On Having a Best Friend

You don’t recognize it with the formality of, say, exchanging rings and pledging lifelong fidelity, and yet somehow, that’s how important it is. My younger sister has had the same best friend since she was in second grade. This completely blows me away. Among the things I’m not which have defined my life, a best friend seems to top the list. In fact, until I was married and having children, the relationships with my women friends seemed so emotionally frought and complicated, and I had a much easier time with male friends. So it really startled me to realize that Jenny is my best friend.

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 30, 2004 | 1 comment

Going Native

Hey Y’all, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. I hung up the phone today and realized that I’d had a slight twang sneak into my speech. Hopefully it was subtle enough thatthe person on the other end of the line didn’t think I was making fun of her or something. I’ve just discovered that speaking Texan often greases small social interactions. When we moved to Texas,it was always intended as a temporary thing. Only now this is our home, and my fantasies about somplace greyer, cooler, less relentlessly sunny — well they seem a bit drab. I know I’m saying this after an uncharacteristically mellow summer, but… I think I like Texas, and what’s more, I think I like Dallas.

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 30, 2004 | 0 comments

Life in the Sling

Life doesn’t slow down so you can stop and nurse when you have three older children. When I was taking mother and baby yoga, after Soren was born, I got teased for being able to breastfeed while practicing certain poses. I’d never do it in a way that would endanger my son, but feeding him on demand seemed to be a notion he wanted to test, and there were days when it felt like I would get to do no yoga at all if I didn’t do it while breastfeeding. It just felt like the natural consequence of all the other things I did while breastfeeding, reading, emailing, playing boardgames, washing dishes, working on world peace… Today I did one better and breastfed while playing miniature golf (and I got a respectable score!) Rainer, bless him, is...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 29, 2004 | 0 comments

The Fringes of Nutrition

I ordered my dehyrdrator yesterday, so I am really committed to trying raw foods. Why does this scare me? I have this internal gyroscope, I believe, that responds to stress or uncertainty by snapping me into taking care of myself the best I can. After giving up my journal for two months, the stress of not going into labor the last two weeks of my pregnancy made me religious about my morning pages again. And I was aware of this unnatural grasping for healthy habits when, after Sżren was born, I realized that one of the things I missed about pregnancy was eating like every bite mattered for nurturing a life, and I wanted to value my own life like I’d valued the life of my unborn child. As a former smoker, I took to exercise for the mood control I...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 29, 2004 | 0 comments

Three Metaphors for the Postpartum Experience

Because if I can’t describe exactly how it feels, I can tell you what it resembles… 1. Being postpartum is coming home from summer camp. You’ve had all these experiences that no one at home understands, in fact, you know you’re profoundly changed, and yet you’re still in all the same roles you had before. By about your third day home your parents are rolling their eyes at every new fascinating detail you want to share about your best friend from camp or the amusing anecdotes about things your infinitely wise counselor told you, and there is nothing that would be more blissful than a phone call from somebody you went to camp with, who shared the experience, who understands. I think this is why we love sharing our birth stories...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 29, 2004 | 1 comment