Ayelet Waldman's Memoir Of A 'Bad Mother'

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Ayelet Waldman's Memoir Of A 'Bad Mother'

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Like many mothers, my guest, Ayelet
Waldman, has suffered from what she calls bad mother anxiety. That’s why her
new memoir is called “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor
Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace.”

Waldman is the mother of four and is best known as the author of the Mommy-
Track novels, a series about a public-defender-turned-stay-at-home-mom who
grows frustrated at home, and ends up becoming a part-time detective.

Waldman didn’t become a writer until after becoming a mother. Like the
character in her series, she was a public defender and really liked the work.
When she was pregnant with her first child, she worked until the last minute,
and when she returned to her job, her husband, the well-known writer Michael
Chabon, stayed home with the baby.

There were times Waldman was in the office with her breast pump whirring while
she was on the speakerphone with a client. Then she’d get a call from her
husband about how he and their daughter Sophie went to the pool and story time
at the library and how he saw her take her first steps, and Waldman started to
feel like she was really missing out.

So one day, she packed up her office to become a stay-at-home mom. Was staying
at home and taking her daughter to the pool and to the library, as wonderful as
she thought it would be?

Ms. AYELET WALDMAN (Author, “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor
Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace”): Well absolutely. It was lovely.
It was, you know, the baby pool and Mommy and Me and story time at the library,
and that whole first day that I was back, it was awesome. And then the second
day it was story time at the library, and the baby pool, and Mommy and Me; and
then the third day and the fourth day and the fifth day. And really, within a
week, I had started to completely lose my mind.

But I am incredibly stubborn, and I had good reasons for going back. So I
decided that I was going to stick with it, and I was going to stay home, and I
was going to do this thing, and I wasn’t going to give up and go back to work.

GROSS: Now you write in your memoir that once you made that decision to stay
home, and then you realized you were losing your mind, that you went on a rant
that we daughters of feminists had essentially been lied to. What was the lie?

Ms. WALDMAN: Well, you know, I was raised by a 1970’s feminist. My mom had a
consciousness-raising group. I used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen
to them. I mean, they went – you know, they did the whole thing. I’m not sure
if they ever actually got the speculum out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they
did.

And my mom and her friends had these incredibly frustrated professional lives,
and what they raised us to do, what she raised me to do, is to live out the
kind of professional experience in life that she had never managed to have.

And they never said how hard it was going to be. You know, they never – my
mother never made it clear that this was going to pull me in as many directions
as it was, because I don’t think she even thought so. I mean, she thought that
if I had the kind of professional life that she had always longed for, then
everything else would fall into place.

So I’m 44 years old, and I think I’m part of the first generation of women
raised by these feminist mothers. And when I first was feeling so frustrated
and depressed and angry about being stuck at home, I really kind of turned on
that message, and I said, you know, this was a lie. This whole thing was a lie.
We can’t have it all. And at first I was angry, but I think what ended up
happening is that I have – it’s not so much that I’ve mellowed but that I’ve
developed some perspective.

GROSS: How would you compare your idea of what it means to be a feminist with
your mother’s?

Ms. WALDMAN: Well you know, at a very basic level, we have the same idea of
what it means to be a feminist. I mean, I absolutely call myself a feminist.
And by that I mean a woman who believes that your opportunities should not be
constrained by your gender, that women should be entitled to the same
opportunities as men - and my mother feels that way, too.

I think the difference is, in between women of my generation and my mother’s
generation and between my mother and me, is a kind of gradations and shades of
grey. And you know, in one area that is really obvious, it’s in abortion.

So for women of my mother’s generation, who struggled so hard to get the right
to abortion, what they needed to do in order to achieve that right and to
maintain it was to describe what they were doing in a certain way. So I – you
know, when they were describing the process of having an abortion, language was
really important to them.

So they never called the baby a baby. It was a fetus. It was an embryo at best,
you know. It was, and this is a quote, “a clump of cells.” But to women like
me, who’ve grown up in the age of the ultrasound, we now have three-dimensional
ultrasounds of our babies from the very beginning, you know, when we can
actually see their features, recognizable features, and we can see them suck
their thumbs. And for us, abortion - even though I think I am absolutely as
committed to choice as my mother is - the idea of abortion and the fact of
abortion has become something very different. And I think women of my mother’s
generation are very uncomfortable with how we talk about abortion.

GROSS: If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk with you about a very difficult
decision you had to make. When you were about 35, you were carrying your third
child, and because of your age and the risks associated with pregnancy at that
age, you decided to have amniocentesis, and tell us what you found.

Ms. WALDMAN: I had just turned 35. So it was sort of up in the air whether I
would have an amnio at all, but I am by nature very pessimistic. So I decided
that I had to have one.

And the ultrasound at the amnio was very, very normal. We saw the baby. I
remember we – they gave us a photograph of his feet, just sort of like, almost
like footprints. And then we came home. And about 10 days later, we were
leaving for a family vacation in Hawaii, and I decided I was just going to call
my obstetrician to find out, you know, get the kind of clear, go-ahead, the
clean bill of health, just so that I wouldn’t have any worries when we were,
you know, floating in the ocean.

And I called her, and this experience is so, it’s so clear in my mind in such a
strange way. I called her, and she said are you sitting down? And at that
moment, I kind of felt myself lift out of my body, and I almost felt like I was
watching what was happening in this very detached way, almost like hovering up
on the ceiling.

I remember having this thought - oh, wow, when something terrible happens,
people really do fall on the ground and scream. And I had fallen on the ground,
and I was holding the phone and just wailing. And my husband, Michael, took the
phone out of my hand and talked to the doctor. And then we embarked on this –
that was a Friday - and we embarked on these three days of just misery.

We went to the genetic counselor, and we found out that the baby had a genetic
abnormality that’s rare. It’s a trisomy, a triple chromosome, but not Trisomy
21, which is Down’s Syndrome, which is the most common trisomy, but a different
one and a much more ambiguous defect.

On the one hand, there was a decent chance that the baby would have this
genetic defect but would be unaffected, that you would never know, that he
would lead – and it was a boy – that he would lead a very normal life, that you
wouldn’t be able to tell. And there, on the other hand, there were chances that
he would be mentally retarded or be predisposed to cancers of the kidney,
things like that.

GROSS: So you know, when you have amniocentesis, you usually have it with the
idea that if it came back with bad news, you’d have an abortion. Otherwise, why
bother to go through with the amnio, in a way. Maybe that’s faulty logic?

Ms. WALDMAN: Absolutely. No, I think that’s definitely true.

GROSS: But when you were slapped in the face by this really bad news, was the
decision obvious to you about what to do?

Ms. WALDMAN: You know, in one way the decision was really, really obvious to
me. I mean, I knew as soon as I heard the news what I wanted to do, what I was
going to do. But the decision was – you know, there’s your decision, and then
your decision as a couple, as a family. And my husband is as much of an
optimist as I am a pessimist, and he heard the statistics, and he thought all
right, we’re good. We’re safe.

And so we spent three days kind of trying to come together as a couple. We
weren’t arguing at all. It was almost the most intimate experience of our
marriage. But at the end, I remember we were sitting at the kitchen table and
crying.

We’d been crying pretty much for three days. And he said, you know, if I – if
you are wrong, and there’s nothing wrong with the baby, and we have this
abortion, I will always love you, and our relationship will continue
unaffected. But if I’m wrong, and we have this baby, and he is, in fact,
mentally retarded, I don’t know if we make it.

And it was this, you know, moment of terrible honesty, and we both just cried,
and then the next day we went, and we had – these abortions take a number of
days - and we had sort of the first step of that two-day abortion.

GROSS: Can I stop you? When your husband said if I’m wrong, and the baby is
born mentally retarded, I don’t know if we make it, what did that mean?

Ms. WALDMAN: I think he meant, I mean I think he meant two things. I think he
meant that our family would be forever changed. But I think he also meant – and
I know he meant this, and I think he meant that he didn’t know if I would be
able to forgive him. And you know, in a way, that was a very harsh thing to
say, but he was right.

I mean, he knows me more than anybody, better than anybody else in the world
knows me, and at that moment, he was saying, you know, I know you, and I love
you, and you know, I want to make sure that this doesn’t happen. And it took –
you know, I had to look in the mirror at that moment and look at the ugliest
side of myself, too, and say you know, you’re right.

It’s not like I wouldn’t love him, but I don’t know if I would have forgiven
him.

GROSS: So you decided to have an abortion. You were four months pregnant. This
is past the first trimester.

Ms. WALDMAN: Yes. It was a second…

GROSS: What were your options?

Ms. WALDMAN: Well, we had a D & E, which is a dilation and extraction, which is
they – you know… And here’s another point where, you know, my mother and I
differ completely on this. You know, my mother, when she describes a procedure,
she doesn’t describe the details. And for me, I needed to know exactly what was
happening. And in this procedure, your cervix is dilated, and the baby is
extracted, and the baby’s extracted, essentially, in pieces from your uterus.

It’s horrible. It’s – the photographs that you see that the right-to-lifers
show, you know, they’re real photographs. I mean, that’s really what it’s like.
And I say this because I feel like I can’t support a woman’s right to choose
unless I’m willing to look at the darkest side of it, and that was the darkest
side of it.

So one of the things I asked the incredibly generous, gentle doctor who did the
abortion was, I asked him if he would make sure that the baby didn’t feel
anything. That was – sorry.

That was really important to me, that he be dead, essentially, before that grim
process took place. And the doctor promised me that he would give an injection
that would make that happen.

GROSS: So what were your feelings when the abortion was over? Did you feel
different about it than you did going into it? Did you have doubts that you
didn’t have before? Were you okay with yourself?

Ms. WALDMAN: No, not for a while. I mean, almost immediately I decided that I
had been completely wrong, and Michael was right. The baby was fine. I had done
this horrible, horrible thing. I had killed a baby because I was a coward.

And I sank into what was really a five-month-long depression. I have bipolar
disorder. So I tend to cycle, but I have a very mild case, and I had never been
really what I think of as clinically depressed until that moment. And I was
just profoundly depressed. I was furious with myself. I just felt like the
worst mother in the world. And it was only when I got pregnant again that that
depression lifted, and it lifted almost magically.

I mean, as soon as I found that I – it was five months later that I got
pregnant again - and as soon as I found that I was pregnant, the anxiety and
the fear for that baby, for the baby with whom I was pregnant did not
dissipate, not until I held her in my arms nine months later. But the sort of
self-loathing and the just trauma of it just kind of floated away.

GROSS: My guest is Ayelet Waldman. Her new memoir is called “Bad Mother.” More

after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Ayelet Waldman. Her new memoir is called “Bad Mother: A
Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of
Grace.”

You were talking before about the difference between how you see abortion and
how your mother sees it, and how you think for your mother and her generation,
it was this black-and-white thing - that in order to fight for the right to
have an abortion, you had to call what you were carrying a fetus and not a
baby. You had to not acknowledge some of the darker sides of abortion because
if there was any grey area, you’d lose. You’d lose the fight.

But you see grey area. You had the abortion anyways, but you see the pain, you
see the grey area. Do you think if you had an abortion when you were in
college, before you were married, before you became a mother, that abortion
would have seemed different to you?

Ms. WALDMAN: I’ve never said this ever, I don’t think. I had an abortion
before. No, I have never told that to anybody, you know, outside of my
girlfriends. I had an abortion when I was much younger, and it was a first-
trimester abortion, and I did it without a moment’s hesitation, without a

moment’s anxiety. I knew with utter certainty it was the right thing to do, and
I can safely say it had no emotional affect on me.

I was also about four weeks and three days pregnant. I mean really, I had had
the test the day that I missed my period, and I had the abortion three days
later. So it was very different, you know, with this – what happened was we
called that the baby that we aborted, Rocket Ship. That was the name that my
son had given when I was pregnant.

With Rocket Ship, I felt him moving. I saw him on the ultrasound. But this was,
this really was like my mom and her friends said. This really was a clump of
cells, and it had no emotional resonance in my life afterwards at all.

GROSS: And does it now?

Ms. WALDMAN: You know, no, it really doesn’t. I mean, I am so certain it was
the right decision, and it was so early. I mean, I do actually think there is a
qualitative difference between aborting in the early part of the first
trimester and in, you know, the middle or later part of the second trimester,
in the way that you feel about it and that you grow attached. I think there’s a
real difference, and I think that my reaction is probably pretty common.

But I also know that there are people who have very early abortions who then go
on to feel, you know, a certain amount of trauma from that, too. So I wouldn’t
want to, you know, denigrate that experience, either.

GROSS: Do you mind if I ask how you and your mother discussed the abortion and
if you used different language and if you had different, you know, emotional
ideas about it?

Ms. WALDMAN: My mother was – you know, my mother’s so devoted. She’s just the
warmest, most lovely woman, and she ached for me. I mean she just ached for me.
She wanted me to feel better. She just couldn’t stand how much pain I was in,
and one of the ways she tried to help me was to say, you know, this wasn’t – it
wasn’t real. It wasn’t a baby.

And I don’t think she understood how much I needed not to talk about it like
that. I don’t think – it didn’t make sense to her how – she thought I was just
being unnecessarily self-flagellating when I would talk about him and what he
looked like and when I held those – you know, I kept those ultrasound pictures.
I have them still.

There was this great divide in how she felt like I was making my pain last
longer by dwelling on this side of it. And I felt like it was not that – it was
irresponsible not to accept that part of it and to really acknowledge what I
had done.

GROSS: Well Ayelet, I really appreciate how much pain this abortion caused and
what it’s like to, you know, reveal the first one you had. I just want to thank
you for, you know, sharing that part of your life with us. So let me tell our
guests who I’m speaking with. My guest is Ayelet Waldman, and she is probably
known for a series of crime novels that she’s written called the Mommy-Track
novels, where it’s a mother-turned-detective.

So it’s about motherhood and amateur detective work at the same time. She’s
written other books, as well, and her new book is a memoir. It’s called “Bad
Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments
of Grace.”

There’s another, like, really difficult topic that I want to talk with you
about, if you don’t mind.

Ms. WALDMAN: Sure.

GROSS: And this was, you know, you mentioned that you’re manic-depressive, and
it’s a, you know, fairly mild case of it, but still, you know, when you were
diagnosed, you were put on medication, which was very helpful, and right after
that, you found out you were pregnant.

Ms. WALDMAN: Yeah, like weeks later. I mean, almost immediately.

GROSS: Yeah, and then you had to decide, you know, should you stay on the
medication, which would be good for you, or should you get off of it because it
might be bad for the baby you were carrying. And this is something that women
go through with coffee and wine, let alone, you know, let alone biochemical
kind of drugs.

Ms. WALDMAN: Yeah, and I had stopped the coffee and stopped the wine and wasn’t
eating tuna and was, you know, carefully making sure I got sufficient Omega-3s
and doing, I know, sleeping on the right side, you know, doing all the things
that you’re supposed to do in that kind of crazy, neurotic way that
contemporary American motherhood has told us we have to treat pregnancy.

And then I was taking this medication that I knew was crossing into my baby’s
bloodstream. You know, my doctor – I went to my obstetrician, and I talked to
my psychiatrist, and they all agreed that it was safe. The problem was, that
after I had the baby, it turned out that there were these research studies that
showed that in fact, it wasn’t as clear-cut. I mean, there are - babies who are
exposed to SSRIs in utero are born with SSRIs in their system, and they go
through SSRI withdrawal.

And Abraham had a whole series of problems when he was born, really which none
of which you could actually say was a result of SSRI withdrawal. He couldn’t
nurse. He wasn’t gaining weight, and while the studies showed that was a side
effect, he also had this kind of bubble palate, almost – if it had been a
little higher of a bubble, it would have been a cleft palate. So that was most
likely the cause of his difficulties.

But to have taken those medications and then to read those studies and then to
know that my baby, for another reason entirely, but still was suffering from
those very symptoms was very difficult, and I don’t know if I would make the
same decision.

In fact, I don’t think I would make the same decision again. You know, I’m not
– it’s not impossible that I’ll get pregnant again, although, you know, God
forbid, as my mother says. But I would not take medication when I was pregnant
now. I would try to kind of go it alone, although it would be hard. It would
definitely be hard.

GROSS: So was this your third or your fourth?

Ms. WALDMAN: That was my last baby, my fourth, Abraham. He’s six now. And he
was fine. I just have to say he’s totally normal.

GROSS: Good, good. My guest is Ayelet Waldman. Her new memoir is called “Bad
Mother.” She’ll be back in the second half of the show. I’m Terry Gross, and
this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross back with Ayelet Waldman. Her new
memoir is called “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities,
and Occasional Moments of Grace.” It’s in part about leaving her job as a
public defender to become a stay-at-home mom and still suffering from bad
mother anxiety. Waldman is now the mother of four. After becoming a mother she
found a new line of work, which she could do from home - writing. She is the
author of the Mommy Track series of detective novels.

She is married to the writer Michael Chabon. You know, you mentioned the mild -
the relatively mild case of bipolar syndrome that you have, which is, you know,
contrasting highs and lows, you know, depressions and manias. The manias are of
course very productive and the depressions not so much. You say something
really funny in your book that you can always spot the other bipolar person at
the party. She is the one regaling the room with a hysterical tale of her
husband’s virulent herpes outbreak.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: Yep.

GROSS: And you say sometimes like when you get into the manic phase, like you
talk too much, you say too much, you reveal too much. Do you feel like you ever
did that like on your blog or you know, or in a novel or something…

Ms. WALDMAN: Oh always. I mean welcome to the world of the memoir, right. Where
would the memoir be without bipolar writers. I mean that’s what, that whole
over-sharing thing is really a very clear symptom of bipolar disorder. And I’m
not saying that every, you know, I’m not accusing every memoirist of being
bipolar but I think in a way it’s a kind of a gift. I mean if we didn’t have
people who were missing a very clear line drawing impulse that normal people
have then we wouldn’t have these articles and essays and memoirs that we can
all – that we all look to to identify with.

I mean I get - most of the mail that I get is from people who say thank you for
saying that I never would have said it myself but it’s so nice to read it. And
you know, lucky them, I’m crazy.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Give us an example of something you said that got that kind of comment.

Ms. WALDMAN: Well, I mean the whole thing about the abortion that we talked
about, you know, that may be that kind of over-sharing was a part of writing
about that. But probably - I mean, certainly most infamously was when I wrote
an essay in which I said that I loved my husband more than my children. That
was definitely the most over-sharing moment particularly since I went – it was
an essay about sex and about sexless marriages. And I talked about my very not
sexless marriage in far more detail than one should, probably certainly then my
husband ever would have let’s just say.

GROSS: Yeah, and the premise of the article was, you know, you knew so many
mothers who weren’t having sex any longer with their husbands and you were
trying to figure out why, and…

Ms. WALDMAN: Right. The only reason I wrote that article was because I was
writing it for an anthology about, you know, all these different mother’s
writing about different things – this anthology called “Because I Said So” -
and the editors came to me and they said okay we’ve got moms writing about
cancer and about divorce and blah, blah, blah. And we don’t have anybody
writing about sex and since you’re the only person who’s having any it’s got to
be you.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So you were trying to figure out why is it that like so many mothers
don’t, you know, don’t want or even have sex anymore but you and your husband
were enjoying a sexual life, like what was the difference. And your answer was?

Ms. WALDMAN: My answer was that all of these women were good mothers. They had
made this kind of erotic transference when they had children. They shifted all
of their ardor and their passion and their devotion from their husbands to
their children. The children had become the center of their passionate
universes. And I’d never done that. I mean I loved my kids like crazy.

And I love them still even though some of them are turning into teenagers, but
I had never sort of shifted that passionate focus. And I still loved my husband
as much as I had with the same kind of crazy devotion and that – if a good
mother was a mother who loved her children more than anybody else in the world
then I was a bad mother because - and here was the line - I loved my husband
more than my children. Buh-dum-bum.

GROSS: And then you said, and I might as well quote it here, “If I were to

lose…”

Ms. WALDMAN: Go for it.

GROSS: “If I were to lose one of my children, God forbid, even if I lost all my
children, God forbid, I would still have him, my husband. But my imagination
simply fails when I try to picture a future beyond my husband’s death.”

Ms. WALDMAN: Yeah, that was the killer. You know, what was going on is I had
just finished this novel called “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,” which was
about a woman whose baby dies of SIDS. I had just finished that novel. And I
had spent a year in the head of this woman trying to get over the death of a
child. So I felt like I had the capacity to imagine that. But I couldn’t
imagine writing a novel about a widow and I still can’t imagine writing that -
I don’t know, you know, the extent of that. That experience just seems utterly
incomprehensible to me.

So that’s really why I said that. But, you know, of course what – when one
reads that, the kind of logical interpretation is that, you know, I’d throw my
kids in front of a bus to save my husband and that’s just obviously not true. I
would throw myself in front of the bus and then they’d go on to lead very happy
lives without me.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: You know what I thought of when I read this is that, you know,
sometimes - well I use to think to myself when my parents were alive, who
should die first. Like, one of them is going to have to outlive the other. Who
would be able to survive, outliving the other better? Which would I would be –
how would I, you know, who – who would I better survive, you know, if one died
and the other lived, like how would I, you know, manage it. Then I – once I got
to that - these horrible thoughts – games like that slip into your mind. But
once I get to that point I’d kind of stop because I felt like wow I just can’t
go on with that, I mean, it’s just I can’t – I can’t - I can’t work that one
through.

And then sometimes just like even like really a stupid thing pops in my mind
like if you had to be blind or deaf which would you choose.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: Right. And that’s like constant…

GROSS: Well it’s like…

Ms. WALDMAN: …that’s constant – I’ve done that my whole life.

GROSS: Yeah.

Ms. WALDMAN: I guess that’s just called being Jewish.

GROSS: Maybe, maybe. But then once I put that premise on the table I think
like, I’m not going to play that game. That’s a really stupid game, you don’t
have the choice, you don’t have to make the choice. You’ll never have to make
that choice. So why even put yourself through it. And I never go any further.
But it’s like you followed that one through, that worst case scenario you had
to make the choice thing. You put it on the table, you made a decision and then
you put in print and…

Ms. WALDMAN: Oy.

GROSS: Oy.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: Well I think, you know, first of all, we were talking about that
line of over-sharing impulse, but also I think because, I mean, what I was
responding to was what I saw was, you know, in a way I was saying look I’m not
the one who set up this hierarchy but if we were playing the game of hierarchy
well I think you’re wrong.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: So that’s sort of how I did it. You know it’s so funny because
everyone was so afraid of like what do my kids think, poor children when they
read that, so I got very nervous about what my kids would say. And I sat down
my older daughter and – this long explanation, told her what was in the essay.
And this is what she did. She looked at me and she went, duh, and walked away.

GROSS: My guest is Ayelet Waldman. Her new memoir is called “Bad Mother.” More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

If you’re just joining us, my guest is Ayelet Waldman and she’s written a new
memoir called “The Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor

Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.” She’s probably best known for her
series of novels the Mommy Track detective series, which is about a mother
turned amateur detective. Okay another issue that you’re facing now: one of
your daughters is in her early teens.

Ms. WALDMAN: Yes.

GROSS: And so you’re facing what is a trauma for so many parents which is the…

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: …the early sexuality of…

Ms. WALDMAN: Right.

GROSS: …your oldest. And you…

Ms. WALDMAN: This is so much more of a trauma for my husband let me just say.

GROSS: Is that true?

Ms. WALDMAN: Having all the reactions of some kind of crazed fictional
prototypical father, but yes, it is definitely – it’s kind of a shock to the
system, this little creature - you know, used to put that little foot in your
mouth and now it’s, you know…

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: …tottering around in a stiletto heel, it’s weird.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So you write in your memoir that you lost your virginity when you were
14, which is the age your daughter’s at. And you had a quite an impressive
sexual resume before you met your husband.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: Oh my goodness, over-sharing. Yes, okay we’re going there, Terry.
Let’s do it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: I’m pulling back from the brink here. But, so what do you tell your
daughter about sexuality without feeling like a hypocrite?

Ms. WALDMAN: Well, this is - it’s really hard. I mean because in a way, my
early sexual experiences were very, very negative ones. So that is – that’s
actually I’m almost relieved that happened because I have a great message to
impart, which is don’t let – I had – there was a much, much older - he was a
man really, he was in his early 20s and he took advantage of me.

And so I had this great lesson that I can teach her which is, you know, don’t
go into a room with a 21 year old Israeli soldier. I think that’s actually a
really good lesson for everybody.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: But, you know, what’s more – what I think of as more of challenge
is I actually, it’s not that I don’t want her to have sex, I want her to have
sex. I want her to love sex. I think that’s a really important part of being a
whole human being. So the trick when you have an adolescent is to teach them
that sex is something good and joyful and wonderful and that it’s something
they have to be incredibly responsible about because it can be fatal. And that
it’s something that is best shared with someone you really love.

And, you know, I’m not actually, I think it’s fine in a life of sexual
experiences to have some that mean more and some that mean less. And I expect
that to happen to them. But I think that it’s really a lot better if you’re
earliest sexual experiences mean a lot more. And that sort of the kind of thing
I tried to tell them. Until you air this tomorrow, my daughter will not have
known that I lost my virginity at 14. So thank you for that, she’s 14…

GROSS: Oh gosh.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: It’s going to be - I’m going home and having that conversation
tonight. But she seems so impossibly far away from it. You know, I was - my
daughter’s in eighth grade and I was 14 in 10th grade. And I think that’s a
huge difference. I think those two years, those first couple of years of high
school are – that’s at least going to be my story tonight.

GROSS: Now, you’re a writer now, you’ve written a lot of books. You’re a
successful writer but you started your career as a lawyer and left that to
become a, you know, stay-at-home mother but while staying at home you became a
writer. And as I said a very successful one. How did you figure out that you
could write and that you wanted to write?

Ms. WALDMAN: Oh, it was so accidental. I was desperate to try to find something
in my life. Here I was a stay-at-home mom. I was desperate to try to find
something in my life that my kids couldn’t have access to, you know, that was
just mine. And because everything when you are a mom - they even, they drink
the foam off your latte. I mean they have everything of yours is theirs. So, I
was either going to, like, take up smoking or write a novel because there - I
needed some part of my day that they couldn’t own. And I really did do it
almost just to entertain myself.

I really had no idea that it would get published. And then when I started, when
I was in the throes of it, I said to myself okay look, here is this example of
a really easy life, right? I used to work 12-hour days, I was in trial, I would
have to go to the Metropolitan Detention Center, interview clients, I’d have to
do investigations, you know, those – when you’re a lawyer you work constantly.
And here’s my husband, he works like what five hours a day and then he hangs
out with the kids and he like, you know, goes out to lunch. This is the way to
do it right, I got to do that.

So, it really was envy. And then, you know, lawyers spend a lot of time writing
so while I had never written fiction at all, not even a single short story
before I wrote my first murder mystery, I had - you know, as a criminal defense
attorney you write these things called sentencing memoranda where you try to
convince the judge what a great guy your client is and why he should get a
lenient sentence and, you know, hell, that’s pretty much fiction writing. So
(unintelligible).

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Now, in your first Mommy Track novel when she starts to work on her
first case, and the first case is the principal of the nursery school is
killed.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: Yeah. Probably a little wish fulfillment.

GROSS: (Unintelligible).

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So anyways the character who had been a public defender like you, you
know, the main character…

Ms. WALDMAN: Art imitates life or life imitates art, something…

GROSS: Yeah. Well, she says the problem with having experience as a criminal
defense lawyer is that you tend to see criminal violence everywhere in
everyone. Did you have that experience too after spending a lot of time in
prison working closely with people accused of horrible crimes?

Ms. WALDMAN: Oh absolutely. I mean, you always see - because the people that
see you at that moment in their lives when they’ve done something terrible - I
mean, sometimes there are people that it’s easy to say oh that’s not me, you
know, I am not a heroin addict, I didn’t grow up in, you know, a war torn
neighborhood in East LA. I’m not - that could never be me. But a lot of times,
you know, there but for the grace of opportunity go you. So, the – but the only
experience worse for seeing humanity as capable of all sorts of evil than being
a criminal defense attorney is being a mystery writer because then your whole
life – all you’re doing all day is trying to find scenarios where people do
horrible things to each other.

So you can’t even, you know, cross the street without thinking I wonder if I
could have a truck run over someone at an intersection.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: I wonder if this has made you like an over protective mother because
you’ve told us you are pessimist by nature. And that because you were, you
know, a public defender that you saw, you know, criminality all around you, so
you add the two together and it might be scary to let your children out of the
house.

Ms. WALDMAN: Well, I’m a – I have a sort of almost political commitment to
letting my children out of the house. I know absolutely that according to FBI
statistics, it is no more dangerous for children now than it was when I was
growing up in the 1970s. I know what a great gift, the kind of freedom that I
had with growing up in the 1970s was, where I could just get on my bike and go
to the candy store or do whatever I did. Or the way we roved the neighborhood
in these packs of children doing all kinds of unspeakable things to one another
that our parents would surely have passed out if they knew we were doing it.

But I also know that’s, you know, that’s where imagination comes from, that’s
where the sense of responsibility for oneself comes from and children who spend
their whole day being taxied from one organized play day to another organized,
you know, baseball game, they never learn that they can have experiences
unmediated by adults. And I am kind of terrified about the idea of a world
governed by these people who’ve never had to govern themselves.

But I’m also crazily pessimistic. And so I do things like, I say to my – to
Rosie this morning, who - she is seven years old and she really wanted to go
around the corner to the café to get a roll and cream cheese for breakfast. So
- and she’d wanted to do it by herself and her older siblings got to it. She
was almost – she’s almost eight, and she wants to do it. So I said, okay, and I
gave her five dollars and in the three and a half minutes that she was gone, I
went the whole thing.

I saw the abduction. I saw the basement, you know, like that thing in Belgium.
I did the whole thing, the anxiety, the horror, the misery. And then she came
home and of course she was completely fine. And I feel really good about
letting her do that. And she feels really good and - but am I going to ever not
imagine the whole terrible - no, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just keep letting
them have their freedom and keep freaking out about it.

GROSS: Are you going to let her do it again?

Ms. WALDMAN: Oh yeah, yeah. She just informed me now that that’s her breakfast
from now on. She is going to have like work a little harder to get a larger
allowance, let me tell you. If she thinks she’s going to be spending 2.50…

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: …on breakfast every morning but…

GROSS: But you and your husband Michael Chabon are both writers.

Ms. WALDMAN: Yes.

GROSS: And how – like, do you…

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALDMAN: He struggles along in my shadow, Terry. It’s very hard for him. I
just don’t know what to say.

GROSS: Do you edit each others work and…

Ms. WALDMAN: Oh, constantly.

GROSS: What’s it like to be edited by your husband? Do you take it any more or
less personally than you do when you get edited by your actual editor at the
publishing company?

Ms. WALDMAN: We edit each - nothing goes out of the door that hasn’t been, and
I mean, not even an email basically goes out the door that hasn’t been edited.
We edit each other constantly. We also – we have, we skip the, you know, when
we’re editing other people, we always say, you have to do a praise sandwich,
like lots of praise and then the criticism and more praise. And we just skip
the bread when it’s the two of us. We go right to the problems, and we’re
brutal. And so – so sometimes I’ll hand him something that I’ve just written
and it comes back littered with notes like, DB, which means do better, do
better. And, you know, I’ll look at enough of those and I’ll say, you know, do
better? You do better if you can think you can do better.

But we have this kind of bombastic editorial relationship where we often have
these huge fights about it. But then the person being edited invariably says,
oh my god, you’re right. What was I complaining about? You’re completely right.
I have to totally change this. And so that - I mean that part is actually, it’s
crazy but it’s fun.

But the most satisfying part is the way that we work together on problems. I
mean writing is such a solitary exercise. And things come up that just – you’re
breaking your neck over. How to solve this problem with a character. How to
make this sentence work. How do you, you know, your plot has kind of spiraled
into disaster. And what we do, we have this thing we call plot locks, where
we’ll just pull each other aside and we’ll go for a walk for an hour and we’ll
just kind of talk through the problem.

And, you know, invariably we come to a solution. And it’s also this wonderful
thing that we share that has nothing to do with our children. You know, so much
of time as a couple when you have kids is spent as kind of, you know, co-
forpeople in a factory, like on swing shifts. And this is something we - a life
that we have together that is completely separate from our lives with our
children, although they’re getting into the business, let me tell you. We’ll be
sitting at dinner and suddenly, you know, the seven-year-old will have a very
interesting point she wants to make about a character that we’re talking about
that she feels like she could really save the novel from, you know, ruin.

GROSS: Well, Ayelet, I want to really thank you a lot for talking with us. I
really appreciate it.

Ms. WALDMAN: Oh, thank you so much Terry. It’s so exciting for me.

GROSS: Ayelet Waldman’s new memoir is called “Bad Mother.” You can read an
excerpt on our Web site freshair.npr.org where you can also download Podcasts
of our show. Coming up Ken Tucker reviews Bob Dylan’s new CD. This is FRESH
AIR.
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Bob Dylan Takes His Latest Look At ‘Life’

TERRY GROSS, host:

Bob Dylan has a new album called “Together Through Life”. On every song but
one, Dylan collaborates with lyricist Robert Hunter, a long time friend, best
known for his songwriting with the Grateful Dead. Dylan produced the album
himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review.

(Soundbite of song, “This Dream Of You”)

Mr. BOB DYLAN (Singer): (Singing) How long can I stay? In this nowhere café.
‘fore night turns into day. I wonder why I’m so frightened of the dawn. All I
have and all I know is this dream of you which keeps me living on. There’s a
moment when…

KEN TUCKER: You have to go back to the start of Bob Dylan’s career to find the
precedents for “Together Through Life.” It’s his first album in decades for
which he didn’t write all or virtually all the lyrics. Dylan wrote two original
songs on his 1962 debut. Here, he’s the sole author of one. Collaborating with
Robert Hunter, Dylan strikes tones of wistfulness and wryness that rarely yield
striking images, unless you count a phrase such as, the mountains of the past,
as striking. But that doesn’t mean the music isn’t good and unsentimental.

(Soundbite of song, “Hell’s My Wife’s Hometown”)

Mr. DYLAN: (Singing) Well, I can come here (unintelligible) I just came here to
hear, the (unintelligible). The ain’t nowhere, you can down, I just say want to
say, the hell’s my wife’s hometown.

TUCKER: “Hell’s My Wife’s Hometown,” now, that’s pretty funny, pretty mean,
pretty Dylan, also pretty Willie Dixon. The song is enough of a variation on
Dixon’s “I Just Want To Make Love To You” that Dylan credits the Chicago
bluesman as a co-writer. Although, the sentiments of the two compositions could
not be more different. Making love for Dixon, making the lover a battleaxe for
Dylan. Elsewhere, Dylan is more breezy, more footloose, more willing to play
out the role of a singing Texas cowboy.

(Soundbite of song, “If You Ever Go To Houston”)

Mr. DYLAN: (Singing) If you ever go to Houston, better walk right. You’re your
hands in your pockets, hang your gun belt tight. (unintelligible). If you ever
go to Houston, buddy, you better walk right. (unintelligible).

TUCKER: The person pushing the accordion through that song is David Hidalgo of
the great L.A. band Los Lobos. Working with Dylan’s touring band and Tom
Petty’s long-time guitarist Mike Campbell, they all create thick, atmospheric
music, music that’s shaped to fit every nuance of a song.

(Soundbite of song, “Forgetful Heart”)

Mr. DYLAN: (Singing) (unintelligible).

TUCKER: Throughout “Together Through Life,” Dylan sings in cobwebbed moans,
growling croons, and spoken-word chants. He does all three on that song,
“Forgetful Heart.” For a guy closing in on 68 years-old, he sounds like a guy
closing in on 68. But he’s a spry one, as anyone who’s gone to a Dylan concert
in the past few years can attest. Touring almost non-stop, he makes thunderous
music, full of high-volume guitar work by others and squalling keyboards from
the man himself. He likes to turn concert halls into honky-tonks, as is
suggested on a new song like this one, the bluesy shuffle “Jolene.”

(Soundbite of song, “Jolene”)

Mr. DYLAN: (Singing) (unintelligible).

TUCKER: A lot of the songs here are both intense and possessed by an effort to
make everything seemed tossed-off, spontaneous. Dylan avoids irony on every
song but “It’s All Good” that’s pretty much all bad. The rest of the time,
though, Dylan convinces you that his heart still throbs ardently for lovers
both past and present. And that it’s making music about that ardent passion
that keeps his steady, unending labor rewarding, for him and for us, together
through life.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is editor-at-large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed Bob
Dylan’s 33rd solo album, “Together Through Life.” You can download Podcasts of
our show on our Web site, freshair.npr.org. I’m Terry Gross.
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Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.