The other day in a crowded restaurant, my daughter announced that she hated Mother’s Day. “It’s the one day of the year you can yell at me and I still have to be nice to you,” she said, stamping her foot. This is the sort of nine-year-old she is–overly sensitive to even a whiff of hypocrisy.

I know she’s not alone in hating the day. It’s as the Millennials would say complicated. What are we celebrating? It can’t be just mothers, because the way biology works is that everyone on earth has one. It can’t be becoming one, because then we’d just be rubbing it in the faces of the 10 percent of women who aren’t mothers–either by choice or by biology.

When I was twelve, I received the personal counsel about my life. Among the words given to me were these, “Many will call you a second mother and many will come to you for sustenance and succor and advice. Give to them to the ability that you have. Be insightful. I bless you that you will be able to understand their needs and you will recognize their great worth.”

For a long time I didn’t understand what that meant. When I was a young adult, I had grandiose visions of following in the footsteps of Angelina Jolie and rescuing unwanted children from impoverished situations. It seems sort of silly now, but much of what I thought in my twenties seems silly. When I had my own children, I began to understand the complex nature of motherhood.

Consider the story of my Great-grandmother Alice. She was born the eleventh child of twelve and had what I’d describe as an unstable childhood.I’ve shared some of her story before, but there’s more and they’ll continue to be more. For a bit, her grandmother, Eva, served as her second-mother. Alice describes Eva as a “strict” woman but a “wonderful sport.” She writes, “Grandma was something else. She was built rather square about 5’ or 5’1”. She looked very wide to me. I think it was partly the style of her dresses. Tight waist full gathered … My cousins and I would waddle behind. Playing she was the lead duck. She would look back, laugh, and waddle all the more.” She credits her grandmother with teaching her an important lesson—if you don’t work you don’t eat.

When Alice was sixteen, she became pregnant after being abused by her stepfather. She was forced to give up the daughter she had for adoption. Here is what she says of that, “I was so hurt, angry, and so bitter that I swore that some day I’d get her back. So I went to work.” Alice goes on to write about how she finished high school and some college but that it wasn’t until her daughter, Wilma, was nineteen that they found each other again. By that time she had several other children with her husband Watz, but because he’d lost his first wife in childbirth, he felt that God had sent Wilma not only to Alice, but to him as a replacement for the child he’d lost.

I moved to Memphis with a four month old and a two year old. I was thousands of miles away from my own mother and as I struggled to learn how to be a mother, I found that I was myself surrounded by second mothers. Countless women reached out with steadying hands, encouragement, or advice when I needed it most. Not all of these women were mothers themselves, some had already raised children or even grandchildren, and others, like my baby sister, hadn’t had children yet. They all had in them the ability to be a second mother when needed.

And that, is what I think we should be celebrating on Mother’s Day. It is what I strive to do–look for opportunities to offer a steadying hand, not only to mothers of young children, but to any human being who needs as it was put to me, “sustenance and succor and advice.”

I’ve been working hard this year at not comparing myself to those around me because is too easy to find someone smarter, prettier, wealthier, healthier, and all around better than me. Instead, I’ve been looking for ways to help.

Oh, and if you don’t want my advice, that’s totally cool. But some advice is good, like I know from personal experience that it isn’t a good idea to let your fourteen-month old ride on the bottom of a shopping cart, and as much as you might be tempted to give your children the “swear words are meaningless” lecture, that you probably should’t because the next four months will be filled with swear words from your small children.

*this was part of a talk I gave at church on Mother’s Day….

Recently my rockstar agent inked a deal for one of her other authors with Reese Witherspoon’s production company. I’ve never met Reese, but she’s one of those relatable celebrities, like Jennifer Garner, who makes you think that if you did meet, you’d become instant best friends and have a sleepover party. So I got a little giddy thinking how there were only a few degrees of separation between me and former Tennessee gal Reese. Turns out I’m much closer than I knew–as one of the women in the MFA program went to elementary school with her.

The only celebrity I went to school with was Tonya Harding and that’s not an association to brag about. At college I went to school with Ed Norton’s sister, we even had a class or two together. She was nice. Her brother made mostly good movies. Chris O’Donnell came to our homecoming and I was shocked to see how well he blended in and how few people approached him. He went on to make mostly bad movies. One of my college friends had his first kiss with Sabrina.

I saw Dave Matthews quite a bit when I worked in Charlottesville, but was most impressed years later to see him patiently waiting in line with the rest of us fools at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. I guess he does pay for what he gets. I met Rita Dove the night her house burned down.

Which brings me to an ongoing argument I have with several of my writerly friends. I don’t think any author (with the exception of J.K., Stephen, and Morrison) is a celebrity. They achieve a certain notoriety in certain circles. And in some circumstances are recognized. At I watched Jane Smiley, who is so easy to recognize because she is six feet tall and stunning, get mobbed as she waited with the rest of us plebes for the panels to begin. But for the most part the people I admire most and would fall to pieces to be in the presence of achieve a beautiful anonymous celebrity and what could be better than that?

So, tell me your celebrity stories, tell me which authors you’d recognize.

Ages ago, before I ever started writing Roots of The Olive Tree, I read an article in National Geographic about a specific species of jellyfish (turritopsis nutricula) who cheat death–and in some way achieve a measure of immortality. What interested me wasn’t the idea that immortality was possible, but that this particular jellyfish is only able to cheat death when it is stressed.

Let me explain. The turritopsis nutricula is a pretty average hydrozoa–it floats around the ocean (mostly the Pacific) and does its jellyfish thing–eating stuff, producing eggs, fertilizing those eggs. But when the jellyfish becomes stressed because of lack of food or gets injured, its cells can regress back into immature form. There’s no known limit to the number of times specific specimen can age and then regress.

Meaning this creature roughly the size of a pea can get old, get stressed, grow young and then repeat the cycle innumerable times to achieve what is in essence biological immortality. You can see how a fact like that might get stuck in my brain.

Of course, I’m simplifying the science, but I still find the concept incredible. I worked a bit of it into the book–in a section where the geneticist discusses the fascination we all have for these scientific studies with headlines like “flatworm holds key to eternal life” or “Mouse unlocks the secret to stopping aging.” They’re sexy, in the same way youtube’s reply girls are.

But what are the deeper implications? I’ve written before about my need to fill every hour of every day with busyness. How are our reactions to stress like those of this immortal jellyfish? In some ways I become immortal–in that I am more productive with a busy hour than with an unfilled hour. And if you mesure life in what you are able to accomplish, then I’m living more life.

But there’s a breaking point. Yesterday I left work almost in tears. Overwhelmed by the work on my plate–teaching, administrative tasks, wondering how much time I’ll have to write the next book, juggling my children’s schedule, social commitments, church commitments, time with my husband, time to exercise, time to fix healthy meals, time to clean my kitchen, fill my fridge up with food, etc.

When I got home, I was very much in a childlike state. Luckily I had someone to fix me dinner and help put the groceries away. How do you handle stress? How do you mesure longevity?

I’m going to my first midnight movie tonight.

Like many cultural trends, this one started when I was too far into adulthood to take much notice. The last time I stood in line for a movie, I was seven years old. We’d convinced my brother to use his birthday money to take the family to see Return of the Jedi and my parents anticipating a fervor around the much anticipated sequel, arrived at the theater at what they considered to early. The line snaked around the front of the Rose Moyer theater and along the side and finally around the back of the building. I took solace that at least the line hadn’t lapped itself. There was some pushing between me and my brother, speculation on what sort of candy Mom would let us get and an anxious gnawing feeling of would we get in.

More than the movie, I remember the camaraderie established with my family as we bore this line-waiting, this anticipation together. Still it wasn’t an experience I was eager to relive when as a young adult I saw fans camped in front of movie theaters with tents and costumes. I’ve written previously about my attitude toward Harry Potter.

A few of my friends tried to convince me that it would be stupid fun to join them for the midnight releases of Twilight, but I was a bit snobby about the whole affair. Tonight, of course, is the release of Hunger Games and since I actually read the books* I’ve agreed that to partake in the stupid fun.

And here’s the thing about being 36. I take myself far too seriously. The last stupid fun time I had was more than a year ago when my sister and I spent the weekend together with my grandmother. We slept in the same bed together and ended up staying up far too late talking and laughing about the most ridiculous and mundane experiences of our childhood. By the time I finally fell asleep I felt giddy with silliness.

So tonight, I’ll be there in line with plenty of tween and teens, cheering for Katniss and maybe with a little bit of luck I can have my moment of stupid fun.

*Books one and two are entertaining and engaging, however I was so let down by book three and the potential plots and subplots that were dropped or not fully explored. Definitely worth reading–as it goes by fast and will give you the cultural currency you need.

By the end of grade school, every child understands the danger of genies. Sure, they grant wishes, but there are inevitably unforseen consequences. You wish to be wealthy and your mother dies–leaving you a healthy insurance policy, wish for world peace and everyone but you disappears off the face of the earth, wish for eternal life and well that mess is best illustrated by Eos and Tithus

Eos is the goddess of the dawn and mother to the north, south and west winds as well as the morning star. Her job is to herald the rising of the sun, which left her with a little too much free time. She got into the habit of making mortal men fall in love with her and father half-god, half-mortal children. This all changed when she met Tithonus, a Trojan prince. Unfortunately for many of the princes of Troy, they were unusually attractive and seemed to catch the eyes of Goddesses, who eventually destroyed their lives. Eos fell in love with Tithonus and they had two children: Emathion and Memnon. As they lived in domestic bliss, it occurred to Eos that for her to be endlessly happy, she’d need to find a way to make Tithonus immortal, like herself.

She approached Zeus and asked that he grant Tithonus immortality. But “Too simple was queenly Eos: she thought not in her heart to ask youth for him and to strip him of the slough of deathly age.” So poor Tithonus aged. He got grey hair and eventually his limbs stopped moving, but he wouldn’t die. Eos, not being able to bear the sight of his “loathsome age” or the sound of his “endless babbling” locked him up behind closed doors–where depending on which version you read, he either still lives as a pile of dusty bones, or he shrivels up and becomes a cicada, still babbling of his misery.

It is a cautionary tale, but not for the immortals–Eos appears to get off rather unscathed. It is her foolishness that cursed Tithonus with eternal life without eternal youth. It is also one of the few cautionary tales about man’s search for immortality. I’ve spent the last year reading just about all the myths about longevity. This story is one of my favorites precisely because it doesn’t end happily or fruitlessly–it is, of course, a version of the classic genie conundrum.

I shall be quite careful in wishing as I blow out my birthday candles today. Mostly it will be a breath of thanks for granting that wish I made three decades back to grow up and become an author.

before anyone else but the sun arrived

I’m a city girl.

My parents tried their hardest to suburbandize me, but it didn’t stick. I married a city planner and together we’ve lived in a succession of cities and visited most of the heavy hitters (New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Richmond, Washington D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Memphis, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Paris, Vancouver, BC). There are a couple of glaring holes. Texas. But honestly I feel like I need a passport to visit there and I’m not quite ready. The other holes? New Orleans and Chicago. Both of which my husband had managed to get to without me.

This past weekend I finally made it to Chicago. Yes, it was winter, but I was still as thrilled as ever and it took all of my will power to check into the hotel at midnight when I stepped off the El instead of wandering the city’s famous streets. My husband had given me a copy of Devil in a White City to read during my travels–and it was the perfect introduction to the Black City. My friend, Lindsay, is right. The best books to read aren’t travel books, but novels, memoirs and other creative works that capture the essence of the place you’re visiting.

Instead I woke up at 5:30 a.m. the next day and by 6:15 a.m. I was standing in front of the Cloud Gate (colloquially known as The Bean) statue in Millennial Park. It was amazing. Then I walked over the ribbon bridge and to Lake Michigan, which when it came into view caused my heart to stop for a moment. Well played Chicago, well played.

Two hours later, I’d circled back to the Palmer Hotel where I was staying. I was exhausted, a little frozen and my pants were ripped up and possibly covered in goose poop. None of it mattered because I was absolutely and completely in love with Chicago. I dutifully attended conference sessions, networked, and helped pimp our MFA program and outstanding literary journal, but at all times a third of my brain was planning a vacation with the children and the hubs.

It will be in October, when the fountain is operational, and it will have to be when my son is comfortable enough riding a bike that we can ride up and down the length of the shoreline. We’ll see Sue at the Field Museum and Nighthawks at the Institute of Art. But mostly we’ll walk the city and just take it in.

There’s an Arab proverbs about two scorpions in a hole having a better chance of survival than two sisters living under the same roof. I am blessed to have two sisters, both younger and I would say during the the whole of our childhood that particular proverb rang quite true.

I got to know my youngest sister when she volunteered to move with our family to Memphis. At the time I had a four-month old and a two-year-old and was terrified at the thought of living 2,000 miles away from the supporting arms of my extended family. She had a bit of her own growing up to do, but nonetheless I was glad to have her. She blossomed in Memphis, finishing college and firmly establishing herself as a woman. She’s also an amazing aunt to my children.

My other sister, who is three years younger than me, still lives in the Pacific Northwest. I tease her about being a homebody, as she lives within a mile of her mother-in-law and our mother. Our relationship began to take shape once she had children. I was so glad to have another sibling I could talk to about how being a mother changes everything–and I’ve been surprised (considering how combative we were growing up) at how she understands exactly what I mean when I talk about a change.

We did not get along when we were young. I once infamously punched her in the stomach at a church activity. She snuck into my room after I’d left for high-school and wore my clothing and read my diary. We were like oil and water, but now that we are both mothers, we are like water and water.

If I have any regrets about only having two children it is that my daughter will never have a sister. There are certain joys and pains that are only experienced in that relationship. The deep resentment and jealousy that exists between sisters eventually gives way to abiding love, but i think it is made all the sweeter by experiencing the agony first.

When Charlie and I got married, he claimed he could only sleep if he were on my left. Not only didn’t I care which side of the bed I slept on, I never really understood how there could be sides of the bed.

In my house, you grew up learning how to sleep in any condition–loud, floor, outside, and even in some long car trips,cargo hold. There were too many people and too little accommodation for such eccentricities as side of the bed. Charlie grew up with one brother and a mother who changed the bedding according to season. Quite civilized, especially when compared to the scramble for bedding my house. I still have a blanket I stole from my brother Noah just before I left for college.

This particular need of Charlie’s to sleep to the left of me, meant some confusion in the early years of our marriage. I never thought of the bed in relation to where I slept in it. Instead, I seemed to decide what side to sleep on based on where the bedroom door was in relation to the bed. Anytime I rearranged our bedroom, or we stayed the night in a hotel, Charlie would inevitably have to point out that I was on the wrong side of the bed.

A few years ago, when our children had just become old enough to wander downstairs from their bedroom in the middle of the night if they became sick or frightened, I moved the furniture around in our room and Charlie installed a built-in headboard/bookcase into the wall. The arrangement resulted in Charlie’s side of the bed permanently being right next to the door.

A few months ago, Charlie groaned out a series of complaints about being the first line of defense against sick children, scared children, and early risers. (Our son likes to get up at the crack of dawn, or even before it. I sometimes joke that his snooze button is broken.) I couldn’t help pointing out that he’d brought it all on himself with his ridiculous notion of sides of the bed. He looked a little stricken and then offered to switch.

“I could get used to your side,” he’d said.

We tried it for a bit, but it turns out not only has he been conditioned to sleep  on one side of the bed, the children, after three years, have been conditioned to bother Dad first when they come into our bedroom.

What about you? Do you have a side of the bed?

I sent my first love letter when I was eight. Joel and I went to church together. He had curly brown hair and warm brown eyes. I was reading the Trixie Belden mysteries at the time and each time I read about her crush on Jim Frayne, I pictured a slightly older version of Joel. Later, when I moved on to the LIttle House series, I found a blonde boy in my third grade class to approximate Alfonso.

Now that I have my own eight-year old daughter, I’ve been keeping a keen lookout for signs of a crush. There are a few, but I am relieved to discover that she is not so nearly as boy crazy as her mother was at her age. I think she has crushes, but they are more about having someone to name when her friends ask her who she thinks is cute. I could be wrong.

I know when I was her age that I kept my own crushes secret. I wrote a heartfelt letter telling Joel how amazing he was and how I would always love him. No matter what. I even promised to dedicate my first book to him. Then I slipped a stamp from my mother’s purse, looked up his address in the church directory and mailed it.

The next Sunday I floated into church, positive that he would have received my letter and fallen madly in love with me. In fact he smiled at me as blankly as ever, with that quizzical look boys have until they discover girls. It has been said that women are born knowing how to love and must teach the men around them how to. In my experience boys are nearly always oblivious to love until they become teenagers.

I was crushed. I got home from church and my mother pulled me aside. She waved my letter at me, which was coverd in hearts and other doodles involving my name and Joel’s last name.

“Just what is this?” she asked me.

I mumbled some vague acknowledgment of what she held in her hand. My face was as red as the crayon hearts drawn on the envelope. I think now that she was trying not to laugh, but what I remember is her sternness and her direction that I was never to mail anything unless I showed her what it was first. After that I mostly mailed chain letters.

It occurs to me that Joel’s mother must have opened the letter and then instead of passing it along to her son, given it to my mother. They probably laughed about it. I do know that my mother told me to keep it. “A letter like that,” she said. “You’ll want to have when you have a daughter of your own.”

The letter was lost a thousand moves ago, but I remember it so clearly. I know what an eight-year-old’s stomach feels like when she sees the boy she has a crush on. I know that she’s thinking look at me, notice me, tell me I am special. Which I guess is what all love boils down to.

Now that I’m married, Valentine’s Day is different. The surprise is gone. There are no secret Valentine’s for me. There’s no anticipation of telling my crush how much I love him. What I have is steadiness and a man who makes me feel everyday that I am special. My favorite time of day is when I come home and find that he’s opened our back gate for me. It saves me from having to get out in the cold and struggle with the heavy wooden door. It says I care about you. I notice you. You are special.

I hope each of you is having the Valentine’s Day you deserve–and I hope all of you with crushes are sending secret notes of love to those who you want to be your Valentines. I’ll pick my kids up from school and sneakily read their cards looking for carefully coded third and first grade declarations of love.

And my book? It isn’t dedicated to Joel. Instead it reads: for Winnie and Sofia who are the beginning and the end of the fabulous line of women in my life. My valentine to my husband is in the acknowledgments.

You may have noticed that I’m one of those people. You know the idiots who see an empty ten-minute slot on their calendars and find ways to fill it. It is a disease and I’ve had it since puberty when I would get up at 4:30 a.m. to wash, blow dry and curl my waist-length hair. I remembering being so tired that I spent the first five minutes of my shower curled up on the floor of the shower. I was, at the time, highly motivated by cute boys. Between after-school activities, work and church, I often wouldn’t stop moving until I went to sleep at midnight. Leaving me 4.5 hours to rest.

That pretty much set up the pattern of my life, until I had children. When I got pregnant with my first, I was working between 60 and 90 hours a week for a man we lovingly called “dragon boss.” This was a man who would throw a hissy fit if he even caught a whiff of microwave popcorn. One time we popped some at two a.m. trying to finish a project and the next day when he arrived, he took one deep breath and blew up at us for contaminating his air.

At first, I really took no notice of being pregnant and I didn’t alter my sleeping schedule or my work schedule, but then around the seventh month, my body staged a protest. Within moments of arriving home from work (whether at 5:30 p.m. or 2 a.m.) I would be asleep. I spent Saturdays watching cartoons and developed an unhealthy fascination with Yu-gi-oh.

And then my daughter arrived and I found out just how little control I truly have over my time and my body. I left the corporate world and worked from home and I changed, I mellowed. I would tell people how having kids changes you, changes your priorities. I had time to do crossword puzzles and sudoku. I watched shows that were in syndication. Oh the time I wasted. It felt glorious.

But in the last few years or so, I’ve somehow managed to again fill up every minute of available space in my day. I sleep five hours a night and Fridays aren’t all that wonderful because what I’m inevitably left with is a list of tasks that I failed to complete the days leading up to Friday.

Part of this has to do with the children. They don’t need me so much. They can dress themselves, feed themselves, entertain themselves. And those three items, well they used to take 12 hours of my day. So it is a natural process, but I liked who I’d become. I liked that I didn’t mind wasting time. Yesterday I wasted exactly 10 minutes of the 19 hours I was awake by playing words with friends.

And yet, I’m so happy because 80 percent of what I’m doing with my time is what I always dreamed of doing. And there are ways that I’ve mellowed. Instead of staying up to put the laundry away, I hide it in my closet. I learned that you can get away with only washing and blow drying your hair every three days. Nothing I own needs to be ironed. And perhaps the most telling fact: I never wear matching socks. Never. Because taking the time to find a pair that matches or even putting them away correctly in the first place is too much.

What have you given up on in your life? I mean in a good way, in a way that makes you feel like you have some control, that you are choosing where to spend your time.