I'm a selfish time monster

Gimme gimme gimme

Happy New Year, friends! I admit that my brain is still not fully functional just yet — easing into getting back into a routine after the holidays. So I’m just sharing some quick and dirty reflections on winter breaks here while I shake off the cobwebs. Let’s get this 2024 year started, shall we?

Winter break monster me

One year in my late 20s, when I was working as a young associate in a sweatshop aka BigLaw firm, I came down with the flu in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I hadn’t planned on taking that week off from work, but my immune system had other plans. As a lifelong type-A person who had had “work ethic” drilled into me my whole life thanks to my Jewish father and WASP mother, I wasn’t used to slowing down. I was single and kid-free at the time, living in Greenwich Village (side note – God, did I love that apartment so much). I stocked up on NyQuil and Kleenex and dug in for a DVD binge of The OC, and discovered the joys of doing absolutely nothing in that non-week week between Christmas and New Year’s. I called in sick a few more days than I actually was, just to enjoy being a lazy slob. 

After that, I tried as hard as I could to recreate that every year, doing the absolute minimum of working, socializing, or anything “productive” during that week. It was glorious. 

And then I had a kid. 

Turns out that “breaks” when you have a kid are not really breaks at all. Babies and toddlers missed that memo. The holidays mean no school or daycare, and if you have a regular nanny, they are probably off during that time as well (as they should be – they have lives and need breaks too!). So even if you’re not working, you are parenting. And when the kid is little, you are intensely parenting. You spend your days feeding, cleaning, and entertaining them. You are IN IT. There is no break. There is no laying around binging TV. It is just “omg how are we going to fill another cold long day?” and “why do humans need multiple meals a day?” and “nannies and teachers are drastically underpaid and undervalued.”

But then something incredible happens. The kid gets older! And requires less of your hands-on, exhausting care. And your “breaks” start to become breaks again, this time with a little buddy as company.

When the pandemic started, my son had just turned seven and was in first grade, just beginning to get to this stage of being a real person and requiring somewhat less from me in those all-consuming, physical ways. Like everyone else, we found ourselves suddenly spending a lot more time together with no school or work (at least, not in any real way, let’s be honest). I discovered that my kid had grown into a tiny person that I could actually do stuff – fun stuff – with. As stressful as that early pandemic time was and as grateful as I was that he went back to school in the fall of 2020, I sometimes miss the extreme togetherness that we had in those first six months of Covid times. 

Which is why I now love winter breaks again. I get a chance to just do nothing, but together with my now 11-year-old kid. During that weird time where we say good-bye to one year and groggily greet a new one, there’s no school and no work (as much as I can help it at least). My son is a co-conspirator in laziness now, not a dependent toddler. We spend the week doing … nothing. 

This past winter break, my son and I basked in our cozy sloth together. We binge-watched The Big Bang Theory (I have lots of thoughts on this show, but my kid loves it) and For All Mankind (love), sometimes play-arguing over who got the fluffy blanket and sometimes cuddling together under said blanket. We played a few board games, but nothing too mentally taxing. We made cookies, which I ate as my meals, sometimes with a grilled cheese, sometimes with more cookies. We ordered takeout. We stayed in our pajamas. We ignored screen time rules. We laughed at our dog when he did something silly or made a funny expression. We laughed a lot. We did whatever we felt like doing that day. We let our brains and bodies and hearts get mushy.

Since my son turned 10, I have suddenly become aware of just how fast time is going and how limited it is. I now have less time left with him living in my home than I’ve had already (assuming all goes according to plan), and I can barely breathe when I think about that. I want to soak up every single last minute. These winter breaks the last couple of years, where we live in this cozy, lazy, ectoplasmic goo of togetherness – I want to freeze them. In a few years, sooner than I want but just on time for him, he’ll be wanting to spend his breaks and free time with his friends, as he should. I’ll be background noise, as I should. 

I am a selfish time monster and I want to gobble up as much time as I can. Before I know it, I’ll be watching The OC again, this time in an apartment where a kid used to live. But not yet. We’ve got some more wintering together first. 

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What’s got my attention this week

• This is not for everyone, but this short satire about how the Anne Frank House can reach Gen Z got me in all the right places. (I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam last spring, and like the filmmaker notes in the Q&A, I also found the gift shop to be a bit jarring.)

• Fascinating podcast episode about how the algorithm-izing of the world flattens our own individual tastes. 

• No thank you.

WAL woman of the week

A woman out there in the world, being A Lot

I loved reading the tribute to this mother who helped her son and hundreds of others reframe their stuttering as something that “is” rather than a defect or disorder. We need more de-pathologizing of “disorders” that are really just ways that people are.  

Out of the mouths of babes

“Women’s darkness is so much more inevitable and interesting than a broken heart; it’s just sometimes the thing that gets us there. Figuring out how to use it as a superpower is the tricky part.” Betty Gilpin, All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns