I'm writing this from a new couch in my living room—everything in here feels new. We moved the bookshelves from the office to the wall around the TV; the TV is on a new stand, under new shelves; we have a new kitchen table and I have a new tiny desk, in the nook where our old kitchen table used to be, between the new couch, which is bigger and cheaper than the old one, and the kitchen, which is really, because this is Brooklyn, a slightly partitioned corner of the living room. There's also, of course, from left to right from where I am sitting, a bouncer, a recliner, a play mat, a bassinet, a stroller, an empty bottle, a discarded bib, and a baby monitor. It shows me the baby wrapped up like a pea pod, sleeping in the bassinet next to my bed, in what is ostensibly my bedroom but, with two layers of black-out shades and the smell of formula (in our case, distinctly wet potatoes) and a sleeping baby in there 14-18 hours a day, doesn't feel like my bedroom at all. We call it "the dark room." I've taken to keeping my clothes in the crib that the baby doesn't sleep in yet, in the nursery that used to be my office, but which right now is mainly used for diaper changes, my at-home new-mom video workouts—the new rug being exactly the length of my yoga mat—and the sporadic work calls that new parents still somehow manage to take. I still slip and call it "the office" sometimes, but I've taken those work calls sitting on the floor with my back against the baby's dresser. I tried to take a work call at my new little desk in the living room, but my voice kept the baby—all the way in the dark room—awake.
A few months ago—before the baby, who's two months old now, was born—I saw that two of my favorite musicians would be playing a show together the day after the baby would turn two months old. (I probably thought he'd be older by the concert, actually, because I didn't know yet he'd be a week late, and born a week and a day late because I was in labor that long. A fun story for another time. Or no other time, tbh.) I asked my friend Allison—whose kids are... is it possible they're five and seven now?—if she thought I'd be able to make it. It seemed doable but a stretch, and I never bought the tickets. Or ticket, singular, because Allison lives in Oregon now, and our other friend who also loves both of these artists would be in Italy the night of the show. And then I forgot about it, because I was very pregnant and THERE WAS A BABY COMING, what the fuck.
Having a baby was extremely "what the fuck," as was being pregnant, which now seems like a fucked up dream that happened to someone else. (Yesterday Tanner made a little flip-book of a bunch of the weekly pictures we took of me in profile while I was pregnant, because that seemed like a thing to do, and honestly just looking at it freaked me out.) But after the first week or two, living with a baby is much less "what the fuck" than I expected. I had one panic attack in week one of "oh my god this is my life forever now what did I do," but it's amazing how you can adjust to something that's your life forever and accept that it's just your life. My mom asked me yesterday (for the second time), "Are you just so in love?" and I said, "I don't know, he just feels normal." (She said, "Normal can be so-in-love." "Mom I feel like you're trying to get me to say what you want me to say." "Just say yes.")
A lot of people I know who've had babies don't feel just-so-in-love at all for the first few months. New babies make your life miserable sometimes, I don't blame them. We've been stupidly lucky, though—if we start counting after the 30+ hours of labor and the c section; please be aware, if you ever have a c section, that the curtain they hang to shield you from your body is WAY CLOSER to your face than what you've seen in movies, I feel like if I'd been aware of this ahead of time I'd have been much more comfortable. Other than his reluctance to be born, though, this baby is pure luck. He's just... chill. We did nothing to make him this way, and even though I don't have a deity to thank, I am extremely, profoundly grateful.
That's the roundabout explanation of how I was able to go to a concert alone last night, with my baby two months and a day old. I thought this whole tinyletter would be about the concert, but apparently I have feelings about new motherhood, who knew. (I am so grateful, also, btw, to people like Emily and Meghan [tinyletter's links are broken, but https://cantcomplain.substack.com/ and https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/this-time-im-not-afraid-to-give-birth.html] who write about motherhood and giving birth; I have to accept the fact that I will never tell my birth story in a tinyletter, I do not have the constitution of a memoirist and never will.) But the concert!
It was Dar Williams and Susan Werner, two folk singers I fell in love with in college. Almost half a lifetime ago! (I missed my fifteen-year college reunion this May because I was three weeks postpartum.) I went alone, which is not a huge feat but is slightly huger considering the communal table situation at City Winery. I went in hoping no tablemates would try to strike up conversation, and none did. The mom who was there with two tween daughters, though, did help me flag down the waiter when she realized he'd never come to take my order; I was very grateful for that, and I watched the younger tween fall asleep on her shoulder as the night wore on and had a lot of new-mom feelings.
Here's a very bad picture of Dar and Susan (l-r), the best my phone could manage:
I felt a lot about the past and the future during the concert. Neither of these artists is who they were when I fell in love with them between 2000 and 2004. Dar's become a mother and written a book about city planning and communities, both of which weave through her work. Susan Werner isn't a folk singer at all anymore—her later albums are jazz and new American Songbook and gospel. Both her and Dar's voices have gotten wildly stronger and more beautiful in the last twenty years. They're an incongruous pairing for one bill—I only fell in love with them side-by-side because the friend who gave me all my music in college loved them both. Susan is wry, Dar is maybe the most earnest person who's ever lived. They know each other because I guess all musicians know each other, but having them share one stage felt like a very personal gift.
Both women sang or spoke about art and writing and creating, explicitly and implicitly. I thought I would write about that but I guess I'm writing because of that, which is enough or more. Dar played a song I'd never heard of hers, "Girl of the World," [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD9jVFop-qs] which was inspired by her time in Ecuador helping girls write poetry (or something like that—if that sounds frivolous I promise it wasn't), and then I sat down this morning and wrote this tinyletter, the first words of my own that I've written in over two months.
xxo
Jaime