Excerpt from Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life: Or How I Learned to
Love the House, the Man, the Child

When I became a mother, part of me thought I had to undergo a radical
personality overhaul. I had been ambitious, prone to curse, ironic, and
rebellious-- often in a rather adolescent form. None of this struck me as
mom material.

Moms, I thought, were people who were simultaneously perky and selfless.
Sure I'll head up the PTA book sale! I'd love to. They were enthusiastic
about service-- anything to help their children. They were efficient and
resourceful.

I had some organizational skills, but I didn't always like using them. I
have pretty simple desires: I like to read, write, talk intensely, and walk
around. One and two, I do alone; three and four I like to do with others.
I do care deeply about the larger world, and this concern had led me prior
to motherhood to develop and use my organizational skills, but I wasn't
sure how the PTA would stack up against my desire to combat the death
penalty, domestic violence, racism in the penal system, and U.S. aggression
overseas. When pressed for time, how would I manage the mom-stuff? Could
I be a respectable, responsible mother without doing any of it?

I was afraid that moms were grown-up cheerleaders, people who stood on the
sidelines of life and applauded as their sons (and nowadays daughters) performed athletic feats. They drove a lot, did laundry, stuffed countless sandwiches into baggies, and listened attentively as their husbands discussed problems at work. They made big meat loaves and invited all the neighborhood kids to partake. They had other moms over for coffee and served fresh coffeecake. Where would I even get the recipe? My mother had made a coffeecake once in the 70s, but I believed it had come from a box. I didn't think contemporary mothers used box mixes. They cooked from scratch or else just got everything as take-out.

Much of this image, I knew, was a bit outdated -- certainly the meat loaf and
coffeecake were. Unfortunately many of the maternal expectations I saw as
more modern struck me as equally frightening and possibly more arduous.
While no one I knew thought women should smile while "running the new
electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor" as Betty Friedan so aptly
described a key expectation for middle-class mothers of the 1950s and early
60s (The Feminine Mystique, p. 18), now you simply had to raise a perfect child.

Check out Faulkner Fox Appearances--Winter/Spring 2004:

North Carolina:

Wednesday, January 21, 12:00 PM:
Carpenter Board Room
Perkins Library
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
919-660-5816

Thursday, January 22, 7:30 PM:
Branch's Chapel Hill Bookshop
243 South Elliott Road
at Village Plaza
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
919-968-9110

Friday, January 23, 7:00 PM:
Quail Ridge Books & Music
3522 Wade Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27607
919-828-1588

Saturday, January 24, 11:00 AM:
McIntyre's
220 Market St.
2000 Fearrington Village Ctr.
Pittsboro, NC 27312
919-542-4000

Monday, February 2, 12:00 PM:
Women's Center
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708-0920
919-684-3897

San Francisco Bay Area:

Thursday, January 29, 1:00 PM:
Book Passage Bookstore
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925
415-927-0960

Thursday, January 29, 7:00 PM:
A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books
at Opera Plaza
601 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-441-6670

Friday, January 30, 7:00 PM:
Cody's on Fourth Street
1730 Fourth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-559-9500

New York City Metropolitan Area:

Wednesday, February 4, 7:30 PM:
Community Bookstore and Cafe of Park Slope
143 7th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718-783-3075

Thursday, February 5, 7:00 PM:
Barnes and Noble Booksellers
Lincoln Center
1972 Broadway (and 66th)
New York, NY 10023
212-595-6859

Sunday, February 8, 2:00 PM:
Watchung Booksellers
54 Fairfield Street
Montclair, NJ 07042
973-744-7177

Austin, Texas:

Thursday, February 12, 7:00 PM:
BookPeople
603 N. Lamar
Austin, TX 78703
512-472-5050

Friday, February 13, NOON:
University of Texas
Moseley Room
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
(corner of Guadalupe and 21st streets)
Austin, TX 78713
512-471-8944

Virginia:

Thursday, February 26, 7:00 PM:
Barnes and Noble
5501 West Broad Street
Richmond, VA
804-282-0781

Thursday, March 25, 10:00 AM:
Virginia Festival of the Book
Charlottesville Coffee
1301 Harris Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434-817-2633

Rhode Island:

Thursday, February 19, 1:00 PM:
St. George's School
372 Purgatory Road
Middletown, RI 02842-5984
401-842-6600

Thursday, February 19, 7:00 PM
Island Books
Wyatt Square
575 E Main Rd
Middletown RI 02842
401-849-2665

Greater Rochester, New York Area:

Wednesday, March 3, 7:00 PM:
SUNY-Geneseo
Lederer Gallery
the Brodie Fine Arts Building
SUNY-Geneseo
Geneseo, NY 14454
585-245-5273

Thursday, March 4, 7:00 PM:
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Pittsford
3349 Monroe Avenue
Rochester, NY 14618
585-586-6020

For reviews, interviews, and more book information, please visit http://www.faulknerfox.com