Introducing Exhale, for Coffee+Crumbs

My first essay for Coffee+Crumbs was called, “Why I Forgot the Ground Beef,” though I didn’t know I was writing it for C+C. I wrote it for me.

I’d just come back from a graduate school residency, where, for 10 days I was reading and writing, and talking about reading and writing, and it was in the grocery store, looking at  the plums, an old lady next to me pulling used fruit bags from her khaki spring jacket pocket, that my first thought was, “Ho hum. Back to reality.” My second thought was, “Why not find a story among the plums and the eggs; the ground beef you’re getting for hamburgers tonight, and the toothpaste you need to buy?”

It won’t be grand, I thought, flipping over my grocery list so I could jot down what happened. I knew my story would be simple, but I also knew this – the grocery store, the food and the people in it, my children – was what I had to work with. This is why I went to graduate school – to learn to write with what I had.

My life – my mind – might be simple, but it is my simple. I would claim it, and I would make something beautiful out of my simplicity.

About a year later, I read Elise Blaha Cripe’s essay about pancakes on what was then a new website called Coffee+Crumbs. Of course, it was about more than pancakes, which is why I clicked to the manifesto, and then quickly to the submission page, and immediately wrote what I’m sure sounded like a breathless email to Ashlee telling her how much I loved what I’d read, and here’s some sample writings, and would she please consider me as a contributor?

I wrote that email on the morning of Hadley’s first orthodontist appointment. She didn’t want to go, and was asking me why she had to go. I had no good answers for her, and was hoping she’d settle on, “because your dentist said so.”

Meanwhile, Harper, who was going through a major, “I will wear my fairy wings everywhere, including to bed because I know any moment the fairies will come and I’ll need to fly,” phase, had refused to put on pants. Fairies don’t wear pants, apparently, and mommy didn’t get the tulle skirt washed in time for us to leave for Hadley’s orthodontist appointment. I can remember Harper so distinctly – in her underpants and fairy wings – jumping off the stairs in our house, trying to fly.

I hit “send,” and took the girls to the orthodontist. (I pulled the tulle skirt from the dirty clothes. It wasn’t the first time I’d do that, and it wouldn’t be the last.)

I heard from Ashlee a bit later. Days? Weeks? I don’t remember. I know we’d just moved to a townhouse that I wanted to live in since we’d moved to Germantown almost 8 years ago. We’d rented our condo because we couldn’t afford to sell it, and we moved to this place next to the library, and the ballet studio, and down the street from Starbucks and the grocery store and a park and we would spend two delicious years walking to these places – reading and dancing and eating and playing. I remember Harper was starting Kindergarten, and I was going back to teach middle school – something I said I’d never do. I was happy. I was sad. I was excited. I was nervous. I was all these things and I heard from Ashlee, who told me she would run my story that began on the back of a grocery list after the lady in the khaki jacket dropped the plums in her used fruit bag, twisted it up nice and tight, and moved on. And like Elise’s essay on pancakes, I hoped mine would tell more than why I forgot the ground beef at the grocery store that day.

Several essays, a book, the Known Workshop, the Year of Creativity, millions of Slack messages between women I call my friends, we are offering the next thing: Exhale. It is a space for people who believe (or who want to believe) that motherhood and creativity go hand in hand; that the two tend to and cultivate one another.

I’m offering 1-on-1 editing, and you can find out more about that here. (Thank you to Erin and Lorren for your kind endorsements!) I’m also teaching a 4-week course called, “Creating Within The ‘Everydayness’.”

Everyone knows I’m not the witnessing, “Come to Jesus,” type, but if I were to witness, if I had to do it, telling others that their standing at the kitchen sink peeling potatoes, deciding on which eggs to get at the grocery store, searching for the missing Polly Pocket shoe, and singing along to, “Go, Diego, Go!” moments are more than enough to make a story. They are more than enough to say, “Here’s what You gave me; here’s what I did with it.” That’s what we’ll work on in my course – the belief that the simple can be cracked open to reveal a beautiful story.

I can’t promise you publication or a book deal, but I will do my best to show you that these diaper changing, sleepless nights, these days of juggling work and figuring out screen time and piano lessons and soccer practices are rich with stories to be told.

We’ll give these moments wings, and we’ll help them fly.

Just put some pants on. (Or not! This is an online course.) Tulle optional, but highly recommended.