My latest piece, Letting Go, was published in the February issue of Pithead Chapel. I started this story at peak mom stress. Many competing obligations and no time to write during the Kathy Fish Fast Flash Workshop reunion. I hesitated to submit it to literary magazines because I always feel like writing about mom life, even in a critical way, is somehow lesser. My own hang up, I know, but one I’m sure grew out of our patriarchal culture and literary canon. I started having anxiety as the story’s pub date was nearing. Then I read this passage in the Paris Review interview of my hero Grace Paley:
“Interviewer: In your choice of subject matter, you and Tillie Olsen have opened the door for a lot of writers.
Paley: I hope so. Of course that’s not up to me or Tillie to say, Yes, there was the door and we opened it—we can’t say that. It’s not nice. I will say I knew I wanted to write about women and children, but I put it off for a couple of years because I thought, People will think this is trivial, nothing. Then I thought, It’s what I have to write. It’s what I want to read. And I don’t see it out there.
Meanwhile, the women’s movement had begun to gather force. It needed to become the second wave. It turned out that we were some of the drops in the wave. Tillie was more like a cupful.”
And, suddenly, I felt more: Fuck Yeah! Let’s do this!
Thank you, Grace, for opening the door. And thank you, Pithead editors Keith Rebec and Kristen Arnett, for seeing the value of it being open.
(Thanks to Pithead Chapel for the first graphic and to Annie Frazier for the second.)
