.SOMETIMES RAW.

I always had a job, so when I had my son I initially didn’t assume I would stop working. I took leave without pay and slowed down, which I was happy to do. I was grateful that I could. Most can’t. However, I had not planned of being a full-time stay-at-home-mom. This is not to say I think being a stay-at-home-mom is not a job or okay. It most certainly is. It’s just not for me. It may be good for you, not for me.

The whole business of working mothers and stay-at-home mothers is so touchy (or tetchy; I spent a rather long conversation with a work-buddy from Scotland the other day). The subject inherently sucks. Not a week goes by without annoying and bullshit articles claiming breast milk makes kids better liars. Many mothers torture themselves and each other, and all of it leads to a lot of women-on-women crime.

Here are some of the highlights I experienced:

I am introduced to someone as “Joel’s mom” rather than my own name, which apparently doesn’t matter.

Me, as a working mom, am at a museum on a Saturday afternoon and friends (who see me alone) ask, “What are you doing out? Where is your son? Who is watching him?”

I sat on the bench at the playground and read my book when a new mother (out of nowhere) told me how she breastfeeds her baby because she “just wants her baby to be healthy.” And if I chose to breastfeed, too. And what kind of organic food I gave and give my child.

A stay-at-home-mom says, “You shouldn’t give your son bananas for breakfast. They are full of sugar. Plus, bananas are not the only fruit. Karl loves strawberries. You should give your son strawberries.”

A stay-at-home-mom acts like she is too busy to return a WhatsApp message. I know you are on your phone most of the day. I just knoooooooow.

A stay-at-home-mom talks about how she doesn’t work because “the kids are only young once” and she doesn’t “want to miss a thing.”

A stay-at-home-mom needs a nanny, can afford one, and refuses to hire one, and in doing so denies herself some much-needed personal time and self-care.

A stay-at-home-mom approaches a working mom and grills her about how many hours she works. She gets really interested in what time the working mother leaves in the morning and comes home at night. Then she comments, “I honestly don’t know how you do it.”

I have gotten the last one a lot, and it got my blood boiling. When I heard those words I didn’t hear “I don’t know HOW you do it.” I just heard “I don’t know how you COULD do it.” I would be feeling overworked and guilty and overwhelmed and suddenly I would be struck over the head by what felt like someone else’s bullshit. It was an emotional drive-by. A random act of woman-on-woman violence. In my fantasy, I would answer, “What do you mean how do I do it? Do you really want to know the most insane story of my nanny’s schedule? Do you want to know how I balance child care, aftercare, kindergarten, and the different ways I manipulate and negotiate work if necessary to help me put my kid first when needed? Also, I need to work because I need an income so my son and I can survive!” Instead of my fantasy answer, I answer, “Ambivalence. Drugs and robots!” The ultimate answer would obviously be, “You don’t know how I do it. Because you don’t do it. You couldn’t. What do you do again?”

See what I did there? CRIME and I deserve punishment. There is an unspoken pact that women are supposed to follow. Some tell me I should feel guilty about being away from my child. But I don’t and I love my job. Mothers who stay at home are supposed to pretend they are bored and wish they were doing more corporate things. They don’t and they love their job. If we all just stick to the plan there will be less hate on the streets. #mothersmatter

But let me try to answer the question for real. Do you want to know how I do it?

Time management. Simple as that. Being a single parent requires a lot of planning, pushing, and pulling. I figured out a way for my son and I that works just fine. Of course, there is the occasional emergency-sick-leave day but so far I have been very lucky.

Now let me tell you about that Karate class I took my kid to once. Or maybe I should stop here. Sometimes I worry not enough people hate me.

I am a moon junkie. Every time I look at the moon, I feel less alone and less afraid. Of course, the movie Moonstruck with Cher and Nicolas Cage is one of my favorites. I tell my son that moonlight is a magic blanket and the stars above us are campfires set by friendly aliens. I track lunar cycles on my iPhone and sometimes I take my son outside when a moon is new or full or blue. We call this “moon hunting” and we bring tiny flashlights.

During one full moon a couple of years ago, we drove to an open field and climbed into sleeping bags and howled at the night sky. As we drove to my preplanned spot, my son once again reminded me to stay in the moment and stop overthinking. He kept pointing at the huge moon, shouting, “Mama, it is right there. We don’t have to drive to the moon. It came to us!” We pulled over and I abandoned my previous plan. I spread out a blanket and we snuggled together. We both made wishes. I wished that my son would be kind and happy and I would wake up healthy. My son wished that everyone in the world was a robot. And more Lego.

Who is this little guy who follows me for almost seven years?

My son has a dark eye color that I can get lost in. He loves to run around and strongly identifies with Harry Potter these days. He recently told me, “Mama, do you want to know something funny about me? I am afraid of little things and not afraid of big things.” I think he was talking about bugs and elephants, but I understood what he meant in a very deep way. He is delighted when I laugh at him, but he is no ham. He is sensitive and stubborn, and as of now, wants to become a paleontologist or a doctor. Or Iron Man. He asked me the other day, “Are you sad that you don’t have a penis?” I told him that I was happy with the parts that I had. I then reminded him that girls have vaginas and everyone is different and each body is like a snowflake. He nodded in agreement and then looked up at me with a serious face and asked, “But did you once have a penis and break it?” The bond between mother and son is powerful stuff. I firmly believe that every boy needs his mom to love him and every girl her dad to pay attention to her. My son needed to figure out if I had ever owned and operated a penis. I get it. His penis is important to him. Anyway, he starts college next year. Just kidding, he is six. He recently asked if he could marry me and I said yes. I couldn’t help it.

When my son was two or younger, we used to take naps together. We spent part of one summer in Germany with my parents and every afternoon we would snuggle together as the breeze blew in. I was holding my baby and count those naps as some of the happiest times in my life. I imagined a peaceful and quiet life with my son. I pictured kissing his head as he obediently put himself to bed, as in a John Irving novel. I was so stupid. Everything is loud now. He wants to wrestle and bump and yank. He wants to play lion cub, rolling around and destroying the furniture. He jumps off couches and buzzes around with his scooter. He swings sticks and tells people “food goes into your stomach and turns into poop.” He loves dinosaurs and superheroes and thinks that I am Wonder Woman. Everything is physical and visual and some things are expressed by Patrick Swayze’s “roadhouse” kicks.

I love my son so much I fear my heart will explode. I wonder if this love will crack open my chest and split me in half. It is scary, this love. When my son arrived, he broke open everything about me. My mind flooded with oxygen. My heart became a room with wide-open windows. I laughed hard and I cried hard. I thought more about the future and read about global warming. I realized how nice it feels to care about someone else more than myself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and the fresh brown eyes, I started to see the world a little more. I started to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it. My son needs so much holding. Kisses and hugs and food and clothes and touch. He needs everything. Sometimes the enormity of what he needs is intense but I give it to him unconditionally. Because I love him and I am here for him.

Single parenting is not easy but I am pretty good at it these days. Also because I was lucky to have met someone who gently gestures for me to follow him down a path that allows me to feel a little less stressed out and to see all the advantages I have in life. I am a lucky woman indeed.

When relationships or marriages end, it is hard at first to stay in a setting you used to share. No one wants to be the cat scratching at the door that won’t open. Sometimes, people are very bad. Sometimes they are very good. A little love goes a long way. My partner and I are riding the same wave of awesomeness. He used to make the same mistakes that I made, which is to close the eyes and hope the storm and crashing waves will go away, miss me, or hit something or someone else. Whenever I feel I am drowning, he dives in, headfirst, to get me out. When I look at him I hide nothing.

The other day I read something that stuck with me. It went something like this: There are small promises. Look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. What truly heals is gratitude and tenderness, and love.

I realize how lucky I am and how awesome my life is. Nothing is missing. I lay in bed and thought about time and the past, and how many different people live under the same big, beautiful moon. And if we are really lucky, we are able to meet the One who adds a tiny link to unconditional happiness.

What’s grinding your gears these days? Is it that you feel you look like Bruce Vilanch and don’t feel hot anymore? For those of you who don’t know who he is and are too lazy to google it, just picture an owl wearing a blond wig. Is it the lady impressing her fingerprints on every apple at the grocery store? Or the mask that conceals your deeply felt facial reactions?

For this post, I added some most pressing reader’s questions that popped up in my email account. Imposing my own etiquette framework on any stranger these days is a gamble and not necessarily one I would encourage. My first suggestion is to find a way to maintain a well of patience during this time. A virtue, sure, but I think patience is actually a skill which can (eventually) bear fruit in all compartments of life, and what better time to refine it than now? Wait, do I write an etiquette column or a horoscope?

If you live in a place where interacting with strangers is commonplace, the most polite solutions seem to be reframing this as an educational opportunity. Rather than asking someone to pick up the pace, I can teach them my tricks for selecting ripe produce and those apples from six feet away. Can you assume the role of a kind stranger, even if your motive may be ulterior? Either the slow-shopper will be appreciative of my generosity of spirit, or they will look for the quickest way to exit this social interaction and take those f***ing apples and get out of my way.

Question: When it comes to shaking peoples’ hands and greetings in work environments, what will we be expected to do? – Handshakeaddict

Dear Handshakeaddict,

The handshake has gone into retirement for the foreseeable future, and I cannot envision an elbow bump performed in a professional setting. Is this an unpopular opinion? Hey, I am Team “Firm-Handshake”. It is my opinion that a succinct, friendly wave will have to sub in for the meantime. Instinctively, most people will follow this with a self-conscious shrug that says, “I am sorry I have to wave at you from six feet away or six feet under.”

Question: Can I have my breakfast at Microsoft Teams or Zoom meetings? – Wearingashirtbutnakedotherwise

Dear Wearingashirtbutnakedotherwise,

Sadly, no. Not cool. Coffee, yes! Nothing has proven the truth in the saying “too much of a good thing” like video get-togethers or mandatory online meetings. While face-to-face time is just awesome, there should never be more than four screens allowed in one conversation. Or no screen and mic on mute. Sadly, not everyone abides by this rule I have unofficially set, so here we are. Maybe, just mute your mic just in time before your kids scream in the back or you say out loud to your partner what you really think about this meeting. And put on pants because you just never know.

Question: As a smiler, I am feeling anxious about how to convey politeness (or any emotion actually) through a mask. Especially when interacting with cashiers, I want to know the best way to let them know I am appreciative, without removing my mask. – Annoyed

Dear Annoyed,

my inclination is that we now have to use language and tone of voice to compensate for what is concealed when wearing a mask. This means being more vocal than usual, for some people, and practicing over-communicating until the correction feels like second nature. In the recent instances when I found wearing a mask to be a social roadblock, I found myself articulating things like, “I just smiled, sorry, I forgot you cannot see it, ” when I realized I might be coming off as cold, arrogant or angry. Adjusting your overall posture and body language are certainly valid ways to communicate friendliness, but I find them more difficult to control than speech.

Question: I find I am more extroverted than I ever realised and craving whatever social time I can get, but I worry about putting something extra on friends who aren’t feeling the same way and are finding it difficult to socialize right now. What do I do? – Constantworrier

Dear Constantworrier,

What a conscientious question. In this scenario, I recommend taking cues from a tennis pro, and feeding the ball into your friends’ courts (30-15). You can send them an open-ended invitation to talk for example. I feel pretty confident that they will take you up on that offer, now or in three weeks. If you have enough of these tennis balls thrown up in the air at once, your social calendar will fill up in no time.

Question: How do you maintain relationships with some “special” people you work with? – SpontaneousInteractions

Dear SpontaneousInteractions,

just send this:

Question: How do I last-minute cancel virtual plans when everyone knows I have nowhere to be and nothing to do? – FlakyFranklin

Dear FlakyFranklin,

I think we should avoid last-minute cancellations to the best of our abilities. I feel that I cannot suggest ways to politely cancel fast-approaching plans. Last-minute-cancellation should be reserved for only the most necessary situations like your child is sick, something at home went unexpectedly haywire and you are in tears because the sauce for your pasta did not turn out the way you wanted it. Consider your plans before you set them in stone, judging them against the criteria of how you anticipate you will feel when you hear the ping of the calendar notification 15 minutes before the start time.

Question: I have been baking bread for the last couple of weeks. Do you have a sourdough recipe that is bulletproof? – BreadforPresident

Dear BreadforPresident,

It seems that baking bread is a consistent activity in this Corona-madness. In Vienna, there was no yeast available in stores for days. But who cares? Who needs bread? Who needs to bake bread? Okay, baking bread opens you to a world of opportunities like fancy-ass toasts or sandwiches. But what is this obsession with baking bread? Check out this recipe.

Okay? Because Okay is Eh’ Okay.