Childcare and the Lion

How much does writing cost?

On Thursday of this week, our family’s babysitter, Annie, will drive from LA to Atlanta to live with her friend from college and start her post-pandemic life. We hired Annie in September when we realized we couldn’t handle Zoom school for two kids with a baby underfoot, plus Patrick’s real job, and my fake one. I say my job is fake because it’s not as if I have coworkers or a salary, or anyone telling me to work.

Before Annie came to help out four times a week from approximately 9 am to 2 pm, Patrick would be with Ginger and Mickey until 10 am (and Bean would be on his own with his virtual learning). That meant I had a few hours in the morning to write. Of course, that was best case scenario. I was often working near Bean, who needed assistance. And, before Patrick left Amazon and went to work for Thistle (yep, he changed jobs!), he often had meetings thrust upon him at 9 am, or earlier, and that meant I got no writing time at all. Everyone who’s parenting through the pandemic knows how this felt/feels: to be with your kids from the moment you wake up and almost until you go to bed, with nowhere to go or do, and no support system available to you or them. It’s really just terrible.

When I don’t get enough time to write I get anxious, irritable, bored, and sad. The world loses its extra dimension—its profundity, its shimmer—and life feels like a flat parade of errands, meals, and tasks. Last fall, I felt like if I didn’t get someone to help me I would never write again.

(It should also be said that Patrick couldn’t continue to do his demanding job. Heading in at 10 am most days was pretty unsustainable.)

Enter, stage left, Annie.

We found her on Care.com, which is a site that connects sitters to parents for a monthly fee. She comes from South Carolina (she always asks “How y’all doing?” when she arrives), and she moved to LA to work in film production. She’s in her mid-twenties. She loves to read and write and drink good coffee. Because all of our social lives have been so narrowed, it’s been nice to talk to her. We all eat lunch together and talk about movies and politics. I joke that I pay her $25 an hour to talk to me.

Yep, that’s right: $25 an hour. Not a ton of money for her, but a lot to pay. Every time I Venmo her money I’m reminded how insanely privileged I am that I can afford over $2,000 a month to spend on childcare. That adds up to $24,000 a year—which, again, isn’t enough for someone to earn annually, but a hefty sum for an individual family to pay. (But, also, um, that’s a few thousand dollars MORE than what some editorial assistant publishing jobs pay…)

Anyway. Hiring Annie allowed me to pitch and write two essays, work on a screenplay (lol), write two book reviews, teach a class at Caltech as well as private novel writing course, start this newsletter, and, most importantly: rewrite my novel. The novel revision was a massive overhaul that I could not have done without the hours and space Annie afforded me with her presence. I rearranged the entire book, cut and rewrote the entire middle section, and to get back into its messy insane world I had to depart from my own.

What I want to talk about is how Annie’s last day is Wednesday and I am in a simmering panic about how life will unfold once she’s gone. I am between writing projects—my novel is finished and awaiting its fate; I’ve finished all the essays and the screenplay (cue: lol)—but my novel class is still in session, and it requires a lot of reading. How will I keep up with it? Duh: early mornings, naptime, and evenings, which is how most parents (mostly moms) have managed during quarantine. Aside from that, though, there will be zero time to write.

The shimmering dimension is already fading.

Let me give you a window into our schedule: For another three weeks, Ginger is at school from 8 am to 11 am. Bean is on Zoom school from 12:30 to 3:30 pm. Mickey is walking around the house monologuing about “the gardener gone” for all daytime hours, save for his afternoon nap. After the semester ends, they’re all home for two weeks. Then Ginger and Bean go to (two different) camps from 9 am to 3 pm. Mickey will still be home, presumably still discussing gardeners and their trucks. My in-laws, hallejujah, are coming mid-June for four weeks to help out. They won’t be staying with us, and they’ll be doing camp transportation and a lot of Mickey duty. Thank goddess they’re coming. They will save me. Once they leave, however, we have two weeks of campless off-time, and then a trip to North Carolina, and then school for Ginger and Bean starts…and it’s supposedly going to be in-person and full-time.

We won’t have regular, sustained childcare for all three children until September, when Mickey enters preschool. Until then, I am the a full time caregiver. I won’t be writing. As I said, I’m finished with my projects, so I won’t have any deadlines looming. But life will also feel dulled without a creative outlet and I worry. Don’t tell me to journal or jot down ideas, that’s not immersive and challenging enough to keep me and my writing brain happy. I need to enter the forest and live there for a while.

I hate that since Patrick has the real job, the one with the salary and the benefits, I’m the one who must put my work on hold when this shit happens. Most of the time, I’m not resentful because my job truly is more flexible, and if I can get four hours at a time of sustained focus, I’m satisfied, and I don’t mind doing more of the parenting during the week. Also, Patrick is a helpful partner who does nearly all the cooking and half of the cleaning, and we don’t often fall into that heteronormative argument hole about chores and such. I know that when I do have a real gig, like the Caltech position, the entire household accommodates it and me.

But last week I got pissed, thinking about how I had been the one to set up the camps when Annie gave us notice. And enough of this “we found her on care.com”—I found her! I hired her, and I’ve always been the one to discuss the schedule with Annie, and I’m the one who pays her! I am the one who is stressed about the summer, and the fading of my shimmering dimension! I told Patrick I felt like Annie was my employee, hired so that I could do my work, and that I was Patrick’s employee, hired to take care of his kids so he could do work.

Obvioiusly, this isn’t the case. Annie works for both of us, so that we can both work. (Patrick agrees, by the way. There was no argument about this. More like: “God I’m sorry this is how it makes you feel. How can we change this feeling?” You know how we don’t really fight, ha, and it’s because Patrick is annoyingly good at communicating and will not take the bait!)

If I had sold a book recently and had more money, the cost of the childcare would be less of an issue. And I don’t mean an issue as in a financial burden. I mean issue as in emotional sting. As it stands, right now I write something, make $600, and then I give that money directly to Annie. Which is fine—I mean, I’d rather pay Annie than pay the mortgage, which, right now, my ass could not afford. But, again, it makes me feel like the children, and getting rid of them so both of us can work, is my responsibility. The fact that any money I make will disappear immediately into the great maw of childcare makes me ask: why earn any money? If I didn’t write, I wouldn’t need childcare, and wouldn’t have any expenses, so no need for childcare at all.

Sigh. You see?

(Here is where I insert what Patrick and I call “the privilege paragraph” that all essays seem to have nowadays, wherein I acknowled this isn’t a Problem-with-a-capital-P because my household can afford childcare, whether or not I make money. I don’t have the same struggle that so many parents in the US do. I’m lucky that I didn’t have to give up my career during the pandemic like thousands of mothers who lost not only their livelihoods but also their identities. I know this. [End of privilege paragraph].)

This is a common struggle. For some reason (patriarchy?), many households (with two hetero parents) only assess the mother’s income when thinking about paying for a nanny or daycare, when they should be looking at the two incomes combined, no matter who makes what. That is only fair, since the child belongs to both people, and both should pay for that child’s care. It’s common sense—and yet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these questions because I want to write without thinking how much money it’s earning or will earn, or if the market—that capricious monster!—will like it or reward it. I also don’t want to be naive or detached from the worries and realities of the world. I want to exist in the everyday world, and for my art to exist there—I actually like the tensions that arise between motherhood and writing. I just don’t want my writing to be influenced by the world in stupid ways. I don’t want to be afraid of making something weird or ambitious, and I don’t want to snuff out some idea or voice because I’m afraid of commercial failure. That’s dangerous territory, which vulnerable people can find themselves wandering in, almost against their will, and which mothers, in having to justify the cost of their time and work, so often do too. If they even try to make art at all.

If I were currently making more money as a writer, I might have hired Annie for five, not four, days a week. Why didn’t I? Because even though Patrick and I could have afforded it, I felt ashamed that I, alone, could not.

I saw a witch this weekend—the session was a birthday present from two friends. During the tarot reading, she said something to the effect of, “Art is a generative force that, like a lion, is amoral.” You can try to tame the lion, she said, domesticate it, put it in a cage and make it behave, make it weak. Or you can coax it, listen to it, work with it, serve it.

Or this is what I remember her saying.

I remember this feeling of being unafraid as she spoke: of my writing, and of my wanting to write.

But, as I write this, my kids are screaming and falling off their scooters. They want me to watch them. MOM YOU’RE NOT WATCHING ME.

Annie’s gone home for the day. Patrick’s at work.

xoxo
Edan

PS For those of you who pay for this newsletter, I’m going to write more about my witch session. Also, I’ll tell you about two movies and one surprising book that I looooooved. Thanks for subscribing!