Hey! This is issue #8 of the Sheila Heti Summer Slow Read, a five month journey through the novel Motherhood. New episodes drop every Sunday from May-September, 20 issues in total. If you want to start at the beginning or read more about what the hell we’re doing here, head on over to issue #1.
This episode is lightly Little Women themed because IDK, it just felt right? While I love and adore Amy – especially in Greta Gerwig’s version – I identify with Jo the most (shocker, I know) and it occurred to me while listening to this episode back that today’s guest reminds me of Meg. Specifically the fact that while Jo and Meg are super different women who grew up in similar circumstances, they love and care for each other so much through every phase of their lives.
For today’s issue I am joined by my friend Daisy, which is absolutely a fake name I made up on the fly. Because that’s just who Daisy is (36, mother of two boys under the age of four, my former neighbor in L.A., was an unfortunate first-hand witness to virtually all of my various dating disasters in my 20s. Sorry, Daisy!!! 🌼 ) She’s sunny and warm and loves babies, has a million friends, and reminds me of both Meg March and Belle from Beauty and the Beast and okay fine, she’s Emma Watson.
To know Daisy is to love her. We’re so so so different, and yet, this is also the woman who recently sent me an actual hand-written letter in the mail, which she probably wrote with an ink-dipped quill. (I’m kidding, probably.) Now you have the scene set for our conversation, which is mostly about how we grew up and how that shaped us into the women we are today. ❤️
#8. Even as a young girl (pages 128-129)
“I remember how last summer on the beach, Miles’s daughter and I walked together along the shore. I had determined that I would discuss with her why her father and I probably weren’t going to have a child together, since earlier in the trip she has asked me about it, and I didn’t know what to say. As we walked along the sand with our towels wrapped around us, I said that even that when I was her age, I had never dreamed of being a mother. Even as a young girl, it was something I had not wanted to do. I wanted to have boyfriends, and make art, and have interesting conversations and friends. Then the most honest words pushed themselves from my lips: I wanted to be free. She thought about this for a moment, and then said, That sounds pretty good, too.” – Sheila Heti, Motherhood
Timestamps:
0:30 – Introductions
3:00 – Reading today’s prompt
4:20 – Daisy’s childhood, conversations she has now with her own mom, and always knowing that motherhood was in her path
10:15 – How Daisy used to make extensive “pros and cons” lists for big decisions, but she didn’t do that when she decided to become a parent or marry her husband
13:10 – My journey of deciding not to have kids (in therapy), including the three different paths my mom, my sister, and I took
20:30 – The things we liked to do as kids and how that may have informed what we chose for our lives as adults, and Daisy’s feelings about being a caretaker
23:30 – Who takes care of the caretaker?
29:25 – How Daisy feels motherhood has affected her ability to “make art and have interesting conversations”
32:00 – What comes after the “goal” of having kids once you’ve achieved it?
33:40 – How you can’t zoom out and think about the world too much and still remain hopeful about the future
36:30 – The idea of “being free” and how that applies to parenthood
