The Momoir Project

This is the third story in a series on the topic of Writing and Memories – a topic that evolved in Cori's online Writing for Moms classes. 

By Patricia Ann Savage

I am 58 years old and until the summer of this year, I had never considered writing about my first experience of motherhood. This is unusual because I write all the time. But it wasn’t until I took an online class called Writing for Moms that I thought about writing about conceiving, carrying, birthing and caring for my oldest daughter who entered my life when I was 16 years old.

All through the brief courtship with my daughter's father, who I met when I was 15, I wrote the usual teenage odes to love and betrayal, rife with hope, good intention and fear. And when I read them now, I am shocked to see that there is no connection with what should be the obvious gravity of my situation. I was 16. I had had sex twice and I was pregnant.

So now, all these years later, I ask: is memory reliable? What was that moment really like?  When I think about my adolescence now, I infuse the reflection with experience, education and expectations based on social norms. I "think" that it must have been an untenable experience for an adolescent to be in.  It must have been.

But how can I transcend my perspective today and allow myself to become immersed in that time in order to write about it? Is there value in trying to tear down the defenses that graced me with the strength to live through this? And if so, what part of the "memory" would be "true"?

This is a common dilemma in memoir writing. But this is also the underlying complexity of shared memory. I am often flabbergasted to hear my daughters' recollections of our shared experiences because they can differ so much from my own version. On the other hand, our personal interpretation of memory can be the sustaining underwriters in situations of loss, grief, rescue and choice.

Because of this, I am giving myself license to peel into the multi-layered onion of my life in my writing. I want to look at my memories of early motherhood and sift through the experience to find the essence that vibrates something inside me, because that resonance is vital and seeks to be heard

My unplanned, teenage pregnancy was shrouded in secrecy, suppressed by feelings of shame. I discounted myself as so many people discounted me for making such bad choices, for playing Russian Roulette with a child’s life, for throwing away all the potential I had to make something of myself.

So when I remember things and give voice to what I lived, I am re-living the experience for the second time. This, like breathing, is essential.

Patricia Savage is writer, dancer and psychotherapist. She lives in northern Ontario on a river that tumbles over a set of rapids and flows into the Mighty Magnetawan. She has two daughters and three beautiful grandchildren. Her dog and horse are her daily companions and she feels truly blessed to be living surrounded by nature.

This is the second story in a series on the topic of Writing and Memory – a topic that evolved in one of Cori's online Writing for Moms classes. 

By Kate Barry Oliviero

I write because it makes me a better mother. 

As a stay-at-home mom to three children under the age of four, I spend the majority of my time taking care of other people – cooking meals, changing diapers, doing laundry and kissing boo boos. But the time I give myself to write is mine. There is something delicious about the companionship of a blank page. With each word and emotion that spills out, I feel more like myself, the woman I used to be before I became forevermore a mother first. For the length of an afternoon nap, my thoughts are my own. I emerge refreshed, clear-headed and smiling. Writing is a gift I give to myself. 

But writing is also a gift I give to my children. I am the keeper of their memories, the person creating their childhoods and the one charged with remembering the important parts: first words, favorite lullabies, Halloween costumes, birthday party themes and favorite foods. 

When my daughter Lucy was two years old she suddenly hated sleeping alone. She asked why her twin brothers got to sleep together, and mommy and daddy slept together, but she, Lucy, was all alone every night. My solution was to buy Lucy a fish to keep on the nightstand next to her bed. For a couple of days, the fish worked its magic. And then one night Lucy came downstairs shortly after I had put her to bed. “Mom,” she said in her raspy young voice. “I want a real person. With legs.” These are the moments that I cherish. And the moments that someday I want to be able to share with her. But if I don’t write them down, I might forget. No, I most definitely will.

All of my childhood memories are infused with my mother. My brother and I orbited around her (though, maybe, in retrospect, it happened the other way around). All I have to do is close my eyes to remember how her eyes twinkled when she laughed, how she held her soft hands on the steering wheel of our grey Volvo and the way her hair smelled like lavender. Mom remembers that I had chicken pox on the bottom of my feet when I was ten and that I lost nine retainers in a single year. She remembers that I thought my name was “Dear” and kept all my crayons in a pink plastic purse. For all I know Mom might be making it up. But whenever I have a question about my childhood, she has an answer.

I live in constant fear that someday I will look back on this period of my life – newly married with three small children – and only remember the struggles: the days when I resent my husband or yell unnecessarily or check email when I should be sitting on the floor with the kids doing puzzles. Capturing the small, sweet moments is my way of guaranteeing that this doesn’t happen. Writing has the power to make memories more vivid. And on the page, beauty, humor and understanding can be found in everything.

Why do you write? 

Over the next few weeks, I'll be running a series here on the Momoir blog about Memories and Writing and how the two converge and transform each other. These blogs were originally created for a series on SheWrites, but they were so good, I wanted to make sure to share them here as well. Hope you will follow along and comment and participate in the discussion about how and why we turn our memories into stories and for whom. Audience…audience…

Here's my story to start it off:

I lie in bed and stare at the pictures on my dresser. My daughter’s six-year-old face stares back at me. I examine her slight smile, her crooked tie, her straight, dark hair carefully tucked to one side. Suddenly, I am overwhelmed with sadness. She’s now in Grade 2 and I haven’t been paying enough attention. Days slip by and I’m constantly overwhelmed and distracted by work, deadlines, groceries, meals, laundry, doctors appointments and homework that I’ve forgotten to play with her for weeks now, forgotten to slow down and just sit with her, to stop what I’m doing and just be with her.

Months have passed and I haven’t written a thing about her. That’s really what this sadness is about. I can give myself a hard time, but really, I have paid attention. I have played with her, read to her, held her, kissed her. It’s just never enough.

My real sadness is about the undocumented passage of time. If I write it down, I have a written record to return to in moments like these, in moments of forgetfulness – something that will transport me back to times I don’t remember, moments of intense awe and bliss or struggle that become a general haze. Without words, my memories are like a fog, bereft of the details that matter.

I started writing about my kids when they were born – and for that, I’m so grateful. I can go back anytime through the scrapbooks I made for them and read about lazy summer afternoons at the beach with my first baby, or walking under the falling leaves with my daughter in her sling until she fell asleep.

I go back to those books often. I am more sentimental and nostalgic than I ever thought possible. But I wish I had had more direction in creating those books. I wrote all my feelings onto scraps of paper – feelings of resentment about my work, struggles with sleep and nighttime feedings — stuff my children don’t ever need to read.

I wish I’d known then what I know now: to keep two books, one for me and one for them. In mine, I now write all the sentimental memories, the marital struggles, the challenges with parenting. In their books, I write stories for them – stories about amazing things they said or did, stories that show the people they are becoming, stories of growing up and exploring the world. 

It wasn’t until I started teaching other moms to write their memoirs that I understood the importance of “audience” – even in scrapbooks. As a professional writer, I understand its value in memoir writing. But it’s a value that applies across the board.

I’m so glad I got a chance to correct my mistakes and start keeping two records while my kids are still young. What about you? Do you keep two records? How do you record your memories of motherhood?

One morning a few weeks ago, I walked into my daughter’s grade two classroom at lunch to bring her the pair of rain boots she had accidentally forgotten at home. When I peered in the doorway, I could see her sitting at her desk, her long, straight brown hair falling across her face, opening her lunch box. I walked quietly and gave her my million-dollar smile and leaned over to give her a kiss when the boy beside her says, “Awkward.”

But it’s not just the word, it’s the way he said it that made me want to slap him across the face. I would never do that, of course, and I tend to love all children but the word awkward and its new pervasive use in our culture is driving me mad. I hear it all the time when my kids watch those horrible shows like Suite Life on Deck and Shake it Up! There’s a whine associated with the word in its popular usage, an emphasis on the first syllable that grates at the ear. 

What was really infuriating – beyond the interruption of a beautiful moment – was that it wasn’t awkward. I was a mom visiting her 7-year-old daughter at lunch. Seven-year-olds kiss their moms. They’re still small and cute. It would be awkward if I walked the same way into my son’s Grade 5 classroom. That would have been more than awkward. It would have been mortifying. But this innocent trip? Nothing awkward about it.

And yet, the result of his inane comment was that my daughter was embarrassed to see me. She kissed me shyly, not enthusiastically. She looked around at her friends and I could see that she was gauging their reaction. I think they all saw the daggers in my eyes and didn’t say anything. I hope they understood how rude it was and how inappropriate.

My daughter is at that age when our culture starts to push hard for independence. She’s at that poignant crossroads, preparing for the time when I let her go to the park alone or to the store. But not yet. She’s not ready to push me away. Not because she’s 7, but because of who she is. She can clean her room, get herself a snack, play on her own in her room, but she still likes it when I’m there to pick her up from school at the end of the day. And she likes it when I surprise her in the middle of the day with a surprise visit. Not anymore. One word ruined has ruined that possibility forever.

My seven-year-old is not a teenager. She doesn’t need to feel embarrassed when her mom pops into her classroom. She should feel honored that I took time out of my busy day to make sure she had her boots, to give her a midday kiss. She doesn’t need the word awkward in her life. And neither do I. 

By Victoria O’Dea

I walk into our beautiful bedroom and glance out of the glass doors that lead to our deck. I never tire of the view of the ocean. I marvel at the kayakers and sailboats on the cold, dark water, straighten the photos of our wedding and our three children on the walls. I move to the pale blue duvet I spent months finding. There is the wedding quilt my mom made for us at the end of our bed and a stack of books on each of our nightstands. I admit to having the larger, messier pile. I sigh with gratitude and contentment. It is our sanctuary.

And then I see a pile of my husband's dirty clothes beside the bed. On the floor. Right beside the hamper. Socks, jeans, sweater, T-shirt, underwear and undershirt.

I want to curl up in his little nest of mess and have myself a little pity party. No one appreciates what I do. I am treated like a servant. A nanny. I gave up a career for this. I don't get any gold stars being a stay-at-home mom. How can he be so disrespectful to not put his clothes into the hamper? Doesn't he understand how much time it takes to fold all his clothes, Gap style? How can he drop his dirty clothes right beside the hamper? How much extra effort would it take to move his arm another 8 inches? How he can he not expect me to not kill him tonight? How can a grown man believe in the laundry fairy?

I decide not to attend my own soiree that day. Instead, I am struck with an idea of such brilliance I am almost knocked into the hamper. I wrestle with the idea. Would it work? Would it create more work for me? Is it too cruel? I call my sister who has been married ten years. With her encouragement, I proceeded with Operation Pick Up Your Own Shit. She calls from Calgary everyday for updates.

I pick up the first item, the T-shirt. It is wrinkled, slightly damp and there is a faint, funky odor that wafts up as I shake it out. Then I fold it Gap style and put it back in his drawer. Same for jeans, sweater, socks, and undergarments. All folded. Yup, even the unders. I search the bedroom, bathroom and closet for other stray offenders. I search every square foot of our home. I find a gold mine. My brilliant, handsome, talented husband has 7 errant socks, 5 wife beaters, 3 pairs of underwear, 2 T-shirts, 1 dress shirt and a pair of workout shorts not in the hamper. It is all refolded, rehung, and redrawered.

I am giddy with the thought of him pulling out a rank undershirt or worse one morning. He'll put in on, smell his armpits, lift the shirt to his nose, gag, retch and say, "What the…?" In my defense, I tell him it wasn't in the hamper so he must not have wanted it washed. Being the excellent wife I am, I put it away for him.

I can't wait for him to find out. Until he does, I am loving every smelly article of clothing I discover throughout our home. I smile as I place each piece in its proper place. I am just slightly disappointed when he actually puts something in the hamper. I have become sweeter, softer, more tolerant since O.P.U.Y.O.S started. Who knew my husband's slovenly habits could make me so happy?

There are many things about being a stay-at-home mom I don't want my husband to find out about. Sometimes I have a nap when Logan naps and then pretend I am exhausted when he comes home. Sometimes I ignore the kids, play Angry Birds and have a cup of tea. Sometimes I let the kids watch TV. All afternoon.

But I do have a secret I want him to find out. Although I am prepared for the mother of all fights.

It doesn't take long for him to discover his tighty whiteys aren't so tight or so white. Three days later, I was denying the fact it was morning. Too dark. Too cold. Too quiet. Impossible to get out of our warm, soft bed. My pillow smelled like Pantene shampoo. I was paralysed with pleasure.

 I heard Mark getting dressed. I opened one eye and saw him in his underwear in front of his drawers in our walk in closet. He looked very confused. I saw him check his thighs, then his butt.

 "I gotta work out, Vic. I'm losing muscle. Shit."

 He grabbed the crotch of his boxer briefs and pulls at the fabric. He stepped from one foot to the other and bent his knees. In a fit of frustration, he takes them off and tries another pair. Same issue. Different underwear.

"What the f…." Off comes this pair too. He has no other option. He finds the butt of the shorts and presses it to his nose and inhales deeply. The sniff test. The underwear comes flying across the room and lands inches from my pillow.

"Jesus Christ! Are these dirty?! Are they? Vic, are they? Seriously, what the hell? Have I been wearing dirty clothes? Do they all smell like shit? Vic?"

I bury my face in my pillow. No luck. The laugher erupts. He sees me and I see him try not to laugh. I don't have to explain anything. He knows. He picks up the other soiled briefs and leaps on our bed to force me to take the sniff test. I barely have time to close my mouth.

It was so worth it.

Victoria O'Dea is a stay at home mom in Deep Cove, B.C. She spends her days doing laundry and finding reasons to laugh at her husband, Mark, and her three kids Lily (8), Holly (5) and Logan (3).

But the word means so much more than that. It is both a noun and a verb. One can toil over their work or labour over it. Labour is work that is done with effort, or workers—not management. For a ship, to labour is make its way with difficulty as it pitches and tosses amid the wind and waves. Labour is the work we do and the challenge that we face while doing it.

To labour is at times is being too persistent at making a point which is what I am getting to here. I have laboured the point that ‘labour’ is a rich and complex word. This is what drew me to this theme in the first place. I do work for the Growing Room Collective, which produces Room Magazine. For me, it is a labour of love.

A few years ago when I took the leap and put my writing out into the world for others to read, to mull over, to criticize, I became hooked. I love being read, and I love providing a venue for other women writers to be read too. I look forward to all the submissions coming from Momoir writers, whether they be stories about actual birthing, labours of love, their union experiences or toiling at whatever it may be. I want to read it all—just make it good. Check out: www.roommagazine.com  for full submission details. Deadline May 30.

By Kristen Witucki

The sonographer’s job was not to make small talk.  I knew that. But I realized how important such chitchat was to me as a blind mother—and therefore how ominous her silence–as I lay there for an hour while she took pictures of my baby. All I could hear was clicking and clicking and more clicking while the weight of mid-pregnancy pressed on my aching lower back.  

After her brief initial demonstration of the baby’s heartbeat and her question about whether we wanted to know the gender of our child or not—we did—she had nothing more to say.

James, my partner and the father of my baby, sat in a chair a few feet away, close enough for us to talk if we wanted to but too far away to touch. We didn’t speak—maybe the computer would be kinder to us if we didn’t. Because he is also blind, James could not offer any description to alleviate the silence.

Suddenly the sonographer asked if I had to go to the bathroom. “You have a full bladder, so the baby can’t move for me to see its gender,” she said. I had been trying to be helpful by keeping my urge to pee as silent as possible, since there seemed to be no place during which it was okay to interrupt her endless clicking, but instead, I was holding her up.  

I rose on legs which shook from nervousness and relief, and she helped me maneuver to the bathroom and then helped me back to the chair. She put some more cold goop on the mound my belly had become and went back to work.

“It’s a boy!” she sang out suddenly without any preamble. James, who had only daughters and granddaughters said, “What?!”

“Yeah I knew it,” I said matter-of-factly. There would be time and space to worry about his maleness later.  For now, I just had to know whether my baby would be okay.

We moved to another room to wait for follow up confirmation from the doctor.  I was relieved just to sit up. She entered in a flood of cheer which did nothing to calm me down. “How are you?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said, forgetting to return the pleasantry. “How’s the baby?”

“We’re going to send you to another hospital,” she said, “because there is a small mark on the heart which one study in Europe indicates can have a weak correlation with Down’s Syndrome. The baby is probably fine but we just want to check.” Then as an

afterthought, she added, “Did you find out the gender?”

“Yes,” I said numbly.

“Aha,” she said, “there’s a penis among us.”

And off we went to the hospital's antenatal testing unit.  This sonographer was much more forthcoming, talking about what she could see, confirming the gender, filling the void with her soothing voice.

Then a male doctor stormed in. The first thing he asked was if my guide dog, a gentle, floppy-eared male black lab whose leash my partner was holding, would bite him.

“No,” we both answered.

He moved the Doppler around on my belly and tried to nudge my son, who had apparently decided to hide.  “You might want to consider terminating the pregnancy,” he said, “given that the baby could have heart complications. Given your life issues.  I’m going to get a colleague.” And he walked out.

He brought in a female pediatric cardiologist whose speech seemed particularly gentle and lilting against the other doctors’ brusqueness. Our son was still not in a position to allow them a view of at his heart, and no nudging could get him to cooperate.  He needed a nap.  “I don’t see anything,” the male doctor said, but he was not talking to us.  “And she is young, but with that mark, I just don’t want to rest.”

 “Look,” said the cardiologist, pointing to me and the tears which came silently despite all of my effort, reminding the doctor that he was dealing with a person. I needed a nap myself.

 “Look,” he said, “all I said was that I needed to get a colleague. I didn’t say anything.”  

He told us that the baby was not in a good position to see much, so we could rule out Down’s in one of two ways: an amnio that day or a visit in two weeks to look at

the heart again via ultrasound when the baby was a little bigger.

 “And … I know this a Catholic hospital, but …”

 “You can still talk to me about the abortion.”

 “Would the two weeks affect … the safety of abortion?” I asked.

Although I am politically pro-choice, this was the worst admission for me as a mother. That I, a person with a congenital disability and who had extensive training in the education of students with disabilities, temporarily fell into his trap, the “you can’t be a mother, especially of a baby with a disability, and I have so little faith that this will work that I will brooch the topic of abortion in a Catholic hospital” trap.  But I did.

“Physically, you mean?” he asked, and I nodded.  “No, it won’t make a difference.”

They left us alone for a minute to make our decision. Fortunately, James was not ruled by hormones. He convinced me to wait two weeks, that an amnio was painful and probably unnecessary. And all through those long nights and days, he kept saying he knew the

baby would be ok. He just knew it.

The two weeks were helpful, even though they were torture. They gave me time to cry, then to pull myself together enough to ask my friends who had experience teaching children with Down’s Syndrome more about the condition. “They’re so sweet, so

happy!” I kept hearing. “And it’s a disability which will still allow them be verbal.”  

Verbosity was important to me. For the first couple nights, while I cried, my son stayed respectfully silent, but once I could lie down more happily, he kicked, danced on my bladder. I decided he must really be a very gifted baby, and one of my pregnant friends said, “Yes, bladder-pushing is a sign of obvious brilliance.”

The advice to wait two weeks did not just have a medical benefit. With each passing day, I was falling deeper in love with my baby.

Two weeks later, we returned to the antenatal testing unit. By this time, James was as nervous as I was. He went out to buy breakfast for us before the test and left my breakfast sandwich at the restaurant; he forgot his hat, exposing his bald head for the world to see; and he opened the door of the taxi when it stopped at a red light, before it arrived at the hospital.

We met yet another sonographer who was nice and chatty. She called our baby Lovebug. The doctor came in to look at the baby’s heart.

“Is he moving?” I asked.

 “Nah,” she said.  “He has his head down on his hands.  He’s napping.  But we can see what we need to.”

They told us not to try to interpret their silences or their conversations with each other and kept asking if we were comfortable. And at the end, we got our reprieve: our baby did not have any heart issues at all or any physical indications of Down’s. How must it be, I wondered, for parents who don’t get that reprieve? And I realized how little the exposure to one disability prepares us for the possibility of others.

There was still a penis among us, his maleness was still alien to me, but my baby and I had both been in the same place—we had both not been wanted by a doctor—and that drew me closer to him.

Kristen Witucki has been blind since birth.  She earned a BA in English and Masters degrees in education and in creative writing. She lives in a small town in New Jersey, USA, with her husband, James, who is also blind; her one-year-old son, Langston; and her Seeing Eye dog, a male black lab named Tad.

By Colleen Mah

The blinds were closed to keep out the light of the day. My husband, Erwin, hovered near my feet at the end of the examination table, our one-year old son, Teo, in his arms.  Cohen, our three-year old, stood on his own but with his back resting up against the security of his daddy’s legs. 

Cohen’s face was focused on the monitor with deep concentration. He had been told that he was going to see his new baby brother or sister today. The whole idea was confusing for him because he wasn’t sure how he was going to see pictures of a baby that was inside of his mommy. I had been building up this event for the last few days and he was cautiously excited. Teo was more interested in a toy truck that he had brought in from the waiting room, pushing the wheels around with his little fingers.

“So, you’re twelve weeks now?” Dr. Seethram asked as he spread the cool gel around on my abdomen with the ultrasound wand.

“Yes, as of last Friday,” I confirmed. “I’m looking forward to getting on with my second trimester so I can stop feeling so sick all the time.” I laughed even though nothing about morning sickness is funny.

“Well, let’s have a look shall we?” 

His right hand manoeuvred the wand while the other clicked at buttons on the machine.

“Okay. So here is the head and the spinal cord and…” Dr. Seethram stopped talking and squinted through his glasses at the monitor. More wand movements and clicking.

“Hmm, well…” his voice was softer, more hesitant. “I… I don’t see a heartbeat here.”

My chest tightened as I frantically craned my neck to see the screen. 

There must be some mistake, I thought. I was sure the baby was just turned in the wrong direction. I waited for him to take back what he had just said.

“I’ll try and find it using a heat sensor.” More clicking.

Everything in the room was now silent. Teo stopped fiddling with his truck. Everyone waited.

“There’s nothing here. The measurements are all accurate for a twelve-week-old fetus, but I’m sorry. There’s no heartbeat.” He touched my arm.

I felt my toes tingle as all the blood left my body and a lump started to well up in my throat. I took in a deep breath and willed myself to say something. But as soon as my voice touched the air, the tears turned my words into a quivering mess.

“So, now what?”

Dr. Seethram suggested that I take a moment while handing me a tissue. “I’ll go and get Ursula, one of our counsellors, to come a talk to you.”

He left and I turned my attention to my family still standing down near the end of the bed. I felt stupid for having brought my boys into this situation. I didn’t want them to have to witness this.

“Can you please take them into the waiting room?” I managed to ask Erwin.

They passed Ursula on the way out. She left the lights dim and came and sat in the chair left empty by Dr. Seethram. She took my hand.

“Dr. Seethram has filled me in,” she said. “I’m really sorry, Colleen.” 

I wept hard now that I was alone with this stranger.

“I just feel like this is all my fault,” my chest lurched up and down uncontrollably with the sobs, “because I didn’t want this baby.” 

I thought about how depressed I had been about this accidental pregnancy. About how I sat crying on the hard tile, kitchen floor the morning the pregnancy test displayed a tiny blue plus sign. I had made this happen because I had put out to the universe that this baby was unwanted. It was irrational, but I swam in this thought while the tears rolled down my face.

“A lot of women who miscarry feel the same way that you are now,” Ursula consoled me, “but you are not to blame.  There would be far fewer babies out there if every unwanted pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage.”

She was right, of course, but it wasn’t until many months later that I finally relieved myself of this emotional burden.  But in the year and a half that has passed, I still have not found peace with the way things turned out. I am still uncertain about whether or not I want another baby. Do I have it in me to do it all over again? Will I regret it if I don’t? I still carry with me the need to share my story. I still carry with me the bitterness that I never got a proper good-bye with my baby. When I experienced a lot of bleeding after the D&C, my obstetrician blamed it on my large uterus. He said that he had to remove a considerable amount of “tissue.” The life that I held was reduced to a mass of muscles and nerves. It was suctioned, tested and disposed of while I slept. I carry remorse that my baby was never acknowledged as a soul who lived and died and was not even identified with a name.

The noise of everyday life usually drowns out these thoughts. I do my best to be in the moment with my two amazing, energetic and healthy boys. Watching them grow brings me infinite amounts of joy. But every so often I am struck by the sight of a sleeping baby. The little body wrapped tightly against her mother’s chest, a little tuft of soft newborn hair sticking up over the top of the sling. It’s moments like these when my grief comes back to me like the lyrics of a forgotten song. Just by hearing the tune of the music it all comes flooding back. It is on my playlist.

Colleen Mah is the mother of two energetic little boys and the wife of a fabulous, but overworked husband.  She is a stay-at-home mom living in Vancouver.

by Cori Howard

It has been 9 years since I’ve been at an airport without my kids in tow. Nine years since I’ve flown alone. Nine years since I’ve been away from them for any significant length of time, aside from the odd sleepover. I know this is a shocking confession in our culture of “me time,” but it’s true. Until very recently, I have never wanted – or “needed” – to leave them. I spend enough time away from them at work. And they spend enough time away from me at school, their activities and with friends.

But the real reason I haven’t left them is because of something that happened when my first-born, now 10, was just 18 months. Back then, I left him — succumbing to heavy pressure from friends and family — for a weekend away in New York City. But visiting friends and book readings wasn’t the fun-filled weekend I had hoped. There was no heavy partying or getting back in touch with my old pre-mom self. Nope. I was miserable and in tears, spending most of the weekend in a hot shower relieving my aching breasts. I was both horrified and ashamed that I’d left my baby, half-weaned, with my poor husband who had to cope with 3 days straight of screaming. It was such a disaster I vowed never to do it again. Until now.

I had waited until I felt comfortable to leave them and now that they are 10 and 7, I knew they’d survive the weekend without me, without tears. So here I am at the airport, oddly jubilant and simultaneously teary, at the prospect of leaving. Having spent most of my 20s traveling solo around the world as a journalist, it is strange to feel so out of practise, so bereft of accoutrements like diaper bags and strollers and bags of toys, so completely alone.

This time, I make sure to enjoy my free time, watching movies on the plane, reading, breathing and thinking without interruptions. Going out late for drinks and dinner with long-lost friends. Attending an amazingly intimate and inspiring writers festival (Thank you northwords.org).

But what I appreciate most is the time to think – to really look at all of my parentally-induced fears and anxieties and how they are so at-odds with the person I was before becoming a mother. One of the many reasons I haven’t been ready to leave my kids is because I was afraid of dying in a plane crash. Really. I didn’t think a girl’s weekend would be worth that. I’ve also had a long-held fear of being caught in a different part of the city – just in case there was an earthquake and I wouldn’t be able to cross the water to get back to my kids.  

I know what you’re thinking. As a close friend recently asked, “Have you ever thought of seeing someone about this?” Of course, I have. But I am determined to work through it myself. I faced my fears and went on that plane and it was great. I regularly drive over the bridge to West Vancouver for meetings and the earthquakes so far – fingers crossed – have stayed away. I try to think positive thoughts when my children go in school buses to far off field trips. I am trying to let go of my fear, and my need to control things so that they don’t fall apart.

It’s working, but it’s not easy.

Do any of you have fears like this? Or am I totally insane? 

Happy new year to everyone!

Just a short post today to let you know that this is the final week for registration for Momoir Writing for Moms classes – both Level 1, Level 2 (advanced publishing) and the new Monthly Writer's Group.

If you made a resolution to start writing in 2012 – about yourself, your kids, your journey as a mother – here's your chance to do it with a group of inspiring women. 

The Level 1 class will teach you the basics of good memoir writing and connect you to a great group of women whose stories you will share over the course of three months. The Level 2 class will get your writing into publication – whether small online parenting publications, your local newspaper or national magazines. My Level 2 students have achieved all that in the past … and more.

The Momoir Monthly Writing Group is a truly amazing group of women who have taken both Level 1 and Level 2 and want to continue writing together as a group. We meet once a month and workshop stories, memoirs in progress and longer essays. 

Please click here for more information. Or email me at cori@themomoirproject.com

Look forward to writing with you in 2012!