Anna Quindlen, NANAVILLE
[0:01]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:34]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:37]I am beyond excited and honored to be recording the bio for Anna Quinlan because she has been my number one
[0:46]on my wish list of authors I wanted to have on this podcast from the time I started it three years ago.
[0:51]And finally, I got to have her on, and it was amazing, and I loved it, and it didn't disappoint me in any way.
[0:58]As you will hear, and she has just been just one of my favorite authors of all time.
[1:03]Anyway, for those of you who don't know, Anna Quinlan is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared
[1:09]on fiction, nonfiction, and self-help, bestseller lists.
[1:13]She is the author of nine novels, object lessons, one truth thing, black and blue,
[1:17]blessings, rise and shine. Every last one, still life with breadcrumbs,
[1:21]Miller's Valley, and alternate side. Her memoir Lots of Candles Plenty of Cake published in 2012,
[1:27]and was a number one New York Times bestseller. Her book a short guide to a happy life
[1:31]has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at the New York Times,
[1:35]she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections, Living Out Loud, and Thinking Out Loud.
[1:41]Her news week columns were collected in loud and clear.
[1:44]Enjoy this episode. I hope you love it as much as I did.
[1:47]Welcome, Anna. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books.
[1:52]Thanks, Debbie, and that's really true, isn't it? I'm with somebody a book when they had
[1:57]little kids and say, put that away in five or six years, you might be able to read it.
[2:01]Maybe I should make like a little like time capsule box, right? Read later, you know,
[2:06]welcome to your mom, and then you could just put the books inside.
[2:09]Well, that's probably true. I mean, you know, you could have two boxes. One box is the books
[2:15]that you will read over and over and over again, like Goodnight Moon or Madeline,
[2:22]so that when you're my age, you can recite them from memory. And the other are grown-up
[2:26]books that you will read when your kids are too busy to have anything to do with it.
[2:32]I listened. I half read and then the other half listened to the audiobook of Nanaville.
[2:37]And I also like many parents out there and grandparents have Goodnight Moon memorized and read it
[2:42]every single nap time and bedtime and everything. And just hearing you read it to your
[2:47]to Arthur and just like hearing the words again and the sweetness of that moment of you guys on
[2:53]the chair. Oh my gosh, I was like in my car crying listening to this story. So thank you for that.
[2:59]It is so sweet, except that I can remember at a certain point when Arthur said to me,
[3:03]where is the telephone? And when I pointed it out, he looked at me quizzically because what is
[3:10]the telephone in Goodnight Moon is not what he has grown up with as a telephone. Oh my gosh,
[3:17]so crazy. Everything looks good. In Madeline, he can understand why 12 little girls live
[3:22]altogether without their mommy and daddy and with Miss Clovell. Yes, my daughter was like,
[3:28]do I have to do that? Like, why did they go? And I'm like, no, no, no. Like, they're already panicking
[3:33]about college. You know, I have a six-year-old, a seven-year-old and two, 13-year-olds. And you know,
[3:37]the little guys are like, well, we're just gonna live here forever. And I'm like, yeah, you probably
[3:40]well, not kidding. But yeah, so many books. I love that those books have stayed the same though.
[3:46]It's so nice that I know that like my grandparents read me the same books that I can read to my kids.
[3:50]There's something just so, what else is like that? That's just so generational and constant
[3:55]when everything else in the world changes so much. Well, the one thing that I really love is
[4:00]a number of the books that I read Arthur are actual physical copies that I read to Quinn
[4:06]Chris and Maria all night we're young. And at this point, they look like a middle school eight
[4:12]lunch on, I mean, they're really a wreck. But the fact that they are the same copies is so
[4:19]talismanic to me. I can almost feel myself reading them to my own kids at the same time that I'm
[4:25]reading them to my grandchildren. So special. My mother has a lot of our same, a lot of the books
[4:30]she read to us that she reads to my kids. And when I go over there and see them, it just,
[4:34]it brings it all back for me and then suddenly you're like that little kid again. And what am I
[4:38]doing with these kids who were like taller than I am? I don't know how it all happens. It's like
[4:42]ridiculous. And the great thing about hearing about grandparents from you is that I feel like I've
[4:48]been following not in a creepy way, but because you've been writing about your parenting, your mother
[4:53]hood journey from the beginning, I feel like your kids have become characters in this narrative.
[4:59]And now that they have had kids, it just like everything is coming full circle with your living out
[5:04]to now. It's like for anybody else, and I'm sure they're just bazillions of people who have
[5:09]followed you as I have. Like it's just, it's so amazing to see you go through this experience and
[5:16]the here and now and sort of follow you in real time. It's like you're a, it's like you were an
[5:20]Instagram poster before Instagram or something. Someone once, I think it was Lisa Belk and the writer
[5:27]who once wrote that I was the first mommy blogger. Yes. And I must admit that when I was writing
[5:33]about the kids, when I was doing the life in the 30s column at the New York Times,
[5:38]there wasn't a whole lot of that kind of writing going on and there was absolutely none of it
[5:43]going on at the New York Times. But you know, people will say to me, even today, you made
[5:50]me feel less alone because of course, as we all know, motherhood can be so unbelievably isolating
[5:57]even without a pandemic. And the thing I would say back to them is you made me feel less alone
[6:04]because when I was writing these columns thinking, does anyone care about this stuff?
[6:09]And then the letters because it was still letters that the letters would come pouring in. I just
[6:15]would think there's a primal connection here that I need to feel every time I sit down at the
[6:22]computer. And it really saved me in a way when I had three little kids and used to pretend to
[6:32]have to go to the bathroom so I could have two minutes alone, which of course is a complete illusion
[6:37]because you're in there for two minutes and suddenly you hear, mommy, are you in there?
[6:43]Oh, mom, mom, I've been in the bathroom. Like, now I have to hear so quickly we go from hoping
[6:52]that they will learn to say mom, to hoping that they won't say it for five minutes.
[7:00]So my gosh, so funny. Wow. You know, you mentioned in your book also about
[7:06]the caretaking of children. Like, the responsibility you feel for them not to get like for
[7:11]Arthur not to get hurt, for instance, when your baby sitting is the wrong word, nana sitting
[7:16]versus how you felt about your own kids who you, you'd glibly joke about taking to the emergency
[7:21]room or breaking a leg or whatever happened to your own kids. That's your, and that's like your
[7:25]responsibility. But when you have your grandchild and it's really, you know, you feel this extra layer
[7:30]and you referenced the child who was hit by the brick near your apartment building. And I actually
[7:36]had the author of, he wrote a memoir. I don't know if you probably know. Oh, it's so beautiful.
[7:41]So beautiful, right? Oh, yeah. That story. I mean, look, they're all hostages to fortune.
[7:49]That's what's so terrifying about being a mother. But, you know, if, if something, I'm not going
[7:56]to say something tragic because I can't even wrap my mind around that. You know, my, my mother
[8:01]died when I was a teenager. And one of the ways I skated through life was that I used to think,
[8:08]okay, the worst thing that can ever happen to me has already happened to me. And then I had
[8:13]children realized that the second worst thing that could ever happen to me had happened to me.
[8:19]So I can never wrap my mind around anything really bad happening to my own kids. But, you know,
[8:26]a trip to the emergency room. I know how to handle that, telling one of my sons that their
[8:34]child got hurt on my watch. I really don't know how to handle that. And I'm hoping I never have to.
[8:41]Oh, my gosh. We were dog sitting for my sister-in-law and her dog escaped out of our front gate,
[8:46]like, like before we even knew what to do. And next thing, you know, like my husband's racing
[8:51]down the street. And I'm jumping in the car and we're all like screaming and whatever. And
[8:55]anyway, eventually, well, to be honest, what happened is the dogs turned around and ran right
[8:59]back home while we were all friends across the street. But, you know, my husband all the time was just
[9:02]like, oh, my gosh, how could I, how could I tell Stephanie if something happened to loot? I mean,
[9:07]I could never live with myself. Like, I feel like he would have been more upset almost than her
[9:11]for that responsibility. So I mean, that's only a dog compared to a grandchild. It's just the,
[9:18]the pressure of that caretaking and the weight of that responsibility. Anyway,
[9:22]on the other hand, to get to do it is a gift. It really is. It's not the dog sitting. That was not
[9:28]a gift. No, to get to be a man. Oh, man. It's so, so great to have that sense of, of the line of your
[9:38]family extending. And also, both of my sons are ACEs fathers. And to watch that, it's so hard
[9:48]to gauge whether you're doing a good job when you're a mother. You know, one day, one of them suddenly
[9:55]learns how to read. And you think, it's all
[10:00]all happening. And then two days later, you know, one of them goes south for some reason.
[10:05]And it's such a long span to do a job. It's like it's as though you were building a house
[10:13]that took you 30 years to build. And after 30 years, you could finally say,
[10:17]oh, looks good. And I like the kitchen, you know. So there are relatively few times when I sat
[10:23]there and thought, I did a good job. And still, when good things happened, part of me thinks
[10:32]they were born with a lot of the raw material. And I just weighed in some. But when I see my two
[10:39]sons being these fantastic fathers, there are moments when I think I did okay.
[10:45]Oh, it's just so nice. There's just nothing better. I can't even imagine my son's having kids.
[10:50]My little guy just said to my daughter, like, you know, like, if we want to have babies for
[10:55]going to have to kiss lips. And like, oh, we've got a long way to go over here.
[11:03]No, but there's, I mean, that's magical just to see it all come full circle like that.
[11:09]And you write so fun in such a funny characteristically way about it. And I love your chapter
[11:14]called did they ask you when you were telling you a little bit about that?
[11:20]Well, it's a pivotal moment in the book. I mean, and it's the one that most readers
[11:27]who are grandmothers have focused on. I mean, you know, to make it very short, my son and his
[11:34]fantastic wife were going to do something with their son that I did not agree with. So I told them
[11:41]that I didn't agree with it. And then they kept on with their plan to do this. And so then I
[11:47]told them again that I did agree with it. And they continued with their plan. And finally, the third
[11:54]time, as I say in the book, Quinn push didn't push back disrespectfully or in a mean fashion,
[12:02]but he pushed back hard. And I know and respect him. And so I backed off. But the next morning,
[12:10]doing my morning power walk with my friend Susan who taught my sons when they were in elementary
[12:17]school and is the most wonderful person. And I told her this whole story thinking at the end,
[12:24]she was going to be totally team Anna. And there was a long silence. And then she said,
[12:31]did they ask you? And it was like a lightning bolt went off. And I thought, that's it.
[12:38]That's the question that you always have to ask yourself when you're a grandmother.
[12:42]Did they ask you? And if they didn't, just keep your mouth shut and back off. Because I
[12:49]think that sense of intrusion is what kills this relationship sometime. And not the relationship
[12:56]between the nana and the grandchildren. This is what would it call a span from the times
[13:02]call it a mediated relationship. This is a mediated relationship. I have this great relationship
[13:09]with my grandson and my granddaughter and my other grandson, which could be nipped in the bud
[13:15]at any moment by their parents. They are the people who give me permission to have this relationship.
[13:23]And I think when the relationship goes south, it's because the grandparents are not respectful
[13:30]of the mediators, whether they're right or wrong, doesn't matter. Respect. Really matters.
[13:36]Your book is also teaching me how to do a better job with my own mother. Right. And what I
[13:42]need to say to her, I mean, I know it was written from the point of view of a grandmother, but it's
[13:47]so helpful to, it's just so helpful from this way too for me to know how she feels and how to
[13:53]communicate better with her about her role because of how you feel. But that really interests me
[13:59]zippy because one of the things that came up during the writing of the book and that people
[14:03]ask me about a lot is, is it different when it's your son and daughter-in-law versus your daughter?
[14:11]Because I think a lot of mothers with their sons and daughter-in-law understand that despite all
[14:18]the changes in society, women still handle a lot of the social intercourse that we have and that
[14:25]therefore if you get on the wrong side of your daughter-in-law, you may really have undercut
[14:31]yourself. Whereas I think there may be more of a feeling that you can tell your daughter what you
[14:38]think without necessarily checking yourself in the same way. There has not been a lot of checking.
[14:46]That's why I think I'm going to take this book and if somehow she hasn't read it,
[14:52]I'm going to put a little sticky on this section. She's gotten a lot better, but it's taken us
[14:57]13 years and I like to think I've broken her in for my brother and all of that, but
[15:02]grandparents don't, they also don't arrive with a guidebook just like parents don't.
[15:06]We don't, we don't know what they're doing. I don't also, as I say in the book, I don't
[15:11]think a whole lot of us think about it. In other words, you mean women all the time who say to you,
[15:16]I've always wanted to be a mom, right? I've always thought about being a mom of having kids.
[15:22]They don't really know what it's going to consist of until they're actually doing it,
[15:26]but they've always wanted to do it. But I don't know very many people who over a span of time have
[15:34]said to themselves, someday I want to be a grandmother. Your mom for a while and of course then
[15:40]your kids reach a certain age and you start to think, hmm, but we don't pregame it as much as
[15:48]we pregame motherhood. And I think the role models we have for it, well, I say this in the book,
[15:56]I mean grandparents now are very engaged many of them in the lives of their grandchildren.
[16:03]My grandparents saw us every Sunday and they sat in the living room with a Manhattan
[16:11]and we passed through, but they didn't. I mean, the idea of my grandfather building with Legos
[16:19]is pretty, pretty unimaginable to me. So I think the way in which people are grandparents now
[16:26]is so different that there really isn't any template for people. I remember saying something to
[16:32]my dad because he's like, he said something like, oh, this was when my older son was like a toddler.
[16:37]Like he hasn't like looked me in the eye or something like that. I was like, oh, no, dad,
[16:41]you have to like get on the floor with him. And he's like, I don't have to do anything.
[16:46]Okay. But it's true. It's like right now like to interact with my son, that's what you had to do
[16:53]to keep his attention. And just to your point about mother's not pre-gaming when I was 19 years old
[16:59]and I had my first really serious boyfriend serious enough that like my mom could meet his mom.
[17:04]I was 19. And we sat down in my apartment here in New York and literally sit down like air
[17:12]still coming out of the cushions. And my mother leans forward and says, well, I don't know about
[17:16]you, but I can't wait to be a grandmother. And I was like, I'm assuming this is not the boyfriend
[17:24]who became the father of your children. No, it was, this was like a decade before that. I wasn't
[17:30]Oh, some people I think maybe have stronger predilections. But in general, I'm sure you are right
[17:37]that that is not something people think about. I feel like also there used to be not something
[17:41]it just seemed like it made women feel old to be considered grandmothers. Right. And there's this
[17:47]like anti-agist right. I don't know. I shouldn't put words in your mouth. Well, a lot of them still do.
[17:53]I mean, as I said in Nanaville, I met a number of women who did not let their grandchildren call
[18:00]them. Right. Grandma or nana or anything like that because it made them feel old. And
[18:08]first of all, I was astonished to discover that the average age of a grandmother in America is 50,
[18:15]which I suppose, you know, 100 years ago, we thought was old. But today we certainly don't think of
[18:23]as old. But second of all, to have the privilege of living long enough to see your children's
[18:30]children, I mean, some of the most full of life and full of Brio and full of excitement people I
[18:38]met when I was on tour for Nanaville were the women who would come up to me and say, I'm a great
[18:44]grandma. And they obviously took so much pleasure in this. We have more great grandmothers in the
[18:53]United States than ever before in history in part because of longer life expectancy and large
[19:00]part because of longer life expectancy. So that sense of, you know, your your clan heading off into
[19:08]the future. I think to feel negative about that is very odd because it's so it's so life affirming
[19:17]at some level. I mean, it's it's your life affirming in that you know that someday you will no
[19:24]longer be here. And yet all these people that are carrying some of your DNA will just be
[19:29]bullying down the road. That was also something you mentioned in your book. All the like the tiny
[19:36]little characteristics that show up in your kids that you aren't expecting from other people in
[19:40]your family. It's just it just hadn't occurred to me until I was like, oh, I seem to have given
[19:44]birth to like my sister-in-law. You know, right? Sometimes characteristics just come through and you're
[19:50]sort of blindsided by it. And a nice way. Yeah, it's really it's really, really interesting just to
[19:56]watch the whole thing. It's been really interesting for me.
[20:00]And my father was from a very clanish Irish family.
[20:04]And my mother was from an Italian immigrant family.
[20:08]And so as compared to my other cousins
[20:11]who are 100% Irish, we sort of were some mollage.
[20:17]But now I have two grandchildren
[20:18]who are half Chinese and half Caucasian
[20:21]and one grandchild who is a quarter black
[20:25]and then three quarters Caucasian.
[20:27]And to see that that gene pool mix
[20:32]is just fascinating to me.
[20:34]And it also makes me feel a little bit full of myself
[20:39]because I look at the three of them and think,
[20:41]this is America, this is what America's gonna look like.
[20:46]And that's kind of exciting.
[20:47]And of course you're like such an amazing grandmother
[20:49]that you learn Chinese and took lessons.
[20:51]And well, I tried.
[20:53]I tried.
[20:54]That was one of the worst experiences of my life.
[20:58]I was so bad at knife.
[21:00]I've maintained a few things and the funny thing is,
[21:02]so my youngest, of course, has no Chinese heritage
[21:07]at all, Jake.
[21:08]And the other night he was getting ready for his bath.
[21:10]And I said, you're gonna get Guangli-Oli-O.
[21:13]Just Mandarin for completely naked.
[21:16]And then I thought, I said, guys, I'm sorry.
[21:19]I used Mandarin and they said, no, no,
[21:22]we say Guangli-Oli-Oli-O to him too,
[21:25]because of Chris's older brother and Arthur and Ivy
[21:30]who Chris is really close to.
[21:32]He's just absorbed some of the reflexive Mandarin
[21:35]that we use for the kids.
[21:36]So I've held on to a little bit of it.
[21:38]But boy, was it a struggle?
[21:40]Well, that's a really fun thing to say.
[21:42]I feel like I need to be part of our regular...
[21:46]Guangli-Oli-Oli-Oli-Oli-Oli-Oli-Oli-Oli-Oli,
[21:47]because you're a fan, Eye for Bed.
[21:49]And one other thing I just loved about Inanaville,
[21:52]and I know that you consider yourself a reporter
[21:54]firstful stop.
[21:56]And I read what you posted recently on Facebook about,
[21:59]you might not have living parents,
[22:01]but you'll always be a daughter
[22:02]and you might not work at a newspaper,
[22:04]but you'll always be a reporter.
[22:05]And you applied that, like, the mixing
[22:08]of all the data in with of your personal story.
[22:11]So seamlessly, it's like you almost wouldn't have caught it
[22:15]if you weren't looking for it.
[22:17]It was just so seamless how you would put in statistics
[22:21]about grandparents, like the ones you were just
[22:22]reciting or like the average age of this
[22:24]or how many people with second languages
[22:27]and just all these things that I think made the book
[22:31]feel even more sort of intellectual, if you will,
[22:34]or informative than just the memoir in and of itself.
[22:38]So I thought that was just so neat how you did that.
[22:40]Oh, thanks.
[22:41]I always feel like I need something to undergird myself.
[22:45]And also, this became something I was deeply interested in.
[22:49]I mean, the more I thought about it,
[22:51]the more I knew people who were doing it,
[22:54]I read about people who had custody of their grandchildren
[22:58]because of deployments overseas or drug issues
[23:03]or that kind of thing.
[23:05]And it just seemed to me to be something
[23:07]that I had to drill down on a little deeper
[23:10]than my own experience to kind of bet my own experience.
[23:14]Although it would have been great either way, I'm sure.
[23:16]But so you mentioned also in some interview I read
[23:21]about how this was such a pleasure to write
[23:24]and how some grandparents have scrapbooks
[23:26]and you have a manuscript.
[23:27]And like, you're like, this is so easy.
[23:28]It was such a joy.
[23:29]So how did writing this book compare
[23:31]to like your 8,000 other books and your novels
[23:34]and your other stories and short guy do a happy life?
[23:37]Like all these other books.
[23:39]How did this one fit in with it?
[23:41]And also like what's going on now?
[23:43]Like that you finish this one, what's to come?
[23:46]Well, on the one hand, it was incredibly pleasurable
[23:50]and it's some level easy because anecdotes
[23:54]about what a little boy is doing
[23:57]are essentially most of the time kind of charming
[24:02]and interesting to write about.
[24:04]On the other hand, it was anxiety producing
[24:07]because the only way that I agreed to do the book
[24:12]was if Quinn and Lynn would read it in manuscript
[24:16]and pass on it.
[24:17]I mean, you know, books come and go,
[24:21]but your kids are forever.
[24:22]And I did not want to alienate anyone.
[24:26]And I think because I'd already developed
[24:30]a knack for not saying too much
[24:35]or saying the wrong thing when I was writing life
[24:37]in the 30s, where I had to protect them myself
[24:41]because they couldn't read, neither one of them
[24:44]had any objection to anything that I'd done.
[24:46]And the thing that was thrilling for me was it,
[24:49]as they were reading the manuscript,
[24:51]I would hear them saying, oh, I forgot about that.
[24:54]Oh, I forgot about that.
[24:55]And I thought, well, this book is among other things
[24:59]and aid memoir for Quinn and Lynn about Arthur's
[25:03]earliest years that will have been worth
[25:06]the entire price of admission.
[25:07]Oh, that's so nice.
[25:09]I know it's all goes by in such a haze.
[25:11]It's like so hard to hang onto any of this memory.
[25:13]Oh, I know, I know.
[25:15]So what are you working on now?
[25:17]What's coming next for you?
[25:18]I'm working on another novel,
[25:19]and I'm also working on a book about writing
[25:22]that I'm almost done.
[25:23]I'm working on a book about writing for civilians.
[25:26]Not it's about how we've lost writing.
[25:29]We've lost letters.
[25:31]We've lost journals because of the press of technology
[25:34]and how we're not only a country, but a species
[25:39]that finds new ways of doing things
[25:41]and then shoves the old ways aside,
[25:43]even though the old ways have something important to them.
[25:47]And I really feel as though writing used to be just
[25:51]a purview of the aristocracy and the clergy.
[25:55]It was siloed in that way.
[25:58]And I feel like we've gone back to siloing it in some way
[26:01]as only writers doing.
[26:03]People will say to me, oh, I had this incredible experience.
[26:07]And I say, you sure write that down.
[26:08]They say, oh, but I'm not a writer.
[26:10]And I think that everybody's a writer.
[26:14]In the same way that everybody's a teacher.
[26:16]Now, everybody's not a classroom teacher.
[26:19]And everybody's not a professional writer.
[26:22]But civilians have something to teach other people.
[26:26]And they have something to say in their writing.
[26:28]And that's what this book is.
[26:29]Wow, that sounds great.
[26:32]Well, this kind of tells with that question.
[26:34]But what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[26:37]I'm sure you get asked this often, but have to ask.
[26:39]It's pretty simple, actually.
[26:41]You put your button to chair.
[26:42]I mean, people think that you wait for inspiration.
[26:46]I don't know where inspiration lives,
[26:48]but she's not common.
[26:50]People think you have to have something
[26:52]important to write about.
[26:53]In this book, I go back to the diary of Anne Frank.
[26:56]So much of it is a femoral about the cat,
[27:01]about the food, about the curtains on the windows
[27:05]that eventually together makes a picture of real life.
[27:09]And so I think you have to sit down and you have to begin
[27:14]because you will tell yourself, as I do every morning,
[27:19]that it's not good.
[27:21]But what happens sometimes is that if you write enough not good,
[27:25]eventually good appears.
[27:28]And then you can get rid of all the not good stuff
[27:31]and start with that one sentence or that one paragraph
[27:34]that sort of took wing.
[27:36]And still, you feel like you're sitting down
[27:38]and writing not good after all this terrible, oh gosh.
[27:42]It's so, writing is a confidence exercise every day.
[27:47]And in some ways, when you've been doing it for a long time,
[27:50]that gets harder because you think, well,
[27:53]it's not like whatever it was I did before
[27:57]and therefore people won't like it.
[27:59]But one of the things I write about in the book
[28:02]is eventually what you have to make your piece with
[28:05]is having an audience of one.
[28:07]And that one has to be yourself.
[28:09]And you have to trust that if you are talking successfully
[28:15]to yourself, that there will be other people out there
[28:19]to whom you will be talking.
[28:21]And that's one of the things I learned
[28:23]when I was doing the life in the 30s column
[28:26]when I was young and the boys were young.
[28:28]I kept thinking, who cares about any of this?
[28:31]And then the readers replied, we do.
[28:34]And that made all the difference.
[28:36]Oh, that's like when I post an Instagram,
[28:38]I'm like, I can't be the only one who's feeling like this.
[28:41]I can't be the only exhausted mom at nine o'clock
[28:43]on a Saturday who wants to shoot herself right now.
[28:46]We're not really, but there must be other people out there.
[28:49]It can't just be me.
[28:50]And then as soon as you share it, you realize,
[28:52]no, there's everybody else feeling exactly the same way
[28:55]and how nice to know that.
[28:56]Well, it's interesting.
[28:57]I saw something on a website today.
[28:59]I can't remember which one it was
[29:01]where a mom said, I'm sorry the pandemic is ending
[29:05]because I don't want to go out of the house
[29:09]to an office again.
[29:10]And I don't want to spend less time with my kids.
[29:13]And I don't want to wear dress up clothes
[29:16]and I don't want to wear shoes with heels again.
[29:20]And it was a kind of a credicure saying,
[29:24]the way we lived before wasn't what it needed to be.
[29:29]The way we've been living had a lot of downsides,
[29:33]but it had some upsides too.
[29:35]And I thought it was a really interesting take
[29:38]on what's been going on in the world.
[29:40]On that sense, people felt like they were trapped at home,
[29:44]some of them, but some of them liked what they did
[29:47]while they were there.
[29:49]Wow.
[29:50]I'm sure it'll get a lot of very interesting reflections
[29:53]when this whole thing completely ends, if and when.
[29:57]Well, anyway, thank you so much.
[29:59]Thank you for chatting.
[30:00]with me about your grandmothering experience
[30:03]and your writing and all the rest.
[30:04]I've been a fan of yours for so long.
[30:06]So I just thank you so much.
[30:08]Made my day.
[30:09]Thank you, Zibi.
[30:10]And I'll be happy to sign that book for your mother
[30:13]if she reads it.
[30:13]Totally.
[30:14]Oh my gosh, she would be so excited.
[30:16]So, and I would be excited to.
[30:19]Okay. All right.
[30:20]Thank you so much.
[30:21]Take care.
[30:22]Thank you.
[30:23]Bye-bye.
[30:25]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[30:27]Don't have time to read books.
[30:28]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[30:31]and at Moms.
[30:32]Don't have time to read books.
[30:33]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[30:36]and sign up for my virtual book club
[30:38]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:40]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[30:42]In fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[30:44]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:46]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.