In my first post, Welcome to the Hatchery, I wrote:
I don’t know what, exactly, this blog is going to be. But I figured the best way to find out is to just … start.
I’m a writer and a mother. Sometimes I think these two occupations are perfectly compatible; other times I think I’m living a double life — one half often at the expense of the other.
When I first had an apartment with a room of my own to write in, I didn’t know what to call it. A study sounded too academic. An office sounded too … officious. I even tried the acronym ARoMO (for a Room of My Own), but it felt ridiculous (and sounded more like an Italian restaurant than a writing room). Somehow the idea of a hatchery popped into my head. A place to hatch things, to incubate, to launch.
Then I had a child. Two, actually: twins. And we moved to a bigger apartment, but one without an extra room for me. I thought I would mourn my hatchery but for many months I found myself too busy with what I had actually hatched.
Now the twins are nearly a year old. As I type this, one of them is reaching up to my desk to pull off whatever’s at its edge. I miss my hatchery.
But whichever room I’m in, I spend a lot of time thinking about things that hatch — ideas, plans, my own children.
I’m hoping this will be a place to share some of those thoughts.
And so far it has been — a place to think about writing, reading, parenting and ways of living. And for now, instead of trying to put more specific brackets around it, I’m going to leave it at that.
And see what hatches …
(To learn more about me as a writer, click here.)
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Randon, I’d read your article “War Weary From a Dangerous Liaison” in the New York Times, back when it was first published in 2008. It had moved me deeply and reminded me of someone from my past, someone i too had once thought of as the love of my life, someone that i had alternated drifting away from and keeping in sometimes-friendly-sometimes-resentful touch with. I had forwarded that article to him that very day to no response.
I chanced upon that email today, just short of 2 years into my own marriage and reread the article and despite the four years it’s been since, was reminded again of how much i had related to your story, how beautifully you wrote, how unaffectedly candid you were and how much i had admired your witty and poignant story-telling. I just wanted to reach out and let you know you have a beautiful way with words and that you made me simultaneously laugh and well up with tears, in a way that only the best books and closest friends ever do.
I hope you’ve been doing very well since and I look forward to reading your blog.
Thanks so much for your lovely comment!