There is a wonderful poem by Amy Lowell on lilacs–only, it’s not about lilacs at all. As with much poetry, the subject matter is evocative, coincidental, suggestive rather than mimetic. I was reminded of this while walking Tilly along the northernmost edge of Sheep’s Meadow the other day, down a dirt path lined with fragrant lilacs. I stopped to take a photograph — how could I not? — and I found myself thinking about the Lowell poem, about its languid elegance and its oddly poignant personification:
“Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.”
I dwelt on the narrator’s gradual internalization of the lilac, the unhurried blurring of the lines between her description of the flower and her description of herself, the ultimate conflation of the external with the internal. It’s a thing of beauty to watch, as though the poem unfolds in a sort of time lapse, until she crescendos in this rousing final stanza:
“Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.”
I love this personal anthem, this Whitman-esque song-of-myself. The mapping of the natural world onto the complex inner workings of the speaker’s soul call to mind the book we’re reading for Magpie book club, a different medium and different tone altogether, but one that carefully interrogates this relationship between man and nature in many of its constituent short stories.
As I hopscotched from the lilacs in Central Park to the Lowell poem to the Sachdeva book and then paused to glance back over my shoulder, something inside me swelled. Was it gratitude? Was it that hazy romanticism I often feel when an author manages to evoke something precise, something I have felt but maybe forgotten, with just the right turn of phrase? (I have felt that way many times while reading Sachdeva, and many times, too, while re-reading the Lowell poem. Why do I feel tears prick my eyes when I read: “You are the smell of all Summers, / The love of wives and children, / The recollection of gardens of little children, / You are State Houses and Charters / And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.” There is something deeply intimate and familiar about Lowell’s writing here. I nod; I know what she means by feel rather than intellect.)
But there was a doubling that afternoon, a mirroring, as if the books and poems I was reading and the natural world I was traipsing through were connected to one another like a paper garland that has just been unfolded, the delicate edges accordioning into something far more elaborate than anticipated.
I should read more poetry, I thought. But poetry is a tough genre. It’s out of vogue, out of favor. It seems to mandate a quiet room and a level of attention out of sync with the pace of modern life. There are also the problems of format and discovery: I don’t want to sit down and read a string of poems — one or two here and there are just enough — but poems are so often sold in collections meant to be consumed together, or daunting, academic-looking volumes that have nary a place in a home library. Stand-alone poems are singularly difficult to ferret out, come to think of it — they’re more like buried treasure, presenting themselves in excerpt form in an epigraph in a book I’m reading, or in a flash of memory (as happened above), or in an oddball blogpost (ahem, hello!)
But I should read more poetry. Poetry is a distillation of emotion; its format invites a focus and frugality wholly absent in ramblings like mine here.* It can open me up, serve as a gateway to some as-yet-unaccessed memory or feeling or connection. And it can send me deep into the lilac-laden heart of a May afternoon in Central Park, where nothing in particular happened, and yet I crossed some invisible intellectual threshold I can’t quite manage to explain.
So, I will read more poetry.
Who is with me? Who reads poetry, and how do you come by it?
First, please consider reading the our first book club book. It is EXCELLENT. Weird, smart, wildly imaginative, pregnant with subtext. I cannot wait to discuss.
And, finally, this book has major buzz right now because a show has just been released based on it! Heads up — it’s pretty dark for best-seller status.
P.S. Does anyone know anything about area rug cleaning? Tilly has been housebroken for years and then she peed on our carpet TWICE in the last week. TWICE?! What the hell. I’m having a service come out to clean it on site because I’m terrified of having an apartment with a dog pee smell (sick), but I’m also contemplating buying one of these, which gets good reviews, for future spot cleans. Any thoughts/recs? I’m mainly concerned about the odor…
I have about a dozen pretty summer dresses chilling in my digital shopping cart right now. Some are higher-end, like the floral beauties I waxed poetic about here, but I thought I’d share a couple of summer dress steals — all under $100!
P.S. With all of these new dresses in the mix, you might want to snag a set of these — they are supposed to be amazing! They’re super slim and the clear acrylic means that they are virtually invisible to the eye, removing some of the heft and clutter we all hate in our closets. If Mr. Magpie wouldn’t think I was an insane person, I would chuck all of our hangers and replace with these, but — alas. I’ll start with one pack and gradually weave them in?
P.P.S. Do yourself a favor and invest in one of these. I steam everything before wearing it. I actually use this less expensive travel style (only $20!), but have heard the Rowenta one is *next level* and I’m inclined to trust that review because I invested in a Rowenta iron and my life has changed. OK, that’s a little dramatic — but the results are super obvious. And our nanny, who kindly handles all of mini’s ironing, raves about it, too.
P.P.P.S. There are so many Hermes Oran sandal lookalikes out right now — these look to be the best quality IMO! I splurged on Le Real Deal and wear them with EVERYTHING. Jeans, sundresses, shorts, etc. It all works. If you also want to splurge, but not to the tune of $700, check out these fun Loeffler Randalls. I’m in love with them. Select colors are on sale!
+Our book club book! IT IS SO WEIRD AND SO GOOD. Pls join! The in-person event on June 6th in New York City now has a long waitlist, but I’ll be sharing discussion questions soon in case you’d like to host a satellite book club!
What I really want to talk about is Childish Gambino’s harrowing, jarring, important new video, “This Is America,” but I don’t quite know what to say or how to say it. Mr. Magpie urgently put it on the TV after mini had gone to bed the other night — “You have to see this,” he said. (Spoiler alert: stop reading if you intend to watch and be surprised.) I don’t think we took a bite of our food until we’d finished watching it, and then we sat in confused, disturbed silence for a minute or three or seven. The incongruity of the messages, the precipitous and shocking violence, the parade of familiar but extracted images from black American culture. It is haunting, pressing — but I’m not sure whether to read it as a warning, or a lament, or an indictment, or a satire. The tone is difficult to parse, and the pace frustratingly implacable: we are forced to swing from a scene of gore to one of dance without a second to gather ourselves.
+I think I might live in this coverup all summer long. It looks so flattering, so easy, so comfortable…true story: I own a simple gray cotton maxidress that I wear almost every other night in the summer. It’s like my version of a muumuu/housecoat.
Hi! A quick little micro-post for you: the lovely Monica Dutia has offered to host a satellite Magpie book club in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown area) on Wednesday, June 6th — the same evening our New York City contingency will be meeting. (And P.S., here’s the book we’re reading.) If you are in D.C. and would like to join, please sign up for details here:
If you are in another city and would like to organize a satellite book club, LMK! I’ll try to coordinate with you. I’ll be sending Monica discussion questions, and I’ll also share some with the entire blog in case you’d just like to mull ’em over in private (or with a handful of your nearest and dearest).
P.S. This is back in stock in the “bone” color. Added to my basket immediately.
By: Jen Shoop
Even now, a year and two months after the fact, I struggle to speak directly about minimagpie’s birth. I struggle because I found–and still find–the c-section traumatic. I hate to use that word, trauma, as my very uncomplicated and straight-forward delivery of mini does not qualify for such freighted language, but words fail me, and I can’t find a better way to express the experience. It was more than intense. It was more than uncomfortable. It was seminal, enormous, unprocessable for me. In the weeks following minimagpie’s birth, I routinely refused to nap when my mother or Mr. Magpie would quietly remove mini from my arms and tiptoe out of the room — “shh, just take a little nap,” my mom would whisper over her shoulder.
“No, no — stay here,” I would protest. I’m sure she thought it was because I was too attached to mini, too full of new-mom-ness. But the truth was that I was afraid to be left to my own thoughts. I knew that — given a stretch of time devoid of attending to mini’s diapers or gurgles or uncoordinated movements — my mind would inevitably return to the c-section, and I was petrified of its memory. My eyes still fill with tears when I think about laying on that table, my arm’s stretched out into a t shape, connected to IVs and monitors, before Mr. Magpie was permitted into the operating room. I felt horribly alone despite the fact that the room was crowded with nurses and anesthesiologists and doctors. I stared up at the ceiling and tears streamed down my cheeks.
“Oh no — what’s going on, Jen?” asked the doctor, who wasn’t my doctor. You see, I had a scheduled c-section for 9 a.m. that morning with my doctor — one I knew well and implicitly trusted — but my water broke at 3 a.m., and they’d decided to perform the c-section earlier than expected, as I was having regular contractions. But my doctor, who lived in the Chicago suburbs, couldn’t make it in on time. I blinked at the ceiling and — though I knew it was rude — did not reply to not-my-doctor’s inquiry. I couldn’t. I didn’t know what was going on.
“Did everything just become…real?” she prodded. Her voice was soothing but I felt a bit like she was performing a routine speech she delivered to all of her new moms-to-be. I nodded, but that wasn’t it at all. I started saying Hail Marys. My mother had given me a finger rosary she’d worn during the births of all five of her children, but the doctor had told me I wasn’t permitted to hold it during the procedure, as they use some sort of electricity and I wasn’t to wear anything that could conduct a current. Instead, I began, shakily, to recite the prayer in my mind, for the first of about twenty million times that morning.
When Mr. Magpie entered, decked out in scrubs, I could see the concern, the fear on his face. He was trying — with difficulty — to keep it together, but there I was, strapped to a table, my arms sticking straight out, tears streaming down my cheeks. My body had started to convulse violently. They later told me this was normal, common — but it felt as though my body was enduring some sort of emotional paroxysm, wildly shuddering in spite of my efforts to keep still. Mr. Magpie sat on a stool by my head and stroked my hair. I couldn’t hold his hand because mine were shaking so intensely. I could see the tenderness in his eyes, the gentleness, the love. In that moment, my fear subsided and my anxieties instead attended to Mr. Magpie–how horrifying it must have been to sit there, helpless, while your wife underwent such a bizarre and inhuman experience. I say inhuman with care, with delicacy — women who have c-sections are just as natural as those who deliver vaginally — but it felt so implausible, so disturbing to be lying awake while my body was cut open. I was oddly thankful for the excuse of fretting over someone else’s anxieties as I projected myself into Mr. Magpie’s perspective, emoting around how he must have been feeling — completely beside himself, helpless.
Only a few minutes after they’d begun, I heard the doctor say, in a coaxing voice, “Come on, sweetie. Come on,” as she tugged. I knew mini was close. And then she and the attending doctor pulled and yanked with such force that I thought my body was going to fly off the table. Mr. Magpie looked on in disbelief; I could see shock written all over his face, and I knew it must have looked as weird as it felt. I had been warned by my sister in law about this — that they really need to get in there to get the baby out. But when I heard the doctor grunt with effort — grunt! — I just about lost my mind. I remember looking at Mr. Magpie in desperation, thinking, “Can this just end. Can.this.just.end.” But instead, I stared back up at the ceiling and returned to my mish-mash of Hail Marys.
At 7:01 a.m., we first heard her cry. Mr. Magpie and I looked at each other. We didn’t burst into tears, because we were already crying, but — there was something different. A sense of awe, wonderment. I had waited for this moment with such intensity, such angsty anticipation. I had prepared for a feeling of fierce connection to that cry. I had heard it described as though the cry was coming from inside you — that, instantly, you were bound to that cry, to that voice. I didn’t feel that way, though. I was in awe, but I was, frankly, distressed. I was anxious to get out of that operating room, and the bulk of the surgery still lay ahead — it took them another thirty minutes to stitch and clean everything up, and that thirty minutes was agony. I didn’t feel pain, but I was uncomfortable, exhausted, terrified at the thought of my body open on the table in front of me. Prior to the c-section, I had asked my doctor if I could do skin-to-skin just after mini was born. In the room, I had no idea how that was remotely possible. My body was still shaking uncontrollably, and my arms spread out to the sides. I craned around to look at minimagpie in Mr. Magpie’s arms, my neck sore from the awkward angle. I strained to feel motherly, but I just wanted the operation to be over.
Finally — finally — they finished up and prepared to wheel me out of the room. They put mini in my arms, and I looked down at her for the first time. I had expected a huge surge of love to come pouring out of my soul, had prepared for some sort of fierce I-am-mother-hear-me-roar sentiment — but that wasn’t quite it for me. I looked down, and I wept. I wept with relief. Relief that the wait was over. Relief at the sight of her. Relief that I was out of the operating room. Relief that I could now focus on recovery, and that the most horrifying unknowns were behind me. Relief that nothing had gone sideways. Relief that she was here, and she was perfect. Relief was the predominant emotion. I was embarrassed to admit that to myself. I kept searching around for that huge feeling of motherhood I’d been planning for. I kept prodding myself — “Come on, Jen. You can do better than this. Where’s that huge rush of motherliness?” But relief washed over me and hung around, subduing all else. I didn’t feel like a mom in that moment–whatever that meant. I felt like me. I felt like a battered, exhausted, terrified version of me, with a cool sensation of relief slowing taking over.
It would take a few days, or maybe weeks, really, for me to feel like a mother. And sometimes, still, when I am solo, traipsing down Columbus from the 67 Street Wine shop or popping into the Wells Fargo at 72nd and Broadway, and I see a mom with her daughter, I pause — “Am I a mom? I’m a mom?! Me?!” And I wonder whether those women see me and dismiss me as a non-mom, or sense the motherliness in me.
I had expected — wanted — to feel like a mother immediately, at her first cry. And I know that it happens that way for some women. But it took time for me, this process of matrescence. It was a gradual and unobtrusive evolution. I was me, and now I am a mother me, and there was nothing immediate about it. I can’t quite mark when things shifted, but I do know this: it’s always in the private, unseen moments of caring for mini that I feel most like her mother. The lingering moments in the bath tub, when mini is clean and I draw the wash cloth one more time behind her ears, under her chin, making sure I’ve not missed any spots. The tiptoe-ing into her nursery, risking havoc thanks to a thunderous pocket door, just to peer over the crib rail at her for a second before I retire to bed myself. The swiping of her too-long bangs out of her eyes with my palm, a gesture of love I have observed in other mothers for decades — but now, that is me, and that small act of preening, of care, is my own. The shedding or adding of layers of clothing according to the weather. The packing of an extra cardigan, just in case. The biting in half of a too-large blueberry to prevent a choking hazard. The quick, wrist-y extension of the sunshade on her stroller when we’ve turned toward the sun. The reading of Dear Zoo for the fourth time in a row because she continues to open all the flaps on each page, smiling until the last one, when she slams the cover shut and holds it out toward me, with a provocative: “Thith? Thith?” (Again! Again!) The slathering of sunscreen. The wielding of the digital thermometer when she’s too squirmy for a diaper-change, as I know it will distract her for a couple of minutes.
These unremarkable details are the fabric of my motherhood. Nothing dramatic or over-the-top about them–they are, simply, the silent devotions of a mother to her child, the self-same ones practiced by women in rural India and northern Ireland and the southernmost tip of Argentina. But just beyond these quiet minutaie lies a hot, fierce love, which occasionally bubbles up into elbows-out protectiveness, or sentimental sobs, or an outburst of kisses that leaves mini writhing out of my reach.
And so I sit here, on the eve of Mother’s Day, thinking about being a mother me. Thinking about the gradual but blink-an-eye-and-you’ll-miss it trip from the trauma — yes, I’ll call it trauma — of her delivery to the twenty-two minutes I spent yesterday watching her feed her babydoll with a spoon, making her own motherly sounds as she did so (“nnnnuuu nnnuu nnuuu, ohhhhh” she said, in a high-pitched falsetto, aping sounds I must make myself when doting on her). And the bigness and depth of my love for my daughter versus the slightness and inconsequence of my day-to-day maternal attentions — they together form the elegant but lopsided dance of motherhood, a pattern of crescendo and diminuendo, of surge and sweep, of rush and stop.
After writing all about the new splashpad/pool/beach gear that’s been on my radar for my post earlier this week, our nanny came home from a day in Central Park with mini and urged me to buy a rashguard for her, stating that it would be better for her fair skin. I thought immediately that I’d order her one from Minnow Swim — they have the sweetest prints, and I’d just been ogling at their suits earlier this week! But the floral one I wanted (shown on the sweet pea above — and by itself below) was sold out in mini’s size, and I also didn’t like that they do not sell bottoms separately/individually — meaning that I’d need to also buy her a bikini, or to mix and match with another brand, which rarely works out (the blues don’t match or what have you).
I found a slew of alternates, shown below — you can click on the image to be taken directly to details, or see links below!
I ended up buying #1 and #4 for mini! I also bought a few of these swim diapers. Will be keeping my eyes peeled for Minnow Swim sales…
Runners up…
I also looked at these from Mini Boden — a few friends of mine love their rashguard sets — and they’re cute, but I’m not as into the contrasting print top and bottoms.
P.P.S. I just bought mini this set of duplos and she is OBSESSED. She will sit and play with them for a good thirty minutes on her own. I also bought her this for our upcoming travels (it now comes in the cutest swan shape!!!) — the perfect alternate when a bath tub isn’t handy!
Came across this beauty by WCW recently, and I’ll just leave it right here:
When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form—chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone but color and the movement—or the shape perhaps—of restlessness, whereas the sea is circled and sways peacefully upon its plantlike stem
-William Carlos William
OK, I won’t just leave it. I’ll add: I love the clever use of enjambment in this poem, the way moving from the end of line 1 to line 2 feels as though we, too, have jumped off a cliff; the way the staccato line breaks in lines 5 and 6 reflect the sense of restless movement he’s describing. (Can we also swoon over the phrase “the shape of restlessness”?!) And, taken altogether, in one big gulp, the poem moves and sways evocatively: flowers in the breeze, the break of waves.
Tangentially related, I have been on the hunt for a breezy floral dress for my birthday. Below, some of my favorite picks — and some incredible accessories to pair with them.
Les Prettiest Floral Dresses + Accessories.
Click on images to be taken directly to product details, or see links below — I’ve also included a couple of alternates in the list below!.
And a big yes, pls to this floral print stunner from sustainable fashion line Dagny London. (Read about the line’s amazing founder — my sister — here.)
By: Jen Shoop
One of the odder entries in my father’s lullaby canon was Johnny Cash’s version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” It’s a rousing, poetic country song about a weathered lone ranger who is warned by a damned cowboy to change his errant ways, or be doomed to an endless hunt to “catch the Devil’s herd across these endless skies.”
I didn’t know what the song meant as a wide-eyed child, but I found the imagery vivid, stirring — the profile of a griseled, weather-beaten cowboy pausing for a rest on a ridge, the herd of steel-hooved cattle pounding toward him, the gaunt faces of those phantom riders. Not exactly soothing bedtime material, but it told a story and it became — for reasons unknowable when I think about the broad range of books and music to which we were exposed as children — a cultural touchstone for me.
*The oil painting above is by Frederic Remington, a great painter of the American West — and one of my father’s favorite artists. As I was writing this post, I knew I had to accompany it with one of his works.
When I was a little older, teetering on puberty, spinning girlhood crushes on movie stars and literary heroes, I used to daydream about marrying a cowboy. There was something dashing about his persona: I was drawn to his ruggedness, his adventurousness, his terse unknowability — characteristics I’d extrapolated from my childhood lullaby and other country albums, the handful of Western movies we watched as kids, and the real-life cowboys and horse handlers we’d crossed paths with out in Colorado, where we spent many of my summers growing up. I imagined falling for a handsome cowboy of my own, softening his tough guy exterior with my charm, my kindness, my nurture.
In my late 20s, after I had married Mr. Magpie, I had a conversation with my sister-in-law about The Godfather, a film we both loved, and I told her that I adored the character of Sonny Corleone (played by James Caan).
“Of course you do,” she laughed. “He’s got that whole hotheaded, lone ranger, masculine energy.”
The commentary had rolled off her tongue so easily, and I reflected on her observation for some time, pondering both my attraction to “that whole hotheaded, lone ranger energy” (and her decided self-distancing from it) and the dissonance between that vision of masculinity and the one that had stood by me at the altar, who slept beside me every night, who made my coffee and also, frequently, my bed.
You see, Mr. Magpie is many powerful things, but hotheaded is not one of them. In fact, he’s more Michael Corleone than Sonny — measured, level-headed, strategic — and many of his tenderest acts of love are domestic ones. But he is also tough, just like his dad: strong, independent, even willful; loathe to shed a tear; predisposed to hold his emotions privately, close to the chest.
Where am I going with this?
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast in which Roxane Gay was commenting on The Real Housewives, and at one point (paraphrasing) she explains that The Real Housewives franchises are fascinating because the women in them “perform their gender” in ways both problematic and illustrative. A couple of days later, I tuned into a Goop podcast (I know, I know — I still occasionally listen, despite my criticisms of the company) in which a therapist explained that little boys learn that they should not be expressive — that they should “suck it up” and “be tough” — by the age of three or four years old, and that this cultural norm blocks emotional intimacy, a heavily prevalent issue in the relationships of many of the couples with whom he works.
This tumbleweed of loosely related observations and thoughts opened my eyes, because in them, I see an interesting narrative about the construct of masculinity. I see the power of cultural transmission at work in even the most innocuous of forms — a childhood lullaby! — and the way in which those idylls (the cowboys, the Sonny Corleones) — are often at odds with the more complex and nuanced realities (the Mr. Magpies) of the world. And I see, too, that though we spend a lot of time talking about gender norms as a “woman’s issue,” they are also very much at play in how we understand men.
Perhaps the seeds for this rumination were laid in one of your comments on The Selection: Liz wrote that she agreed with my “issues with the depiction of femininity in The Selection,” observing further that the author “puts masculinity in the same restricted box, and falls victim to the Twilight trope of characters who are forced to be two-dimensional to adhere to a very limited construct of what constitutes the right romantic roles.”
Just so.
One of the aspirations of this blog is to “make space” — an expanse in which we can think, reflect, feel; a latitude in which we can connect with one another on topics frivolous and freighted; and, I hope, a headspace that is a bit more open and charitable than it might otherwise be.
This week, chasing the specter of those ghost riders, listening to those podcasts, thinking about Mr. Magpie, re-reading Liz’s well-timed comment, I carved out some new space in my thinking about the portraits of manhood to which I have long, unthinkingly clung.
Post-Script.
I have been wearing this basket bag everywhere. It’s the perfect size, and that brown leather matches my Hermes Oran sandals perfectly.
This would make for a sweet and chic hostess gift — a little more interesting than a dish towel or candle and perfect for a summer ice cream sundae.
In love with this everyday dress — the stripes! the embroidery! the sleeves!
This book is now on my list after Reese Witherspoon endorsed it on Instastory last week. (She tends to have a knack for identifying zeitgeist books, like Big Little Lies!)
Man have I got pool-wear on the brain — between our upcoming trip to the Hamptons and the sudden spike in temperature that led me to take mini out in her swimsuit a couple of times in order to enjoy the splashpads, I have been on a beach-gear-buying-spree! Below, a couple of my favorite finds:
Beach Gear/Wear for the Chic Pea Set.
Click on images to access details, or see notes below! (And if the image doesn’t take you anywhere — see footnotes!)
+Personalized bucket. I actually ordered this style, though — can’t go wrong with an oversized monogram 🙂 And I like this one, with the crab decal, for boys.
All.the.things from Jacadi (I bought so many of their cherry-print pieces, including these sneakers!), but especially this sweet strawberry print set — AND P.S. — YOU CAN GET 30% OFF YOUR PURCHASE THROUGH MAY 10 WITH CODE VIPS18! Andale, andale!
P.S. Speaking of microtrends, would you rock this look?
Have you started our book club book? I am deeply impressed. After reading the first short story, I immediately texted one of my sisters to recommend it — I could tell it would be right up her alley, and she often takes me to task (not really) for my beach read addiction; this book is heftier. (Not difficult to read, though — just exceptionally well-crafted, varied, imaginative, and they say something.) I am savoring every story and taking time to properly annotate as I read in anticipation of our first in-person book club meeting, so when I woke in the middle of the night and found myself unable to fall back asleep, I felt like I needed something more mindless — something I wouldn’t mind nodding of to. Basically, I needed a light-hearted sidecar. After crawling through Amazon and GoodReads for a good thirty minutes, I settled on Julia Sonneborn’s By the Book, a modern-day re-telling of Persuasion, which is my absolute favorite Austen book, because I relate so deeply to its heroine, Anne Elliott. (No, really — remember when I identified her as my favorite heroine ever?!) But guess how Sonneborn has reimagined the novel? “An English professor struggling for tenure discovers that her ex-fiancé has just become the president of her college—and her new boss—in this whip-smart modern retelling of Jane Austen’s classic.” YAAAAS.
P.S. – If you’re in NYC and want to join our first in-person book club meeting, please sign up by inputting your email below — and if you’ve already emailed me to ask to be on this list, you’re already on the list! I’ll be sending out a formal invite for our inaugural book club in the next few days, and the first 10 women to respond will secure a spot:
You’re Sooooo Popular: The Mara Hoffman Sale.
The most popular items on Le Blog this week:
+The entire Mara Hoffman sale here. This is currently in my cart, and if I didn’t already have too many bathing suits, so would this.
+My favorite running shoes, though one of you smart readers (also an avid runner) pointed out that these shoes offer minimal support, and you should get your gait examined if you’re in the market for a new pair!
Have you ever had to part ways with a friend? As an adult? It’s a weird concept, really, and it feels borderline infantile — the kind of thing you might expect of seven year olds trading secrets after school while waiting in the carpool pickup covey. “No, Miranda’s not my friend. I’m only friends with Charlotte.”
A friendship isn’t, at least in my experience, the kind of thing that you snap into and snap out of. But over the past few years, I’ve had to part ways with two friends — and I didn’t do it face-to-face, either. In both cases, I came to the realization that the friendship made me feel badly about myself. I would come home after a coffee date or hang up after a phone call and feel less than, depleted — and I’d turn to Mr. Magpie for comfort. His response was always in the posture of protection: “What is she thinking?” and “That is so weird. Yuck. You shouldn’t spend time with her,” and sometimes, at a loss for words, a blanketing “I don’t know, Jennie. I love you.”
With both friendships, after much heartache, I decided that the best thing would be to quietly fade into the distance–not an Irish goodbye, exactly, but a gradual withdrawing. A part of me thinks that I owed them an explanation for the increasingly sporadic responses I would offer, the polite declines to invitations. (Was it cowardly of me to not say something outright? Was it unfair of me not to offer them the opportunity to rebut my claims?) But most of me thinks that I had given them years and years of time, dozens and dozens of instances of “I’ll just shrug that off” or “I’ll just politely move on,” and that I did not have the energy or, frankly, the desire to go toe-to-toe with someone who I was quite sure was simply not a good fit for me and my life.
I remember getting drinks with a now dear friend, W., early into our friendship. She said to me: “I’m only interested in being friends with people who are authentic, honest, and lift other people up.” She said it pat-ly, as though it was something she’d rehearsed a thousand times. I found it endearing; it was as if she was on a first date, and she’d given some thought to what she needed out of any relationship she might enter into. (I trust I passed her screening…ha!) She was onto something there; I think it’s fair and healthy to consider whether the people with whom I surround myself are life-enhancers (to borrow Lee’s excellent turn of phrase). Isn’t life too short to do it any other way?
What do you think? What has your experience been?
#Shopaholic: The Melamine Plate.
+Can we talk about how incredible these melamine plates are?! We’re attending TWO picnics in Central Park this weekend, and I wished I’d ordered these in advance!
+Love these marble-effect mixing bowls. I know they’re meant for food prep, but I’m primarily interested in serving popcorn and chips out of them — and how they’d look styled on our shelves!
My father was traveling on a guys’ golf trip last week, leaving my mom on her own for a couple of days — a rarity for them, as they travel everywhere together, and travel they do, as they’re rarely in one spot for more than a week!) — and I texted her to check in at 7:32 PM:
“How is your solo night going? What movie?”
“Alarm is on…just finished dinner — in the dining room, no less. Having a glass of SB, and thinking of watching one of these: 27 Dresses, Maid of Honor, or Phantom Thread. Thoughts? Recommendations?”
In other words, my mom was in the midst of her own #SBB, and I die over the image of her sitting alone in their cavernous dining room, at their oversized, polished-wood, 12-seat table, beneath their dramatic crystal chandelier, enjoying a dinner for one with a chilled glass of sauvignon blanc (“SB”).
My mother is many things — deeply empathetic, warm, excellent at listening, lighthearted, decorous, attentive to details, genuine, organized, devout. But above all, she is dedicated to and deeply invested in her loved ones. If you were to look at her (pristinely-kept) planner, or her phone log, or her email inbox, you would quickly learn that she keeps time by attending to others: organizing our travel, ordering gifts for us, scheduling time to visit with us, sending snail mail to us, noting our travels and plans, even if she isn’t directly involved in them (“Jen and Landon in the Hamptons!” she’ll scrawl in her perfect, loopy cursive, in pencil). If we are coming home or visiting her in her Florida house, she will invariably email a week or two prior to our arrival asking what we need from the grocery — what kind of milk we take, what flavor of yogurt we like — and mapping out where we’d like to sleep and whether any new baby gear will be needed. I’ve written about this many times, but in the aftermath of giving birth to minimagpie via c-section, my mother attended to my every need, caring for me in the most humbling of ways. She folded down my bedding at night, easing me into it. She gripped my arm as I stiffly, slowly mounted the stairs, in absolute agony. She held my hand while I was weeping for reasons I did not know. She bought me milk of magnesium and pads the size of life preservers without batting an eye. She made me sandwiches and tea and encouraged me to shower and nap while she tended to mini. She sat at the foot of my bed on a patterned x-bench for countless hours, cooing over the two generations of women in front of her. At one point, I asked her if she could pick up my underwear from the ground because I was too sore to pick it up myself. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t take care of such intimate tasks on my own, and I told her so — and thanked her.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “My pleasure. My privilege.”
My privilege. My privilege!
When I was very young — maybe six or seven — I got in trouble for doing something, which was, to be honest, a rarity; I was a quiet, well-behaved girl. My mother scolded me, her voice uncharacteristically forbidding. I was crestfallen to have disappointed her and burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry — I hate myself!” I cried, theatrically.
“What did you say?!” she cried, her eyes wide, her expression shifting instantly from stern reprimand to concerned disbelief. She walked over to me and took my hands in hers. “Don’t say that about my best friend. Don’t you say that ever again.”
I was astonished — a little afraid even — to have elicited such a dramatic response. I remember turning it over in my mind for many weeks after, scrutinizing both the severity of the phrase “I hate myself,” which had suddenly surpassed “butt” and “poop” on my infantile “bad word list,” and wallowing in the discovery that I was “her best friend.” Me! Six-year-old me! I was my mom’s best friend. The realization gave me a warm sense of confidence, maturity, belonging. And I marvel now, as a mother myself, at the tremendous and delicate care my mother took with me in this and so many other instances — and so naturally, unthinkingly. How did she know just the right thing to say to show me her incredible devotion, to warn me against self-abnegation? And without rehearsal? I worry that I will say the wrong thing in such moments, or know what to say only after mulling it over on my own for a few days. (“Remember when you said that thing about hating yourself? Well, I’ve given it some thought, and…”)
But what I mean to say is this: to me, my mom is the image of the Madonna, her head bent in motherly attention to her infant child, her face arranged in solicitous serenity.
And so — catching her on her own those couple of days last week was a rarity. So bizarre to see her on her own, without a child or husband or grandchild cloying for her attention — to see her indulging in some much-needed self-care.
For those reasons, this mother’s day, I would love to give the moms in my life the gift of self-indulgence. Below, my top picks, as you still have time to order before the big event! — but before that — an idea:
Many years ago, I ordered a pair of “brand new in box” Manolo Blahnik heels from eBay, and they came with a hand-written card from the seller that read: “Go dancing in these!” I loved that — the power of suggestion! I can’t look at those heels without smiling and thinking about dancing. The same goes for any of the gifts below, which might go even further if accompanied with a thoughtful self-care suggestion (i.e., “take an evening to try this mask with a glass of wine” or “light this candle, turn off your phone, and spend an afternoon reading!”. (And if you need some elegant new stationery, I love this set — or these gift enclosure cards.)
Les Best Mother’s Day Gifts.
Click items below, or see details (and notes on each pick, as well as a couple of other items!) below:
A Kindle and a Kindle gift card, possibly with a list of books worth reading. There is absolutely nothing more glorious than the handful of times I have closed my laptop an hour before our nanny leaves, walked to the wine bar around the corner, and sat with my Kindle for a solo hour of escape.
A dramatic sunhat — with a note encouraging her to take a nice long walk or spend time at the pool or beach if they’re accessible to her.
A high-end candle and pretty matches. This might seem impersonal at first blush, but my mother and Mr. Magpie have both gifted me candles for various occasions, and they are such a treat. Who wants to spend $60 on a candle? No one. But when it’s a gift…? Yes pls.
A Kayu mini tote. I have one of these and I adore it — it’s the perfect size for an evening out, as it fits sunglasses, a wallet, lipstick, keys, and a phone. I might add: “Ditch the diaper bag and go out for a drink on me!”
Finally, and these are idiosyncratic to my interests/tastes, but here are the items at the top of my personal lust list:
+New bedding from Hill House Home. Bedding can be super personal, but if you know your mom really well…or maybe just a pair of monogrammed pillowcases? Ugh, love.
