Sarah Ruhl, SMILE: The Story of a Face
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[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:39]Sarah Rule is the author of Smile, the story of a face.
[0:44]And this is my interview with Sarah as part of the Temple and Manual Striker Center,
[0:48]Women on the Move event series, which if you aren't familiar with,
[0:52]you should be because I help run that series with Marjorie Schuster and moderate some of the events.
[0:58]Sarah is a playwright and writer of other things.
[1:01]Her 10 plays include In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, The Clean House, and Eury Dice.
[1:06]She has been a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Tony Award nominee,
[1:10]and the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award.
[1:12]Her plays have been produced on and off Broadway, around the country, internationally,
[1:16]and have been translated into over 15 languages.
[1:19]Her book, 100 Essays, I Don't Have Time to Write, was a times notable book of the year.
[1:24]By the way, I wish I had written that book.
[1:26]Her other books include 44 poems for you, and letters from Max, with Max Ritvo.
[1:31]She has received the Steinberg Award, the Sam French Award, Feminist Press Under 40 Award,
[1:36]the playwright of the Year for the National Theatre Conference, the Susan Smith-Blackburn Award,
[1:40]the Whiteing Award, the Lily Award, and a pen award for mid-career playwrights.
[1:44]You can read more about her work at Sarah Rule R-U-H-L Playwright.com.
[1:49]She teaches at the Yale School of Drama, and she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tony Charu Vastra,
[1:55]a child psychiatrist, and her three children.
[1:58]Hi, Sarah. How are you?
[1:59]Hi, good. How are you?
[2:01]I'm so excited to be interviewing you today.
[2:03]I have multiple versions of your book.
[2:06]I'm like, hard-comoured.
[2:08]And Kelly, I was so excited about it.
[2:10]I've been shouting it from the rooftop, so I'm delighted to talk to you about it.
[2:14]I guess I don't have the sign, so that'll be the next one with us.
[2:17]I can send you a sign if you have room.
[2:23]Well, why don't you tell people listening in case they haven't read your book yet?
[2:26]Basically, what it's about, and the experience led you to write this book.
[2:30]So the book is about a metaphysical and medical odyssey I had over the past 10 years.
[2:35]After I had a high-risk pregnancy with twins, and they were miraculously born healthy,
[2:41]I developed a condition called Bell's Palsy, where this nerve on the side of the face,
[2:45]the cranial nerve is paralyzed, and most people get better really quickly.
[2:49]And for me, it was a 10-year long odyssey.
[2:53]And the book is a reflection on what it feels like when you're smile sort of walks off your face
[3:01]and wanders around in the world.
[3:03]And in a way, I feel like the whole book was a prayer in a way to ask it to come back
[3:08]and also to make sense of what happened to me.
[3:11]Yes.
[3:12]Well, the book was great on so many levels.
[3:15]One, your experience of parenthood, the anxiety, the risks, the pictures of your kids throwing up,
[3:23]like how open you were about it.
[3:25]But, and also your honesty from the very beginning that you were worried about your career
[3:32]and how kids would get how you would fuse the two and not lose your ability to be a playwright
[3:40]and be in all the rehearsals and all of that.
[3:44]Can you talk a little bit about sort of the impending news when you found out you were also expecting twins
[3:50]after you already had a daughter?
[3:53]Yes.
[3:54]And you're the mom of twins too, right?
[3:56]I am the mom of twins.
[3:57]Yes.
[3:58]And I related very much to that.
[3:59]And I was also on, you know, some bed rest had some complications as most twin moms do.
[4:04]So, I, yes.
[4:05]So, the twins were a bit of a surprise. They were spontaneous.
[4:09]And I had sort of thought one or two children I could manage with my writing life.
[4:13]But when I found out I was having twins, it was, you know, a happy abundant shock.
[4:18]And at the time, I, I was about to have my first play on Broadway called in the next room where the vibrator play.
[4:25]So, I was very, very pregnant through that whole rehearsal process.
[4:29]And, you know, the theater isn't actually really built for children or families.
[4:35]And I think after I had my first daughter Anna, I was 15 now.
[4:39]I had learned how to write and go to rehearsals with one child.
[4:43]You know, I would sort of haul Anna to the green room.
[4:46]And I would set up a pumping station.
[4:48]And we had a rhythm.
[4:50]And with twins, you know, the rhythm was very different.
[4:54]I remember I, after they were born, I had this play Orlando, which is an adaptation of the wolf novel.
[5:00]And it's about gender to some degree.
[5:02]And I would bring first one baby one day and then, and then the next.
[5:06]So, I could keep my milk supply up, but I didn't bringing two seemed overwhelming and a rehearsal room.
[5:11]And the costume designer thought I was dressing them purposely in boy clothes and then girl clothes every other day as the comment about the plan.
[5:18]I was like, no, they're two of them.
[5:20]The boy and a girl.
[5:23]I remember having to do that too.
[5:25]I was in like a new baby group.
[5:26]And I would bring one at a time.
[5:28]And then the next week I would bring a different one because I couldn't figure out how to manage that.
[5:32]Yeah.
[5:33]It's a lot to manage to.
[5:35]I mean, I think when I found out I had bells palsy, I was with a lactation consultant who was teaching me to do something called the football hold, which maybe you've done.
[5:44]Yeah, Carrie, you know, you hold two of them and breastfeed them at the same time, which, you know, I'm not terribly athletic. So, the football sort of alluded me.
[5:54]But you did it for a year, by the way, you said in the book. That's amazing. I mean, for a year.
[5:59]Yeah, no, I could not do that. But anyway, I do find mothers of twins. It's a little bit like going through battle. I feel like you meet each other.
[6:08]And there's a lot to talk about because it is sort of motherhood and extremis.
[6:13]Yes.
[6:14]I was and I started with twins. So then I had a single daughter after and I was like, Oh my gosh, one baby. This is going to be a piece of cake.
[6:21]It didn't seem breezy after that.
[6:24]It did. It was so. I was like, Oh my gosh, you could just come with me everywhere.
[6:29]Right.
[6:30]Just heard she happened to be an easy baby.
[6:32]Anyway, we're getting off topic, but yeah.
[6:34]It's sort of the topic, but yes, carry on.
[6:37]Well, the topic is not me. So we'll go back to you and your book and your story.
[6:41]One way that you captured the reader's attention right away is sort of the intensity of your experience, giving birth and the NICU and on and just the fear.
[6:52]Right. The fear that haunts any parent over something happening that's out of your control to your children, either when they are tiny or when they are adults.
[7:01]It doesn't seem to go away, but yours was so magnified because of the twins and what really happened in your husband being a doctor and talk about the moment when you are about to leave the NICU and I know you have a section you can read about that too.
[7:14]Sure.
[7:15]Yeah. So so just going back for a moment. I had something called colistasis of the liver, which is why the pregnancy was so high risk. I mean, twins pregnancies are a little bit high risk anyway.
[7:26]And then I was on bed rest and that was very Victorian and then colistasis of the liver. If you don't know what it is. It's it's bile is leaking into your bloodstream causing an intractable itch that's really quite torturous, but the worst part is the anxiety because it can kill the babies.
[7:42]So they deliver you right at 36 weeks to make sure the baby survive. So I can just read a little chat.
[7:49]And by the way, the doctors would not believe you. You were like, I think I have this. Please test me. I've diagnosed myself and they were like, no, no, you're fine. And of course you're right.
[7:58]Well, it's very rare. And I, I was working from a website called itchymoms.com, which didn't maybe sound very like it had expertise behind it, but I think they've changed their name since then.
[8:11]I mean, it really was through this network of women that I knew what was happening to me.
[8:16]So the babies miraculously were delivered and then they were rushed to the NICU. They had breathing episodes. They were a little bit early.
[8:23]And then I got bells palsy. So this is a little scene of me going to the NICU with my frozen face.
[8:30]NICU in the ice and cold. Once there, I saw William and his little plastic box breathing. Where's my daughter? I asked, you mean baby be the nurse replied. Yes, hope. She's sicker than your son. So she's over there.
[8:44]And then what does that mean? I asked. I don't know. She said you'll have to ask the doctor when he rounds. Hope was in a little plastic box attached to monitors.
[8:53]I wanted to take her out, hold her feed her. There was a bottle of formula on top of her plastic box, even though I was breastfeeding. I asked if I could move her closer to William so I could feed them both.
[9:05]We don't have enough chairs. I spent some time feeling angry at the nurses for not having chairs. I wasn't yet used to my frozen face. And I realized I didn't know how to be ingratiating with strangers without smiling.
[9:18]How does one do that, especially if one is from the Midwest, where a smile is almost prerequisite for citizenhood. They hand them out along with lollipops at the bank. Nice big untroubled smiles that you have to undo when you move to New York.
[9:34]That's where the Americans smile more because we're a heterogeneous country of immigrants that we don't always speak each other's language. So we smile to signal friendliness to those who are beyond kin.
[9:46]In any case, I tried to make friends without smiling in the NICU. I met another mother who had twins the same day I did. She'd had a C section, her husband wheeled her in a wheelchair to visit her babies.
[9:58]The name of the NICU Orthodox.
[10:00]Jewish men prayed. I can still see them now in prayer shawls,
[10:04]davening. It was the only thing that made all the machines bearable,
[10:08]the human swaying, to the internal sound of hope. I wished I could pray in a visible way.
[10:15]I wished I could pray. I just love that. I love how you describe things the way you see them,
[10:21]the language you use, and then just the experience itself. All the emotion behind the words,
[10:26]it's really amazing. And then you had to deal not only, of course, with the pressures and
[10:34]stresses of having twins, but then this new medical issue of your own that also affected the
[10:40]way everybody was even treating you. It was like you had to learn how to exist in the world in a
[10:45]whole different way. Identity-wise, physically, everything. When you went to write this,
[10:51]how did you even know? I just feel like there was so much coming at you all at once.
[10:56]How did you figure out how to tell the story in a way that didn't seem that way to the reader,
[11:02]that it became clear when I imagined it was a rush of stress and fear and everything.
[11:08]It was a rush. The fact that I had 10 years to contemplate what had happened to me helped a lot.
[11:16]And I approached the book almost like peeling an onion. I kind of knew what the broad
[11:21]scope of it was, and then I was peeling back layer after layer. And then it was interesting
[11:26]working with my editor because at a point I realized that my tenses were all over the place,
[11:30]past tense, present. And as a playwright, you're always writing in the present tense pretty much,
[11:35]because stage time unfolds in real time. And it was interesting that my tenses were all over the
[11:41]map. And I think, you know, in an early draft, and I think it was because my sense of time was
[11:48]really disordered and my sense of where the illness was in my life was disordered. And at a point,
[11:55]I put Bell's palsy and all that in the past tense and the healing and the present tense.
[12:01]And that probably irritated the copy editors, but it made a kind of cosmic sense to me
[12:08]that the healing was in the present tense. Will you just briefly touch on when exactly it started?
[12:14]I know we're seeing a question come in. Sure. Yeah, so it was two days, I think, after I gave birth,
[12:20]and my mom was there and the lactation consultant was there. And she said, your eye looks a little
[12:25]droopy. And I was like taking it back because it seemed slightly insulting. And I think I made a
[12:31]joke about being Irish because my great uncles, when they drink, you know, their eyes,
[12:35]turn into a little crescent moon shape. So I said, oh, I'm Irish. And she said, that's not what
[12:40]I mean. Go look in the mirror. So I looked in the mirror and this whole face had kind of fallen
[12:45]down and wouldn't move. And I thought I might have had a stroke. And my husband's a doctor and
[12:51]he told me to call the neurologist. And he diagnosed Bell's palsy. And usually, you know, you get
[12:57]better within three months. And it's really a small minority that has this long recovery. And
[13:03]in my case, I think what was especially hard was the neurologist after a year said, well,
[13:10]you're not going to get better. There's nothing you can do to help your face. So you can have
[13:14]experimental neurosurgery, which I recommend. But otherwise, don't try acupuncture PT, nothing will
[13:19]help you. You're just not getting better. And in my case, it turned out there were some other
[13:25]underlying conditions. And and all those modalities did help. It just took really a long time.
[13:31]And I think for a long time, I thought, well, how is a chronic illness interesting?
[13:37]It's long. It's incremental. There's not necessarily an apotheosis. But I came to realize through
[13:43]writing it that life is, you know, a chronic condition, you know, in many ways. And art has to
[13:50]make space for that. And I was recently reading a memoir by Chuck Me, who's also playwright.
[13:56]And he had polio at a young age. And he talks about in his memoir, the idea that to make
[14:02]sense of a sudden illness or sudden rupture, it's almost as though you need to make
[14:07]aesthetic sense of it to become whole again. And I feel like writing the book was that for me.
[14:16]When you wrote about your relationship with your twins and how there were all these studies
[14:22]about, I can't remember the word like silent mother or, you know, the face, the face.
[14:27]Yeah. And how when you were dealing with all of that, how you tried to show your real
[14:33]self to your kids. And yet knowing that they only saw this new version of you, I found that to
[14:37]be a really poignant moment to do you think about that often or what was that like for you?
[14:43]Yeah, it was hard. I really wanted to smile at my babies. And that was in a way the worst torture
[14:48]for me. And I thought, how will they know that I'm joyful that I'm, you know, that I adore them
[14:54]when I can't smile with my whole face because they're still learning how the face is coded.
[14:59]And my husband who's a child psychiatrist long, long time ago had shown me these studies
[15:04]about still face, which is kind of a cruel experiment in a way. I think it's, you know,
[15:10]you take a really loving more mother. And then you tell them to not interact with their baby at
[15:14]all and show them still face like just for it to be like, oh, I gave you two and then suddenly
[15:18]be like, and the baby freaks out. And so I thought, oh, my God, am I, am I giving my children still
[15:25]face? And in retrospect, they had my voice. They had my touch. They had my gestures. They had
[15:32]all of this warmth coming at them. They weren't encoding that half my smile wasn't functioning.
[15:39]But I worry about it for a long time. And I think I even worried about it until writing this book
[15:44]in my daughter, Anna, you know, whose older was listening me talk to my editor on the, I was on
[15:51]speakerphone. And I said, oh, that must have been interesting. What did you make of that, Anna?
[15:56]And she said, well, it was interesting. And for me, I'd always thought of your face as kind of a
[16:02]beautiful house that suddenly fell down or a wall fell down. And you spent all this time trying to
[16:07]rebuild the wall brick by brick. And you couldn't quite do it. But when we looked at you,
[16:13]all we saw was our home. Oh, so I thought if Anna had said that, maybe I wouldn't have
[16:22]needed to write the book, you know, I think we always think of the unconditional love
[16:26]parents have for children, but it's also quite stunning that children have that unconditional
[16:31]love and acceptance for their parents. It's true. That was so beautiful. Oh my gosh. What you said,
[16:37]a minute ago, you know, keeps going through my head about the doctors again, to not
[16:42]recognizing or giving you the wrong information. And after a year telling you, you wouldn't get
[16:47]better. And it makes me think of when you saw that one hacky puncture as to said that perhaps the
[16:52]first person you saw had actually damaged the nerve. And then it would take a while to recover.
[16:57]Do you believe that or not? I have no idea. I mean, I've seen so many Eastern medicine specialists
[17:04]at this point. You know, I was lucky to be able to do that. And it's hard for me to make sense of
[17:10]what was helpful, what was not helpful. I mean, I think for sure physical therapy was helpful to me.
[17:15]And I didn't try that until really 10 years in. I tried it too early on. And you know, I'd talk
[17:22]about in the book going early on to a physical therapist. And I was making, he told me to make
[17:27]expressions in the mirror that I really couldn't make. And so I kind of look like Cosmo from
[17:32]singing in the rain, if you've ever seen that scene where he's like, you know, making really
[17:36]insane expressions. And the physical therapist friend was like, dude, that's insane. And like
[17:41]took a picture of me without my permission, making, you know, really strange expressions while trying
[17:47]to smile. So for that reason, I didn't try again until decade later. And when I did, it was with a woman
[17:54]who had herself had bells palsy. And she really mirrored my face and smiled with me. And it made
[18:01]such a huge difference. And I feel like it was so therapeutic emotionally, but also physically trying
[18:08]to retrain those muscles with her. I lived in the book to how you show your relationship with your
[18:15]own mother and how you idolized her and her career and how she also had bells palsy and how
[18:22]even that one scene where she was sitting next to you in the audience when you were watching
[18:25]your own play. And she said something like, are you displeased with this? And she said, no, I'm not
[18:30]displeased. I can't move my face. And how she came in and helped. How do you think this has affected
[18:36]your relationship or has it or maybe that's too hard to even know. But I don't know. But I could
[18:42]read a little passage that you had asked about about my mom. Yeah. Yeah. So my mom had had
[18:49]bells palsy too, but recovered more fully and quickly than I did. After my mother's two
[18:55]month retreat from the world, her face got much better. It's hard to know where my mother ends,
[19:00]and I begin, isn't that the story with so many mothers and daughters. I remember when I was
[19:05]little, she taught me what event diagram was. We were on a train from Chicago to Texas to see my
[19:10]cousins in the dining car on a napkin. My mother carefully drew two circles showing me the overlapping
[19:18]section. What do these two circles have in common? Here, she said pointing. I was fascinated
[19:23]by the logic of that diagram. Mothers and daughters, two circles, and the all important bounded
[19:29]sections where they are complete unto themselves. Daughters perhaps of a tendency to point out
[19:34]the differences. Mothers to point out the commonalities. My mother and I both love theater, both love
[19:41]both were afflicted by bells palsy, and also the bounded section where two are not alike.
[19:47]She recovered. I love that. This is great. All these favorite parts of mine.
[19:53]You do. Are you reading them? I know I don't have to go back and listen to the audiobook as well.
[20:00]How did your relationship,
[20:01]did you ever feel like this unspeakable annoyance
[20:05]that she improved and you did not,
[20:07]or was that just off the table?
[20:09]I feel like I don't know.
[20:10]No, I don't think so.
[20:12]I think it was more mysterious,
[20:15]why am I not getting better?
[20:16]Why am I not getting better?
[20:18]People are supposed to get better.
[20:19]My own mother got better.
[20:20]Why am I not getting better?
[20:22]I think it was more that well.
[20:24]Tell me a little bit more about how you even got started
[20:27]being a playwright
[20:28]and how you achieved all that success.
[20:31]And like, where did that begin?
[20:33]And did you ever write these types of essays
[20:36]that sort of became this memoir
[20:37]was that a form that you experimented with?
[20:40]Also, or did you go straight to play writing
[20:42]or how did what happened?
[20:44]So I always wanted to be a writer for my young age,
[20:46]but not necessarily a playwright.
[20:48]But speaking of my mother, she's an actress
[20:50]and she used to take me to rehearsals when I was little.
[20:54]So that world was familiar to me
[20:56]and I understood it,
[20:58]but it seemed like too decadent and fun
[21:00]to actually have that be your job.
[21:03]And it wasn't until I met Paula Vogel,
[21:05]who was my teacher at Brown,
[21:06]that I really considered a life and play writing.
[21:09]And Paula was one of those incredible mentors
[21:13]who not only teaches you substance,
[21:16]but also is an example of how to live
[21:19]as a writer in the world.
[21:21]So studying with Paula,
[21:23]I really started writing plays and earnest.
[21:27]And you asked about the essay form.
[21:30]I mean, I never stopped writing essays,
[21:31]I guess, or poetry.
[21:32]I really started as a poet.
[21:34]And when I, after I had the twins,
[21:36]I wrote a book called 100 essays,
[21:37]I don't have time to write.
[21:39]Oh, I have that.
[21:39]Yes, you do.
[21:40]Yeah, it's right.
[21:41]Yes, I have it right there.
[21:42]It's in your white direction.
[21:43]What's that?
[21:44]It's in the white section.
[21:45]Yes, it is.
[21:46]Yes, I, you know, because time was so disordered
[21:49]when I had the twins,
[21:50]I just wanted to write little distilled essays.
[21:55]I mean, in terms of your, your, you know,
[21:57]moms don't have time to read thing.
[21:58]It's perfect.
[21:59]People can read down the toilet
[22:00]because they're really micro essays, you know,
[22:03]or you can read it before falling asleep.
[22:05]And the form was really for me.
[22:07]Can I have a thought in the morning and retain it
[22:09]until I have time in the data write it down?
[22:12]And that was how that book came to be.
[22:14]So in a way, smile is an extension
[22:17]of the thinking I was doing then,
[22:19]but now that I finally have time to write in long form.
[22:22]Yes, I remember stumbling upon that book
[22:25]in a bookstore and thinking like, oh my gosh,
[22:27]like I hope this person doesn't think
[22:28]I'm ripping off her whole brand.
[22:30]You know what I'm gonna call it?
[22:33]Yes, I forgot all about that.
[22:34]But yeah, I loved the book.
[22:35]And it is great to have sort of snackable bits, right?
[22:39]And books that you can dive into and stay
[22:41]and bits you can pop in and out of.
[22:43]And just getting that sort of hit is great.
[22:46]Like I love just a snippet or whatever.
[22:48]I think that's like, well, I think,
[22:50]I've been talking to writer friends recently
[22:52]who say they have readers block,
[22:54]which I think is interesting.
[22:55]Like it's a new corollary of writers block.
[22:58]And I think it's part of the disordered attention we have
[23:02]with phones and the 24 hour news cycle.
[23:06]It's very hard to take in long form and truly get absorbed.
[23:10]So I do love a short essay.
[23:13]I love reading poetry.
[23:14]I love reading in the little moments you have in the day.
[23:21]I have this new anthology at mom's don't have time
[23:23]to have kids and it's the same thing.
[23:24]I'm like, can read it and you can read each essay
[23:27]in three minutes.
[23:28]It's all authors from my podcast.
[23:29]So, but I think you're right.
[23:32]I think that on TikTok they had to shorten the videos
[23:35]from like 11 seconds to eight seconds or something like that
[23:39]because they couldn't keep people's attention
[23:41]for 11 seconds or it's crazy.
[23:43]Especially for, I mean, I have teenagers.
[23:45]I have my twins are 14 and a half at this point.
[23:48]And it's hard to be like, oh wait, stop that
[23:51]and sit down and like immerse yourself in a book.
[23:53]And it might not get good for 100 pages,
[23:55]but you're gonna stick with it.
[23:56]They're like, what?
[23:59]Yeah, it's, I wonder how the brain will change.
[24:01]I mean, with theaters, my primary mode,
[24:03]I'm really attuned to presence in time and space
[24:08]and you know, abandoning the world at the door
[24:10]of the stark and theater and letting yourself be
[24:13]in another place for two hours.
[24:14]And it's one of the few places where we do it.
[24:16]And I have this opera at the Met right now.
[24:19]That's an adaptation of an earlier play of mine,
[24:21]you're ready to see.
[24:22]And the director doesn't let anyone have phones
[24:25]or electronics in the room or her sing.
[24:28]And it's kind of amazing to realize that the artists
[24:30]themselves have been disordered by the attention economy.
[24:34]You know, that even for the artists,
[24:36]it feels like a monastic ritual to really stop
[24:40]and really be a truly attentive,
[24:43]loving first audience for these incredible opera singers.
[24:47]Like why would you wanna look at your phone
[24:48]when you could listen to this extraordinary voice?
[24:51]And yet we have this bizarre training
[24:54]that I do think is affecting our brains.
[24:58]I totally agree.
[24:59]I used to go to the movies and it was no problem.
[25:01]Like turn off your phones.
[25:02]Okay, whatever.
[25:03]And now, like even when you said sitting in a dark
[25:05]in room for two and a half hours,
[25:06]I'm like, I don't know if I could do that right now.
[25:10]I'm like, I'm, I don't know.
[25:12]I hope that it was in an intermission.
[25:13]I would need the intermission.
[25:14]Like, yeah, not that, you know,
[25:17]of course there's like the fear always as a mom
[25:20]that like, I need to be in touch.
[25:21]And what has something happened?
[25:22]And I need to be reachable forever.
[25:24]But yeah, I don't know if it's,
[25:26]or maybe I'm just getting trained,
[25:27]like everybody else in the world.
[25:28]And it's really, although I do still love long form
[25:30]fiction and narrative, I don't know.
[25:33]It takes a different kind of long form fiction
[25:36]to really immerse myself these days.
[25:38]I find, but also the mom thing of wanting
[25:42]to be reachable and interruptible.
[25:45]I think it's such a paradox.
[25:47]It's like we want to always be reachable,
[25:49]but then we're never reachable
[25:50]because we're not actually present.
[25:52]You know, it's like, oh my gosh,
[25:54]I was sitting right here.
[25:55]I shouldn't even admit this.
[25:56]My daughter was sitting on the couch behind me
[25:58]and she was doing her homework and I was here
[26:00]and she was trying to talk to me and talk to me
[26:01]and she's like, I'm just trying to like,
[26:04]spend time with you mom.
[26:05]And I was like, no, I'm right here.
[26:07]I was like, I'm right here.
[26:09]And from behind me, she was like, but are you?
[26:12]And I was like, oh man, so of course I got up
[26:15]and I walked over and I started the couch.
[26:17]And I was like, why did she have to remind me of that?
[26:20]Like my being here working on my computer
[26:22]with like half an ear to my daughter
[26:23]is not being with my daughter.
[26:25]Like I'm better off spending five good minutes with her
[26:28]than an hour with me being distracted.
[26:32]I also think, yeah, I saw like a beautiful little shadow
[26:35]of your daughter like at some point.
[26:37]I just like, you know, in the corner.
[26:38]And I feel like, you know, in the 19th century
[26:42]when of course you couldn't get anything done as a woman.
[26:44]I don't know how Harriet Beatrice Doe wrote,
[26:47]you know what she had like nine kids or something.
[26:49]But I sometimes think, well, if you're sort of sowing
[26:52]or mending, you know, it's like you're doing something
[26:55]but actually the kids know they sort of
[26:57]have your mental attention.
[26:59]I think kids crave that kind of being with.
[27:02]I sometimes think kids don't actually want me staring at them
[27:05]and trying to be truly present with them.
[27:07]They want me to be somewhat otherwise occupied
[27:10]but not with my mental work that totally consumes
[27:14]my emotional attention, you know.
[27:17]But I don't men suck.
[27:18]So I'm sorry.
[27:19]You know, yes, I don't know, I don't know.
[27:22]This weekend we actually went like holiday shopping
[27:25]in person.
[27:27]I've decided like I don't want to take
[27:29]shopping time out of my time.
[27:31]I don't want to take it out of my work time.
[27:32]So it's going to have to be done with the kids
[27:34]and instead of doing it online,
[27:36]I was going to make it a whole thing.
[27:37]Anyway, I do think this speaks to your books.
[27:39]I'm not just totally going off on Tandon,
[27:40]but you know, taking them and remembering what it was like
[27:44]to like give and be in the moment and think of someone else
[27:48]and say like, look at this whole store.
[27:50]What would this particular cousin of yours like?
[27:53]Right.
[27:54]Because otherwise how do they get that skill?
[27:56]Anyway, so I'll just say yes,
[27:59]as moms have sort of teenish and even younger's.
[28:02]I think that we don't realize sometimes as parents
[28:05]that we're not showing the way our parents showed us as much.
[28:09]Right, it's a little bit internalized
[28:10]because we're doing a lot of activity with a screen.
[28:13]And I think then you're not modeling.
[28:16]I think that's true.
[28:17]And that moment is so resting and wonderful.
[28:19]The moment when children decide it makes them happier
[28:24]to give than receive.
[28:25]They know that actually that's what makes you happy.
[28:28]It's, I mean, it's magical.
[28:30]So to be able to do that in real time with them.
[28:32]Yes, great.
[28:33]How do you do your holiday shopping?
[28:35]Are you online?
[28:37]Have you thought about it?
[28:39]Not yet.
[28:41]Once this opera opens on November 23,
[28:43]then I'll think about it again.
[28:46]So what other work are you actively engaged in at the moment?
[28:51]That's the main thing, you know, going to rehearsals.
[28:54]And it's not as though you rewrite a libretto that much,
[28:57]but being moral support and having thoughts.
[29:00]Well, there's the church ball saying it's noon.
[29:03]And I wrote one haiku a day during the pandemic
[29:06]just to keep myself sane and as a marker of time.
[29:08]So copper canyon is publishing that in the spring.
[29:12]It's called Love Palms and Quarantine.
[29:14]My kids make fun of me because my themes tend to be love and death.
[29:20]What else is there?
[29:21]What else is there?
[29:22]What else do we have to talk about?
[29:23]I mean, that's really it.
[29:24]That's the correct thing.
[29:25]The whole thing.
[29:26]Have you, maybe it's too early with the publication,
[29:30]but I'm curious if people have responded to you
[29:33]in ways you were not expecting or maybe apologized
[29:37]or have said things inadvertently that, you know,
[29:40]sometimes you pointed out like things that didn't sound so good
[29:43]or whatever.
[29:44]So have you had any responses that you weren't expecting
[29:47]or anything like that?
[29:48]You know, I've had a lot of responses from friends who said,
[29:52]oh my God, I didn't actually know what you were going through.
[29:56]And I said, well, that's good because I was trying to maintain
[29:58]a plucky, no, no.
[30:00]on sense, stoicism, mid-western cheerfulness,
[30:03]and I didn't want anyone to know
[30:05]that the Bell's palsy actually was giving me any suffering
[30:10]or that I went through a period of postpartum depression,
[30:13]and retrospect that I was quite unaware of at the time.
[30:18]So I've had a lot of reactions from friends like that.
[30:21]And again, I said, please don't apologize.
[30:25]You were absolutely there for me.
[30:26]I just, I didn't want anyone to know.
[30:30]And I think part of the book is coming out
[30:32]of that form of hiding.
[30:34]I think we could all hide a little bit less in that way.
[30:38]And other reactions I've had have been so moving
[30:41]from people who've had strokes or Bell's palsy
[30:44]and actress who had Bell's palsy, who never recovered,
[30:47]who found it sort of disqualifying in terms of her career.
[30:51]A lot of pregnant women who've had Bell's palsy
[30:53]because it can be associated with either your third
[30:55]trimester or right afterwards.
[30:57]So it's been really moving hearing from those people.
[31:01]That's great.
[31:02]There was this one scene I just wanted to flag really quickly
[31:06]about gratitude with, you know,
[31:08]Thanksgiving coming up here.
[31:10]I thought this was particularly apropos of the holiday.
[31:14]This is when you were at the Tony's and not win,
[31:17]but sorry about that.
[31:18]Yeah, that's okay.
[31:20]You said, and this is your nanny who was at home, I guess.
[31:23]Once home, Yang Zum told me she had hoped I would win
[31:26]so that I would be able to thank people on television.
[31:28]As a Tibetan Buddhist, Yang Zum
[31:30]is always attuned to values like gratitude.
[31:33]I've always thought it was a strange quirk
[31:34]of all awards programs that they foster greed
[31:37]and the desire and artists to win,
[31:39]mainly so that they can thank their dear ones in public.
[31:41]The system creates competition among artists
[31:43]who are otherwise compatriots,
[31:45]so that the winners can say publicly
[31:46]that they're grateful to their third grade teacher,
[31:48]their mother, their children, God.
[31:51]In truth, we don't have to win to be grateful.
[31:53]We can always thank the people we love,
[31:55]the people who help us,
[31:56]even when we don't win an award,
[31:57]we often just forget to.
[31:59]At any rate, I thank Yang Zum and she went home.
[32:03]Thank you for reading that.
[32:05]I love that method.
[32:06]How's Yang Zum these days?
[32:07]Are you guys still in touch?
[32:09]Oh, she's like part of our lives.
[32:12]We actually hear all the time.
[32:14]I mean, I feel like once I had twins,
[32:16]I kind of gave up feeling like I could do everything myself.
[32:20]Yes, there is something to admit in complete defeat.
[32:22]I know there are gonna be a lot of questions for you,
[32:28]but my last question is what advice would you give
[32:31]to aspiring authors?
[32:33]Spiring authors don't give up, cultivate patience.
[32:38]It's a long game, if your lucky life is long
[32:44]and find a reason to write that is intrinsically motivating
[32:49]to you, not for an award, not for publication.
[32:54]I recently, I always reread Lewis Hides the Gift
[32:59]because it's such an incredible book about
[33:01]being a poet and being an artist
[33:03]and a kind of capitalist economy
[33:05]and the idea of art as gift,
[33:07]that there's such a thing as a gift economy,
[33:09]speaking of picking out gifts for people
[33:11]and that artists are actually in a gift economy.
[33:15]So at a certain point, I teach at Yale School of Drama
[33:18]and I have my students write gift plays for each other
[33:21]when they're getting to know each other.
[33:23]And I like to think that every play is a gift
[33:26]for an audience, but also maybe for a particular person
[33:28]in your life.
[33:30]And I think it's a way you could approach fiction or poetry
[33:33]that if one person in your life might be pleased
[33:37]by this gift, you know, you've done your job,
[33:40]even if you don't end up reaching publication
[33:42]or getting an important grant.
[33:45]And I wrote a little essay on writer's block
[33:48]for poets and writers where I tried to anatomize the different.
[33:52]I think writer's block is a kind mirror.
[33:54]I think it doesn't really exist,
[33:56]but trying to anatomize what we think of as writer's block,
[34:00]which often is just not having your butt in a desk
[34:04]and paying attention for an hour a day.
[34:07]Usually if we do that, we end up writing very too.
[34:12]Well, thank you for this.
[34:13]Thank you.
[34:13]Thank you.
[34:14]Bye bye.
[34:16]Thanks for listening to this episode
[34:18]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[34:20]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[34:22]at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[34:25]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[34:27]and sign up for my virtual book club
[34:29]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[34:32]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan Heck,
[34:33]Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[34:36]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[34:37]for providing this fantastic intro and outroom music.