Ten days before you were born, I wrote something on the back of an envelope that had been sitting on the side table in our bedroom.
“I can feel my brain changing. Is it permanent?”
I couldn’t know in that moment that the answer to the question was yes. Yes, in fact, Jeanne, your brain is changing and it’s a transformation that will alter everything from when you wake up to how you architect your days, and which will likely last forever.
But it may not be what you're thinking, son. Or more than what you're thinking.
The thoughts I jotted down hinted at what you might call “creative writing,” though no one would probably have said as much if they happened upon the envelope. Plus, I simply never wrote for myself, never wrote anything outside of my job as a journalist at that time.
Something was burning inside of me, dear Leo, but I didn’t know it was the need to be writing anything and everything, all the time. Or that this need, this vocation, would accompany me throughout maternity leave and the first years of your life so much so that I would come to see July 9, 2012 as the day you were born and the day my writing life was reborn. A twinned birth -- the two passions that saved me.
Indeed, writing would become an obsession during maternity leave when -- trust me -- I sometimes needed a break from the new love of my life! (That's you). Writing, in fact, anchored my first year as a working mom. It quickly became my escape; more than that: a necessity. If I had free time I wanted to write. A notebook became -- along with you! -- my constant companion. I wrote everywhere; in the car while snarled in traffic and when you were snoozing, in parking lots. I can even remember writing in church on Easter Sunday in the first year of motherhood. A tectonic shift was taking place. Until then, I'd always confined my writing life to my dayjob as a journalist.
But let's go back to that original thought -- that my brain was changing.
But it may not be what you're thinking, son. Or more than what you're thinking.
The thoughts I jotted down hinted at what you might call “creative writing,” though no one would probably have said as much if they happened upon the envelope. Plus, I simply never wrote for myself, never wrote anything outside of my job as a journalist at that time.
Something was burning inside of me, dear Leo, but I didn’t know it was the need to be writing anything and everything, all the time. Or that this need, this vocation, would accompany me throughout maternity leave and the first years of your life so much so that I would come to see July 9, 2012 as the day you were born and the day my writing life was reborn. A twinned birth -- the two passions that saved me.
Indeed, writing would become an obsession during maternity leave when -- trust me -- I sometimes needed a break from the new love of my life! (That's you). Writing, in fact, anchored my first year as a working mom. It quickly became my escape; more than that: a necessity. If I had free time I wanted to write. A notebook became -- along with you! -- my constant companion. I wrote everywhere; in the car while snarled in traffic and when you were snoozing, in parking lots. I can even remember writing in church on Easter Sunday in the first year of motherhood. A tectonic shift was taking place. Until then, I'd always confined my writing life to my dayjob as a journalist.
But let's go back to that original thought -- that my brain was changing.
In the days before you were born, I often had prodigious amounts of energy. Although the word "prodigious," the way it conveys industry, hardly seems right – a form of mania was what I was feeling. I was almost possessed at times. One night, I jotted down this thought at 4 a.m.: “Look at the time! I have too much energy. I know it’s hard to believe that could ever be a curse but I find it to be just that. Perhaps because there does not appear to be an “off” switch! I have more energy than sense right now.”
This burst of energy and this sudden mania for writing only served to thicken the plot, since pregnancy is nothing short of an insane journey. (Just imagine, dear Leo, if you can, a creature kicking the inside of your stomach. Do you have that sensation in your head?)
This burst of energy and this sudden mania for writing only served to thicken the plot, since pregnancy is nothing short of an insane journey. (Just imagine, dear Leo, if you can, a creature kicking the inside of your stomach. Do you have that sensation in your head?)
But however you slice it, I will never not see the two things twinned, bound, married to each other. I owe my writing career to you because you awakened me from a deep creative slumber. Perhaps just a slumber in general, as if I were living my life with the flag at half-mast.
What in the heck am I talking about? Well, I’ll tell you all about it. But first, here’s that first entry, transcribed from the back of the envelope into a computer file:
June 30, 2012 (~ten days before Leo is born)
I can feel my brain changing. Is it permanent? Is it only because of the hormones or am I finally beginning to care only about what’s essential?
Is my brain improving?
My concentration is acute. I keep thinking of the phrase, ‘The rough places made smooth.’ It’s as though obstacles haven’t been so much surmounted as removed by the person who planted them in the first place (me). I feel as though the impossible is now slightly less so.
Oh and one more thing: time moves more slowly. I busy myself in some activity, and when I look at the clock hardly any time has elapsed. Now how could that be?!
Oh and one more thing: time moves more slowly. I busy myself in some activity, and when I look at the clock hardly any time has elapsed. Now how could that be?!
-30-
