Q & A with Brett Paesel

 Q:  At the beginning of the book you are a new mom and you are extremely unhappy.  You have two children now.  Do you like being a mother?

A:  I absolutely adore being a mother.  So much so that I wish I had more children.  I was initially unhappy not because I didn’t like my son, but because I didn’t know who I was any more.  I had been an autonomous, extremely independent, woman before I had him.  Suddenly, I couldn’t walk out the door without a boatload of gear and a creature that could demand (loudly) at any moment that I stop what I was doing and latch him onto my breast. I never thought that my unhappiness was his fault.  I knew that it was my own.  I needed to find a way to be responsible to my baby and to regain some measure of independence.  I did this by meeting with my friends on Fridays and by satisfying my need to do creative work on my own time – which was writing about my experience.  Once I achieved this balance, I found being with my children the greatest joy of my life.  I had to laugh when a journalist described me as a writer who freely admits that she’d rather be drink at the bar her friends than spend time with her children.  He got it wrong.  I want to be able to drink at the bar with my friends and spend time with my children. 

 

Q:  Your book was initially optioned by HBO.  When you started writing it, did you think that it would make a great TV show?

 A:  It never crossed my mind.  I don’t watch much TV.  Many people have pointed out that the scenes at the bar seemed very “Sex and the City.”  Which may or may not be true.  I’d never seen a “Sex and the City” episode before I conceived of the bar scenes.  I wanted to include Friday conversations as a device to move the story along and to offer up different perspectives of the parenting experience.  So much of the book takes place in my head that I felt the need for some other voices.

 

Q:  Why do you use so much profanity in the book?

 A:  I actually don’t use that much profanity in life.  But I was looking for a clear way to differentiate events that take place in my head from those that take place on the playground and in my daily mommy world.  I remember writing the scene on the playground in which I’m bored with the mommy conversation around me.  I thought, what could be going on in my head that’s radically opposed to this domestic scene?  And I wrote the most profane things I could think of -- things I could barely say out loud.  To this day, I don’t know that a “dick-slap” exists.  When I wrote the words, I laughed out loud till I cried.  I had managed to shock even myself.  And it occurred to me that if I got such a charge out of saying the unsayable, that others might too.  I wanted to shock.  It was the most provocative way I could think of saying, “These women on the benches could be thinking anything.  They could be anyone.  They are not solely defined by the fact that their children are playing in the sandbox in front of them.”  In the same vein, I wanted the scenes in the bar to be distinctly adult and separate from scenes with children.  It was my way of saying that you don’t have to submerge yourself in an all-kid-friendly world, all the time, in order to be a good parent.  These worlds can co-exist.  

 

Q:  How do you feel about your book being categorized as a “Mom-oir”?

 A:  I wrote a book about identity, isolation, reclamation, and love.  I happen to be a mother.  And I happen to have written a book based on my own experience.  It doesn’t much matter to me on a personal level how it’s categorized.  On the one hand, it thrills me to think that mothers like myself would identify with, and be comforted by, my experience.  On the other, it would be great to live in a world where being a mother wasn’t perceived as only interesting to other mothers.  I read books by James Elroy and Charles Bukowski.  I love these books, and I’m not an embittered old man obsessed with crime or the bottle (though my cocktailing pals at the bar may quibble with this).  I love their books because they speak to my experience as a human being.  I don’t pretend to be the writer that these two mavericks are, but I would love to think that my subject matter doesn’t automatically exclude me from being read by over half of the population.  I love getting letters from women who’ve awakened their husbands in bed by laughing at something I’ve written.  They tell me that their husbands pick up the book after they’re done and they love it.  This may be the way that “Mom-oir” crosses over – husband by husband, man by man.

 

Q:  You talk a lot about your fears in the book. Are you really that fearful?

 A:  Yes. Though I must say that since writing the book, I’ve become less so.  I told someone the other day that one of the best things about getting older is that I am becoming impatient with my own shortcomings.  It’s true, for example, that I’m painfully shy.  When I started to go on the book tour, I was terrified at having to talk to total strangers.  I have a picture of myself at a Portland reading, my blouse dripping wet from perspiration.  After a couple of sweat-drenched readings, I realized that it was possible that I might not enjoy the launch of my book.  That would be tragic.  So I had to CHOOSE to enjoy the whole process.  My first response would be fear, and then I would look at it and switch over to enjoyment.  I am still very afraid of illness, death, and falling short of other people’s expectations.  But again, because life seems so much shorter to me now that I’ve hit my 40s, my determination to wring every bit of happiness from it tends to supercede my fear.  The biggest fear I grapple with now is the fear of being exposed as a fake.  I still cling to the belief that I’m incompetent at pretty much everything and I’m sure that someone will discover this and announce it to the world.  I can be plagued by images of a mom at the pre-school pointing at me and screaming in front of all the other parents, “She can’t even sew!  Look at the stapled hem of her son’s pants!”  Mind you, it never occurs to me to actually learn to sew.

 

Q:  The book is very funny.  Are you funny in real life?  Do you have some kind of “comedic” philosophy?

 A:  I consider myself the least funny person in my family.  All of my family members tend to tell outrageous stories in which they look foolish or incompetent.  This is how I’ve learned to tell stories in which I’m the biggest idiot in the room.  Which leads to a sort of philosophy: our weaknesses, our fears, our very “humanness” is what’s funny.  Also, if you’ve exposed all of your own weaknesses, readers will allow you to explore other people’s weaknesses as well.  While I’m a comedic writer, I do aim to be kind.  I aim to celebrate the absurdity of day-to-day life.  I think that we laugh at what’s true.  And what’s true is often the thing that we are afraid to admit or socially conditioned to ignore.  It’s difficult for me to admit, for example, that when I’m feeling lousy I often say something nasty to my husband so he feels lousy too.  Once I’ve managed to make him miserable, I start to feel a little bit better.  Now on the face of it, this dynamic is a horrible thing to divulge.  I’m basically saying that I willfully torture someone else to make myself feel better.  However, I can guarantee that many readers at this very minute are saying to themselves, “Wow, I do that too.  But I’d never say so.” 

 

Q:  Why do women feature so prominently in the book?

 A:  I love women and am fascinated by the way they interact.  I wanted the book to be, among other things, a celebration of the friendship of women.  I read a UCLA study a while back that found that women respond to stress by “tending and befriending” while men withdraw.  The study went on to surmise that women live longer because the “tend and befriend” response is actually very healthy.  Our need to share our experience, gab, laugh, and cry – actually lowers our blood pressure and stress levels. The study makes sense to me because it corroborates my experience. My husband was deeply concerned when I was so unhappy after my first son was born, and one of the best things he ever suggested was that I talk to other women about my unhappiness.  Also, I love the way women jump around in conversation.  I find it funny and moving that they don’t need any transition at all.  They can jump from talking about shoes to talking about God without taking a breath.

 

Q.    So what about God?  Why did you feel the need to talk about religion in the book?

 A:  I’ve always believed in God, except for one terrifying moment on a street corner in New York City.  Since faith is a constant part of my make-up, it’s impossible to write about myself without writing about it.  I will say that it’s scary to write about it because so many people have preconceptions of what it means to believe in God.  I remember a friend of mine once told me to write about the things I was afraid to say.  I’m pretty sure that she thought that those subjects would be sex and drugs. Actually, I find those subjects far less frightening to write about than religion and age. 

 

Q:  Why is age so scary to write about?

 A:  The main reason is that it’s not considered sexy.  No one over the age of twenty sits around fantasizing about getting older, they’re far more likely to fantasize about the surgical procedures they could have that would fool others into thinking they’re skipping the aging process altogether.

 

Q:  Do you think that writing a memoir is essentially a narcissistic act?

 When I first started writing about my life I did wonder if it would be interesting to anyone else.  What I found to be true is that many readers identify with the universal themes in the book.  They think about their own journey as parents, or simply as people negotiating the grown up world.  In that respect the book is less about me than it is about the reader.  I have come to believe that my journey is significant because all of our journeys are.  My story is no less or no more important than anyone else’s.  I imagine I’m as guilty as the next person of a certain amount of narcissism.  But I hope that sharing my story comes more from generosity.  When I was struggling as a new parent, it meant so much to me to know that I wasn’t alone in my experience.  This memoir is an attempt to participate in that exchange of stories and knowledge.  

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