Game of Crones | Hacker News Reader

Game of Crones

longreads.com

51 pointsdanso13 comments

> But the man who would become my second husband desired a child, so I made a child happen. That’s our dynamic. He writes checks; I make things happen. As noted, I have money of my own, but he out-earns me by a factor of 10-to-1 and he talks a good socialist game on Twitter, so our arrangement seems only fair.

It’s not specifically relevant to her experience as a mother or her established career as a professional writer, but the author’s husband is David Simon, best known for creating of “The Wire” (among other HBO shows). Her reference to his Twitter persona made me laugh :)

Really enjoyed her writing style. This was the most telling part of the story and our search for meaning in life as reflected in the eyes of a child.

"... This summer, because of my job, she will return to Tuscany, her fourth visit. She has stayed in luxury hotels, flown in business class, eaten at five-star restaurants, sat in premium seats at Broadway musicals.

But she says the most fun she ever had was the result of three off-brand dart guns that retailed for $9.99 each. I believe her."

The only thing I gleaned from this piece is "be rich; don't be poor"

Seriously, I get the sense that the take-away is intended to be "you can be an older woman and still have a career AND a child if you just work hard!" when really material wealth seems to be a bigger factor. She even mentions having a fulltime nanny for the first four years of the kid's life. It's not that surprising that your rate of book writing only slightly slows when you have hired help for the hardest years of child-rearing. This sentiment is lampshaded several times but is still way understated.

I'm not trying to say that her experience was easy, I'm sure it was really hard. I just think the empowering "you can do it too" message is severely undercut by the privilege.

to be fair, she does explicitly say "Money made motherhood possible for me" in the first paragraph of the third section.

Even knowing that the author was well off (despite both she and her husband starting out as newspaper reporters), I was still expecting to read about how hard it is to just be a mother, period. Was not expecting it to also be about what it takes to be a mom at 50 and still aspire to publish a new novel per year.

Tangent from the article: apparently there's an American Girl Doll space pack, and now that's on the radar for my American-Girl-Doll-obsessed nieces (perhaps for Christmas?). Maybe not the full-blown spaceship, though (that'd blow out my Christmas budget); the spacesuit looks pretty neat, though.

Thank you: that was definitely the part that I expected HN to react to.

Wow. I didn't expect to enjoy an article about an "old mom," but this was fantastic. Her voice is so direct and engaging. This reads more like a blog post that just happens to be brilliant. Now I want to read one of her novels.

I know someone who's naturally born of a 50 years old mother, completely accidentally and unplanned. So this could happen, too.

It's interesting that if you google her this comes up: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/style/modern-love-my-biol...

> I was just moving along the path I thought we were supposed to be on.

Consistent

Also many people go through the motions of trying to make a baby eventually - or any of the rites of passage - she did it for a year with a husband and moved on. Checked the societal box one year out of the 30 adult years before she did it. It would be interesting to figure out if the universe came through, and/or he got his sperm count fixed and/or she got her uterus lining fixed to help with the discomfort.

> he out-earns me by a factor of 10-to-1 and he talks a good socialist game on Twitter

I appreciate this author and her recognition of privilege

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