Timeless, really, but there are so many chic pieces in this fabric right now, including on the sleeves of the chicest Flaviana Matata above (get the look for $24 with this).
If you have been anxiously waiting for me to move on from all-floral-everything: here is your chance. I have seen ultra-chic, unexpected, sophisticated khaki/taupe in so many fantastic shapes recently. Yes pls. Top picks:
Speaking of embroidered children’s finds: this bubble (!!) and — I was so startled when I came across these Guatemalan worry dolls, which one of my good childhood friends introduced me to when I was little. According to tradition, children tell their worries to these dolls before placing them under their pillows at night — then wake with newfound wisdom and peace. I think we could all use some worry dolls…
We are renting a car to get away for a week with family and it dawned on me just the other day that we only have the Nuna Pipa infant carseat for Hill, who has obviously outgrown it! After a brief debate over whether we should rent a carseat, I ordered a second one of these inexpensive travel convertible carseats (we already have one for Emory). Allow me to list its virtues: it is affordable ($50!), narrow (fits in an airplane seat and I’m fairly sure you could fit three across in most cars if you needed to), well-reviewed for safety, convertible (can be used forward or backward facing), and — the real kicker — extremely lightweight. Like, a feather. Do not underestimate the weight when you imagine yourself (whenever we are flying anywhere again…) lugging an unwieldy seat through O’Hare airport while wrangling small children and inevitably running late. I could carry this puppy with no problem myself! Honest downsides: the fabric feels thin (read: cheap) and it takes a little maneuvering to figure out how to secure it properly in the car. But for the two or three car trips we have planned for this year? I’ll take it!
If we owned a car and drove more regularly, I would buy the Clek Foonf for both children. I spent a lot of time researching this before we sold our car last year!
And if you are planning to travel by air at any point with a carseat in tow, these gate check carseat bags are brilliant — not really (in my opinion) for keeping the car seat safe so much as for ease of transit throughout the terminal (sling it over your shoulder instead of awkwardly holding it out to your side)! Bonus: the bag is easy to spot when picking up at the jet-bridge or carousel.
Weekend Musings: On the Rare Virtue of Open-Mindedness.
My father is sharp as a tack, the best-read person I’ve ever met, highly articulate, experienced and storied in the realms of business, philanthropy, fly-fishing, and law (among others), and deeply curious by nature. It is almost always the case that he knows more or has spent more time thinking about any given topic than I. You might assume, based on these attributes, that he would be the type to exercise fully-formed opinions with unwavering confidence or even an air of the unimpeachable.
And yet he is one of the most open-minded people I know.
I can recall many fumbling attempts at debate with him in my teen years in which I would arrive at the dining room table with an arsenal of half-formed arguments only to find myself entirely disarmed by the tilt of his head: “Now that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of that…” It was always humbling: there I’d be, a green-horned ideologue striding gallantly into some imagined tete-a-tete, my pre-sharpened (albeit rudimentary) points pricking my pockets, only to find my “opponent” standing next to me, gazing into the dark in front of us both, an unexpected, more intellectually capable ally.
Now I realize just how rare his receptivity was and remains. His willingness to change his mind — and openly, without embarrassment — strikes me as the highest of virtues. It reflects the humility and thoughtfulness with which he leads his life. And I find myself now — especially while rearing my own children — positioning his open-mindedness as a core aspirational value for my family.
Which virtues do you value the most in your parents?
+OK, these scalloped disposable plates are absolutely amazing for an outdoor event…or just for having on hand! We have this set by the same brand and use them when we eat picnics in Central Park — they are honestly sturdy enough to bring home, wipe clean, and re-use!
+Love this little set for a baby girl on a hot summer day. I have been finding these white onesies totally indispensable for Hill’s afternoon naps — he’s usually thoroughly dirtied whatever sweet outfit I’ve had him in during morning/lunch/park, so I give him a bath and slip him into a white onesie for nap and evening. That set would be the perfect thing for a similar setup with a little girl.
+I don’t think I can bear to bring a single additional brightly colored, large toy into our house, but Hill would lose his mind over this.
I could not believe when I found a treasure trove of Sammy + Nat pajamas on ridiculous sale at Rue La La, including the sweet anchor-print footie above for under $20! I ordered Hill these and these and how can I not snag this little pima dress, only $9?! (down from $60)?!
P.P.S. Great outdoor gear for toddlers. I’m especially excited about mini’s binoculars (she will flip) and flash light (she will lose her mind). She has been really interested in bugs ever since we hatched butterflies from caterpillars, and we read this book and this one nearly every day, cover to cover (my mother sent us both!). Interestingly, they are fantastic companion books to one another, as they feature a lot of the same insects/principles/language. So I of course had to buy her a magnifying glass, too.
I don’t have anything profound to say about turning 36. There is too much happening in 2020 to pause and think about how it feels to turn a year older. And on that point, I feel chastened after recently reading a piece in The American Scholar, where David Gessner wrote:
“I am wary of anyone who offers “lessons” from a moment of crisis. September 11 should have taught us that most of these immediate insights are disposable.”
In short: there is not yet enough distance to make out the shapes that matter, or — more to the heart-breaking point — the ones that remain. Maybe my flimsy, fumbling attempts at writing about coronavirus and even aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement were ill-advised, and I should have taken a page out of my post answering the question of whether it is more difficult to go from 0-1 children or 1-2:
“I couldn’t possibly tell you which has been harder because I’m too close up. I need time, perspective, space to process it all.”
And yet I know myself well enough to say with unflinching certainty that I will continue to write about our times — with varying degrees of obliqueness — because my writing has always prioritized process over product. That is, I write to know what I think.
Sometimes I will play the Pollyanna, sometimes I will distract with beautiful things, sometimes I will delicately play with the hemline of a difficult-to-broach subject. I will often make mistakes. I will occasionally entertain. And, rarely, when I am as brave as a 36-year-old woman should be, I will stare something right in the eye and write directly at it rather than around it.
But, not today.
Today, I turn 36, and you can bet that I am overdressed for the quarantine-induced constraints upon the occasion. Not quite wearing yards of mint green tulle like the chic pea above, but not far off.
Today, I intend to put down my phone, cuddle with my children on the floor, have a glass of champagne with lunch, read my book, and wait for my four siblings and two parents to call me and wish me many happy returns in their own individualized yet predictable ways.
Today, I plan to put on bright lipstick, eat french fries, kiss my husband, and go to bed in freshly-laundered sheets with my hair still wet from a late-night shower — this last bedtime vignette one of the strangest and most satisfying luxuries I know. (To hell with my crimped bed head the next morning!)
Today, I want to shelve my usual regimen-and-routine-oriented habits and instead remember all day long how lucky I am to be healthy, loved, and surrounded by blessings.
An eclectic roundup of things I love today, beginning with the rose-trellised home of Brooke Giannetti above. Stunning. A bit closer-in and more accessible, though —
1 // Weezie Makeup Towels. I have destroyed countless sets of wash cloths washing my face or drying my hands after applying makeup. These navy-colored makeup towels are brilliant — the softest, fluffiest cotton and they never, ever show a stain. Brilliant. Weezie sent me a set a couple weeks ago and they are in constant rotation. Love that they are now customizable! Great gift for a girlfriend or lowkey apology to your mother, whose towels you ravaged as a mascara-obsessed teen. (More gift ideas here.)
2 // CPC Kids Shorts. I’ve had a couple of Magpies ask about the shorts mini has been wearing in a few photos I’ve posted on Instastory. She only has CPC Kids shorts this season. I like the cut (short, flattering) and traditional styles (gingham, seersucker), and they hold up well in the wash. (Do note, though, that they require a hot date with an iron after laundering!). My favorite pair she owns is this lemon print style, but her seersuckers are classic, too, and it’s not too late to order this to-die-for print for FOJ. I pair them with polo shirts and Cienta plimsolls.
3 // Nailmatic Kids Wash-Off Nail Polish. This is one of mini’s absolute favorite activities: I do her fingers and toes and then she does mine. This brand of toddler polish washes off with water, so everyone wins 🙂
4 // Lauren Napier Beauty Wipes. I have been on a tear testing various facial wipes from a variety of brands. These are excellent and actually feel like they’re doing something beyond removing makeup and impurities — they are even the tiniest bit astringent? I like them for when I really want a freshly scrubbed feel–especially handy after I have taken the children out to the park in sweltering heat, given them baths, and put them down for a rest. I look in the mirror and say: “Wow. We need to start over.” These are great for those moments. Otherwise, I still love the Billie wipes for end-of-day run-of-the-mill makeup removal. Both are excellent.
5 // Hue Lightstrips. We ran these under some of the cabinetry in our kitchen and they are AMAZING. They totally light up the space and are controllable by smart phone.
6 // StateBags Crosby Fanny Pack (<<I own in this exact color, which is on sale!, but more colors here). I purchased this last summer in an effort to lead a more hands-free life while chasing two small children — and I still use it nearly any time I’m out in the Park with the kids, as it means that I can keep my phone, sanitizer*, key, and credit card on me at all times and therefore feel more comfortable roaming after my children / leaving our stroller area unattended. And I think it can look cute with any of the gauzy/billowy dresses I wear these days — speaking of which, I am currently looking to expand my repertoire with any one of the following similar styles:
7 // J. Crew Vintage Cotton Tees. Still my favorite. Soft, great colors, perfect cut, and no tag. I have been wearing the navy with white jeans a lot for unfussy day time uniform.
8 // Leuchtterm 1917 Notebooks. Just my favorite for notes, lists, ideas, quotes. I love both the dotted and squared/gridded styles — very European and super-tidy.
9 // Weekly Planning Pad. I am a leftie and I love that there is no crease/spiral to contend with in this weekly planner. Unstructured enough to accommodate nearly anything you want to jot down there, from to dos to reminders to daily gratitudes and more. (Also like this style, with a bit more space for doodling on every day of the week.)
10 // Noodle & Boo Cream Rinse. Adding this to my roundup of children’s bath time gear I love! I’ve noticed that mini’s hair is a little dry these days — this cream rinse is incredible! Left her hair soft, tangle-free, smooth, and shiny.
In late March, I contracted coronavirus and spent the subsequent 22 days entirely within the confines of our small Manhattan apartment. I did not write about it then and cannot bring myself to write about it now–there is not yet enough daylight between. No one has been untouched by the circumstances in which we are living; I am one of the luckier ones. I share this today because I feel the need to asterisk my posts on the subject of coronavirus, many of which have been spiriting in tone because I have needed to cheerlead myself, and some of which have been self-indulgent, because I have been experiencing the full range of emotions over the illness and have occasionally needed that kind of blood-letting. But I remain — sharply — aware of my blessings. Not a day passes where I do not think about the thousands of people dying, grieving loved ones, losing their jobs or homes, shuttering their businesses, or feeling lost and alone. If I write about quarantine in a way that feels abstracted from the lived suffering of so many or seems determined to look for silver linings where there are none: well, it is because I am writing my way out of a darkness.
****
A few weeks into quarantine, our super informed us that ours was one of four or five units (out of dozens) left occupied in our building. An informal survey of my Manhattanite friends revealed that more than half had fled the city to spend time with family or rent houses upstate or out East. Three sets of friends with young children moved away permanently. So to the readers who have asked whether recent events have prompted us to re-evaluate our decision to live in New York City: yes.
Yet here we are, with no immediate intentions to leave. I’m not sure whether our outlook would be the same were it not for the proximity of Central Park, which has become an extension of our daily living space. We sojourn there for an hour or two after lunch, grateful for its sparsity, at least in some of the corners we have claimed for ourselves in recent weeks. I took the picture above earlier this week, struck by its lucid conjuring of the essence of childhood: my little scavenger with bare feet and bird-like eyes, seeking treasure in the grass, or maybe dodging a worm, or — doing something else perfectly suited to a three-year-old’s self-directed curiosity. You would never know she was standing just a few yards from Central Park West, with the blare of sirens and honk of horns her routine and unremarkable soundtrack.
If there is anything positive I can say about coronavirus, it is that it has reminded me that life finds a way. Babies are born, lovers are married, and still my three-year-old will come home in the afternoon with twigs in her hair and stories of the bee that crawled into her pink shoe.
“But mama said ‘Shoo, bee,'” she explained matter-of-factly to her father, recounting the incident upon return home, her attentiveness to this nothing of a story catching me off-guard and leaving me unexpectedly swallowing, hard, in the hallway of our apartment, the purity and narrowness of her thoughts stirring — or maybe relaxing — something in me. So too when I find myself tripped up by her incessant interrogation: “But what does a drain do?” and “Why is that car white?”, as I fumble with my mask. Her precociousness–her unflustered toddlerness–momentarily blots out the intensity of these times.
Life finds a way.
And so Mr. Magpie and I talk at length about what we want, what might be best for our children and our careers, and how to reconcile all of that with not only the presence of coronavirus but the lumbering reality of logistics. It is an incalculable math problem. How to weigh, for example, the impossible privilege of dining out at Prune (currently and possibly forever closed) and dropping by the Met and enjoying a largely pedestrian life where the pediatrician is one block (one block!!! one block!!!) away and nearly anything in this incredibly cultured and diverse city is at our fingertips, with the uncertainty around when this damned virus will die down and our current lust for a square of hedge-lined backyard, preferably visible from a squat window over a farmhouse sink, from which I can watch my two babies play in the grass while the sun sets? Is it the times speaking or am I just at that stage of life where space matters more? How often do we truly take advantage of the city anyhow? How much more would we value it if we committed to a couple of visits each year while living elsewhere? Would we visit after all? Would we find ourselves those insufferable urbanites mourning the lack of delivery options, never quite “over” our brief stint in NYC? It feels impossible to imagine moving of our own volition versus following our careers, but are we at one of those times in life, and possibly in history, where “the impossible” is prudent?
Recent life experiences have left me circumspect when contemplating the unknown. I find myself grittier — better able to fare life’s inevitable dips and twists — but cautious, especially when I find myself inclined to do something based on near-term pain.
And so we sit in this city, in our tight quarters, soaking in the small pleasures where we can find them, clinging to one another.
“In my 20s, I didn’t quite know who I was, but I believed I could do or be anything; I was amorphous, evolving — but the world around me felt crisp, knowable, navigable. In my 30s, I know who I am with a kind of true blue certainty (I am somebody!!!), but feel less convinced of my agency, less confident in my grasp on the world. It’s as if I went from being far-sighted to near-sighted; I didn’t know what I didn’t know in my 20s, and now I know what I don’t know — and so my conviction in the shape of things has shifted, shrunk, concentrated in on only the small world around me, the narrow sphere in which I know that 1+1=2. The mathematics beyond skew.”
At nearly 36, I write to let you know that I still don’t know — and in fact know less? — but that it’s still OK. After all, the mathematics in my own home still computes. Tomorrow morning, my daughter will spring straight out of bed at 6:02 a.m., pad into my bedroom, and let me know “the sun is coming up, mama”–and we’ll do it all over again.
+More on what it’s been like living in NYC in 2020 here and here.
+I bought myself one of these elegant Smythson planners (<<on sale for nearly 50% off!) when expecting mini — such a lovely treat to organize lists of questions, baby names, baby gear, to-dos, etc! Great gift for a close friend expecting…
+I know I’ve mentioned this a lot, but these onesies are the absolute best. So soft and hold up to infinity washings. Our current routine is lunch, park, bath, and then I usually put Hill in one of these onesies for his afternoon nap. So soft and breathable! (And is there anything cuter than a little baby in a classic white onesie?!)
If you have not yet bought a pair of sandals for summer, you are in luck — troves of incredibly chic finds are heavily discounted at the moment. All items below are under $200 and most are under $130. A few standouts below:
It’s been awhile since I shared a round-up of books on my radar. Below, sharing my dream summer reading list, hopelessly ambitious as it might be.
FOR A DARK THRILL RIDE // What Lies Between Us by John Marrs. This is all you need to know: “Every other night, Maggie and Nina have dinner together. When they are finished, Nina helps Maggie back to her room in the attic, and into the heavy chain that keeps her there.” Um, what?
FOR POETIC CRAFTSMANSHIP IN A FAMILY-FOCUSED NOVEL // The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett — A lot of buzz about this book, which traces the stories of a family across multiple generations, interrogating “the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations.” Most intriguing to me? Reviewers have likened Bennett’s voice to Toni Morrison. Must read.
FOR A TOTAL BRAIN VACATION // The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, which comes out in early July. I absolutely loved the pre-cursor to this book — it actually made my list of the absolute best beach reads — and you know I love all things royal.
FOR ELEGANT PROSE // The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Ann Patchett described it pithily as follows: “The night watchman is trying to save Native lands while a young woman is trying to save her sister. Gorgeous, brilliant, important — everything you could want in a novel.” OK, Ann! I’m in.
FOR NON-FICTION THAT READS LIKE LYRICAL FICTION // The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson — Currently reading this non-fiction account of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South in the early twentieth century. It reads like lyrical fiction: compelling, poetic, highly attuned to the personal. I have underlined countless sentences in this book out of the sheer rhythmic joy of reading them, and, of course, there is a lot to chew on content-wise.
FOR A JUICY MEMOIR SET AMONG THE FASHION ELITE // The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir by Andre Leon Talley. A love a juicy memoir, and here is one from a fashion industry veteran who is both a fashion icon in his own right and a conduit to the hush-hush of the fashion elite. I think I will listen to this on audiobook — I love hearing memoirs read by the authors themselves.
FOR A NOVEL THAT BLURS THE LINE BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION // Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld. This book seems to be enjoying a polarized reception — some absolutely love it and others hate it passionately — and for that reason, I’m desperate to check it out. I love a good book controversy. As its name suggests, the book is a fictional account of Hillary Clinton’s life. Sittenfeld pulled off a similar undertaking in American Wife, a fictionalization of Laura Bush’s life that I enjoyed a few years ago, although I did wonder how she managed to write damning bits of it without some sort of lawsuit filed against her…
FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN SILICON VALLEY (I.E., IF YOU LIKED BAD BLOOD) // Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac. A close-up look at the rise of Uber, the outsized personality of its storied founder, Travis Kalanick, and a sweeping (incriminating) interrogation of the venture capital world in the early oughts and beyond.
And in case you’d prefer to shop from BookShop, a digital boutique that enables you to purchase from small book sellers across the country, I have listed all of these selections and a couple of other picks here.
What other must-reads are on your list for summer 2020?!
Post Scripts.
+A clip-on book light if your significant other goes to sleep earlier than you do.
+I was surprised to see that Crate and Barrel discontinued the beloved leaning bookshelves we have flanking our media console in the living room — what a shame! I always get so many compliments on them, and they almost look like they could be built-in. They now have a similar though more modern style available here. LOVE these for apartments because they don’t block out as much light and give the impression of something custom-built. (Look for less with these.)
+Mentioned this Friday, but Minnidip was recently restocked at Target and there are still some available. I ended up ordering this watermelon style, although I still die over this pink confection. Boys can wear pink, too (duh), but I have to be honest and say that Hill has a lot of girly things in his life…trying to balance it out.
+This statement mini is UNBELIEVABLE. The sleeves! The pleating! The Monet-esque pattern. Wow wow wow.
+This boat-print HVN dress is so fun. This label does such a good job with their prints and cuts — walking the narrow walkway of “retro chic” without ever looking dated or fuddy-duddy. Obsessed! Also — I feel like Charlotte York in this label.
+I own and love these in a different colorway — silver would go with everything (on sale!)
By: Jen Shoop
My Latest Snag: New Nightgowns for Mini.
Mini prefers to sleep in nightgowns and I love them, too — not only because they are absolutely precious on a toddler but also because you can extend the life of a nightgown a lot longer than traditional top and bottom styles. Mini is tall and — at just over three years old — typically wears a size 4T, but we still have a couple of 2T nightgowns that fit in the rotation! At any rate, I bought her two new Petite Plumes, a sleepwear brand whose pieces hold up beautifully despite infinite launderings: this floral print and this whale print.
I have so many well-read, book-loving Magpies and I’m curious to know — when do you read? How do you make time for it?
The Kindle has totally transformed my approach to reading in the sense that I find it much easier, physically and mentally, to pop in and out of reading. When I have hard copies on hand, I find I will not read unless the circumstances are just so: a comfortable perch where I can rest the book on a pillow or on the bed, a quiet stretch of uninterrupted time. The Kindle has left me far more prone to read in small snippets on the Subway (back when I took the Subway — possibly one of the only aspects of New York I have not missed at all since the start of quarantine), while supervising mini in the bath, or during the odd couple of minutes where both children are happily preoccupied at my feet. Still, if I intend to make serious headway in my tsundoku pile (i.e., more than one book a month, which seems to be my chelonian pace these days), I find I have to put myself to bed around 8:30 p.m. so that I have a full and quiet hour to read before I find myself drifting towards sleep.
What about you? When are you most likely to read? How do you fit it into your life?
+Target now has a few Minnidip pools available — run! These sell out so quickly. I guess everyone is spending time in their backyards trying to entertain small children, huh? I ordered the watermelon, but if I only had daughters, I would have gone for this one. (This one is super small — only 4 feet wide — but could be cute if you have just one tiny little baby to entertain!)
+Roop bags are in stock in the prettiest colors here! These under-$100 statement bags fly off the shelves and are enjoying a major moment right now. I bought a black and white style a few weeks ago and am anxiously awaiting its arrival, but that pastel pink is also calling my name…! Does a girl need two?!
+Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer is on sale for an unprecedented 20% off — really hard to find prestige cosmetics that heavily discounted. I toggle between LM and Chantecaille’s tinted moisturizer, but bought a few tubes with this current promo!
+Nordstrom marked a ton of never-on-sale beauty products down to 15% off, including this beloved Clarins serum (apparently one sells every 15 seconds?!), all of their Jo Malone perfumes and candles (ordering this peony scent I’ve been eyeing for a long time), and these hair clips, which I have used for maybe five or ten years at this point?! The SAME EXACT HAIR CLIPS. They never die! Love them for sectioning hair while blow-drying.
+I do not need these – I do not need these – I do not need these – but if the were still available in my size…I would need these (70% off holy cow).
There are a lot of new readers here — welcome! I am so glad we’ve found one another. You can read a little bit more about me and Magpie as a whole here, but the TL;DR is that I am a mother, wife, and writer who took a circuitous route to land where I am now: authoring a literary lifestyle and fashion blog sustained by the passionate, thoughtful, and intelligent women who read and comment along daily. (Some spectacular reader gems here.)
An advisor once told me that many entrepreneurs “take a squiggly path” to success. As it turns out, “squiggly” was wildly euphemistic. I started my post-college career in an offshoot of government consulting (the most excruciatingly boring year of my life), then earned an advanced degree in literature with the intention of pursuing a life in academia before taking a wild left-hand turn into the non-profit world, working for two start-up organizations focused on educational access for underserved communities. Both of those organizations were led by young, enthusiastic social entrepreneurs determined to use technology to level the playing field for disadvantaged youth and I somehow found myself leading product strategy and innovation for both. Those professional experiences were humbling, ambitious, challenging, inspiring, and in many ways undeserved. I had the opportunity to meet, brainstorm, and collaborate with leading minds in the worlds of technology, design, and philanthropy; learn how to pitch, sell, and speak publicly (with formal training!); discover — trial-by-fire — how to manage a team and navigate countless complicated workplace dynamics; and spend many afternoons in classrooms on the South and West sides of Chicago, observing idealistic college students teach bright-eyed teens from low-income, under-resourced, and gang-riddled communities the basics of personal finance using technology and programming I had a large hand in designing.
I learned a lot about the many complex barriers to educational attainment in America, the nuts and bolts of technology development, and — mainly — leadership. My biggest takeaways from those six years of hard work? No matter how visionary the mission, success rests on the strength of the team, culture flows from the top down, and — in direct contradiction to the age-old “it’s not personal, it’s business” adage — everything is personal in business.
In 2015, I decided to take what I had learned about management and product design, much of which had been absorbed boots-on-the-ground style but some of which had been accessed more tidily from an excellent executive MBA course I took at Stanford focused on social entrepreneurship, in order to found an HR technology business with my husband. Building our business, which aspired to streamline and mitigate bias in the performance review process by providing real-time employee feedback, was probably the single-most transformative thing I have ever done in my life. We ran it for two years before shutting it down in 2017, not long after the birth of our first child, Emory Lucia. We had built a small team, raised capital, launched multiple releases of our product, secured customers, participated in accelerators, pitched on many a dais, and generally lived through the highest highs and lowest lows of our lives. I remember clinking champagne glasses and dancing around our kitchen in excitement — and also suffering from heart palpitations, months of sleepless nights, and what I can only describe as absolute heartbreak and burnout. I am frankly still coming to terms with the building and then burying of our business. It was the hardest, most meaningful, eye-opening, and exhausting undertaking of my life. I did not emerge unscathed. I am far more circumspect and risk-averse, occasionally jaded, and I still feel sick to my stomach when thinking back on nearly any aspect of those two years of labor. But I have learned to “take the long-view” (as my Dad puts it) when reflecting on it and can already see the many ways it has made me a better thinker and writer.
I feel impossibly fortunate that I had the opportunity to build that business with my husband and best friend, Mr. Magpie, who has handily earned the starring role in the re-telling of my life experiences. He is my counterbalance, my anchor, my shield, my cheerleader, my instigator — the man who “isn’t doing a thing that I can see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” That is: he is everything and I would be nowhere without him. I love him wholly, entirely, from his astounding thoughtfulness right down to that irritating and occasionally gutting stubbornness of his, and I love him also for the life he has given me, which rotates around good food, good books, good conversation, and — principally — our two beloved children, Emory Lucia and Landon Hill Shoop, Jr. (whom we call “Hill”).
Motherhood is my deepest privilege and joy, and I write about it — a lot. In general, I have found that parenting for me is more about being the branch that bends versus the mighty oak that breaks in the storm. I am constantly adapting, learning, listening, tinkering, trying something new. In some ways I feel that I know close to nothing about raising children, even with two of my own, three years into the project, but I do know this: I love them with both fierceness and tenderness that know no bounds. And so I remind myself that I am a human, I will make mistakes, but that I will also wake up tomorrow and try again, driven by an ineffably intense desire to do right by them and for them. At night, I ask myself: “Did my children feel loved today?” If I answer “yes,” I tell myself that I’m on the right path. And so far, my answer has always been yes. There is far too much else to write on this unwieldy and all-consuming subject, so let me interrupt myself here with a couple of my most-read posts on the subject:
As you may have gathered by puttering around here or reading this post, this blog covers a lot, from the freighted to the frivolous. I talk about marriage, self-care, fashion trends, cultural phenomena, grief, parenting, books, cosmetics, home organization, words, “adulting,” relationships, sale scores, children’s gear, happy times and tough times–and the prayers, prose, and meandering trails of thought that get me through it all. Collectively, Magpie is a manifestation of the varied and imbalanced bric a brac of my emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual lives.
Yet that is only half of the equation.
The other half is, of course, you.
If you are new here, I think that part of what will make this blog remarkable is its readership. There are meaningful and intelligent comments on nearly every single post, many of which I pocket and think about for weeks and weeks to come, your words materializing in the depths of parenting despair as well as the glass-clinking of personal victories–and even in these off-kilter, limbo-like days of quarantine, where I would do well to remember, as one of you put it just earlier this week, that it is “enough to lie outside in the grass sometimes.”
In short, the community standards are high here: you have created a space for positive, highly articulate, civil, and intelligent discourse about the many things that make up the life of a modern woman. And I’m here for it.
I am horrific at tennis and haven’t played in years at this point, but I am drawn to the sport for several reasons:
I took lessons as an adult and it was eye-opening to try my hand — publicly — at something in which I lacked skill.
I love the way my body feels after tennis — tired, tight, sore all over. A good kind of all-body fatigue.
I like the outfits.
I used to go to the storied Legg-Mason Tennis Tournaments in D.C. in the summer — they took place not far from where I grew up, along Rock Creek Park. Mr. Magpie took me to the tournament a couple of summers when we were just starting to date, and I have a pocket full of golden memories sitting there with my handsome beau in the sweltering heat, listening to the pick-pock-pick-pock of the tennis ball volleying back and forth.
At one Legg Mason match I did not attend, Mr. Magpie went with his friend Andrew (now a celebrated photojournalist whose pictures you probably know from the news and a dear friend of mine, too). They must have been cheering too loudly because an older woman in front of them turned around, shushed them, and said, sternly, “This, gentlemen, is not football.” Ha! I love the propriety of this sport.
Just because I’m not actively playing doesn’t mean I can’t jump in on the accoutrements, however…
P.S. Speaking of lipsticks, one of my FAVORITE brands/formula is Chantecaille’s Lip Chic, which glides on like a moisturizing/semi-glossy balm and comes in the prettiest shades, including several on sale here!
P.P.S. Reflections on two years in New York and nine years of marriage — both written last summer. Am already marinating on what to say about three years of New York and ten years of marriage later this summer…
