24-7 authored by Binky

What’s your blogaversary? I was coming out of my fourth trimester in October of 2005 when I began blogging. I could not have done it any sooner. Only when three months had elapsed since the birth of my daughter could I even begin to navigate the fog of my new life in a way that was responsive to landmarks that weren’t breast based and diaper dependent.

Why did you start blogging?A friend of mine brought the blogosphere to my attention before the idea of becoming a “mommy blogger” was even a gleam in my eye. She thought that my writing skills–coupled with my constant, yet unfulfilled search for discipline–made me the perfect candidate for the structure of blogging. Like everything else, that morsel of inspiration was tucked deeply into my subconscious, not to reappear until I was good and ready for it. I now consider the leap I took when I searched the Blogger templates for the first incarnation of my three blogs to be one of the most important factors in solidifying my identity as a writer and, far more surprisingly, as a mother.

Favorite books (top 5 will do): I was in middle school when I read–and read, and read again–Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. I was looking for love and I found it in Cilla and Johnny, whose romance fueled my pre-teen fantasies. In college, at an all-women’s school in Virginia, I was assigned Isabel Allende’s The Stories of Eva Luna. The writing was so perfectly pure that I found it hard to believe I was reading a translation. Her words in English me want to learn Spanish (though I never did). That summer, back home, I read Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books on lower bunk of my old bed. The guttural hum of the air conditioner couldn’t drown out my laughter as I woke up my parents in the next room. Then summer was over, and school was over, and work began, and I didn’t read much. Five years passed. I was in my early second trimester with The Boss when I discovered The Red Tent by Anita Diamant as I sat in an outdoor hot tub of stone. I knew that pregnancy rendered verboten such extremes of temperature, but the air at that Canadian ski resort was so clarifying, the water so warm, and the book so inviting that it took many chapters before I was able pull myself away. Everything turned out fine. I haven’t stopped reading since.

Other than your daughter, any other favorite bosses? I’m a direct report to only one person, and that’s the 18-month old I call The Boss. They don’t come any better than that. Admitting it is no small feat, either, because I’ve never been the type to willingly submit to other people’s ideas of the way things should be. I remember being four, and standing at the top of the stairs with my arms bent out from my hips. “I’m NOT your service,” I would scream down to my mother whenever she asked me to do something. Isn’t it funny how things come full circle?

P.S. I’m sorry if anyone was hoping for an ode to Springsteen…

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