Well, since you asked ...

Bub and Pie tagged me with the question, 'Why do you blog?', to be answered with five reasons.

I don't imagine my reasons are all that unusal: I like to write (as Beck would say, "I know! I'm a delicate, unique snowflake!"); I appreciate the chance to have some human contact beyond people I pushed into the world through my girl parts (this was especially true of the six months of my maternity leave); I wasn't getting my bloggy-fix from simply reading and commenting; and I wanted a written record of this time in my life.

That's four. The fifth reason? Let me tell you a story.

In September 2005, a friend from my grad school days got in touch with me. She was going to be visiting family in my new town, and wondered if I might like to meet up with her and her husband (also a friend of mine) and their baby, to catch up. And so my friend, M, and her husband, and Baby M came over to visit. We exchanged pleasantries. We talked of mutual acquaintances. M kindly let me play with Baby M, while she hovered around and did a complicated routine with bottles and the fridge and hot water, and she seemed a little frazzled. I sort of got that they were bottles of breastmilk, maybe, but I couldn't figure out the bottle aspect; I didn't ask. I was about three weeks pregnant; I didn't say. We smiled and hugged and went on about our lives, having mostly exchanged pleasantries about new motherhood and new home ownership and life in the academy.

Time passed.

In June 2006, I gave birth to Miss Baby. I was tired and overwhelmed and nothing was like I imagined, and I found myself all alone, all day, and many evenings. With a wailing infant. Desperately googling about green poops, about projectile vomiting, about sleep--always sleep. I began to read a lot of blogs, and, as happens, was drawn into writing my own.

In early December, a blogger called 'Mad Hatter' left me a comment that she was pretty sure she knew me in real life. I went to her blog, and, of course! how could I not know it was M! I began to read. And read, and read, and read. Here was an M I never knew, even though I had known her well enough to have her on speed dial for a time in my life. And, among many other things, I learned all about Miss M's eating troubles, and Mad's heartaches with breastfeeding. And their visit at my house made a lot more sense. And simply reading her site made me more and more consicous of the gulf between us when we met face to face, observing the niceties of the friendly visit. Safe. Conservative. Pleasant. And really? Kinda shallow.

M, as 'Mad Hatter', compiled an awe-inspiring, nuanced, laugh-out-loud and burst-into-tears chronicle of her life as a mother. I was blown away. I recognized myself in some of here experiences, learned from others, and was able to share my own perspectives on yet more. And this is how we got to know one another again--through these typographical selves, this intimacy of text, the trust-building exercise of being brave and honest and out there. Blogging. Somehow, 'Mimi' and 'Mad Hatter' were able to communicate more empathetically, more uproariously, and more thoughtfully, than our offline selves had managed, despite the fact that we really were friends as best as we were able 'in real life.'*

So this is the fifth reason I blog, and probably the most important one: in my blog, I feel safe to be honest about the full range of my experience as a mother, and as a woman who is a mother as well as her own self; reading your blogs, I am grateful for your honesty, your intensity, your joy. I blog because so much of what we say here about our lives is a lot more real than what I manage in many, many of my 'real' interactions, at least wandering dazed through these conversational minefields of parenting and womanhood.

I'd like to tag three of you who have been kind enough to start visiting me recently: I'd like to know more about you, Em, Melanie, and Jennifer (ponderosa).

-------------------------------------
* thanks to Mad, for letting me tell this story here.