Never, Unless

In August, my memoir came out. I will never publish another memoir. But what I liked about writing Daughterhood was committing real people to the page: my mom, Dan, Wes. Especially Wes. In the fall, he started second grade and learned the difference between fiction and nonfiction. He asked his teacher if Taylor Swift sings nonfiction. Did she really get a thousand cuts? Did she and her friends throw a party specifically to make fun of their exes? His teacher wasn’t sure. At home he grabbed a copy of my memoir, read the first page and muttered, “My god, this is all true!” The first page depicts me screaming at him when he was a toddler, and he demanded to know why I would write about something so terrible. I explained I often write my way through past mistakes, to figure out why I did the thing I regret doing. As far as I know, Wes never read more of Daughterhood, but now he says it’s his favorite book. Because it’s about our family.

For a long time I said I would never have another kid. (Privately, I added caveats: unless we came into some money. Unless you could promise me she’d be a girl this time. Unless we up and moved to Idaho.) I had Wes when I was twenty-seven. Postpartum, sleepless, and having brought a four-month-old to lunch in Manhattan, I told my agent, “I’m never doing this again.” Unimpressed by my conviction, Susan said I had ten years to change my mind.

Our daughter is due in March, the week Wes turns eight. He’s rooting for a shared birthday. On New Year’s Eve we hiked six miles along the John Day River in Oregon’s Cottonwood Canyon and saw bighorn sheep clacking up the rockface. At the trailhead, I said, “Are you impressed we walked six miles?” I meant for Wes to be impressed with himself, because it was cold and muddy and Wes is a child. He looked confused. “You mean because you’re pregnant?”

When people find out I’m pregnant, their first question is, “What made you change your mind?” (Always asked with some urgency, as if frightened of what I might change my mind about next—or what they might.) One answer is Wes got older. He wears his long hair in a topknot and an Olivia Rodrigo shirt to his knees. When he orders in a restaurant, he reads the menu’s entire description of what he wants: “I’ll have the Belgian waffle served with fresh strawberries and homemade whipped cream, with a choice of sausage or bacon on the side, and I’ll choose the bacon.” He sticks his tongue out while riding a horse. He bonds easily with adults and enjoys stirring up elaborate, inscrutable drama among his peers. There is no one I’d rather talk about, no character study that interests me more.

In my memoir, I claimed that the years before Wes was born were the best of my life. It felt true when I was writing it, still pining for a kind of freedom I could no longer access, but laughably untrue by the time the book was published in August. By then, I had stopped associating freedom with a kind of formlessness—with underemployment, light alcoholism, winter afternoons reading novels on the couch. Freedom became the willingness and ability to do what I wanted within, and in spite of, the limitations I’d imposed on my life. And the limitations of motherhood seemed less severe as Wes grew up and we often wanted the same things: to wake in a motel room in Moab, Utah and be the first in the pool when it opened. To pet the cheek of an appaloosa. Adopt a large breed puppy. Go out to breakfast, have our friends over for dinner. I know the limitations will shift again when the baby comes. First she will be a baby, and eventually she will be a person who is not Wes. She might be shy or play soccer. She might get carsick. She might be, as I was, a weirdly somber child, forever offended by the assumptions of a family formed before she was born.

Here's another answer. Since becoming a parent, I’ve gotten to know the worst version of myself. Sleep deprived, resentful, uncharitable, enraged. At first I was terrified of my own temper and bad moods. I imagined it was all leading somewhere unforgivable. No one is uglier than me screaming at my son to stop. Stop pressing buttons, stop rocking back and forth on your heels. Stop telling me about the injustices inflicted upon you in preschool. Stop explaining how Scooter Braun bought Taylor Swift’s masters out from under her in 2019. Stop asking me to make a plan for Christmas 2027. Stop talking back, laughing, crying, whistling through the gap between your front teeth. I remain ashamed of my worst self; she genuinely sucks. But I’m not scared of her anymore. How selfish was I? To believe that my moods were beyond my control or meant anything at all. Moods are weather. Lately, when I get mad at Wes, he likes to say, “You’re about to be so sorry.”

Final answer: our oldest dog died last winter. Suddenly I understood my responsibilities had been privileges all along. In caring for an animal for thirteen years, I lost absolutely nothing, and I loved that dog so much. Within a month or two after Hank’s death, I came home from walking our younger dog and began ranting to Dan, ferociously but indirectly, about childbirth: how bad it had been with Wes. It was the one part I couldn’t do again. My vehemence gave me away and Dan asked if I was thinking about having another baby. We were both shocked by the question.

He said, “I would have another in a heartbeat, but it’s not up to me.”

In a heartbeat, I changed my mind.