When I popped into my parent’s house yesterday to pick up The Boy after his sleepover, my dad was sitting at the table chatting with some documentary filmmakers who were there to do some work with him.
"And there’s my daughter!" he announced cheerfully. "She has a blog!"
They politely asked me what it was about, and after giving my father a brief, dark look, I mumbled something about "parenting and cooking."
"So it’s tips and such, then?" one of the filmmakers asked. GOOD GRIEF, NO. Can you even imagine ME writing one of those Hints From Heloise type blogs? ("Found a dead mouse? Phone your husband at work and scream until he comes home and takes care of it!") Some women are GREAT at managing household things, but whatever fairy handed THAT gift out at their cradles managed to pass over me altogether. The things I AM good at – babies, baking, holidays, lounging around and reading, coming up with adjectives – can often feel too slight and trivial to matter much in a world where it often feels like everyone but me has a big defining career, something that they are good at that MATTERS. And too often my blog can feel like one prolonged exercise in misplaced narcissism – especially when I’m trying to explain what it is to people who are looking at slouchy, unimpressive me, wondering what I would ever have to write.
But I love my odd, narrow little life and I’m very good at the few things I’m very good at – like annually burning the caramel for our annual caramel apples or dressing Barbies with The Baby for HOURS or making pizza every Friday night. (I LOVE my flatbread oven SO. MUCH.) And so most of the time I’m pretty good at feeling pleased with my choices because I am where my talents are best used – but some days, I wistfully imagine a grown-up career with real business clothing doing, I dunno, accounting and probably drinking vodka at my desk because that just does NOT sound like something I want to do. And yet living my life the way I want to makes me feel a bit like one of those historical reenactors, spinning wool in my pioneer dress and being Ye Olde Homemaker.
The filmmakers were still waiting for an answer.
"It’s about me," I said, and grabbed The Boy and ran like the wind to the car, dodging barn cats and rutabagas and heading home with all of my children intact, ready for another big day of doing the stuff that I’m mostly pretty good at, which does NOT, let me state emphatically, involve handy household hints in ANY way.