Mom

I have a friend.

A woman, a smart, educated woman, a beautiful woman, a kind woman. A sensitive, intelligent, hard working woman. She has two lovely children.

Her children have recently started going to school full time.

She had chosen to stay home to raise them, despite having a PhD in her chosen subject, despite having had a fulfilling career in front of her a decade ago when she had her first born.

Now this woman, this smart, kind, educated woman wants to pick up the threads of her own life once more, between the hours of 8:30 and 2, because she still wants to be around for her children. They remain her first priority.

And so she starts applying for jobs--part time research jobs, teaching jobs.

They're hard to find, given that she wants part time work. Given that she has been away from the paid workforce for so long.

And so, she decides to get her feet wet by volunteering for a health organization. She gets a call from a prestigious place.

She goes in and asks for her assignment.

For the next few hours or so, she sorts boxes of medicines. She thanks everyone at the end and drives back home in time to pick up her children from school.

On her way home, she fights back tears.

This is what it is going to take to get back to finding her own life. And while she is willing, for the most part to do what it takes, it still rankles a little. That the way ahead is going to be long. It is going to be hard.

Society has little time for stay at home mothers who have been "napping" for a decade or more. Even those with PhDs wanting to re-start their own personal engines are going to have to re-pay their dues.

They are going to have to re-do things in every way. From the beginning.

There is little by way of recognition for the work this woman and millions like her do. Little by way of allowing her to add that decade she spent with her children on her resume with any degree of pride.

Little by way of understanding that being a full time mother is a bloody hard job, especially if done well, with full commitment. Like she and millions of others have done.

And while she waits, while she scrambles to re-collect those strewn threads of her previous life, 'So what do you do while the kids are at school,' becomes a dreaded question she doesn't know how to answer.

She might be deemed unambitious, or worse lazy. Not driven enough.

The world has a long way to go to finding ways to utilize this and other brilliant talented women who have so very much to give, albeit within a non-traditional time setting, perhaps in a non-traditional manner.

She's not asking for much, really. Not too much money, or promotions or status.

Just a chance to be part of the society at large that she chose to step away from in order to do her best for the past ten years to provide with well brought up, kind and highly productive new members.

Her children.

Society's future. 

Snacking @#$%tips

It was a sad sad day in December or so, I remember. I had turned 25.

I was watching some TV and stuffing my face with a giant bag of cheddar and sour cream chips (newly discovered since I had only a few months ago moved to the US). They were crunchy, ridged and just the best thing ever. I was also washing them down with coke or some other (vile, I know, but delicious) soda.

For some reason I happened to look at myself in the mirror not long after and it seemed that this single binge had caused me to gain quite a few unwanted pounds in all the wrong places. I am not tall and I am small boned. Even a few unwanted pounds show and how!

It struck me then, the horror of it. Now that I was getting older, those days of yore, those sweet years when I could polish off bags and bags of salty, spicy snacks when the only side effects were waves of nausea and little weight gain were behind me. The days that lay ahead were ones of portion control, calorie counting and such horrific activities that can only cause one to lose faith in living and eating.

It is especially hard for ones such as myself (and I figure all other sensible people in the world) who love to eat.

This is not a vain boast. In school, classmates refused to share lunches with me because I ate too much of theirs. Even in university, one of my classmates with her ever so tiny lunchbox said she could no longer share food with me because I took two bites of her lunch and it was gone.

Only my future husband shared with great selflessness. He would merely hand over his scrumptious lunchbox to me and take whatever it was that I had on offer. Of course I only took advantage of this selflessness if I didn't care for whatever it was that my mother had packed for me that day. I wasn't a total loss.

More tragedy. I saw a documentary about sugar not long ago. The ideal number of teaspoons to consume of sugar a day is 6-7. I was ready to heave, people!

I drink two cups of tea a day. At least. That is two teaspoons. I require something sweet after lunch. I try and be good and eat a piece or two of chocolate or if nothing is available, a spoonful of honey and sometimes just a spoonful of sugar (sue me if you dare). That's four teaspoons.

I also require snacks at tea time. Something salty accompanying my chai and then to balance it, something sweet. Again, I am happy to partake of a spoonful of honey if nothing else is available. I am easy that way. That's what five, six, maybe eight? Now I am not even counting the sugar that might exist in lunch and dinner.

There is also a requirement for dessert post dinner. I am flexible this time too. Sugar or honey wise.

You see 7 teaspoons is easy to consume in a heartbeat and I consider myself a healthy eating person. Meals home cooked. Snacks in moderation and such. No longer do I dare bags-full. I eat out of minuscule cups, slowly so it lasts and I watch with envy at my sons who put away reams of potato chips without skipping a beat then burning them off by jumping and running like mad.

But this post is not about my lament. It is about my solution to it.

Seaweed. Wasabi seaweed. This satisfies the need for salt and spicy and is very low cal. Also if you eat too much, you don't feel so great in that it is self limiting in a good way. Unlike chips there is no nicotine like urge to keep shoving more into your face.

I also discovered a new thing. I bought these puffs for my little son. He loves plain puffed rice which is like eating air so I thought I'd give him a similar consistency but healthier alternative. Vile stuff man. Kale and spinach. Like 20 calories a cup or something. I dare anyone to eat a cup full of that stuff. Anyway he rejected them in a minute and I was left with a bottle full so I ate some. And like I said, it was vile.

I had a thing of peanuts close by.

Hmm.

In my minuscule bowl I took a bunch of the puffs and added some spicy peanuts. Lo and behold. Yummy snack. The spices of the peanuts made the puffs actually tasty while providing crunch and salt and spice all at once making a reasonably healthy and actually enjoyable snack.

The urge to make the mix tilt towards a higher ratio of peanuts persists but I am resisting it. Why? Cause I am not liking what I see in photographs and the mirror. A gut, muffin top, jeans that don't fit and the like (dangerous for the heart, yeah) accompanying an aging face. Not a great combination.

That's it then. Snacking tips. Seaweed and toddler puffs (snuck with peanuts).  I plan to buy the whole line of the stuff.

Oh and the sugar police notwithstanding, I still think a spoonful of sugar as a dessert substitute is pretty darn smart eating.

The writer's 'body' image

I just read a wonderful blog post written by a Chicago actress about body image. The advice she was given, nay the "wisdom"--lose weight, you need to get a nose job to get cast, you're not believable as a love interest (got to love that last one) are all sadly accepted as part and parcel of the acting business.

I often tell people about the rejections writers face. Other than telling us to lose weight or get a nose job, we hear it all.

And unlike with actors where it is usually the women that get this kind of rejection, I think for the most part, it is equal opportunity gender wise in the world of publishing.

I remember it especially with my first novel that didn't get published because it was too 'quiet'.

My agent sent me feedback from various publishing houses and editors.

Editor 1. The opening childhood scenes are most compelling. Use more of that thematic matter elsewhere as well. Lose the bit about the Russian girlfriend. She's not interesting. In fact turn the novel into a children's book.
Editor 2. The bit about the Russian girlfriend is the best. Lose the childhood stuff. Its all hackneyed and been done a million times.
Editor 3. There needs to be more drama.
Editor 4. There is too much happening in this novel. Reduce the scope of it.
Editor 5. If this is a family saga, we must have more pages.
Editor 6. Open with the last chapter.
Editor 7. Open with the middle chapter.
Editor 8. I have my ethnic novel for the year. Maybe next time.

And on and on and on.

Now the last one about having her ethnic novel for the year I can sort of live with. I tried not to seethe at being slotted into an ethnic novel versus just a family story--although the book was based on my father's family and we are Indian, the events could have happened to anyone. However that is a battle that will be fought as long as we are minorities, I suppose. I have to come to terms at being labelled thus.

I laughed or cried reading the feedback, depending on the day and as is apparent, altering the novel one way or another was sure to displease someone. It was a game of chance no matter what I did.

The final straw happened when an editor at a major publishing house who wanted more drama agreed to re-read the manuscript. My agent told me that never happened which must mean she liked it a lot to start with. This was my chance so I seized it. I re-wrote the book to be less quiet, added more drama, intrigue. Make it more salable.

The process took me a few weeks. I was ready for the editor to re-read it.

And guess what, she had moved on. And no longer interested in reading the book since she now had different commitments.

I get it, people move on, things happen but there I was stuck with a novel I hadn't meant to write that I had forced myself to like so I could sell it.

I tried pitching the new version to several small presses but none of them wanted it. Perhaps all that added drama didn't feel real and I should've stuck to the original quiet version. Maybe it just wasn't a good enough book for anyone to want to put out. I wasn't ready to self-publish. So that was the end of that.

I have published my second effort and am none the wiser about the vagaries about the publishing business, post putting out a book. It remains a strange, hard to navigate, not to mention completely illogical world. But that's another story.

I will do this again because I like telling stories. I have learnt a lot about crafting a book, pitching it and once it's out, marketing it. The greatest thing I learnt given my experience with both books is to remain true to myself. I stuck to my guns with certain aspects of my second novel and am glad I did. It is a work I am proud to call my own.

And so even as I foolishly embark on a third novel, one thing is clear. It will be what I want to write. It is possible that at the end of it, if it is also deemed unpublishable. This time though, given what I now know, I won't object to self-publishing.