’ Year 3.
I don’t know about you, but my kids were perfect angels at 2. They were snuggly, they were respectful, they were adorable, they were brilliant, they were compliant. And the minute they turned 3, angel became devil.
This year I’ve had the pleasure of raising two 3-year-olds. That’s been wonderful, let me tell you. You know how 3-year-olds ask a billion questions a day? Try having two of them. I’m so questioned out I could live the next 30 years without hearing another one, which won’t happen. I’ll hear another billion by the time I finish this sentence, because guess what? They’re still 3!
Also, the number of times I’ve turned into a 3-year-old is quite astounding. You’d think that after all these years—after, in fact, having survived three other 3-year-olds—I would know better. But I’m still a sucker for getting into an argument with a threenager, mostly because they think they know EVERYTHING, and you know what? I’m the one who knows everything.
I can get myself into a lot of trouble if I say something like,
“Here’s your vitamin.”
“You mean my melatonin,” one of the 3-year-olds will say.
I don’t like misinformation, because I spent a decade as a reporter, so, of course I’m quick to correct them.
“No, it’s not melatonin. It’s called Focus Factor.”
“No. It’s melatonin.”
Which quickly disintegrates into a clipped, matter-of-fact answer by yours truly:
“I can read. You can’t.”
“Mama, you’re doing your workout wrong,” they say when I’m actually busting my rear end to get ahead of the interval training video because I’m a beast.
No, I’m sorry, I know exactly what I’m doing and you should just shut your mouth if you don’t want an uppercut right to your jaw. (Not because I’d beat a kid who tells me I’m slacking while my heart rate is camped at 130. Because I’m doing uppercuts in my workout, and they’re leaning in too close to tell me I’m doing it wrong.)
“I didn’t have milk today,” is another one of my twins’ favorite things to say, even though the cup they’re staring at right this very minute still has three drops of milk in it because they just finished their glass.
Um, yes you did, blindy. (To be clear, these are only the things I think in my head.)
“I’ll put my jacket on,” they say on mornings when we’re already five minutes late for leaving, and, hey, who am I to argue, because I’m all for autonomy. Except one of them likes to turn his jackets inside out before putting it on, which I’m pretty sure defeats the purpose.
That’s not right. Yes it is. No it’s not. YES IT IS. Okay, then, wear it like that, genius.
They talk back about everything, they have their own ideas about the way things should be (I want the BLUE plate. There is no blue plate. I want the BLUE plate. You can have the yellow plate or the orange plate. I want the BLUE plate. Okay, you get nothing), they make ridiculous threats (I not eating ever again, because you said it’s still time to stay in our beds and I don’t want to nap. Okay, more for me.), they fight about everything (This is Lightning McQueen. No, THIS is Lightning McQueen. It’s the same car, guys.), they know everything, they break everything, they mess with everything, they can do everything themselves even if it means going the whole day with their shoes on the wrong feet.
So, if I had to choose a stretch of time in my parenting that I could leap over, it would be year 3. Potty training comes at a distant second.
We’re looking forward to Year 4, with high hopes that 3 will be long gone and we will have our sweet little twins back.
Wait. I can’t remember. Were they ever sweet in the first place? (My gray hairs say no.)
All day long, since he got home from school, he’s been raising his voice, letting it hang up there in the whine-range, and it’s grating and annoying and maddening, and his daddy and I say it over and over so it plays like a broken record, “Please speak in an honoring tone,” but he’s having a hard time still, even with all these constant reminders.
And some days we just have to let it be.
Because we know the truth of it, how all those pressures can keep mounting and those disappointments can keep piling and those expectations can keep crumbling, and before we know it, we’re stuck there at the bottom of a negativity pit, all of us, and we can’t even see to climb our way back out.
Sometimes believing in who our children are created to be means accepting who they choose to be, right here, this moment, knowing that one moment or a few moments or a whole bad day or fifty of them does not define who they are.
This boy, he is not a negative boy, defined by the dark clouds that follow him today. He is a boy who sees light in everything, who feels wonder at the world’s mysteries, who explores the possibility living in all things. He is curious and marvelous and magnificent.
“Remember that children are not miniature adults,” says Susan Stiffelman, a family therapist, parent coach and author. “They are reasonably new inhabitants of the planet, programmed to discover all they can about the world around them…rather than seeing your boys as misbehaving, recognize how healthy it is that they are so engaged with life!”
She is talking about how boys are constantly on the move and how it can annoy and frustrate those of us who just want them to sit still, but I hear it for everything, because we parents can too often hold up that bar of unrealistic expectation for our children, the bar that demands perfect behavior and perfect sitting still and perfect peace and quiet.
[Tweet “Everyone dies under the bar of perfection. So let’s tear it down.”]
Maybe we turn, instead, toward accepting, believing that our children are more than just what they do today—because they are.
It’s not an easy turn, when they are running wild and flipping over couches and talking in a roar, when it’s all I can do to keep from demanding that silent sit-still so I can hear myself think, just for a minute, please. But this is nature. It’s how they’re made. It’s unique and wonderful and wild and heart-stopping and life-giving and exhausting and beautiful and true.
Turning our hearts begins with the turning of our mind, so we see the way they stand on their heads during story time not as disobedience but as necessary to their listening; so we see that standing on a chair during dinner, after all those times we’ve told him to sit down and he forgets, not as blatant defiance but as necessary for his always-fidgety legs; so we see their hand taps and then their foot taps and their bottom wiggles during phonics lessons not as rebellion but as necessary to their learning.
Our children are more than what they do. May we be the first ones to believe it.
This is an excerpt from the Family on Purpose April: We Believe in Jesus. In Ourselves. In Each Other. To find out more about the Family on Purpose series, visit the project landing page.
Me: It’s time for bed.
3-year-old: But we dinnent have breakthast.
Me: We just ate dinner.
3-year-old: But we dinnent have breakthast.
Me: Breakfast comes after bedtime.
3-year-old: No! Breakthast is now.
Me. No. It’s not.
3-year-old: Yes, it is!
Me: No it’s not.
3-year-old: Yes, it is!
[15 minutes later]
Me: I see what you’re doing here.
Husband: Everybody be quiet.
3-year-old: Why?
Husband: Slap your face for me, son.
5-year-old: I don’t ever want to see my teacher again.
Husband: Why? What happened?
5-year-old: She signed my folder today.
Husband: If you only knew how many times Jadon had his folder signed in kinder.
9-year-old: that was a long time ago. Aaannnd one of the times I got my folder signed I learned how to whistle. So there’s that.
Husband: Show me your whistle.
9-year-old: ffffftttt.
Husband: Yep. Totally learned to whistle.
9-year-old: May you please polish this with butter for me?
Me: We had really big cell phones when I was a little girl.
9-year-old: Did you have a milk man back then?
5-year-old: Knock knock.
Me: Who’s there?
5-year-old: Axew
Me: Axew who?
5-year-old: Can I Axew a question?
Me: You already did. hahahahahaha I GOT THE LAST WORD ON THAT ONE.
5-year-old:
Me:
5-year-old: I don’t get it.
9-year-old: I really like playing Pikachu with Asher.
Me: Okay, enough with the Pokemon jokes.
6-year-old: Knock knock.
Me: Who’s there.
6-year-old: There’s a Pokemon on your finger.
Me: There’s a Pokemon on your finger who?
6-year-old: There’s a Pokemon on your finger, and it’s named Pinky-choo!
Me: Are we ever going to be done with Pokemon jokes?
All: No.
