I think so. And it seems that the majority of you think I should give it a try, this unplugging thing.

I guess we will see how it goes, because starting tomorrow, August 1, I will be unplugging in a big way. No writing this blog, no reading other blogs, no Facebook update consumption or creation, no Tweeting. Only some light email-checking here and there to make sure I don’t miss an important Kindergarten announcement or alienate someone I love.

My gut is that this will be hard. At first. That I will twitch a bit from my self-imposed inability to come here and muse on life and love, that I will have urges to scroll through your updates and tweets and fashion my own, that I will reach for my iPhone in moments of silence or exacerbation.

But. My hope is that with a bit of practice, I will settle in. To a more liquid life with my little creatures. To lazy mornings full of big coffee cups and big cuddles, to days full of sunshine and smiles and family. To whatever it is that happens (or doesn’t happen) when we actually allow ourselves to stop, think, and be.

Okay, I’m not going to lie… I had a bit of a pre-cyber-cleanse panic yesterday and signed up to participate in Susannah Conway’s amazing August Break one-photo-per-day blogging carnival. I figured pre-loading a month’s worth of photos wouldn’t be cheating, right? But then, circa 9:40pm last night, as I was horizontal on the sectional, cloaked in a dreamy post-Pinkberry haze, watching Olympic swimming with my main man, I decided – and I think rightly, too – that said participation in said community blogging effort would be fun of course, but would also go against the spirit of the pure, total, unblemished unpluggedness I now seek (and, let’s be honest, fear).

Unpluggedness.

Not a word, you say? Alas. We shall add it to the ADR Fictionary.

♥

I hope you all have a wonderful, story-filled month. *See* you in September!

Sometimes, I have this imaginary conversation with an imaginary friend who is days from giving birth to her first child. In this fictional scenario, we are huddled at a small table in a coffee shop and she, my fictional friend who is about to pop, shifts uncomfortably in her wooden chair and plucks errant blueberry muffin crumbs from her cleavage.

She asks me for advice. Because I have been there, and three times now, and my kids seem to her healthy and happy. To her, I am a relatively seasoned member of the Mother Species and she wants me to share the secrets. She asks me one question as she traces small circles around her bulging belly button, just one part of her anatomy that will never be the same.

What’s the one thing I need to know?

She asks me this question while fixing me with her eyes, eyes that shimmer with excitement and fear and anticipatory love. I can tell that she is literally hungry for information, for a piece of wisdom that will work to sate and to soothe, for a little gem that will get her through. She clutches her belly, a belly that is powerful in its roundness, a belly that is full of life, a belly that will be empty so soon.

And everything about this scene makes me smile. The coffee shop full of strangers seeking caffeine and connection. My friend – puffy but beautiful too, full of an intelligent and endearing panic I recognize. Her question – foolish in its simplicity, gorgeous in its gall.

And my mind does its jig, rumbling with all the bits I have learned – secrets about strollers and swaddles, secrets about nursing pillows and boob tents, secrets about the magic of meeting other new moms and believing only half of what they say (something about fresh motherhood makes us candy-coat the early days), but as all of these things flit through my mind, a single sentence arrives. A simple sentence. One that is stark and undeniably true. Bitter. Unsweetened. Like the coffee I drink.

She leans in, my friend, as if she knows I have it, the secret to share.

Parenthood is hard, I say.

She shrinks a bit in her chair, no doubt deflated. But I am quick to elaborate, fired up now:

Here’s the thing. One day you are a person with a belly and then suddenly you are a person with a baby. And you will love that baby in a way that you can neither fathom nor articulate. This love will be fierce in essence, something that grips you and guides you. You will want, and immediately, to get it right. You will want to be good at this, this elusive thing you are suddenly and desperately immersed in doing, this nurturing of a tiny creature you have created. And you will quickly realize that there is no Right. There are people who will say things. There are books that will say things. All of these things will commingle and conflict and conspire to confuse you.

You will cry. From joy. From crippling fear. From exhaustion. You will have moments when you feel alive and invincible, when your instincts are golden and then you will have moments when you are a puddle, when the baby is crying and you are too and it is dark outside and morning seems like it will never come. But it will come. It always does.

It’s not just the early days either. The days when your milk is coming in, or not coming in, when you are shredded with fatigue and lost in a wilderness of hormones and change. It’s all the days after, too. They will be hard. They will be stuffed with moments of confusion and guilt and piercing love. They will be full of questions and conundrums and frustrations and fears, but they will also be laced with the most incredible sense of satisfaction that you are doing important and invaluable work. Work that is, if you are doing it honestly, if you are doing it “right”, hard.

When I finish my hushed-but-heated monologue on motherhood, I am surprised by something: My fictional friend is smiling. And this baffles me and delights me in equal measure.

Thank you, she says. Maybe this sounds kind of crazy, but I am looking forward to the struggle.

And her words, to me, don’t sound crazy at all. They sound honest. They sound real. For one delicious moment, I imagine a world where we women, we moms and almost-moms and non-moms, have coffee and muffins and talk instead of casting dispersions and judging. A world where Maternity Leave is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, where some of us stay home and some of us go to an office, but all of us, each and every one of us, works and hard.  A world where we acknowledge, tacitly, triumphantly, truly, the work that we are doing – individually, collectively, imperfectly, lovingly. The work that we are doing well, and not so well sometimes. A world where we are humble and reverent and real about the fact that when it comes to parenthood, and to life, really, most of us are trying. And hard.

It’s getting dark outside, in my dream world, as day dips toward night, and we stand to go. I throw my arms around my friend, capturing her in an awkward and abiding hug. And I feel it, a twinge of something between envy and empathy, a tiny taste of the magical murkiness she’s about to muddle through.

Good luck, I say.

Thanks, she says, her smile wild and wide, and then she takes my hand, puts it on her belly. And I feel it, a pointy little something, rolling along the surface of her skin.

I think it’s her elbow!, she says, her beautiful eyes brimming with a breed of awe I know oh so well.

Do you agree that parenthood is both wonderful and hard? What advice do you have (from the super-practical to the super-philosophical) for parents-to-be? What do you wish someone had told you about parenthood before you became a parent? Why do you think we women are so quick to judge each other and the choices we make (and don’t make) vis-a-vis motherhood?

We are all busy creatures. For better or worse – okay for worse – that seems to be part and parcel of modern life. But what are we actually doing? Are we working toward goals that matter to us? Are we acting thoughtfully to become better people, and professionals, and parents? Or are we just flitting around the cosmos, full of blustery and blurry motion?

Stop. Think. Ask.

Are you truly acting? Or just moving around? Do questions like these make you uncomfortable for some reason?

Where does beauty come from? When do we first become acquainted with this concept? When does it come to dominate our decisions and our visions, or does it? Do some of us escape concerns about being beautiful and having beautiful things and carving a beautiful life better than others? Is this escape even a good thing?

Middle Girl is aware. Of beauty. She looks at herself in the mirror, makes little faces. When I put her clothes on, she remarks that her dress is pretty. When I am wearing earrings, she pulls my hair aside and smiles, I like them. Your earrings. When we go out outside, she looks up, and around, and says, Look, Mommy. It’s a beautiful day.

Her older sister never did this. She is observant, and wildly so, but in a different way. She doesn’t spend time in front of the mirror (or as much time), she doesn’t comment on my clothes or the brilliance of the day. She notices other things – how her sister’s toy stroller has a wiggly handle or how the pantry has lost “electrishitty”… Ultimately, she seems oblivious to questions of appearance and beauty. So far.

Anyway. Not sure where this is going exactly, but I am thinking today about beauty, about where and when it’s born, about why some of us are so fixated on it, about how it can be that two girls raised by the same parents in the same home can have such different views of things…

When did you become aware of the concept of beauty? When did your kids become aware of it? As parents and people, how much should beauty matter or not matter? Do you think on some level Middle Girl is just differentiating herself from her big sis, or do you think she’s just a different creature and essentially so?

I have four sisters. I now have three girls of my own. I am 99.999% sure our brood is complete.

I’m not sure why, but I’m endlessly fascinated by the question of how many: How many kids? How many kids do people have or want or long for? How many kids did people have in their family growing up and how did this affect their desires for their own future family? How many people want zero kids, none at all, and why? How many people want as many kids as they possibly can have physically and afford financially, and why?

Is there a right number of kids? Is it irresponsible to have too many? Is it selfish to have none? Is it desirable, and somehow morally sound, to have a moderate number of progeny?

I have no answers here. I’m just curious. Curious enough to ask all of you.

How many kids do you have? How many do you want? If you do not want children, why not? If you do want children, why? Do you think some people should have more kids and some people fewer? Do you think there are any hard and fast rules here? How did the size of the family you grew up in affect (or not affect) your visions of your current or future family?

A few weeks ago, Husband and I gave my dear friend M a ride back from the wedding we all attended in Saratoga, New York to her childhood home. M needed to go back there to pack up her things; after more than twenty years, her parents have sold the home.

I was so happy to have a chance to see this home one more time. I have so many memories – of soccer camp sleepovers, of Larry Bird letters, of bee stings and dodged rocks, of swallowed dimes, of meals under the veranda, of birthday parties, of a beautiful and perfect wedding on my thirtieth birthday where I was the solo bridesmaid and weeks shy giving birth.

We stayed for a short while at M’s house, but I made sure to run around and snap a few pictures – to send to M, to keep for myself, to remember. The picture above is of the tiny powder room. The walls are papered in magazine and newspaper clippings and I’ve always admired the room, its cheekiness, its spunk, its slicing color and liveliness.

Husband and I said goodbye to M and her parents out front before heading back to the city. And as I said goodbye to them, these creatures who are family to me, I had a view of the wonderful white house in the background. And it made me sad to think I might never see the house again, or spend time in it at least. It also made me thankful for the time I had there, the moments that have stained my mind, and most of all, for the girl that house produced.

M is now pregnant with her second kid. And I’m so happy that little guy or girl had a chance to spend a little time, albeit cocooned, in that beautiful home where his/her mommy grew up.

Tell me about your childhood home or your best friend’s childhood home. Are these places you still visit? Have you had to pack up your past?

I am considering pressing pause for the month of August to spend oodles of unplugged time with the three people above. What do you think?

Do you ever worry about how your online life affects your off-line existence? I am working on an article about this very topic, namely how spending so much time online affects parenthood and person-hood, so please paste links to any and all posts, articles, studies and books you know of that speak to this question!

Believe me. I know. It’s hard to begin things. It’s hard because we don’t know where to start.

But the truth is that beginning well, as Aristotle says, is often half the work. Often if we just decide to start, things will fall into place. The story will come together. Dots will connect. And before we know it, an end will be in sight.

I guess I am just realizing how different so many of our lives would be if we weren’t so scared. To commit ourselves to something exciting and uncertain. To say screw it, I’m going to try this. To look failure in the face and say: Bring it. I can handle you.

Yup, this is a pep-talk of sorts. For all of you.

Mainly, selfishly, for me.

Do you ever think how different your life would be if you were less risk-averse, more willing to begin things, even things at which you might fail? Any clue how to instill in our little creatures the boldness to begin?

My good friend. She made partner in her law firm months ago. And guess what? She just quit her job. That’s right. Made partner and up and quit.

I’m so proud of her.

I’m proud because she didn’t like her job and she’s been talking about leaving it for years. She has two young kids and has been suffering from terrible headaches for more than two years. She attended her daughter’s preschool graduation and had an epiphany that went something like this: Where did the last five years go?

My friend started this job right after her daughter was born. And the last five years have blurred by. And my friend said that realization was the final straw. She gave her notice. And, yes, obviously she had the financial, existential, and emotional wherewithal to make this move.

And I am proud, and wildly supportive, of her choice but I can only suppose that not everyone is, or will be. I imagine she will face the predictable chorus of prudence, the sinister swirl of voices. I imagine, though confident, she will have moments of doubt and fear and what in the world did I just do?

And all of this has me thinking about happiness, what it is, and how much it has to do with other people. Can we only be truly happy if we drown out the oft-conflicting voices that swell around us? And is this even possible, to narrow our focus on the self when there is so much other to contend with?

I don’t pretend to know. I do know one thing though: I am inspired by my friend for waking up and honoring herself and her own sense of happiness by making a bold, and in my mind beautiful, decision. These are the decisions that are never easy. But sometimes it is hard that brings the best reward.

Do you think that in order to be happy we must ignore others? Is it even possible to do this? Is the goal to only let others and their opinions affect us so much? Have you ever made a hard but worth-it personal or professional decision?

At the rehearsal dinner before our wedding, there were speeches. Wonderful, thoughtful, booze-fueled, speeches. And there was a theme, a word rather, that carried through said speeches: hot.

Yes, Husband is hot. I’m not going to lie and tell you that this fact did not play a critical role in our late-night bar encounter ten years ago. He was hot then. He is hot now. He is even hotter now. Why? Because he is a dad. A dad to my girls.

There is nothing more sexy than seeing my man with my girls. I can’t describe it, but it’s true. Witness Evidence A above. In this shot, Husband is kayaking with my littlest creature in the waters off Cape Cod. Sure, his muscles are swoon-worthy (sorry, Babe, ’tis true), but it’s really the fact that he is with her, my girl, our girl, that gets me most.

 What is hot to you these days? Is your definition of hotness (a word?) different than it used to be? If so, how? Do you find your partner to be hot? How important is mutual finding of hotness (heat?) to a marriage?