Tess Thompson's Blog, page 15

Miracles

Last week I wrote a blog post about how difficult it is to tell your children they cannot do something they want desperately to do because of finances. In this case is was my oldest daughter’s desire to participate on our local swim team this summer – I had to tell her ‘no’. In my writing, I didn’t give specifics about why but I will now. When I was married I was able to afford a membership at a private club where we enjoyed an outdoor pool and swim team. Given my financial situation as a single mother I had to put my membership on hold last autumn, hoping I could rejoin by the summer. Unfortunately, I was not able to make that happen. To be clear, the fees for swim team were certainly something I could do, but not reinstating my membership.

I had no intention for the post to illicit the sort of response it did. With my blog I try and be as honest as I can about whatever issues arise in my life. My feeling is that if I’m going to ask for five minutes of someone’s time, the writing should be authentic. So I write about real stuff that matters to me. It’s always the posts that feel too vulnerable that resonate with people. Although it sometimes feels too exposed, I feel strongly that to write the truth is what really matters.

Keeping that in mind, the response to the post was so thoroughly unexpected, I’m still shaking my head in disbelief. Total strangers, dear friends, and acquaintances wrote to me. “Can I pay Ella’s fee?” I had so many emails I had to put something on Facebook explaining why it wasn’t as simple as just a couple hundred-dollar fee – it was a whole membership.

Later that week I learned from a friend there was a campaign on Facebook comprised of a group of friends trying to raise money.

On Friday I received an email from my best friend from college. She would be mortified if I told you who she is, so I won’t – but what she did was so generous that it makes me weep now as I write this. She figured out via a mutual friend out here who to call at our private club and paid for an entire year’s membership, including the swim team fee.

My first instinct was to say, no. It’s too much. I can’t take it from you.

But in the mail she said two things that moved me to accept. The first was – “I know you would do this for me if the situation were reversed.” This is true.

The second was this. “I remember what it’s like to have divorced parents. Just let me do this for your girls.”

Listen, I can’t write or think about this without crying. The sheer beauty of it is overwhelming. And its not just what my best friend from college did – it’s all of you who wrote to me – all of you trying to arrange something behind the scenes – I cannot express my appreciation adequately except to say, simply, thank you.

I am not worthy of the kind of love that’s showered upon me on a daily basis, not just in this situation but each and every day of my life. I’m so very blessed and grateful and humbled by the love that surrounds my family. I am rich in friends.

Ella was dumbfounded when I told her what my friend had done for her. Then she said, “Mom, I prayed so hard last night that a miracle would happen. And it did.”

A few minutes later she said, “Mom, when your books hit the New York Times Bestseller list, we’re going to do something like this for someone else.

This is the thing – the kindnesses we do for others are not just the act itself, the moment itself. Kindness is perpetuated for years and lifetimes and generations. My daughters will never forget their kind benefactor. It will influence them all the days of their lives. The generosity will be paid forward and forward.

This world is good, my friends. Full of good people. And hope. And faith. And love.

Do not despair, wherever you are in this moment. I had some heartbreaking news today (I can’t share the details but suffice it to say, it hurts badly) but remembering the miracles of last week, I will not despair. Please, those of you out there hurting, do not either. Miracles are everywhere. If you don’t feel one or see one, just wait a moment. Like the unexpected rainbow, it will come.

God bless all of you who wrote to me and to all of you who pray for my family. Love is all there is and all there ever will be.

My Mother Mask

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.” Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

I spend a lot of time and energy in the pursuit of courage and strength. A lot of times I’m faking it. Most times, actually. I’m not brave. I’m not strong. I’m soft and sensitive and vulnerable. I’m afraid all the time.

So I fake it, hoping at some point, like the old saying, I’ll ‘make it’.

I live alone here with my two little girls and they need me. They rely on me for their basic needs but also for love and nurturing. I can’t be a mess in the middle of the kitchen floor when they need their breakfast made and their lunches packed. Sometimes when I walk into the kitchen first thing in the morning, I think, “I can’t do it. I won’t be able to get them out the door on time one more day.” But then they come down the stairway with faces puffy from sleep and grumpy eyes and Emerson holding Lamb Lamb. I smile with my ‘mother mask’ and say good-morning and pour their glasses of milk and begin the hustle of this life.

In my friendships and personal relationships I aim for low-maintenance – someone self-reliant and steady in my love and affection – someone who gives instead of takes, someone who never asks for too much for fear of being a burden instead of a joy. But inside I’m whispering, “Please help me. Please love me. Please ask me how I am.”

In my business transactions I am purposely flexible and reliable. I meet deadlines. I don’t ask for more than my share. I swallow my fears and insecurities instead of hoisting them on others and demanding reassurance. I don’t nitpick or criticize. I play well with others. But sometimes I want to pick up the phone and say to my colleagues, “I think I might suck. I don’t know how I’m going to do this for much longer and still pay my mortgage.”

And yesterday it all caught up with me. I felt weary. Weary of pushing myself so hard. Weary of the energy it takes to hold it all together. Weary of how hard this book business is. Weary of having to say no to my children over and over again because of finances. Weary of being the only adult in my home. Wearing of being strong. Weary of wearing the mask.

So I took the day off. I read Brene Brown and her theories of vulnerability and belonging. I watched the last episodes of “House of Cards”. I stared at the clouds outside my bedroom window and asked God for strength to continue forth despite all the unknowns in my personal and professional life. I prayed for the ability to lean into the unknown despite how scared I am all the time.

As the clouds shifted across the sky, I thought about how hard it would be to tell Ella the latest bad news. There will be no swim team for her this summer. I’ll spare you the details, but for a week or so I’ve tried to figure out a way for her to participate in our local swim team despite my lack of disposable income. She participated the last two years and loved it – the child has belonged in the water from the time she was a tiny baby. She never asks for anything because she knows our situation. But this – this she really wanted. This she begged me for.

Regardless, the answer was, no.

When it was time to pick up my girls from school I took a shower and put on my ‘mother mask’. I smiled wide when they climbed in the car.

“Did you find out about swim team?” asked Ella, first thing.

I lied. Buying time. Praying for the fortitude to not break down when I had to disappoint my little girl once again. “Not yet,” I said, my heart thumping loud in my hollow chest.

The night was typical – homework and dinner and television before baths and our bedtime routine.

It was after eight when Ella asked me again. “Did you find out about swim team?”

I hesitated, wondering if I should put it off one more day. But I knew it was merely delaying the inevitable so I told her the truth. “I can’t make it happen.” I sank onto the edge of the bed. She curled into herself like she does when she’s hurting and sat next to me, crying. “Why does everything feel so hard all the time?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. The tears started for me too, the hot kind that fall out of your eyes no matter how you try to hold them in. My ‘mother mask’ had deserted me. I was ‘the mess on the kitchen floor’ I try so hard to avoid.

My little Emerson came into the bedroom, her hair still wet from the bath. She sat next to me on the bed and wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her soft cheek on my legs. “It’ll be okay, Mama.” She has the kindest eyes of anyone I’ve ever known, I thought.

I murmured something about how sorry I was I didn’t make more money and that I didn’t have a regular job. I said I was sorry their dad and I weren’t together anymore. I said I was sorry I loved writing so much. “I want to give you everything but I just can’t. I’m sorry I’m not like other mothers.”

What came back from both of them overwhelmed me. It was a litany of what a wonderful mother I am. Everything from how I clean the litter box every day even though it’s their job to the fact that I’m always there to pick them up from school to how I always try to make them what they like for dinner.

“You work so hard, Mommy and we’re so proud of you,” said Emerson.

“We wouldn’t want any other mother but you,” said Ella.

I thought of this quote from Brene Brown then.

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”

Well, Ms. Brown, I was vulnerable, and in that space, my children saw me and loved me. I understand.

Nothing was solved, of course. Ella still can’t participate in the swim team. I still have to figure out a way to work all summer and give them the time they need and deserve. I’m still uncertain of my future, both personally and professionally. But what I do know is this – I love my daughters and they love me. They see me. I see them. And for this we are blessed beyond all measure.

Love is all there is and all there ever will be.

There is rain today; no need for wishing

“Isn’t it love that keeps us breathing? Isn’t it love we’re sent here for?” Bonnie Raitt, You

I wake to Nanci Griffith’s, “I Wish it Would Rain” playing like a jukebox between my ears. Eight lines in particular run through my mind as I brush my teeth and put on my workout clothes.

Once I had a love from the
Georgia pines


Who only cared for me


I wanna find that love of twenty-two


Here at thirty-three


I’ve got a heart on my right


One on my left… neither suits my needs


No, the one I love lives a-way out West


And he never will need me

On the way down the stairs, I pause at the rectangular window that looks out to the Cascades. There is rain today; no need for wishing. I sing Nanci’s eight lines under my breath. I think, then, of my love from twenty-two. I remember how he pushed his glasses up his nose with the tips of his graceful fingers when he told me a story and how I wanted to listen to him forever. One time he kissed me in the rain on a Seattle street, the sounds of a saxophone floating out of a Blue’s club, and I thought, oh, so this is what all the fuss is about. Another time he told me I was like, ‘the salt of the earth’. When I confessed to not knowing what that meant, he explained it to me.

Our love was not meant to be. I had to let go and it hurt. But I kept the memories. Years later, I put some of them in a book. It won’t be the last time. Because love is never wasted.

The rain is steady on the windshield of the “White Whale” as I drive to the gym. Bonnie Raitt’s “You”, comes on the radio. It’s a song I played over and over in my car when I was a young woman when we listened to songs on CD’s instead of gadgets small enough to fit in a slit of a pocket. I drove a little red sporty car then with two doors and two seats instead of sliding doors and seven seats.

“Isn’t it love that keeps us breathing? Isn’t it love we’re sent here for?” sings Bonnie. Yes, I think. That’s it. That’s all there is.

After the gym, I put away the dishes, and feed the kittens and prepare my cup of berry tea, smiling when I think of the phone call I will make later to my mother because I have something funny to tell her. I laugh out loud at a text from my friend, Natalie, far away in Florida. And I’m grateful for both the love of my mother and this dear, old friend. I loved them both at twenty-two, thirty-three and forty-five. I’ll love them all the days of my life.

I sip my tea and pick up a book of poems by Mary Oliver, hoping for inspiration before I began my work. I open quite by accident to her poem about the owl and it’s penetrating gaze – how it reminds her of how precious her life is – how very much she wants to stay alive.

“as though if wanted he could lift me

and carry me away –

one orange knife for each shoulder, and I,

aloft in the air, under his great wings, shouting

praise, praise, praise as I cried

for my life.

At my desk, I read emails from ‘fans’. Two tell me about the heartbreaking deaths of their children, of how the winter months bring a feeling of despair, but that my books uplift them. Another thanks me for the hours of pleasure I’ve given her.

And there in the middle of it all – the tea in my cup, the cats on the desk, the rain outside my window, I think about loss.

Just last week my friend Kathy lost her mother. As I write this, Teri sits with her ailing father.

My mother lost the use of her legs when she was fifty. My brother and his wife lost their infant son. There’s the loss of my marriage, of course, which the poets say is like a death. I had to let go and it hurt. But no love is wasted. I just look at my two girls to know this.

And Lisa’s twin brother and Katherine’s father, both snatched from us too soon by cancer, and Maria’s father, murdered and Ann’s brother succumbing to drugs. There’s 9-11 and Sandy Hook and the lost troops.

I can count and count all the losses, not one of us unscathed.

I’m a person of faith, but I do not understand why. I know only that love is never wasted.

My phone buzzes, interrupting my thoughts. It’s my ex-husband asking how to make Emerson a ‘perfect soft-boiled’ egg. I write back, “When the water boils, take it off after 30 seconds. She likes to dip her toast in the yolk.”

Later, my phone buzzes again. It’s a photograph of Emerson eating her ‘perfect soft-boiled’ egg. She’s like sunshine, this girl, and my heart does that mommy thing where it almost hurts with how much I love her.

I think of Clare and her baby boy coming any day now and how it will awaken her mommy heart.

Utterly beautiful, sometimes, this life.

I think of those letters from my grieving readers. How could they continue on after the loss of their children? I cannot imagine how, truly. But they did. Just as my friends have moved forward after their losses. Just as my mother did and my brother and me. And these readers, they said my work mattered to them, like the words of the poets I wake to in the morning hours matter to me. Perhaps I’m not invisible after all. Perhaps I’ve done something good with my “one precious life” as instructed by Mary Oliver, even though it’s never been my intention.

Because the truth is, I do this work for myself. I’m selfish. I’m a sinner. I write to understand myself, to purge my own grief, to take note of the inexplicable joys, to examine the complexities of the human experience, to understand why there’s so much loss. I do this work because I love it, because it’s my particular way of shaping and molding the chaotic world so that I can breathe. I write to silence the demons that want to pull me under and cover me with their layer of dusty despair.

But somehow, choosing to do what I love brings more love. I love what I do. It brings love to me. I send it out. It comes back.

In Tea and Primroses, my character, Constance writes, “I didn’t know then that love is a circle.”

Perhaps the poets, Bonnie and Nanci and Mary write for others. Perhaps they are not selfish sinners like me. But it doesn’t matter much because their words mean something to me regardless of their intention. Their poetry has lifted me from despair in the darkest moments of my life. Their words have explained my life to me.

Life is a constant seesaw of loss and gain, triumphs and defeats, beauty and ugliness. It’s a constant juxtaposition of grasping love and letting it go.

It’s love that keeps us breathing. It’s love we’re sent here for. That’s all there is and all there ever will be.

 

RIP, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Dear Mr. Hoffman,

Thank you for the artistry you brought to this world. Thank you for sharing your gifts during the short time you were with us. You made the world lighter for those of us lucky enough to watch your performances. You inspired many other artists of all mediums to reach deeper for perfection. You moved us, made us think, made us yearn to be better. You cannot possibly know how many lives you reached but we do.

I’m sorry the demons that chased you in the dark night won. Many of us understand about the demons. They chase us too. We duck and run and barely escape. Because of this, we do not judge, we do not condemn. We only mourn that their poison branches reached you and snatched you away from us.

You will be missed. May you rest in peace in the place where there are no demons, only light. May your family feel some peace in the joy you brought to so many of us with your dedication to your craft.

Love,

A fan

Interview and Excerpt from “Tea and Primroses”

We started out with a bit of a bang today with an interview and an excerpt from “Tea and Primroses”. Click on the links to read! Thanks to “Readers and Writers Connect” for hosting us! I appreciate it very much.

Excerpt

Interview

Don’t Ever Leave Me

Tea and Primroses, the second in the Legley Bay Collection, is set in the fictional coastal town of Legley Bay, Oregon. The novels in this collection are always titled something edible with a flower. If you read Caramel and Magnolias you know that the main character, Peter Ball, a Seattle police detective who grew up in Legley Bay, thinks women always smell of two things. Thus, the titles.

When I proposed to my editor, Jennifer D. Munro, that the title for the follow up to Tea and Primroses might be Tobacco and Dead Roses, it was met with silence. What do you think? A tad too dark? Listen, if you’d been out here in the wilderness dating for a year like I have, you’d be bitter too. But I digress…

Of course I was kidding with the suggestion of the title. I live to make Jennifer laugh, mostly because she makes me laugh and I’m competitive that way. I’m kidding about that too.

Jennifer D. Munro, or JDM, as I refer to her, is one of those effortlessly clever people. She is smarter than I am and a better writer and probably a better person. Actually, I’m pretty sure she’s a better person. And because of all that, she makes me a better writer. She makes me smarter. Or, is it more smart? I’ll make a note to ask her about that one. JDM, if you’re reading this, I’m kidding.

Tea and Primroses is about loss and love and redemption, like most of my books. But this one is also uniquely personal in that one of the main characters, Constance Mansfield, is a fiction writer. Much of the book is about the relationship she forges with her first editor who helps shape her work in a way that sustains and informs for  thirty years. I believe most writers would tell you the most important relationship they have is the one with their editor. If you’re lucky enough to find the perfect match, it transforms your work. They ask the hard questions. They point out the holes. They tell you when it sings. They tell you when it’s finished.

Tea and Primroses is partly an homage to writers and editors, partly about the terrifying and complicated journey of mother/daughter relationships. I guess you write what you know.

What I know for sure, to steal a phrase from Oprah, is that JDM transforms my work and therefore my life. There will never be enough “thank you’s” in the acknowledgment section of the book to properly express my gratitude.

When she wrote in the margins of the first draft of Tea and Primroses, after my description of Constance’s first editor, Patrick Waters: ”I hope you’re not trading me in for a tall, dark and handsome editor.” But she needn’t have worried. I had already answered her before I even read this pithy comment. In my email response to her first set of notes was:”You can’t ever leave me.”

I hope she never does. For one thing, I don’t think there’s a Match.com equivalent for finding the perfect editor. God, I hope I never have to find out.

So to all you long-suffering editors out there and beleaguered writers, cheers, and keep on swimming, bird by bird. Tea and Primroses is for you. JDM would probably tell me I shouldn’t steal metaphors from both Finding Nemo and an essay about shitty first drafts by Anne Lamont, and then make it worse by combining them in a sentence, but she’s not editing this piece so I’m going for it. Do you see why she can’t ever leave me?

Happy New Year

Making resolutions is something my mother and I have done for as long as I can remember. Like many of you, my goals in the past have been focused on weight loss and exercise, always with a level of disgust and self-hatred at my perceived weakness for those 5-10 pounds I’ve struggled to keep off since I was a teenager.

Two Novembers ago I reached my diet and fitness goals. I’ve maintained them since. It’s hard work. I won’t lie. I’m obsessive about my workouts. I count calories. I practice moderation. And guess what? I’m as critical of my appearance as I’ve ever been. When I catch sight of myself in the gym mirror, I see the loose flesh of my arms, the extra skin around my waist.

This tells me something important. It is my vulnerable insides that need attention.

Therefore, this year I’m resolving to accept myself as I am. I vow to practice self-love rather than self-hatred. Because let’s face it, I’m getting older. Places are softer, no matter my commitment to exercise and diet. The lines in my face grow deeper by the day. I’m fighting a battle one cannot win if one is lucky enough to live one more day. I’ve had to say goodbye to friends who did not have this privilege. Would I rather grow older and be here to love my girls, to read more good books, to discover new music, to fall in love again, to reach my writing goals? Oh, yes.

Writers call that ugly voice in their heads their ‘inner critic’. The same applies here. Be damned, Inner Critic. You’re keeping me from living, from breathing in every precious moment of this sweet life. I’m free of you. 

I encourage you all to do the same. Forgive yourself the extra pounds. Caress the lines around your eyes or the edges of your mouth and be thankful for what they’ve taught you. Think of the softness of your body mimicking the ever softer heart that simply living and loving gives you. Be as kind to yourself as you are to others. Love yourself. Let go of perfection. Breathe in every precious moment.

Happy New Year. May God bless you with good health and love throughout 2014.

In Their Guessing

The idea comes unexpectedly for a Christmas surprise for my girls. Kittens – two of them – one for each daughter. They’ve asked for one over and over after we had to let our sweet but high-maintenance puppy live full-time with their dad. I mull it over for several days, thinking through the logistics and the financial obligation. There are many reasons not to, of course. Pets are a lot of work. They make messes. They destroy furniture. They’re expensive.

But none of that seems important as I think of my little girls’ faces when they see the kittens for the first time. I think of the hours of enjoyment they will derive from the small, furry balls of mischief. Their anticipated surprise and delight obliterate my apprehensions. I will do it for them even though I’m not really a cat person. I wasn’t a dog person, either, until I fell in love with Patches.

But I’m a kid person. I love children. I love my children. Apparently, when one is a child person, furry creatures follow closely behind.

Regardless, this is what parents do. From the moment we see our precious baby’s faces for the first time, everything is about them. Suddenly, we’re animal people because they are.

During the holidays, we want  to give our children special memories. We want to give them everything they need and want, as long as we trust it’s good for them. We’ll go to great lengths and expense to do so. Although it sometimes defies logic, it must be this way. Our window of magical moments grows ever smaller as the years pass. In the end, all we have is our memories.

On Christmas Eve I will fetch the fuzzy merry makers in the White Whale while my friend Janelle teaches the girls how to make fudge at her house. When she brings the girls home I will have the kittens in our family room ready to meet their forever girls. I can hardly wait, kind of like a kid at Christmas.

I told the girls I had a surprise better than anything they could imagine for their Christmas Eve gift. As children do, they immediately tried to guess what it might be. And in their guessing, they surprised me. Not one of their guesses was something material.

Emerson’s face lit up like the Christmas tree behind her. “Are you getting married again?”

“Um, no.” Married again? Where did that come from?

“Are Shane and Sofia coming from California?” asked Ella.

“No, but that would be wonderful.”

“Wait! Is Jesse James is coming to visit?” asked Ella.

“I wish.”

There were other guesses, all similar to the first, all about people we love.

And then I knew – the kittens are nothing compared to the gifts they give me everyday by being such good girls, such loving girls. I am blessed, so very blessed.

All we have at the end are our memories. I will remember.

 

 

Waking up Happy

In early July I met a man via Match.com. We dated until the Saturday after Halloween. I know this because he decided to, in his words, “end the relationship” via a text, two days after Halloween. I know it was two days after Halloween because he spent that holiday with my girls and me and our best friends. This was a man I told  my deepest fears and shared my deepest secrets. I introduced him to my circle of friends. I made myself vulnerable to him. And it hurt to be thrown out in the trash via a text with no warning and no explanation, especially after the amount of time and effort I put into the relationship. But I’m a lady. Manners matter. Pride matters. So, after I politely wrote back that I wished him luck, I deleted his phone number and all the photos we’d taken the weekend before when we went to Cannon Beach for his birthday. Then, I poured a large glass of wine and called my mother. After we hung up, I cried. Then, I went to a friend’s for some more crying and Chinese takeout. Later that weekend, I called friends and talked things through, got advice and reassurance, and love. Lots of love.

In the weeks following, I accepted more dinner invitations from friends. I curled up on the couch with my girls and read books. I watched the Seahawks win several more games. And, my USC Trojan football team started winning; this might be considered a small miracle given the first half of the season..but I digress. I became addicted to season 1 of the “Vampire Diaries” because Ella and my writer friend Jesse James Freeman convinced me to watch just one. “Just one, Mom, and you’ll be hooked.”

I finished my latest novel. I supervised homework and took Emerson to a doctor’s appointment for a persistent cough.

I received two bouquets of flowers from concerned friends. Another sent a popcorn maker to my girls – for our upcoming family movie nights – but mostly to cheer me up.

Friends called and texted and emailed.

The love poured in, as it always does when I need it.

All the while, I had this ache in my chest – the kind you get after a break-up. I replayed last moments. I wondered what happened, exactly? How does one go away for a romantic weekend and break it off five days later? How does one let my oldest daughter make him a birthday cake on a Tuesday and end things on a Saturday? I won’t know, of course. As Nanci Griffith says in her song “Late Night Grande Hotel”, “But no-one ever knows the heart of anyone else.”

But I can be angry. I can expect better. I can be thankful that someone so false and immature is no longer in my life. I can be glad that my children didn’t become attached to him. I can vow to find a man next time, not a boy. Yes, all this.

And with each passing day, the sting fades. Today I didn’t think of him when I woke up. I don’t think I have for a week now. I’m grateful, trust me.

However, in between realizing, in the words of Jesse James, that “I dodged a bullet”, and in the middle of experiencing all this ordinary life, darkness invaded. It came with a vision of the future. My girls grow up and go off to lives of their own. And I’m left alone writing love stories in the basement of some dark, damp house surrounded by cats, growing old and arthritic.

Alone.

This is called my greatest fear. And it wants to take over. It wants to smash hope and joy and gratitude.

Last weekend I confessed to one of my dearest friends that I was dreading the holidays. “Again”, I said. “Last  year my mantra was, ‘just get through the holidays’. It’s threatening to be the same this year.”

I also told her of my greatest fear – you know, the basement and cats and dying alone. She wrote back that one day, after I’ve truly accepted that it is a possibility I will grow old alone and come to peace with it, I will suddenly wake up one day – happy.

Well, here’s the thing. It happened. I don’t know how. The romantic in me wants to think it was my friend’s wish for me that did it. Regardless, I woke up two days after our conversation – happy. I woke up excited for the holidays. I woke up thankful for all the love I have in my life and for my health and for my work. I am happy. I may not have a man to share life with, but I have friends and family and my girls and they all want to snuggle up with me on the couch.

And none of them would “end the relationship” with me via a text after I took them to a getaway on the Oregon coast.

And you know what that tells me? Love the ones you’re with. That’s from a song too, but I can’t think who sings it. I know a friend who will, though. I might ask him. Because that’s my life – full of incredible, interesting people who know things.

I love the ones I’m with. Yes, I surely do. And I’m thankful for all the ways they love me back.

For Heather

Heather, my partner in crime at Booktrope (she’s the marketing guru behind all my success) went out on maternity leave yesterday. Her baby girl is supposed to come anytime. I decided to give her some unasked for advice on the cusp of the biggest, most amazing, wonderful event that’s about to rock her world from here to Singapore.

I’m sorry, Heather, in advance, for sounding like a know-it-all but I’m just hoping you’ll gain from some of my mistakes.

Here goes…

Take the next three months and do nothing but stare at, feed, swaddle, diaper that precious bundle. Do not try and get back into real life. Just be with the baby. The world will be here when you’re ready.

Sleep when she sleeps. Don’t clean the house, make a meal, put laundry in or (man, this hurts) answer email from one of your needy authors about their sales numbers. Go to sleep.

If the breast-feeding thing doesn’t work and you’re both miserable, let it go and send your husband out for some formula. I breastfed both of my girls, but with my first daughter I tortured myself for eight weeks. It was hell and I’m not exaggerating. So if she doesn’t latch on and the breast feeding Nazis are trying to pressure you into keeping at it for weeks and weeks, show them the door and send your husband out for some formula. It’s much more important that the baby bonds with you – a relaxed you – than whether or not they’re nourished with breast milk or formula. Plenty of smart and healthy adults were given formula. And don’t waste one moment of the precious hours of your infant’s first weeks feeling stressed or guilty. On the other hand, if she latches on and starts eating like a rock star (like my younger daughter – I swear the kid would nurse for hours if I’d let her) celebrate with a Guinness (yes, a beer is known to help with lactation) and send your husband out for some of that nipple balm stuff. It really helps. Oh, yeah, did anyone tell you that yet? Nipples crack and bleed the first couple of weeks. Good times. When they hurt, smell the baby’s head. It will help with the pain.

Take as many photos as you want, even though it might feel ridiculous. I mean, can you have too many of the baby sleeping? No, you cannot. Snap away.

Remember that the difficulty of the first three months is temporary. She will eventually sleep through the night. And the first time she smiles at you? All will be forgiven. Oh, and smell her head. A lot.

Trust your instincts. Something about our biology makes us natural mothers, whether we give birth or adopt. We just know things. Don’t question your natural inclinations. You will know what to do. No one knows your child like you do. So dismiss the big mouths and do what you know is right.

Smell the baby’s head.

And when you emerge from the cocoon of the first three to six months, ready to re-engage with the world…

Establish a weekly date night with your husband. Really. Do it. I mean it. You won’t think you need it but you do. And when you sit across the restaurant from him without the baby crying or fussing or being absolutely adorable by cooing and smiling with her great-smelling head, you’ll remember why you love him so much. And loving him is the most important thing you can do for your daughter. I know. I’m divorced.

Find some mommy friends. I say this with caution because although I am currently in the process of giving you advice, there are two kinds of mommy types and one of them must be avoided at all costs. One of them is the advice giver.

Here’s how to spot her. She knows absolutely everything there is to know about mothering: nutrition, nap schedules, discipline, private versus public school, homework routines, whether you should stay at home or work, breast-feeding, – the list goes on – but you get the point. She also thinks her children can do wrong, and are most probably geniuses. She has her children in every activity known to man, just in case they have a talent for one of the arts, a sport that leads to the Olympics, or at the very least a sports scholarship. At first you may be enamored by her, well, ‘super mommyness’, hoping it might rub off on you. So you open up to her. You tell her something that’s bothering you. And immediately out of her mouth comes a litany of advice, and with this so-called well-intentioned advice, comes a lot of judgment, because remember she knows it all. This woman is not your friend; her ammunition through life is to judge and advise; it makes her feel good. But it makes you feel bad. And the truth is, no one will know your child like you do. No one. Not super mommy with her judgments. Not even your mother. You will.

So who are the friends you need? It’s simple. They are as unsure and honest and realistic. When you confess something very imperfect about your parenting or your child, they do not judge you. When you cry in frustration or despair, they put their arms around you. Then, they pour you a glass of wine or take you to coffee. And they say things like, “I know, I get it. Let me tell you what happened this week with us.” They admit they’re unsure a lot too. They will tell you of their children’s struggles, not for advice, but because they need to be heard by someone who understands. These are your real friends. And you’ll need them. Because after your interactions with them, you’ll think, “I’m not alone. It takes a village. I’m a good mother because I’m doing the best I can.”

A true friend listens with their mouth closed and their arms open.

I’m your friend. After this litany of advice, I promise, I’ll never say another word. My arms are open and my mouth is closed. Call me. I’ll always answer.