WEBVTT - An Answer to the Offness 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:08.360 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. One afternoon, I 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:12.760 was listening to Derek DelGaudio, a master of sleight of hand, 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:18.280 on NPR. He talked about secrets, their weight, their heft. 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:23.120 He talked about how carrying them affects your breathing, your speech, 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:27.840 your movements. You have to remember who knows what. You 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:31.440 have to remember which versions of the stories you've told 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.839 and to whom and when. If you tell the truth, 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:40.440 there's nothing to keep straight, nothing to work at. The 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:45.800 truth isn't easy, but it's simple. What I wanted from 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:50.000 my husband was the truth. I asked for it, and 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.480 I waited for it, and eventually I stopped waiting. What 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:58.560 I was given was something different. It was shaped like, 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.080 It's not what you think. It held the weight of 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:06.920 You don't understand. How did I not see the heft? 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:11.000 How did I not hear it? The question I keep 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:15.880 asking myself is the same question we ask about someone 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:25.120 who's good at sleight of hand? How did he do that? 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:30.320 That's Maggie Smith, poet, writer, editor, and teacher. Maggie's is 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:35.600 a story about secrecy and betrayal, deep inner knowing, groundedness, 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.880 and grace. Ultimately, It's the story of a woman coming 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.760 into her own. This episode was recorded in front of 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:47.520 a live audience at the Miami Book Fair at Miami 0:01:47.600 --> 0:02:04.480 Dade College in Miami, Florida. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.480 is Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.240 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:20.400 keep from ourselves. So much of your story has to 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.800 do with the secrets that we keep from ourselves. There 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.359 are other kinds of secrets within it, too, But that 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:30.880 feeling of knowing and yet not being able to apprehend, 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:35.000 not being able to quite touch what's really happening, because 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.960 it's too scary, it's too frightening. 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:39.520 It's too dangerous. 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.000 But I want to start way back at the very beginning. 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:45.720 But the question that I always start with in Family Secrets, 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:49.679 which is tell me about the landscape of your childhood. 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:52.480 There's a line in your book which is, if you 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.480 opened me up, you'd find Ohio. 0:02:55.919 --> 0:03:00.480 It's true, Yeah, the heart of it all, I'll live 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:05.919 in my hometown. Basically, I grew up in central Ohio, 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:12.200 in the Columbus, Ohio area. I'm the oldest of three girls. 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:15.760 I have two younger sisters each two years apart, so 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:20.040 we're stairsteps. My parents still live in the house I 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:23.919 grew up in, and I have Sunday dinner there every Sunday, 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.080 except when I'm at the Miami Book Fair and I 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.880 won't make it back in time for Sunday dinners. I 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:37.880 had honestly a really traditional, blissfully boring childhood. You know, 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:40.720 I was born in seventy seven. I'm a gen xer. 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:44.720 I grew up in the eighties, your parents being able 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.520 to reach you when you were out playing, so we 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.000 would just sort of leave on our bikes in the morning, 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.880 come back at meals kind of scuffed up, and that 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:57.680 was pretty much it. I was bookish, as you can 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:02.080 probably imagine, an introverted, and when I wasn't playing with 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:06.600 my friends, I was either reading, listening to music, or 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:11.200 doing jigsaw puzzles in my bedroom. I was not cool. 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:15.600 It's so much better to get cooler later, wasn't it. 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.640 I mean, yeah, I definitely did not peak early, let's 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:19.520 just put it that way. 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.680 So when you were in that sort of blissfully boring 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:30.360 childhood and this very stable kind of extended family family situation, 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:36.280 how did the feeling of that stability impact you as 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:36.719 a child. 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.720 Honestly, I think it was just sort of the air 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.520 I breathed and the water I swam in, So I 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:47.080 don't think I recognized it as anything special. Now, as 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.560 an adult, I realized there's a sort of novelty to 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.840 having almost my entire extended family live in the same place, 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:59.120 and to all get together, and to have dinners thirteen 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:03.440 people on the weekends. It's not the norm. I think 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:06.360 it's not very twenty first century for sure, and maybe 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:10.279 not very twentieth century in a lot of ways. But 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.200 at the time it didn't seem strange to me, and 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:18.520 in fact, it probably didn't prepare me well for what 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:20.640 my own adult life would would look like. 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:24.560 Did you ever think about leaving or did you always 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:26.400 know that you would stay in Ohio? 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.520 I tried. I guess I would like to be like, no, 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:31.840 I'm so rooted. I never wanted to leave. 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:32.440 I did. 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:38.160 I considered MFA programs very far away from home, and 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:41.560 then a fellowship kept me, kept me in Columbus at 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:46.080 Ohio State, and since then, you know how it is. 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:48.760 You stay someplace and you meet someone, and then you 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:50.720 have kids, and then they're in school and then you 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.760 have a mortgage, and then your parents start aging, and 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:58.200 so I don't think when I was twenty, I didn't 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:02.839 really necessarily imagine my self living in Columbus, Ohio when 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:08.120 I was forty six, But here I am. I met 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:12.400 my husband at Ohio Wesleyan actually, which is where I 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.839 went to undergrad. I would have been nineteen or twenty. 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:20.800 And you were both in a creative writing workshop, that's right. 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:24.080 I think we had a couple of other classes together 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:28.320 in the English department before that class, but that was 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:30.920 the sort of smallest seminar, and that was around the 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:32.440 time that we became good friends. 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:37.000 And did you both know that you wanted futures as 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:38.320 writers at that point? 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.800 I knew when I was in college that I always 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.880 wanted to write, and then I probably always would because 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.039 I had been doing it for, you know, five or 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:51.520 six years already, and it didn't seem like something I 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:55.080 could quit even if I wanted to. I didn't know 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.440 what my work would be, though, and in my mind 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.039 it was still pretty separate. I need to find a 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:05.039 job in the world eventually, and also I'm going to 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.240 be a writer, and it's still kind of strange to me. 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.680 That those things have braided together in the ways that 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:14.840 they have, and I don't know what he thought he 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:15.680 was going to do. 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:16.680 It's interesting. 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:20.840 I mean, being a writer is something that we are, 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:23.320 not something that we aim for. 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:26.000 It's not a career choice. I think. 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.240 I don't think there's a writer out there who would say, 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:30.720 you know, when they were a little kid, that they 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.880 knew that they were going to build their life toward that, 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.520 because how do you know how to do that? 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:41.120 That seems terribly impractical. I'm a Midwesterner. That's not something 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:41.440 we do. 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:46.840 So in a way, it sounds like you initially replicate 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:53.239 that kind of solid family history by choosing the person 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.960 that you were going to be with very young, you know, 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:00.760 very young for your generation, and sticking sticking to him. 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:01.960 Yeah. 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.920 I mean I really did think that what I was 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.360 building would end up looking a lot like what my 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:12.760 parents had in some ways and probably not in others, 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:14.440 because I'm not my mother. 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:17.160 Tell me a little bit about your mother. 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.400 Oh my gosh, she's a firecracker. I love my mom. 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.240 My mom is someone I talked to almost every day. 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:30.400 She married my dad when she was twenty had me 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.280 at twenty four. My sister at twenty six, my other 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:38.040 sister at twenty eight. She was a stay at home 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:41.000 mom until we were old enough to get off the 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:45.079 school bus and get ourselves into the house, and so 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:47.839 she went back to work at some point, but even 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:52.440 then she was still the mom. So if I was sick, 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:55.440 she took care of me. If I needed food, she 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:59.040 made it, If there was laundry to be done, Mom 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:00.679 was the person you TalkTalk to. You if you need 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.280 a permission for something, you clear it with Mom. She 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:08.080 was sort of the CEO. And my dad went to 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:12.440 work every day and was sort of probably blissfully unaware 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:14.400 of most of what was going on. And so if 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:16.720 I wanted to do something I wasn't supposed to do, 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:21.440 I'd ask Dad, right like Mom probably wouldn't say no 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:25.840 because she knows, but Dad doesn't know, so maybe Dad'll 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.640 clear me for this. So he was, I mean, hilarious 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.000 and I'm very close to my dad, but a very 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:37.480 classic arrangement where the caretaking was very much my mother's 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:41.800 job and not my father's. Like I don't think he 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.840 changed a diaper until he had grandkids, and that was 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:47.640 a big deal when he finally did. 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.920 But when you say that you imagined a life that 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:56.280 was somewhat like your mom's but not But you're not 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:00.360 your mom. I think part of what we're talking about 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:04.000 here is that your mom really wanted That was what 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.679 she wanted. Yes, that was that she wanted to be 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:10.400 a wife and a mom and to raise this family. 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.200 And so there was nothing conflicted about that. 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:15.880 No, nothing conflicted at all. I mean, if you asked 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.000 my mom today, what did you want to be when 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:20.680 you grew up, she would say a mom and she 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:23.360 got to do it. So there wasn't that kind of 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:25.959 push and pull. And when she went back to work, 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:28.800 it was because she needed to and because we were 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:30.920 at school all day. But it wasn't because she had 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.319 some grand design on a career. You know, she's recently 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.880 retired and is so happy hanging out with her girlfriends 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:40.440 during the day and like traveling and doing all these things. 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:41.880 And I wish she had just been able to do 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:45.880 more of that. But yeah, I thought I could copy 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:53.120 paste my childhood into my home and have a completely 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.040 different kind of career. By the time my mom had 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.400 three kids at twenty eight, and I had just published 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.880 my first book to finish graduate school and didn't have 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.680 kids and was just getting married then. So the idea 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:10.920 that I could just replicate that template and sort of 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:15.360 overlay it on my life all these years later now 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.600 seems a little naive, But at the time I was like, sure, 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:20.920 it can look exactly like that, except I'll be doing 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:22.679 all these other things too. 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:23.160 Right. 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:27.200 Well, it's such a classic and such a relatable story, 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.560 I think that because how else do we know, right, 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.040 I mean, we can only know what we were raised 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.960 with and what our hopes and dreams might be. And 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:38.720 why can't we quote unquote have it all? 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:44.240 Have it all? 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.600 Maggie and her husband embark on their lives together. She 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.720 finishes graduate school, he goes to law school. Maggie's first 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.920 book comes out, and they move into a house painted 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:59.000 the very optimistic color of Perrywinkle blue. 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.720 I just actually painted the house charcoal gray. It's not 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:08.600 Perrywinkle anymore. So it's like now it's sort of memorialized 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:09.800 as a Periwinkle house. 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:11.479 There's a metaphor in there somewhere. 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:13.920 Isn't there. Yeah, And there's a metaphor in everything. 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:15.520 True. 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:18.960 Tell me about the search for the house, because you 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:22.640 write about that in this book, And there's something that's 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.680 so lovely and hopeful about looking for the place that 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.440 you're going to just start your life as a young adult. 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:30.120 Yeah. 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:33.319 I think my daughter Violet was one when we were 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:37.319 looking for houses because we'd been renting and the woman 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:39.240 we were renting from was putting the house on the 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:41.599 market and we couldn't afford to buy that house. It 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:45.160 was big Victorian and German village in this historic neighborhood, 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:47.760 and so we thought, Okay, now we have to buy 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:49.760 the house in the school district where we think we're 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:52.000 going to send her to kindergarten, even though she's one, 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.240 because that's how you do it, right, you do the thing. 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:56.920 And I thought, well, I still want to live in 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:00.480 a walkable neighborhood because all these years we've lived in 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:04.320 neighborhoods we can walk to a bookstore, a coffee shop, 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:06.680 a post office. You know. I didn't want to replicate 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:08.679 that part of my childhood and be out in the 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:11.680 suburbs and have to get in the car to go anywhere. 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.880 And so it came down to two things. One, we 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.880 visited this house on this street, and the house is 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.400 a very beloved money pit that I continue to work 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.800 on year after year earmarking and moving things around, like 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.760 is it the bathroom year or the roof year. But 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:34.840 I was completely charmed by it because there are like 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:40.160 thirty four windows in my house. It's all glass. The 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:47.120 whole street is a tunnel of sycamores or London plane trees, 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:51.240 which are kind of cousins, and in the summer they 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.840 make this arch of green and so it looks like 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.200 you're driving down this tunnel of trees. And it seems like, 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.400 of course, such a poetic thing to do to buy 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:01.320 a money pit of a house on a street with 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:06.120 a tunnel of sycamore trees. But that's exactly what we did. 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.600 And we also chose that house because it's Caddy corner 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:13.280 across the street from one of my best friends. I 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:17.640 love the house. It's just home. It's a constant project, 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:21.120 but there's lots of light and lots of trees and 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:26.080 friendly dogs and then albino squirrel. And I know it 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:30.280 sounds like I'm snow white. It's not that ucolic. You know. 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.240 Things are constantly breaking, but I love it. 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:55.200 We'll be right back. Prior to this big hopeful move, 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.160 Maggie and her husband are still renting their home in 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:02.800 German Village when Violet is born. After Violet's birth, Maggie 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.520 has an extremely difficult time. She doesn't even realize what 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:10.520 plagues her postpartum depression until she has it for the 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:12.200 second time years later. 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:20.400 I had pretty serious postpartum depression after Violet was born, 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:22.800 and we lived in the house in German Village then, 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:25.800 and I was just a shell of a human being. 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:31.080 I actually cut my maternity leave short because I couldn't 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.760 cope anymore. I actually chose to go back and sit 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:39.360 in a cubicle to just have a different kind of 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:43.200 day than I was having with a colicky child feeling 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:44.120 that bad. 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:47.720 So I wonder, Maggie, you know, is in not knowing, 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:51.560 which I think is so true of people who are 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:56.160 suffering from something that they haven't experienced before. The instinct 0:15:56.280 --> 0:16:00.640 is to think it's my baby's colloquy, or I'm impatient, 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:03.160 or there must be something wrong with me that I'm 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.240 not handling this better, and not to go to the 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:11.320 place of self compassion of maybe there really is something 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.560 going on that isn't my fault. 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.320 Yeah, I think that's right. I remember at one point, 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:19.920 and maybe it was my mother or one of my 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:24.400 sisters said, you don't talk about any of this with 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:29.920 any joy. You seem miserable and stressed out. And I mean, 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:32.840 granted I wasn't sleeping, but no parent sleeps, and a 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.200 lot of them still seem okay. And it didn't occur 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:38.000 to me that the way I was feeling was any 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:41.480 different from what anyone else was feeling. And one of them, 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.080 I remember, said to me, you need to go to 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:46.560 your doctor, like this isn't normal to feel this way, 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:51.360 and I remember saying something like there's no pill for 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:56.320 no sleep and a baby with acid reflux and colic 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.280 and a dairy allergy, like that's just my life and 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.960 there's nothing that anyone can do to make it any different. 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:05.960 But of course that was me speaking from a place 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.879 of not being well. And I know now that no, 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.920 those material aspects of my life would not have changed, 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:15.840 and probably if I had taken a bit of something 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.760 prescribed to me by a medical professional, I would have 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:24.120 been able to manage those bits better, because I then did. 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:25.080 When my son was. 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.200 Born, and that was also a year of not writing. 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:30.879 It was a whole year of not writing, and I 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.199 think about that, I'm like, well, no wonder I was depressed. 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.199 I had a baby. It didn't go the way I 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:39.320 thought it would. I thought, where's my bundle of joy? 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.480 This child screams at me all the time. I feel 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.040 like screaming all the time, but have the decency not to. 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:50.280 The poems are not happening. My husband is in law school, 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:56.120 and that's very demanding on his time. Even having family support, 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:58.439 even being in a place where I had lots of 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.440 people checking on me and coming over, bringing soup and 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.120 doing all the things. I couldn't get to a place 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:09.919 where anything was cooking up there for a year. 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:14.480 Which is a vicious cycle, right, because I think for writers, 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:19.359 for poets, that feeling of It's one of my favorite 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:22.280 quotes from Joan Didion in her essay y I write, 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:24.840 if I had the remotest access to my own mind, 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:26.359 I never would have become a writer. 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:29.400 I write in order to understand. 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.399 What I think, what I feel, what I fear. And 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:35.560 there's no other path, there's no other way to get 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.040 at that. So to be feeling all that and not 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:42.560 have the tool to not be the instrument of being 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:44.919 able to do that kind of work is just a 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.040 prescription for disaster. 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:49.520 Yeah, I think about that now. And I'm like, why 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.960 wasn't I even journaling through that time? And I really wasn't. 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:56.040 The only writing I think I even have to this 0:18:56.160 --> 0:19:02.280 day from that first year are lists, like nerotic lists 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.240 of when she slept or didn't sleep, what she ate, 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:10.439 and how much the color of her poop, because this 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.719 is what we do with newborns, you know. I just 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:18.200 was sort of like looking for patterns in anything she did, 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:23.640 thinking that if I can just find this pattern that, 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:26.520 like if she eats this and this, then she'll sleep, 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:28.800 if she does this and this, if I do this 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:31.679 then this, looking for some way to make sense of 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:35.640 it all. And it was just lists and charts and 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:38.919 nothing of any import really. 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:42.600 You know, in reading your book, I was experiencing it 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:51.399 as this kind of slow erosion of identity, of intimacy, 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:56.520 of both intimacy in your marriage but intimacy with yourself. 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:57.400 Yeah. 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:01.040 So there's this, there's this period of which you go 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:05.040 through this postpartum depression. Then you move into the Periwinkle 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:12.359 House and you suffer two miscarriages. Yeah, in trying to 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.960 have another child and for Violet to have a sibling. 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:21.560 Yeah, And of course I didn't know until after my 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:26.480 son was born, and I had postpartum depression again. I thought, 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:29.399 what are the odds? And he was colicky again and 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:31.760 had asked reflux, and I thought, what are the odds 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:34.439 that lightning will strike twice? Surely it will be different 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.919 the second time. And it was not. And I only 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.400 found out later that, you know, miscarriage is a huge 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:48.800 sort of predisposing condition for postpartum because of course it is. 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:51.320 I mean, being pregnant three times in a year and 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:55.880 a half does pretty wild things to your hormones and 0:20:55.960 --> 0:21:01.119 also your grieving and terrified, and so the even the 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.440 sort of joy of pregnancy of even finally getting pregnant 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.680 and thinking is this going to stick? Is this going 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:15.400 to happen? I never relaxed that entire you know, ten months, 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:19.120 I never relaxed. Every day I woke up and thought, 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:20.840 this is the day. There's not going to be a heartbeat, 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.200 this is the day. There's going to be blood, this 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:27.359 is the day. And so it really it changed me 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:32.639 in ways I probably can't even articulate or understand myself. 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:36.600 It made me a very fearful person. I didn't trust 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:41.399 my body, and I didn't trust my mind. You know, 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:43.359 I didn't know what kind of mom I would be 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:48.000 the second time around, because I knew what happened the 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:51.840 first time, and so when rhet was born, it didn't 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:55.480 take very long for things to go downhill. And the 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:59.879 difference was I went to the doctor and it got better. 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:03.040 And that also gave me a little bit of regret 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:07.000 I would say about what didn't happen the first time, 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:09.160 because I thought, God, I didn't have to feel that way. 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:11.280 I didn't have to go through that. 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:16.480 There's a point where you realize that you become more 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:21.600 mom than wife. And it was also a period. You 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:23.399 didn't write this, but it was my sense that you 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:26.960 became more mom than poet, more mom than Maggie. 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.639 Yes, that became my primary identity. And I think there 0:22:30.640 --> 0:22:35.840 are probably people listening who can relate to that sort 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:40.199 of eclipsing of the self that happens, particularly when your 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:45.359 children are small and need you for everything, including food, 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:50.960 like you are the person keeping them alive, and that 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:56.680 kind of daily, ongoing responsibility sort of shoves everything else 0:22:56.760 --> 0:23:01.560 into the margins of the page, I suppose, And of 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:04.440 course I think this happens in marriages. You know some 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:09.120 of the and I you know, I think in general 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:12.080 my writing and my children are the greatest blessings of 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:15.800 my life. I feel both of them are sort of 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:19.960 miraculous to me. I in some ways have no idea 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:22.800 how that all happened. I mean, I know how it happened, 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:27.000 but I really in some ways don't. Like these human 0:23:27.080 --> 0:23:29.879 beings live here now in my house and have their 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:32.960 own personalities in their own lives, and these pieces of 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:37.159 writing like come to me, like occur to me, and 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:39.879 then grow and unfold, and all of this still seems 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:44.880 very much like magic to me. That the greatest blessings 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:47.080 of my life. And I think they're also the things 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:53.200 that were hardest on my partnership in a lot of ways, 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:58.520 and probably because of the demands on my time right 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:01.120 and not just but bandwidth. 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.760 During these years of young motherhood when Maggie's kids are little, 0:24:09.280 --> 0:24:11.720 she has a job as an editor. Her husband is 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:14.399 working long hours as an associate in a law firm. 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:17.359 There's not a lot of time for her real work, 0:24:17.640 --> 0:24:21.440 which is writing poems. She writes whenever she can grab 0:24:21.480 --> 0:24:24.840 the time, in coffee shops, late at night, in the 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:29.840 school pickup line, the car. One day, when Violet and 0:24:29.920 --> 0:24:34.200 Redd are seven and three, Maggie writes a poem titled 0:24:34.520 --> 0:24:38.960 good Bones, and that poem changes everything. 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:43.560 I had a preschooler who was going off to part 0:24:43.600 --> 0:24:46.640 time preschool a couple days a week where I could 0:24:46.640 --> 0:24:49.760 get a little writing done, and I think I was 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:53.959