a book and balance

I stayed up super late last night and finished Road Map to Holland. I have mixed feelings about it - on one hand, I'm so glad she wrote it. I do *heart* her honesty. There are definitely pieces that echo my thoughts. That this is all my fault, my old eggs. If I'd just been content with an only child, I'd never have had any further worries. That I'm greedy, selfish, want more. And this is the price you may pay for such greed - when you aren't willing to have an abortion.

Sigh.

But I ended up still feeling like she was trying too hard. I don't know what it was - the way each segment had to be wrapped up and bound in some lyrical conclusion? I can't even articulate what about it made me distracted. I feel slightly embarrassed even admitting to feeling anything other than raging love for the book. She's a Mommy, she's trying, she did well to write it, and I'm sure her words have helped countless others.

Finished with it, I reached for my next book, The Year My Son and I Were Born. Holy shit! This one is knocking me flat. What a writer. What a writer..... I've cried my way through half of it already. I feel like she articulates for me how I've felt in trying to work my way through Ds. I've avoided developmental disability all of my life. The deep shame I do feel in having a child that will in all likelihood be 'less than perfect'. This, added to the depression that I already struggle with.

With her son, she had a lot of problems that I pray I won't. He was 10 weeks premature for starters, then had all kinds of eating and breathing issues. Hearing loss (I can't say I care so much about that though, to be honest - it would just be cheaper and easier if Moxie doesn't...). The flip side is that she'd already had 6 kids. I think of what a gift that is - her son having so many siblings. I worry about that with Moxie and Micah - that they'll need more support, more in the way of sibling cushions.

And her family is Mormon... one great thing about being Mormon is that the church stands by it's members. Her little boy will always have that. I feel like I need to get more of a support network in place for later. For me, for Micah, for Moxie. I'm not Christian though, and sometimes I feel like the Baha'i network is too flimsy for me to really rely on. Mikey doesn't want anything, doesn't feel it's necessary. I know I need more than the nothing I've got right now though...

Moving on, here's a slideshow I found of her baby on youtube (I'm crying again!):

on the road map

I'm reading Road Map to Holland now. I feel like such a snob because I tend to get distracted when I feel like she's trying too hard to write well and/or when she gets repetitious in her writing patterns.

Like, to backtrack and explain something, she's got a tendency to start off with "when...". She likes splicing and dicing present and past (I guess to shake things up) but does it a little too fast. The combination of the both distract me.

Choosing Naia's author had similar tendencies to use the same ways to backtrack - he'd make some kind of a statement and then you just KNEW this hellaciously long-winded explanation was coming up. And boy did it ever- he'd start from the very origins of whatever (institutions, drugs, certain people's stories - you name it) and draw the whole thing out till you almost forgot you were reading a story about a little girl with Ds who was about to come into the world.

I feel kind of guilty writing about this at all since I myself am not a good writer. How dare I sit back on my high horse and get all critique-y with folk that write books that I'm glad were written?

Shame on you, meriah!