.SOMETIMES RAW.

Last night, I was putting my son to bed…

Before that, we spent half an hour in our sauna, and he is usually pretty tired after. But when he was in bed and I kissed him goodnight, nine-year-old Joel drowsily asked, “Want to lie down and chat for a bit?” I was secretly thinking how excited I was to read my Nora Ephron book “I remember nothing” and almost declined. And of course, it would have been fine for me to say no – it was already 9:00 p.m. and we had spent the whole long weekend together. Plus, my book!

But, suddenly, I remembered something else I’d recently read: The Emotional Lives of Teenagers by Lisa Damour, PhD. In her brilliant guide, she explains the importance of letting kids “call the meeting” — in other words, they should be able to decide when they open up about their feelings, their emotions, and their lives. Instead of parents always asking The Big Questions at the dinner table, when kids might be tired or not in the mood, we can wait for each child to invite us in, whether that’s in the car, at bedtime, or whenever they’re ready to share.

Here’s an excerpt from Damour’s book:

“Of course there’s nothing wrong with greeting our teens at the end of the day with a friendly ‘How was school?’ But we should be prepared for that conversation to go nowhere. Why? Because teenagers, at their very core, are autonomy-seeking creatures. When we ask a teenager about his day at a moment that works for us, we are in effect calling him to a meeting for which we ourselves has set both the time and the agenda… The same teen who stays at a distance during the day may pull up close at night. When this happens, let’s remember that we’re being called to a meeting we want to attend.”

Yes! As Joel invited me to stay and talk, I remembered this advice and changed my answer. “Sure, I’d love to,” I told him. “Scooch over.”

For the next 20 minutes, we lay together in the dark, stars above us, and he poured out his sweet heart. We talked about his hopes and dreams; our pre-Austria life in Canada where we spent so much time at his favourite playground and had tons of caramel ice cream; we played a funny numbers game; he shared all sorts of musings. It was a precious time together, and I’m so, so glad I attended his meeting.

So, I wondered as I headed to bed afterwards, how do we encourage kids to seek us out as listening ears? “By being around,” writes Damour. “Over time, I have come to think that teenagers feel most at ease when they know where their folks are, in much the same way that securely attached toddlers keep track of their parents’ movements around the house even as they pursue their activities. Further, having us nearby means that teenagers can readily talk with us about the topics they care about when, for them, the moment strikes.”

In order to be around, one of her friends reads in the same room as his teenage daughter as she does her homework; another folds laundry next to her kids watching TV. “For my part, I save my customarily drawn-out kitchen cleaning for times I know my girls are going to be home,” says Damour. “In this way, I am available, utterly interruptible, and right in their traffic pattern, just in case they have a sudden urge to talk.”

Smart, right? Any other insights you’ve learned along the way? I love hearing thoughtful tips, especially as my boy approaches his teenage years.

What always works for us is when I at least once a day, look him in the eye, smile and tell him, ‘I love you.’

“How old are you again?” my son asked me the other night. “Mommy, are you old?” I am 41, so maybe a little bit?

Sometimes I see an old photo of myself or glance in the mirror and realize I didn’t change that much over the years. Tiny wrinkles (from laughing so much) that appear out of nowhere but no grey hair. My elbow is sometimes doing something weird. Not really sure what is going on there. But overall, if this means getting older, it is all good. It is natural. On another note, I don’t understand Snapchat. Technically or philosophically. College students look like babies to me. Like, tiny infants who should be rocked to sleep in a bassinet.

What I like about ageing:

I feel comfortable in my body. I don’t mind that my arms are a little soft. My body can take my kid on bike rides and kiss and tap tap tap on the computer. I love laugh lines; they exist because of all the times you’ve laughed at funny things. And frown lines are good for freaking children out just enough at bedtime.

I still feel really young. Maybe everyone does? “I’ve never got used to the Queen being grown up,” writes Margaret Atwood in Cat’s Eye. “Whenever I see her cut-off head on the money, I think of her as fourteen years old… The Queen has had grandchildren since, discarded thousands of hats, grown a bosom and (heresy to think it) the beginning of a double chin. None of this fools me. She’s in there somewhere, that other one.”

You learn things over the years. That hard work pays off. That I look good in bangs. How to listen. Which gelato flavour to order (i.e., the poppy seed flavour sounds like the worst but is actually the best).

I have mantras. I used to lie awake beating myself up at night about how I might have done some random thing (socially, work-related, parenting, etc.) better or differently. I wouldn’t be able to get over it. Now I think, “I’m learning,” and it feels productive and calming, and nine times out of ten, I’m able to put it (and myself) to bed.

I understand how much older ladies can sit by the window and remember the past. You’re all your ages within one body. It feels good.

Life goes in chapters. Sometimes you feel stuck or lost or heartbroken, but things always change. I’ve been a bookish little girl; a karate-loving teenager; a college student in love; a miserable statistics student; an anxious twentysomething searching for a path; a happy friend; a blissed-out newlywed; an exhausted new mother; an early forty-something woman writing this post. Hard times can feel endless, but they always always end. Who knows what lies ahead?

Based on current celebrity beauty standards:

The goals are clear: you need to look like you’re in your twenties until you’re thirty-five, then look thirty-five until you’re dead. Also, regardless of age or retirement eligibility, all women should have supple, lineless skin with no evidence of sunspots, muscle movement, or laughter. The only indication that you’ve been on Earth long enough to outlive a household pet should be the look in your eyes, which peer wearily out of your flawless, youthful face like a haunted doll.

To get specific about various body parts: boobs, obviously, should be perpetually high and firm, lips full and plump (with the help of Botox!), and your hair long and flowing with the aid of extensions, even as you enter an assisted living facility, where it will invariably get tangled with your breathing equipment and other life-prolonging devices, which would be annoying if you were not so successful clutching to the hallmarks of youth with steadfast determination.

But be careful how you cling. Hands and necks are a dead giveaway that you might have vivid memories of the New Kids on the Block, or worse, Studio 54, so you need to do whatever you can to take care of that whole situation. Hand transplant, neck power blasting, the surgical attachment of permanent, elbow-length gloves – don’t be afraid to get drastic. Just go to your local med spa or plastic surgeon, and say, “Help, the passage of time is evident on my body!”

It is also important to e mindful of changing beauty trends, so you don’t inadvertently age yourself by trying to look young in the old way. For example, right now, filler-plumped, sexy balloon faces are out; skeletal, ageless vampire faces are in. So while just a few years ago, you may have paid some doctor to inject a bunch of goop into your cheeks until you looked like a beautiful, hairless chipmunk, you now need to have that goop sucked out of your cheeks ASAP, so you can look like, well, I guess, whatever the reverse of a chipmunk is. A gazelle? An anteater?

Anyway, it is important to note that even if you follow this advice and update your body as often as you update your phone’s operating system, the thing about ageing as a woman -just like all things related to being a woman – is that there are many, many ways to do it wrong. In fact, you have probably aged incorrectly already. Did you not get preventative Botox in elementary school? Did you get so much Botox you were once mistaken for dead or so much Botox in your lips that someone might have mistaken them for suction cups? Are you not uncanny enough, to the point of normally walking around, for everyone to see, looking like a human woman who has maybe birthed children, frowned at some point, or been in the sun at least once? Did you furrow your brow while reading any of these questions? Uh-oh, another burgeoning flaw to fix.

If this all seems exhausting and impossible, rest assured: it is. You are not imagining it. But take solace in the fact that, one day, things will be easier. Eventually, society will progress and finally ditch unrealistic expectations for women’s looks, or, alternatively, some tech-bro startup will figure out the science required to turn women into walking, occasionally talking, 3-D photo filters. I hope being a filter isn’t too expensive. But then again, I know I won’t spend money on neck and anti-wrinkle face transplants.

What about you? How old are you? Do you feel that age? Funnily enough, I’m actually looking forward to turning 42.

One of the questions I am asked most is, how do I read as much as I do? Sometimes it’s mere curiosity, sometimes the query is tinged with frustration. You have a child, a house, and a huge garden, ffs.

I get it. It is irritating to see someone do so much of something that you feel you have no time for. I feel similarly riveted and envious when I see people on Insta having the time to do their hair so nicely every day or the time to go to pilates so often. So I am going to try and answer this question as fully and honestly as I can while musing on this idea of time and why reading is somehow seen as a more productive use of it than other hobbies.

Historically, I have shied away from answering this question, because to answer it would be to acknowledge that yes, I do read a lot. And that to do so might imply that I think I am smart, or diligent, or – perish the thought – well read. I actually don’t think I am particularly well-read, btw. I read a lot, but have enormous gaps in my literary education. But pretending I don’t read a lot is like pretending I go spinning every day. It is an intractable truth.

I have read voraciously – at times, obsessively – since I was tiny. I took a book into every classroom, and I read in queues and during meals and on the toilet and on the bus/train home from a night out. As a child, my mother would take me to the library and we would get out the maximum 14 books. I could easily read for 8 hours a day, aged 9. I fucking loved it. I still fucking love it. I am easily over-stimulated, I have a racing brain, and reading takes me out of myself. It is my self-care, my meditation, my way to find an equilibrium in order to face the world. The novelist Emma Straub puts it perfectly:

My love for books arrived pre-memory. There is no before. Books were always my stalwart companions, my escape hatches, my private joys.

Reading a lot I can do. Reading is perhaps the only thing I know I can do. It is no more a skill – something I burnish and work at or feel proud of – than it is part of me. As the writer reader Zadie Smith observed in 2011 of her bibliomania:

For me, being a reader, in summer or at any other time, isn’t a “lifestyle choice.” Rather, I made the choice—if that’s what it was—so long ago, it has taken on an inescapable character in my mind. I think that if I were a very good swimmer, I would be proud to be so, but being proud of being a reader, in my case, is like being proud you have feet.

So yes, bestow up me no praise for simply doing a lot of something I like doing and I wish it would be even a part of my work. I get most of my writings for this blog or my books done after work. My work is a great playground to collect stories by simply watching people and listening to stories. I will take written or mental notes and work on the fineprint at home. As for where I find the time to read – in lieu of giving you an hourly breakdown of my week I will offer you these transparencies (not!!! tips).

• I do not have a regular exercise routine. And when I exercise, I usually listen to books on my phone. I love audiobooks while jogging.
• Cold outside: I read. Warm outside: I read. Snowstorm outside: Cozied up inside with hot chocolate and I read. You get the picture.
• I do not keep many (social media) apps on my phone, not because I am holier than thou, but because it makes me a jittery mess and I hate the time it eats. That saves me, say, 30 mins a day? I know someone who spends HOURS on Twitter. (That’s a very conservative estimate, I’d hazard.)
• I do not really cook, except for maybe once or twice a week. I heat. Cheese sandwiches in the sandwich maker, quiche, pasta, soup. I do not labour over my food for more than 20 mins and in the division of our household labour, my son helps me cook. (while I read to him, ha!)
• I read anytime I travel anywhere. Train, car, bus, plane – I make a point of getting out a book.
• I watch Netflix only a few nights a week (this is an insomnia thing as much as a reading thing) and I rarely go out. At least 3 nights a week I either read or write when my kid is in bed. Usually for 2/3 hours a night – which, as I am a fast reader, can be the bulk of a 300-page book. 
• There was a very stressful time in my life a couple of years ago and insomnia has caused me tremendous amounts of stress and exhaustion and resulted in a veritable shit ton of reading. In a bad bout, I may have slept for only one or two hours a night, which can easily make for a book a night. Not very healthy, I know but these times are over.

This is how I rack up the hours. It is not the right way to live a life, it’s just the way I live mine. So why does reading come with the moral signifiers that other hobbies do not – the signifiers that make so many people feel bad when they are not doing it? It is partly due to articles like this, with their somewhat flattening headlines on how reading makes you a better person. 

To be clear, I do think reading brings enormous benefits. It is a wonderful way to learn about the world and develop compassion, as well as language. I hope my child loves reading (I think he does) – but not because I think it will make him a worthier person than if he doesn’t.

When I hear people with young kids tell me they haven’t read a book for two years and they desperately want to, but how can they?? I hear someone who doesn’t need to read to get to sleep (lucky fuckers). I hear someone, perhaps, who likes scrolling through their phone, or watching Netflix every evening, or listening to a podcast series long into the night, or cooking something slow and delicious with a glass of wine in their hand while jazz plays softly in the background. (I want to be that person) I hear someone, in other words, who has found other ways to feed themselves.

I think, when it comes to our disposable hours, we make time for the things we want to do. I read because it is what I want to do, frequently to the exclusion of other things. I may think that I want to get into a solid pilates routine, or cook a meal out of a cookbook, or go to more gallery openings and museums, but in reality, I only want to want to. I will find ways, as I always do, to not do the other stuff, so that I can find time to read. So if you want to want read, don’t force it. As long as you are finding ways to nourish yourself, cut yourself some slack. Screw the books! Do what makes you happy.

We all have stuff we want to want to do. Sometimes we just have to go for it. This little something that makes up happy. And maybe when you finally make headway through the book cleaved to the surface of your nightstand, I’ll finally commit to a thrice-weekly pilates routine, and my reading will, with its big girl panties on, take a backseat for a while.