Thoughts While Running #018
LA vibes and mom thoughts
I was in LA for a couple days this past week, looking to get inspired with a change of scenery, in a city that is not my own. With Wylder IRL becoming a more tangible reality, I wanted to see and experience other stores, restaurants, coffee shops that aren’t ones I could easily access on my regular day to day. LA is a vibe, one that I very much enjoy microdosing every so often. The sun feels brighter, the temps a little warmer and I get to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in far too long.
Overall, the trip was great, although the shopping was admittedly ‘meh.’ Something happened since the pandemic, the struggle for small businesses being very real, that so many of the quirky little boutiques that made LA feel LA have unfortunately gone out of business. I booked an adorable hotel recently opened by the Gjusta family located mere steps from Venice beach (as well as their wonderful bakery + home goods store of the same name), and a short stroll away from Abbot Kinney. A shopping destination once filled with small businesses and boutiques I was shocked to discover was now home to the same stores I’d find at a shopping mall. While it was convenient to pick up a new pair of Birkenstocks on my trip, it broke my heart a bit to see just how commercial + vanilla the entire area felt. Which sort of summed up LA shopping in general for me…gone were the stores that made LA feel so LA and instead they’ve been replaced with, well, something different and maybe I’m change adverse but I’m not sure different is necessarily better or good.
Overall I’d say it felt like a transitional moment for retail, maybe not bad but just evolving. Perhaps it’s because the areas that historically had been popular places for boutiques have gotten too expensive for them to exist, the rents are now too high and maybe it’ll create opportunities for new areas to become what Abbot Kinney once was. SF is no stranger to change and transition as it also seems like lately more stores have been closing than opening and even the ‘doom loop’ stories have become so over saturated they don’t even feel like news anymore, just existing in the background as someone argues it’s either happening or not and we all just sort of shrug our shoulders and move on. Which either makes me feel excited to be opening a store during this weird period of transition (I get to be apart of the next generation!) or terrified (a children’s store on the same block as the future Wylder IRL recently closed its doors after 10 years in business).
LA being LA it was as it always is fun to people watch. The vibe very much translates to the outfitting and it’s always interesting to see what people are into in a city that isn’t dictated by fog and the basicness of tech-bro culture. Overall the trip delivered on what I needed and while the inspiration might not have been the same as say, what I’d have experienced in 2019 (RIP old Fred Segal) ideas were still sparked. Interesting yet unsurprising, traveling solo, while what I craved and wanted, was at times both odd and liberating. Despite being weighed down by a carry on that felt like it could carry me (this bag was amazing though, highly recommend) I felt like I was traveling incredibly light (which for me, a non-carry on traveller I was) because I was a singular body moving through space when I am used to always having my 3ft tall plus one attached to either arm.
On my first night, I was catching up with an old friend whom I last saw pre-pandemic and the first question she asked me was ‘how do you like being a mom?’ Without hesitation I replied ‘I adore it,’ which is such a core truth I honestly don’t have to think about it, ever. If I were to be asked the same question, half asleep on a Saturday morning in the midst of diaper negotiations (aka how to convince a defiant 2 year old he not only needs his diaper changed but also needs to wear one after the old one is removed) I would answer it the same way. For some reason I never expected or thought being a mom could be so much fun. Perhaps because I never considered myself a ‘kid’ person, but what I’ve realized is your own kid is not someone else’s kid and you will always, always think your own kid is the absolute best.
Prior to having my son, I would have considered ‘adoring motherhood’ to be so cringe, such a gendered ideology, as if a woman suddenly has children and her entire life’s purpose has been rearranged. Transported back to the 1950s, her children are her priorities, her north star, her sun; she existing in their orbit, dependent on their heat for her own survival. How narrow my view of motherhood once was, before I had the honor of experiencing it myself, that becoming a mom meant I had to give up everything else, as if it were an either/or of happiness. Something I’ve actually come to realize over these past ‘nonworking’ months (nearly a year now!) is that I’m neither my happiest nor my best self when my singular or primary identity is that of being a mom. I am actually in awe of the women I know who’ve set their other identities to the side to prioritize their children because I’ve realized I cannot.
Dougie’s returned to daycare full time now and despite an excitement, eagerness (and at times impatience) to revisit these other selves I’ve put aside, I’m sad my part-time stay-at-home mom identity is ending, regardless of the previous recognitions. While I’m relishing the space an additional two days of freedom will warrant me, I’m also mourning what I’ll be losing in regards to the time I was able to spend with him, and even more of what I might need to one day choose between when Wylder IRL is open for business and I’m employee one (of one).
As we were catching up and talking about my life as a mom, I also admitted to my friend that while I adored being a mom, I’ve realized I’m too selfish to be a mom again. We’ll be a one child family, which I think is far more common now than it once was due to cost of living but also a desire for the freedoms that come with having one child vs. two. Despite the obvious luxuries one child affords (we can stay in SF, afford schooling, etc) for me it’s more about maintaining balance between motherhood and self because while I adore my son, I also adore my self. To relinquish bodily autonomy and become pregnant again, to go through the newborn/infant stages again would all tip the balance too far for me. I’ve adored all these stages (pregnancy notsomuch minus the third trimester) however I also have no desire to experience any of them all over again.
Perhaps if I were younger, 32 instead of 42, the luxury of time working for rather than against me at some point I’d consider a second. My cut off for having children was 40, acknowledging how much harder pregnancy would be on my body and how much harder it would be to ‘get my body back’ the older i got. My feelings on this have since changed, as it isn’t about regaining some sort of pre-pregnancy body (pregnancy has reconfigured my body in more ways than a scale will ever identify) but rather how old do I want to be when my children are 18? 25? 30? How old do I want to be when my husband and I are empty nesters? The answer is I’d like to be young enough to enjoy and old enough to afford the apartment I’ll be getting in NYC when Dougie attends university there. (Kidding because he can go to school wherever he wants but not kidding about the apartment if he really does choose NYC someday).
Wylder IRL is not a new idea for me although at times it feels unreal, frivolous, like a daydream. As if I’m playing dress up, establishing a hobby vs a profitable business that will one day bring in additional income to help support our family. It’s an investment where the ROI is more than incremental profits made off some nameless assortment of stocks strategically chosen by an advisor. One day the ROI will be monetary but in the interim it’s my happiness, pride and sense of self. It’s the legacy, as a mom, I will live into for my son to see. An example that shows he can be more than the sum of some corporate parts and he can have the freedom to choose a career he’s passionate about. Maybe it’ll be managing a run store, maybe not but either way I fully intend to teach him the art of merchandising when he’s older.
While it was fun to be away, solo, living into all my non-mom identities, everything I did somehow simultaneously also reminded me of how much fun it would have been if he had been there too. How much he’d have enjoyed running down the path along the beach, eating the croissants where I got breakfast each morning. When he’s older, I hope to bring him along with me, an evolution of our Mama/Dougie adventure days.
In addition to all the things I was excited for, I was also looking forward to catching up on sleep, as I always am when I’m away, but maybe even more so on this trip as Dougie was (and is) still waking up in the night, I’m so tired and my body is so broken from sleeping in a chair for a few hours at random each night. Despite my enthusiasm my two consecutive nights of solo sleep were so not awesome they bordered on horrendous. On my first night I instacarted melatonin at midnight from a 24 hour CVS and on my second night I tossed and turned despite my fatigue, despite the melatonin until I finally woke up sweaty and exhausted at 6am. It was as if I had phantom toddler syndrome, that even though my son was not with me, my body was still on alert. It couldn’t settle, couldn’t relax because it felt so unnatural and so foreign to be alone. My primal maternal instincts were unable to turn off.
So while I love my sense of self and the alone time that allows me to reconnect to it, I also simultaneously want to devour all the time I can have with my son. Because as he gets older, this time will get more precious and more scarce. He’s on a quest to become more and more independent and at some point years from now he’ll have achieved it, and be busier with life outside of our family; life outside of me. When I was pregnant, for ten months he was entirely dependent on me and I looked forward to the day someone else would be able to help, to alleviate me of the stress and mental load of being the singular person responsible for sustaining his life, of growing his body. Since his birth day, every week, hour that goes by I am hyper aware that his dependence on me is shifting, diminishing with every new skill he acquires.
So now I’m home, immersed back into my life as mom, wife, and all the other identities I carry with me like scout badges on a sash. I have to say as much fun as it was to get away, nothing is better than the ginormous doubled armed knocked me over hug I received when I got home. Until I served him a quesadilla and chili for dinner and he informed me he wanted to go back to school.
*k