When you have kids, I do believe you become more motivated. You do get a lot more done in a day, because there is someone that’s so supremely important to you, and you’re so in love with this being, that it becomes effortless in certain ways to do so much.
Witnessing footage of women giving birth in the bathtub, doing natural things with the midwife or the doula. I can see that that is one of the most exciting, alive things they’re ever going to feel. There is nothing that probably will ever compare to that experience those women are having, with their husbands, and the other children. It’s probably a wonderful time having that baby, but cut to every other thing that comes with that. That is not probably the most wonderful time, and very few people are willing to talk about this. The realities of family living, child rearing, marriage, especially in contemporary society.
What I’m saying is, I realize one of the best things probably that ever happens to a person is child rearing. I understand this. I understand how beautiful babies are, and I intellectually get that I have missed out on something by not giving birth in the bathtub to my baby, and I’ll never ever experience that kind of love, but at the same time, I don’t want to pick out schools and get vaccinations, and get the driver’s license and stay up all night worrying. This is a twenty-four-hour commitment of fear and anxiety, and I am not mature enough to handle that.
I’m not proud of this. I’m ashamed of this, but I am not up to the task. Again, there are millions of other people who are not up to the task either, and I wish they would realize that. Many, many people have weddings and babies because they don’t know what else to do. Life feels kind of empty and they don’t know how else to fill it. There are millions of ways to fill an empty life. Marriage and children are not always the best way to do that, but it’s the easiest way a lot of people think.
MOLLY SHANNON—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
I love being a mom. I always wanted to be a mom, and I really feel so fulfilled. I’m so happy. I really feel like I worked really hard in my twenties and thirties, and struggling to make it, and Saturday Night Live, and I really killed myself with work. It was just work, work, work, work, work. Now I really feel like I’ve created a family, and I feel like I’m living my dream. This is all I’ve ever wanted. My mom died when I was little, when I was four, so for me, getting to be a mom and do all the things that she was never there for, it’s very rewarding to me. It makes me feel so happy.
ALI WONG
There’s a lot of joy in parenting. That part is really true. She’s great, and she makes me laugh. When you become a comic that doesn’t laugh out loud as much anymore, my daughter and my husband and my friends who aren’t in comedy are the only things that make me laugh hysterically.
She’s funny. She’s sweet and all that. People are like, “Aren’t you going to miss doing all the stuff you’re able to do?” I’m like, “Yeah, but I get to do other stuff now.”
PAULA POUNDSTONE—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
We were riding in the car one day. I always tried to tell the kids a couple days ahead of time when I was going out of town so it wouldn’t blow them out of the water. I say, “Okay, Mom’s going on the big plane day after tomorrow.” That’s how we said it. My son was huffing and was very upset about it. I said, “Honey, you know, I have racked my brain to think of something I could do.” You know? I said, “But I don’t know how to do anything else.”
My daughter, Allie, she was maybe seven at the time. She says, “Oh, Mom. I love it that you’re a stand-up comic.” Then she took this funny little pause and she said, “And don’t you love it?” Which was such a great moment. I mean, she’s a regular kid. She’s a kid who wants more for herself. For that moment she cared about whether or not I was happy in my work, which just blew me away. It’s not like I’d ever sat and talked with her about whether I was happy in my work. I try not to burden my children with all of my difficulties. She’s a funny kid that way. She’s a great kid.
Trust me, soon thereafter she returned to being as selfish as any other kid can be. That’s just how they’re supposed to be. There’s nothing wrong with that.
We were walking down the street one day. We dropped her older sister off at school. It happened to be around Christmastime. I say to her, “Why don’t we go over to the mall and you could talk to Santa Claus?” She was like, “Well, why would I want to do that?” I go, “Well, honey, because you sit in his lap and you tell him what you want for Christmas.” She walked for a little ways and she said, “Why?” I said, “Well, have you thought about what you want for Christmas?” She said, “No.” She thought about it for a little while. We walked and walked. She thought about it for a little while. She said, “I would like a Christmas bear.” That was it. I almost started to weep right there on the street. I thought, “What a wonderful child I’ve raised that she feels she has everything she needs. There’s nothing that she wants other than a Christmas bear.” It was such a beautiful moment.
We walked a little farther. She said, “I thought of something else.” I was like, “Ugh. There’s more?” She’s practically like, “Do we have time to stop and get a catalog?”
WANDA SYKES—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
I can’t believe this is my life. Me, married to this beautiful white Frenchwoman, and I have two blond-haired, blue-eyed kids. Me? Really? The country girl from Virginia? Bizarre. All the time, I wake up and I just go, “What the hell? How did this happen? How did I get here?” I am grateful, but it’s just all so bizarre.
I wake up in the middle of the night—this is one of the scariest things ever. The kids are five, the twins. It’s one of the scariest things ever to wake up in the middle of the night and see two little white kids standing at the edge of your bed. It’s some creepy shit. It’s just creepy.
“What the hell? What are these crazy little white kids doing at the edge of my bed? What kind of horror movie is this?”
“Oh, they’re mine. They’re my kids.”
ADDICTION
“Introduce Yourself to Your Sickness”
There’s a weird assumption that drug and booze problems disproportionately affect creative people. I don’t believe this is true. It doesn’t matter what you do or who you are, the bug isn’t picky. It can live in anyone. People from all over have addiction problems. Once you know you have the bug, you know it can feed on almost anything: drugs, food, booze, gambling, spending, people, sex, etc. Sometimes it’s a combo.