Welcome to Spinning Plates
Volume 1, Issue 1
Hi, and welcome to Spinning Plates.
“Wow,” you may be thinking. “Thank you, Sheila and Justin, for adding me to your new … Substack? … without my consent?”
You’re welcome.
And also, thank you for making it this far.
2021 was wild. We all lived through a pandemic. Sheila gave birth (!!!) to Azad, who is perfect and six-months-old. The two of us spent the first three months of Azad’s life together, without professional responsibilities, taking care of the baby and the dog.
Now, it’s 2022. We have professional help with the baby, COVID is still VERY much a thing, Sheila is back working a full-time adult job, and Justin is doing *waves hands* whatever it is that he does, because … #LateCapitalism? #GirlBoss, maybe?
In light of all that, we’re thinking about how to best situate our “new parent” identities alongside the other ways we’ve defined ourselves until now. If we had to update our LinkedIn profiles today, Sheila would be all “Founder, CEO. Now also relentlessly pursuing perfection in motherhood,” …
… while Justin would be like, “Imposing arbitrary character limits on how I express myself causes a kind of panic that is impossible for me to capture in wor…”
That’s why we’re trying a little newsletter called Spinning Plates.
There’s a lot going on, in our lives, in our heads, and with Azad. We don’t want to be “Those New Parents Who Only Talk About Their Child,” even though we know we totally are those people. To pretend we’re not, though, we’ll use this newsletter to do other things, like review classic baby books, offer rants & musings, and workshop long-winded reflections on the public policy implications of parenthood.
We’ll probably do other stuff, too. That’s just what we’re planning for this first month. #Boundaries #UnderPromise.
Let’s get started …
Sheila & Justin Review Classic Children’s Literature
Justin’s mom was an elementary school teacher in New Jersey, so he grew up immersed in the complicated tradition of American children’s literature. Sheila didn’t move to the United States until she was five, so most USian classics are new to her. This natural experiment provides the opportunity for us to look at old favorites with fresh eyes. Do some of our cherished books hold up? Totally. Are some utter trash? You betcha! Will Justin take it Very Personally when something he once cherished ends up being read for filth? We’ll see!
This month, we’re starting with The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
To elaborate on the tweet, Justin’s sense of self is intact, because he remembers loving this book as a child and was not disappointed upon revisiting. Sheila can see why. It’s illustrated in Eric Carle’s signature tissue-paper collage style, while using the “Board Book” format in a way that’s creative without being overbearing. In the process, children learn about the biological process of metamorphosis at an absurdly early age, and the book still, objectively, slaps.
Whether or not a book still slaps requires answering questions that aren’t strictly scientific.
Does it contain a unique blend of artistry and thematic content?
Is the point of view sufficiently unique to warrant consumption, over the trillions of other disposable children’s books out there?
Can an adult tolerate reading it thousands of times without engaging in self-harm?
Does it contain any problematic elements that require us to confront our families about their internalized conceptions of oppression and domination?
You know, fun stuff like that!
Good news: The Very Hungry Caterpillar has minimal problematic elements with which to wrestle. There is a case to be made that the book sends a weird message about the consequences of binge eating, but unless you’re committed to using a cartoon worm as justification for fat-shaming your kids, the coast is clear.
Eric Carle, the renowned author and illustrator, passed away in May of 2021, and we have two more of his books - one about a bear, and another, seemingly, about the abusive relationship dynamics that exist between aphids and beetles. We think he nailed the dosage of scientific curiosity, beautiful illustration, and child-friendly storytelling in the caterpillar joint. We’ll see if the rest of his corpus sustains that balance when we review a lesser known book, The Grouchy Ladybug, next month!
Sheila’s Rants and Musings
RANT: Ugh, all of these stars are just eco-cleansing their reputations with this Don’t Look Up movie. Leo, your Prius does not make you relatable, bruh.
RANT: Speaking of space, it took thirty years between the launch of the Hubble Telescope and the deployment of this new “Captain Hook” one. Huh. What’s that? Oh, it’s named after Jim Webb? Whatever. They took THIRTY YEARS between awesome telescopes. Maybe we could make progress more quickly if we didn’t spend all of our cultural R & D efforts on, oh, I don’t know, delivering takeout more quickly.
MUSING: What is there to say about Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian that hasn’t been said? Seriously, I’m asking, because I will read literally any take on this.
Justin’s Long-Winded, Serialized Perspective on Parental Leave
I have a habit of moving things around the house. I think of this as a quirk that I’ve christened “micro-redecorating,” while Sheila prefers naming it an undiagnosed form of obsessive compulsion.
Semantics, lol!
Either way, as Azad’s arrival approached last spring, my instincts manifested as spasms of nesting. I arranged, and rearranged, stuffed animals on reclaimed shelves from the Big Reuse, Brooklyn’s largest warehouse of shit that people couldn’t bring themselves to actually throw away. I started calling the animals “The Welcoming Committee,” then I ordered and installed rolls of custom-sized jungle-themed wallpaper from a discount printer in rural England to round out their aesthetic.
One weekend, after my neighbor Nyesha told me that our approach to diaper changing would be better served by a decentralized method, I went through the wicker basket collection in the basement (*Sheila’s aside*: HOARDER!) and made three independent satellite sub-stations, each with wipes, newborn diapers, and a foldable fabric changing mat.
In retrospect, I’ve come to see all of these activities for what they actually were: straw-grasping attempts to exert control over a situation in which I had none.
“Nothing can prepare you for being a parent” is a cliche for a reason: there is little useful guidance on how a person ought to prepare for child-rearing, especially for partners who are not themselves giving birth. Sure, Penny Simkin’s The Birth Partner is a terrific, if extraordinarily technical, description of the actual birthing process, and yes, there is an entire literary sub-genre dedicated to making you feel alternately terrified about, and ill-prepared for, parenthood. But the vast majority of guidance, particularly when shared among the male-identifying members of our species, tends to come in cryptic half-sentiments:
“You’ll figure it out!”
“It’s the greatest and hardest thing in the world, bro!”
“Just do whatever your wife says, LOL!”
*Stares in aspirations of disrupting traditional conceptions of gendered child-rearing*
The more I talked to people about parenthood, the more I realized that even the most progressive parents tended to collapse into black holes of gendered labor distribution. Was this inevitable, I wondered? Was it possible to raise a child without reinforcing dynamics rooted in the biology of who experiences childbirth, even though much of what happens AFTER childbirth seems to be driven more by hardened social norms than sexual biology? There were lots of things to read about how to raise a child without steering them into gender norms, but what about the parents themselves?
On Azad’s three-month birthday - the last day of mine and Sheila’s joint paternity leave - I experienced divine intervention on these topics. That night, Tucker Carlson used the stupid monologue on his stupid Fox News show to mock Pete Buttigieg’s decision to stay home with his own new child.
While I have no natural Buttigieg-protection instinct, I took personal offense. I was further enraged by the naive commentary that followed, in which scads of “conservative” men reinforced the idea that there just isn’t “much to do” when one is a new father.
Armed with nothing but my new parenthood and my searing rage at white conservatism, I decided to share my thoughts on these topics. With you, specifically, over the course of multiple newsletters.
Will some of my thoughts be half-formed? Yes, duh. Will I regret some of the things I say? Undoubtedly. Will all of my takes be good? No.
But will I try to make all of them entertaining?
Also, no.
This is going to be fun! Each time Justin writes, “you were right Mom” I am going to put a dollar in my tip jar. I am hoping to buy a small island.
Love it! What a beautiful thing to do together :)
Request for content: can we get a section on Justin’s weekly renovations/redecorations?