Hi, I’m Koseli Cummings. I’m a writer and mom living in the Bay Area. I love talking about creativity, motherhood, tech, and home and how they fit together. This is the podcast for women who never want to stop learning.
Read MoreThe Dance of Mothering
Five and a half years ago this dance felt unnatural, forced, and lonely. Today it feels full and fleeting. The only thing that's really changed is me.
Read MoreWhat's in a name
The dreaded question. "And what do you do?" My mind stumbles over Stay at Home Mom, Freelancer (but not these last few months), Cummings' Family Manager, etc. I need one of those terrible sweaters that's covered in cutesy embroidery listing, Nurse, Teacher, Chauffer, Chef, etc. with a checkmark next to each label. I'm all of it and more. I'm none of it but more.
I hate that conversation unless I'm talking to someone who might get it. Doesn't have to be a woman, but we probably need more than a couple minutes. Once I stumble over my answer, there's a nervous laugh and an understanding "Yeah..." and then we talk about the things we love, what we want to be working on, something new we've discovered online or in the Bay. It's an inadvertent ice breaker because I've realized none of us know what we're doing. We're taking care of kids while caring for our own finances, relationships, and minds. Behind every halted answer to, "And what do you do?" is a field of commonalities that stretches and falls with the seasons of our lives.
I'm deep in a season, calling it whatever feels right at the moment. I really need that sweater. (AND Beverly Goldberg in my life, for real. I LOVE HER.)
Writer-Artist in Motherhood Residency
All images by Lenka Clayton
Three years ago, I wrote about Lenka's Artist in Motherhood Residency on Design Mom. Lenka Clayton is a fine artist who had a tough time finding a residency that would accept her because of the constraints of having a child. So, she created one herself and called it Residency in Motherhood. She printed business cards, scheduled part-time child care, and established her own "studio space" where she dedicated herself to exploration and creation and journaled the process for the world to see. The result is beautiful. (Alain De Boton agrees.) When I found Lenka's project three years ago, it moved me. When she photographed objects she found in her child's mouth (63 Objects Taken From My Son's Mouth), I laughed. I got it. When she typed interrupted, stunted, exasperating events of the day (What do we do all day? jpg file name "nightmare"), I was right there with her. I was her, and she was telling the story I didn't know how to tell, but felt. She was the Artist of Motherhood, accidentally painting a dizzyingly poignant picture of my personal motherhood.
Three years and two more children later, I rediscovered Lenka's project. I don't recall what I was doing on the desktop computer—I'm so rarely sitting down in the office these days—but I happened upon her personal update. She's shown art in the Guggenheim (among so many places!), she's waiting for her second child to arrive, and she's created a Artist in Motherhood Residency kit so anyone in the world can create their own "formal" residency at home or at a studio, and even seek a grant. It moved me again, just like it did three years ago. But this time I did something about it. I pulled a sheet of paper out of my notebook and scribbled down the following mess:
And just like that, I am an Writer-Artist in Motherhood Resident. (Albeit a Bachelor-watching, stick-figure drawing, part-time one. Baby steps, right Lenka?) If you want to join me, sign up and put your name on the world map and let's keep in touch and follow each other to see each other's projects. I'll be sharing some of my thoughts here since I am calling myself a Writer-Artist, but most in my private physical journals. (I still keep those, but alas, no key.)
Thank you, Lenka. Oh, and your pinterest boards are amazing. xo
PS One of those links in the Design Mom post now takes you to a Tumblr featuring breast augmentation. LOL
Happy Mother's Day
As I sit here, all is still. Two of my three beautiful boys rest peacefully upstairs and the other two boys in the house are out. Today is Mother's Day and it's been a special one. Breakfast in bed, kids singing Mother's Day songs in church, a sunny walk by myself. All is well.
Hope you're all having a nice Mother's Day too—my thoughts are with those of you that struggle today. It can feel like a million feelings rushing past. Lots of love to you, whatever you're feeling. xo
On Salad and Motherhood
Sat down and wrote this in one spell while the baby was sleeping. Felt so good to write. Thanks for sticking around even when I write more posts in my head then I publish. xo
Last week, I made a salad that would make angels sing. No, really. And it didn't even have bacon in it. Local market arugala, organic spring mix, really good olive oil, salt, pepper, and half a lemon's juice tossed together. If I'm feeling crazy, I slice heirloom tomatoes on the side, and throw in chunks of nectarine. AMAZING. Oh my gosh. It is magic. When I eat this salad, I feel like a freaking queen. This fact could either be incredibly depressing, or you could be a person like me who's not very good about sitting down and eating your vegetables. Or food you love. In a quiet place. On your own plate, with nice utensils, an icy drink, with greedy chubby fingers no where to be seen. You could be a mother.
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In the background of my mind I'm always chanting simplify, simplify, simplify but my legs and mouth are running. I'm torn between boundless energy and depleted self, trying to direct money and time and me towards the best possible people, places, things, preschool activities, playdates, family, brands, food, freelance, etc., etc. It's a lot. Raising kids is just a lot. But it's not just raising kids; it's doing everything else you have to do on top of raising kids. And I have it so easy so I'm embarrassed to say it's challenging. If there's one thing I'm learning, and I'm only a few years in, it's that it's worth every ounce of fight, assertive push, "no", and amount of money to (re)assert your Self as a mother. You owe it to yourself. You're a person, you're awesome, you're somebody amazing regardless of your baby(ies). You love stuff, you deserve to love the stuff you love, you thrive when you follow your heart and do the stuff you love, and nobody can tell you you're bad, thoughtless, negligent, or wrong for doing just that. It's your life, your motherhood. Yours.
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I have a thing with salads—I love them, but I've never been able to make a good one. I'll make it but it's got a million things in it and I get a few bites in and I'm like, Ugh, I kind of just want a quesadilla. It's a texture thing. It's a tired thing. (Pretty tired to be too tired to chew celery?) But then I found my new signature salad, this arugala and mixed greens with a light lemon vinaigrette and I feel so good. I feel like I found the salad I'll be serving at dinner parties for the rest of my life. I'll never have to think about what kind of salad to make, because I'll know: the arugala and mixed greens with lemon vinaigrette. It's exactly what I like, I stand 200% behind my salad, and I feel really good about feeling disproportionately passionate about a stupid salad. I love my decision that much.
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More and more I'm realizing it's so much more about weeding out the stuff you never wanted in your salad in the first place. If you feel you've retreated, side-stepped, or even disappeared behind more colorful happenings or bigger personalities or trying toddlers or a body you don't know or friends you once had or ideas that stretch, now is the time. It's your time. Step up now. Laugh to yourself when you sit down to the most beautiful, colorful, delicate salad when you feel full and good and You. You did it. You're doing it. You do you, mama.
Lemon Arugala Salad
Fistful Organic arugala
Fistful Organic spring mix
1/2 Organic lemon, squeezed
Drizzle Olive oil
Dash salt
Dash pepper
Toss and enjoy.
Voice Memos
I've been thinking about Brooklyn.
One evening, about 30 women gathered in the upstairs of the church building. It was an activity I'd helped plan. We were sitting on the floor on dozens of blankets, a spread of delicious food on a low table to the side (good food and church always go together, don't they, or at least they should), and strings of twinkle lights surrounding us. It was dark out but it felt incredibly warm, being together; missing the pieces of our puzzle that couldn't make the Saturday activity, but feeling a little more whole and a little less heavy just being together. There was something that ran much thicker in my Brooklyn Relief Society than I'd ever experienced in a prior congregation. There was a spoken and unspoken need for each other. Different women filled different holes. When one person left, that hole reverberated through the group. We weren't perfect but we all cared and were trying. We loved each other. "Charity never faileth" in its imperfect form.
We got it when somebody said their husband had been working a lot. Oh, we got that. Or when somebody lost their job, or found out they had to move because their apartment building had been bought by a new company and was tripling its rent. Or when somebody had mice, or lice, or the worst: bed bugs. (The worst!) Or when someone's family came to stay too long (and slept on their bed, or couch, because where else?), or lost their wallet on their subway, or had a mortifying experience on the subway, or with a stranger passing by. Or having a baby, or not having a baby. (Again.) Or finding a new favorite restaurant that has room for strollers to park, a beautiful grocery store with pretty good produce, comfortable sandals, a gem on Craigslist apartment listings, or a dream job and a nanny they trusted. There were all these little things tying us together. We loved and hated the city together and there was nothing more funpainful we'd ever wanted.
For the activity, we were sharing our favorite things. Each person brought one physical object and explained why they loved this thing, what it meant to them, etc. It was surprisingly sentimental and thoughtful. I mean, I knew people would be thoughtful but wow. Every person had brought something so funny, or beautiful, or amazing and it just kept getting better and better. Then a friend stood up and shared this:
She shared that in a moment of total craziness while trying to put her three kids to bed in one room (New York!), she had a moment of clarity. She grabbed her phone and started recording audio. She let it record through the kids' back and forth, through nursing her youngest, then through story time, then prayers, then the kids falling asleep together with her arms around them. She let it record the quiet, thinking of each of our children and the period of life they were in. Just relishing the moment and letting herself be.
Of course I cried. This was during the Wander/Days days—my husband co-founded a start-up and the pressure and time demands for those years were beyond anything we'd experienced prior, even with lots of late nights and weekend freelance work under our belts. I was pregnant with our second child and overwhelmed by what ifs and loneliness from anxiety and motherhood. In so many ways, I had thought I was built to be a mother. My disposition, the things I like, the things I hoped to do with my life, the way I was raised. It all made sense in my head that becoming a mother and raising my children day in and day out would be the fulfillment of my childhood dreams. I'd apply my education and work experience and just be on cloud nine all the time raising chubby blonde babies. (A dose of naive with your naive, anyone?) Anyway, that was not what was happening so I felt the weight of her words in a very real way. I wanted to let myself be. Enjoy my baby. Love my baby. Love myself. Do what was best for myself, but what was also best for my family. I felt pulled, bored, and sad with intervals of being totally fine. (As a person does.) But at that moment I just wanted to go home, curl up next to that warm sweet-smelling body of the little boy that really made me the happiest person in the world and relish the moment in peaceful bliss. Understand the miracle I got to create with the other person I love more than anything else in the world. Remember the trying times during pregnancy, how I waited every day to have another miscarriage or loss just like before, how scary placenta previa was and the three weeks of full bed rest, how that "bleed" and hospital stay threw everything into perspective: I'm having a baby and all I care about is getting that baby safely here. No matter what. Nothing else matters. I knew I could focus and love—I just needed let myself do it. The rest could work itself out. Love first, everything else after. Us. Us first. Then everything and everybody else after. It's love first and then everything else.
So. Ever since my friend talked about her voice memos on her phone, I've been recording my life in audio. Just here and there in the most random places and times. When I give the boys a bath, or when we're driving in the car at sunset. I'm always really specific when I label them because I've realized I'm a word person, so I've got to have the voices and the context. Reading Busytown + Toots and Afternoon Bath Time on a Rough Day are some of my top picks. (Those are the real titles.) But my favorite are the times I've recorded car naps. Yeah, like I've intentionally recorded my kids sleeping in the car when we're parked somewhere. There's just snoring, and the occasional sound of cars going by but it's incredibly relaxing to me. And it makes me laugh because they snore SO loud. Lil' pig babies that played so hard and are happy and healthy, sleeping in their car seats. I made those! I did it. I'm doing it! We're alive. The recordings ring nostalgic for just the two months that have gone by, which is just what I need when it's hard to grasp the passage of time: you stop and think and it's been like three years and you have two kids. It's freaky. Voice memos has been a little way for me to snag moments and freeze them.
So now I can flip through pictures AND audio after they're asleep at night. Year of My People in full force.
You're here now.
There isn't a moment that goes by that I don't wonder what I should be doing. Should I be working full-time? Should I share that post? Maybe the dishes instead of laundry? Can I write? Is another show too much? When's the last time we ate, Does anyone know what time it is?, Is it more than a cold? One commitment, or another. There are so many, but sometimes it feels like there's not enough. A dear friend once told me her mom would always say, You'll fill whatever time you have. Isn't that the truth? But when you attempt to trace the points of, I did this, or Oh, I finished that, it's hard to recall. Or is it hard to recall for just me? (I'm so tired.)
Something I didn't realize before I had kids is that you can't just teach your kids how to sleep. I mean, you can, in like a hundred different ways and those can really, really help but babies are still people (I forget that.) and sometimes they can't be put down like sleeping robots only to wake up after the sun is up twelve hours later. There's nightmares, wet diapers, thirst, strange noises. It all adds up to a wail from the other room, or pitter patter feet to the bathroom. (Or our room.)
I don't want to look back on now and think, I wish I had been there more. I'm here all the time but I don't want to have regrets. I think the only way to fulfill that wish it remind myself every day. You're here now. They're this little now. It doesn't have to be perfect, the hard stuff is temporary, it's already gotten easier. Look at his baby hands. Look at his brother's slappy feet and easy smile. Look at that backwards shirt, those rosy cheeks, smell them they smell like outside. It's going to go by so fast. I know it. Hold on.
Yesterday our oldest slipped out the back door and when he looked back to see if I saw him, I laughed. He smirked at me and said, "Mom, what's wrong with your eyes? I can't see your eyes when you waf." Later that day, when we put the baby down for bed, he jubilantly yelled, "Nite nite Sondre Star Sondre! Wuv you!" and Sondre solemnly waved, waved, waved back at his brother, sleepy and just as serious about their nighttime traditions as his brother. Si trotted his brother's warm bottle up the stairs because "it's too heavy for you, mama. Too heavy when you have to carry Sondre too." and pushed it over the top of the crib bars, into the bed, just where Sondre would find it.
There are few things that feel clear when my head is tired, but I feel so full. I feel so lucky. It turns out Year of My People is a team effort.
Year of My People, and Sibling Love
The boys are asleep and the house hums with the sounds of the dishwasher, Sarah Sample lullabies, and the train in the distance. Our house is always a little cold—single paned windows and what I guess to be zero installation in an old two story. I love this house. I want to do so much with it and at the same time I'm letting it settle. Figure out exactly what I want.
Si started preschool this week. A part-time set-up close to home with kind teachers, an indoor treehouse, and lots and lots of outdoor time. We picked him up in the sunny afternoon and I saw him before he saw me. He was talking with a little girl, perched on a bike much to small for him, his hair gelled and a peanut butter smear on his right cheek. He looked a little sun drunk, a look I know and love. (A signature Silas look when he's played outside long and hard, just the way I like it.) She was telling him something with persistence, he responded with confident staring and a few words I couldn't hear. Then, he glanced over and saw me, looked away, then looked again. It's like I could see him shifting worlds. His new 'school world' and his 'home world'.
All he's ever known is his home world. Keenan and I. And for the last year, Sondre. Friends have come and gone, apartments, playgrounds, cousins, even grandparents as we traveled and trekked the first three years of his life to pursue career opportunities. I'd like to think we helped him see a kind side of the bigger world—exploring New York City together since he was three days old. (Even the taxi ride to the hospital in active labor was exciting.) He's played on the carousel in Central Park, eaten chocolate ice cream under the The Brooklyn Bridge, chased pigeons in Strawberry Fields, learned to hold on just so on the subway. Not uncharacteristically, our move across the country hasn't been a big deal for him. He's adaptable, observant, and most of all, a really chill guy. But it all comes back to home.
Once, on an awful, awful mom day, where I yelled and cried and looked at the clock one million times, I saw Silas as a person. (A three-year-old person with no pants and chiclet teeth, but still, a person.) I realized that this is his whole world. This. Us. Our House. What we do at home. What he eats in the morning. His favorite show. His favorite grey lounge pants. Books. His blankets, his sippy cup, the toilet even. The way he likes to ring the doorbell and the bond he feels with our car. The things he learns at church, his friends, his observations that are never more than an armslength (it seems)—from me. From both of us. I was so ashamed. It's like I betrayed the sacred trust he and I had that it's about people first. Us. Us first. Then everything and everybody else after. It's love first and then everything else. I had forgotten that most important thing somewhere between hangry, bored distraction and mopey, self-inflicted creative unfulfillment.
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Now they share a room. Just yesterday I pushed their beds to nearly touching. Brothers. They sleep better together. We sleep better having them together, down the hall. (I get teary even saying brothers, gah.)Maybe sibling love will help fill in the parental gaps?
For 2015, my goal is People first, everything else after. I love changes and I know 2015 will bring many. I feel grateful for that. That my life is full enough that there are peaks and dips and things happening all the time. I love living like that. Keeps you on your toes. 2015 will be the Year of My People (<in big banner letters>). Also, I'm going to eat more vegetables (specifically leafy greens), become a blog or magazine contributor again(on the hunt!), and publish something(in print I hope!). I'm excited.
By the hair of your tiny mullet
He turned one in October, walked in November, pointed in December. Four teeth and a whisp of fluff. And I didn't write a thing. Me. The writer. Writer. The journal keeper. Everyone tells you how much busier you'll be when you have another but I've been living that flurry and haven't resurfaced to report just how true that is. The demands never end. If insanity is it to be avoided, then you have to dig deep and find some kind of lever so you can shut off your brain and be okay with everything around sitting half undone and a little behind. It's hard if you're a perfectionist; it's hard if you're not. It's hard if you work; it's hard if you don't. I feel like I'm constantly rallying myself—my own cheerleader, coach, shin guards, Neosporin. Never has anything taught me more self-reliance than being a mom. Most of the time I feel fine and feel like we're doing an okay job raising our humans. But some nights before bed I take the thought step by step until the weight of raising a couple chubby babies who are always with me turns into raising responsible children, then teenagers, then adults and on and on. The impossibilities, the fears of something happening to them, the things I lack or am not teaching them. There's not enough Rocky Road in the world to help me figure it out. I've already picked out a couple people I know for sure could raise my kids better than I can. The hope is that somewhere between the tantrums and the cartoons and the scrambled eggs all over the floor is a love that links what I lack and what they need. We can only hope.
The Me in My Motherhood
I wonder if there is one woman out there who has never felt frustrated with her motherhood, in any way. If there is, I do not want to meet her.
Read MoreAnd Now There Are Four
Three months ago, three of us became four. It was long anticipated and everything we knew it would be, but so much more. The flurry of excitement walking to the hospital. Waiting for contractions to kick in. Enduring when they did. Pushing a baby into the world and wanting nothing, nothing, nothing more than that in the whole world. Seeing his big, healthy body and hearing his perfect cry. Snapping our first picture seconds after his 12:12 birth. Then thinking only of how happy I felt, how much I missed Silas, and how grateful to do all this with my favorite person in the whole world.
And now there are four of us. Two boys! I couldn't have ever imagined something more perfect.
I don't know much about pregnancy, birth, or parenthood—what I've experienced is different than any other. Everyone's story is their own. But one thing I do know: I am grateful. I am honored to be called 'mama'—even in the middle of the night from corner of the room where our oldest sleeps. There is so much to learn, to enjoy, to refine. Our daily activities aren't monotonous and meaningless unless I dip and let them be. My mom always tells me, This is sacred. What you are doing, This is sacred. That feels so serious to me but I know it carries the weight and soul stirring I feel when I allow myself to really relish in my motherhood. It is sacred. Loving each other is sacred.
P.S. — It's not something I'd typically share, but Keenan captured Sondre's birthday so beautifully. Here it is if you'd like to see, captured and captioned in his(our? :)) own app, Days. I cried a lot of happy tears when I saw it for the first time. It's one of the best gifts he could have given me.