Writer Mother Monster: Kristin Bair, “Every Facebook moms’ group has a provocateur.”

(February 18, 2021) Kristin Bair is the author of three novels, most recently Agatha Arch Is Afraid of Everything, and writes about China, bears, adoption, and off-the-plot expats. She lives north of Boston with her husband and two kids and describes writer-motherhood in three words as “Are they asleep?” In this episode, Kristin talks about surviving COVID, the time a famous male poet stomped on her poetry, and why a teenager’s brain is like a snow globe. Plus, she shares what happened when she was locked in a cabinet with a pride of lions.

Writer Mother Monster is an interactive interview series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice as we make space for creative endeavors.

Transcript

Writer Mother Monster: Kristin Bair

February 18, 2021

Kristin Bair is the author of the novel Agatha Arch Is Afraid of Everything. Under the name Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, she has published two novels, The Art of Floating and Thirsty, as well as numerous essays about China, bears, adoption, off-the-plot expats, and more. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Baltimore Review, The Manifest-Station, Flying: Journal of Writing and Environment, The Christian Science Monitor, Poets & Writers Magazine, Writer’s Digest, and other publications. Kristin has an MFA from Columbia College Chicago and a BA from Indiana University, Bloomington. A native Pittsburgher, Kristin now lives north of Boston with her husband and two kids and describes writer-motherhood in three words as “Are they asleep?”

Lara Ehrlich  

Hi, everyone and welcome to Writer Mother Monster. I’m your host, Lara Ehrlich, and our guest tonight is Kristin Bair. Before I introduce Kristin, thank you all for tuning in. And, I want to let you know that you can listen to Writer Mother Monster, as a podcast on all major audio platforms or read the interview transcript on writermothermonster.com. If you enjoy the episode, please consider becoming a patron or patroness on Patreon to help make this series possible. We want to invite you also to please chat with us during the interview. Your comments and questions will appear in our broadcast studio and we’ll weave them into our conversation. 

Now, I’m excited to introduce Kristin. Kristin Bair’s new novel Agatha Arch Is Afraid of Everything is People magazine’s best new book, published in November 2020. It received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Booklist called it “hilarious” and said that “readers of Laurie Gelman and Abbi Waxman who enjoy irreverent moms who say what everyone else is thinking will love the ride.” As Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, she has published two novels, The Art of Floating and Thirsty. Her essays and articles about China, bears, adoption, magical realism and off the plot expats have appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, Writer’s Digest and other publications. As a writer and writing instructor, she has landed in classrooms and conferences around the world. A native Pittsburgher, Kristin now lives north of Boston with her husband and two kids and describes writer motherhood in three words, as “Are they asleep?” Welcome, Kristin.

Kristin Bair  

Hi, Lara. Thank you for having me. 

Lara Ehrlich

Thank you for joining us. I’m reading Agatha Arch right now and I love how you provide insight into motherhood and the voyeuristic nature of mothers watching other mothers. We’ll get to that—but first, tell us who lives in your house.

Kristin Bair  

So, I have my husband, Andrew, and my two kids: a 7-year-old and a 13-year-old. And, we have a new dog named Zuma, who just joined the family about a month ago. She’s a five-year-old poodle. She’s a sweetheart.

Lara Ehrlich  

How is your family coping with this strange situation? Are your kids in virtual school? 

Kristin Bair  

We’ve been in remote school since last March. My older one is in seventh grade. She just started hybrid, so she’s in school two days a week, so it’s been completely nuts. I’ve been on leave from my day job since September because there are just way too many things going on. So, I’m one of those statistics right now. Obviously, I feel lucky that we’re able to do it, but it is not as comfortable as usual. 

Lara Ehrlich  

What was your day job?

Kristin Bair  

I worked in the Communications Department at Phillips Academy.

Lara Ehrlich:

I’m in a marketing and communications department, myself, for an arts organization. It’s an interesting position to have as a writer, the same brain space.

Kristin Bair  

They’re always competing. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Were they always competing before you had kids—the day job and the writing job?

Kristin Bair  

Well, I’ve gone in and out from teaching writing, which I do sometimes, to communications. I kind of go back and forth throughout the years. And sometimes they work together, and sometimes they don’t. Time is obviously a factor. With two kids, there’s not as much time, so headspace is a hot commodity.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, definitely. Even before a pandemic, but much less now when everyone is in the same space.

Kristin Bair  

Absolutely. The only time I have headspace is in the middle of the night. So, I get up at three every day to write.

Lara Ehrlich  

Oh, wow, what time do you go to bed?

Kristin Bair  

I try to be asleep by 9:30—10 o’clock at the latest. So, sleep is also a hot commodity. But, it’s the only time. My little guy is up usually by 5:30, so I try to squeeze in as much as I can possibly get.

Lara Ehrlich  

Are you able to find time throughout the day at all in little pockets? Or is the early morning your only time?

Kristin Bair  

That’s my one time. I can do some social media, you know, when I’m not monitoring second grade or seventh grade. But, for any kind of deep work, I need that quiet, still house when nobody else’s energy is interrupting. 

Lara Ehrlich  7:19  

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it-- other people’s energy, because it does take such dedicated energy to get big chunks of writing done and your kids have so much energy, like forcefields.

Kristin Bair  

Exactly. I’ve always gotten up early to write even before kids, because I just like when the whole world is still. But with the pandemic and my husband’s working at home, and they’re here full time, there’s just always energy. I just have to find those pockets.

Lara Ehrlich  

I used to do the same thing and get up before work, I’d get up at 4:45 and write until I had to get ready. And then, when my daughter was born and a newborn, I quickly realized I couldn’t do that because sleep became so crucial. It broke me of that ability to get up early. And now, I sort of soak up as much sleep as I possibly can in the morning. Did you find that experience as well when your kids were young? Or, if you weren’t able to get up early for a while, at what point were you able to do it again? When did that ability kick back in?  

Kristin Bair  

It probably took at least a year with each kiddo. But I still, that inclination is always there. I don’t need an alarm; I just wake up at three automatically. But, if I let myself sleep in one day, the next day, my body wants to sleep in, so I definitely have trained it. So, I think it would probably happily go back to sleeping past three.

Lara Ehrlich  

It’s that muscle memory. Maybe the pandemic isn’t the time to worry about that. I’m hearing so many people say they’re just not getting any sleep, so you might as well write if you’re not asleep.

Kristin Bair  

Exactly, exactly. Plus, there’s a whole Twitter world out there and 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. that you can connect with.

Lara Ehrlich  

Oh, yeah, I know. I’ve been having insomnia too. I’m lying there and I will—at 2 a.m., Tweet and say, “Hi, who’s up?” And, so many people are just awake. If I wait another hour, I can talk to you on Twitter.

Kristin Bair  

You could, yes. There are a couple people who are like that, night owls. We overlap just at the 3 a.m. hour. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Hey everyone, you’re invited to tweet at us at 3 a.m. Do you mind if I ask you: you were telling me that your whole family got COVID?

Kristin Bair  

We did. And we were so careful. My kids were in remote school, and only my husband went grocery shopping, but somehow it made its way into our house in November. It was the week before Thanksgiving and it hit my husband first and he ended up in the hospital for three days. He had the shortness of breath and the pulse ox that went down. But then, it’s such a weird illness in that it hit each one of us differently. With me, I was convinced I had a sinus infection. I had a telehealth visit with my doctor, and I was in so much sinus pain. She said, “You have COVID. Go get tested.” I said, “No, I have a sinus infection. Give me an antibiotic.” And then my little guy had the classic kids’ version, where he just puked everywhere and had a fever and had the worst body aches. It was awful. And then, my daughter had it the mildest. She had headaches and just was tired. It hit each of us differently, and it took us a good while to get through it.

Lara Ehrlich  

We’re talking about virtual classrooms and losing jobs and figuring out when to write while you’re in the midst of insomnia and all these things—but then there’s the whole health aspect of actually struggling through an illness.  

Kristin Bair    

And to be sick while your kids are sick. My husband was really sick. Moms just muscle through. You know, cleaning up the puke, taking care of the one who can’t breathe properly. I’m grateful that we all made it. And, you know, there’s so many people who’ve had it much worse. But yeah, I don’t wish it on us or anyone again.

Lara Ehrlich  

It’s just such a hyper example, I think, of a very urgent fear as a mother of falling ill at the same time as your children and not being able to care for them. I have that paranoia.

Kristin Bair  

Absolutely. I just remember, there was a couple of days when I literally couldn’t stay awake late, and he was puking. And I was trying to stay awake, and I’m lying on his bed, and I just kept falling asleep. He’s like, “I need you,” and I was in a dream state talking about, I don’t know, monkeys or lions, or he’s like, “What are you talking?” 

It is so challenging. And then, the doctor says to you on the phone, you know, “This can escalate very quickly, make sure you have a backup plan and who’s going to come.” 

Lara Ehrlich  

I’m so happy or grateful that it didn’t for you guys. Although what you suffered through was awful. 

Kristin Bair  

But we’ve made it and everyone’s healthy again. They’re driving me nuts in the normal, motherly ways. 

Lara Ehrlich  

I think that gets at a primal mothering fear. I remember when my daughter was about five months old and it was the dead of winter and I got sick first with a really bad flu and I was completely debilitated. I could not move. And then, my husband got it when I was slightly recovered enough to be able to call my parents and ask for help. My daughter couldn't even sit up by herself. Ever since then, my poor husband has panic attacks every time there’s any sickness floating around. I try to remind us that we have a backup plan. 

Kristin Bair 

And why these backup systems are so important, you know?  A lot of people don’t have them. My older sister lives in Maine, so she’s the closest. But there’s no family right within quick driving distance. She’s only an hour and a half. But, these backup systems are super important.

Lara Ehrlich  

I think the pandemic has revealed that to us even more than usual, the whole “it takes a village” philosophy.

Kristin Bair  

Absolutely. Even when we got sick and it was Thanksgiving, some dear friends brought us most of our Thanksgiving meal, even flowers and wine and candles. And, we had brownies delivered from people and groceries delivered from people. But it’s just a crazy thing. Thankfully, we had toilet paper. 

Lara Ehrlich 

Oh, yeah, especially that! That leads us to community, which is very prevalent in your book Agatha Arch in a very different way—that mothers’ community of the online Facebook group. Tell us about the communities that you have witnessed or been part of as a mother, specifically a mother writer.

Kristin Bair  

I started writing Agatha Arch after we moved home from China. My second book had come out and I was working on a book that takes place in China. And, I was a mom in the US for the first time and I got us involved in some mom groups here, some online and some live and in person. And what I quickly realized was that they’re very complex entities. They’re both wildly supportive and nurturing and they can also just cut you to the quick in seconds. After a couple of incidents and misfires in terms of trying to get involved in groups, this character started taking shape in my head—Agatha. She kept talking. And, she was in a Facebook moms’ group. So, I’ve been in some wildly wonderful ones and then, also bowed out of a couple of not so wildly wonderful ones.  

Lara Ehrlich  

Can you give us an example of a time when a mother’s group either helped or hindered you? I have so many examples myself. 

Kristin Bair  

Well, I wrote about this for Scary Mommy a couple months ago, but when we first moved home, I hooked up with a group in a nearby town, and they said, “We’re having a get-together with the moms.” Their group was organized around welcoming new people, so it wasn’t like trying to break into a group that wasn’t there for the new people coming into town. That’s what they exist for. 

So I thought, “Well, this is perfect. We’ll just go and we’ll make some new friends and connect.” And, so we got ready and we showed up at the door and it was just one of those moments where you knew when the door opened that for some reason, this person was not going to take to you and you don’t know why. But you’re still a group that is designed around welcoming new people to town, so we went in and said hello. And the whole group turned and looked at us and turned back around and continued and we were virtually on our own in this group playdate that was designed around welcoming new people to town. I just was floored and flabbergasted, and my daughter is very intuitive and she just looked at me and she said, “They don’t like us.” So, that stuck with me. 

It was very funny because I actually tried a second time with the same group and the only reason it was more manageable was because I had a headache and instead of taking two Tylenol, I accidentally took two Tylenol PM before I went. I was super chill. I was like, “This is okay.” But, it didn’t work out the second time either. They just basically ignored us. And I thought, “Well, this is bizarre.” So, that was one of the really negative ones. And then, there’s been other ones that have turned into deep friendships. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, it really depends on the group, right?

Kristin Bair  

Definitely. And the group energy. I think sometimes what happens is that after moms are a group that is intended to be public, they become very good friends. And so, I think they should just close ranks and say, “We’re not really that group anymore. We’re really a group of friends who want to be together and aren’t really interested in new members, which is a fine thing. But I think you have to be clear about your intention. This group was not clear about their intention. 

Women are just weird and funny. I think that’s one of the things that interests me more and more as I get older is women’s friendships, which also I explore pretty deeply in Agatha. I’m just fascinated by what makes a lasting friendship and what do you have to give? And, how much of yourself and who can and who can’t and why can’t they? And then the cycle of fear, anger and empathy. I think so many people are afraid, and it comes out as anger, but if only they can access empathy, it would be so much better. It’s kind of one of those cycles that I just go over and over again in my head.  

Lara Ehrlich  

Tell me how that plays out specifically in Agatha. So, just to set the stage, and I’m not ruining anything—in the first few pages, Agatha discovers her husband in flagrante with the dog walker from down the street in the shed.

Kristin Bair 

In the shed, yeah. 

Lara Ehrlich 

And, she quickly becomes the subject of the local mother’s group’s scrutiny and judgment. So how did mothering and the experience of women’s friendships and being parts of these mother groups play into the logistics of writing this story?

Kristin Bair 

So, it’s funny because I never intended to write a story about infidelity or even had infidelity as a theme at all. But that’s really what starts it off, which is still interesting to me—where that seed came from. As the title says, Agatha Arch Is Afraid of Everything; she’s had all these fears her whole life and her husband, Dax, has protected her. He’s been her buffer. He’s been her shield and so she hasn’t had to deal with these directly. And she’s somebody who again—this anger, fear, anger, empathy cycle—she has these fears, but she has always expressed anger when they come up. So it’s an easier way of dealing with the fear. It’s another Dax. It’s another shield. So, she’s in her Facebook mom group. And she is, you know, every Facebook moms’ group has a provocateur. They have somebody who provokes who, you know, always says the thing that everybody’s thinking, but nobody says out loud, and she is that person, she is the person who just ticks everybody off and who has no patience and has no empathy for some of the things that the women are going through, but it allows her to keep all of these women at a distance. 

She’s kept Dax really close, but suddenly he’s no longer in the picture. She has to go outside of herself for the first time and the Facebook moms’ group is the natural place to do that, because that’s the one group she’s deeply involved in, even though her involvement is not very positive in the beginning. And so, that begins her journey in her interaction with these groups and while she doesn’t have a lot of friends in the beginning, it’s definitely part of her journey to friendship. 

Lara Ehrlich  

What did you learn or go deeper toward in yourself by writing about these issues? In the process of writing this book, did you grapple with some personal motherhood issues?

Kristin Bair  

Oh, yeah. Agatha goes very far with her anger and her provocation, but she always stopped short because of stepping too far over a line, because of her boys. She has two boys and being a mother stops her from going too far into anger. If we talk about universals, I think moms have that. It’s not an ability—I don’t know what the right word for it is—but just that inclination not to go too far toward any kind of negative emotion because of that protective mama bear thing. So that was really interesting to explore: how far would she go?  So for me, that was interesting. And then also again, women’s friendships captivate me and I think that’s probably something I’ll keep exploring in my work. I think the next book definitely has some of that as well. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Do you have anger that you feared to go too far into? And why?

Kristin Bair  

I think when I was younger, I probably definitely did. I think I probably had some big, big anger things from time to time. I wasn’t raised in a house where we were taught to manage big feelings in really productive ways, so that’s something that I’ve really worked on over the years and I think I’ve gotten better at, so it’s interesting for me to explore that on the page. And also, as a mom now, trying to teach my kids very consciously how to process and express big feelings. It is not easy. You’re not born with that ability. It’s something that you learn when it’s modeled when it’s consciously taught. And, with having a 13-year-old with hormones—you work through that when they’re little and then at that point of when teens are starting to break away emotionally, but at the same time, having the surge of emotions you realize, “Oh my God, I’m teaching again.” It’s not a lesson that you learn once. It’s a lesson that you learn over and over again in life. 

Lara Ehrlich  

I’m terrified. I’m terrified for my daughter to become 13. She’s four, so we’re dealing with the rage of her not wanting to go to the bathroom because she wants to control her own bodily functions. That’s one type of rage. But, I remember being 13 so vividly—probably because I wrote about it. I wrote copious journals. And so, I’m curious and terrified to see what it will be like from the perspective of a mother of a 13-year-old. What was your experience as a 13-year-old and how is that playing into the mothering of a 13-year-old?

Kristin Bair  

I was just all emotion. I think I was all emotion from the time I was born. I’m a Pisces. I think this is one of the things that pandemic is complicating. My daughter is in seventh grade. This is the time when they’re starting to break emotionally, but also physically, away from family. So, this is the year when she and her friends would have been going downtown by themselves and doing things on their own. It’s not happening; they’re with us all the time, which is not the natural place for a 13 year old. It's definitely complicated by that. 

I don’t remember who taught me this, so if anybody remembers this, please shout out, “That was me, I don’t do that.” I use this analogy of a snow globe. So, the teen brain when she starts getting very emotional and very loud and very expressive and just can’t control the emotions, I just say to my husband, “Snow globe, snow globe.” The brain is like a shaken snow globe, and you’re not gonna be able to communicate, you’re not able to get through to them until the snow settles. She has these periods of fritzing out and yelling and saying mean things and stomping around, and slamming doors. Her brother laughs and thinks it’s hilarious and chases her around. But I’m just like, “Snow globe, snow globe, snow globe.” Don’t respond because if you respond in the moment, it just heightens it. Then, I just wait most of the time—I’m not always perfect—for it to settle and then we can talk. But it is not easy. Cherish those four-year-old years.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, the tantrums about things you can more or less resolve, right?  I think 13—you adjust the escalation of the types of issues that, as a mother, you must address.

Kristin Bair  

Yeah. And also, these things that we’re talking about with grown women—these the behaviors and the judgment and the exclusion—that starts so early. It starts so early. If there’s anything I could get rid of in women’s lives, it would be that. It would just be that urge to exclude. And again, you’re going back to fear. You’re going to be excluded yourself, so you might as well just exclude somebody else. If it's not you, it’s me. And, it starts so young and it’s so hurtful. It just makes me nuts. I see it already. I see it in her lives and girl groups, and I just want to shake them.

Lara Ehrlich  32:48

Yeah, I saw it when my daughter was in preschool before COVID time—even then. You have little cliques of girls who say, “You can’t play with me.” You see it all the way up to moms’ groups of women who shut each other out to control—and I try not to pass judgment—but to control the sphere of influence in which we live and the influence we have. It’s very insidious. Did you always write when you were younger? How did you come to write?

Kristin Bair  

I’ve been writing since I was seven. It’s really strange that my kid is seven because I look at him and I’m like, “How in the world?” But I knew. I announced when I was seven that I was a poet and nobody should bother me when I was working on my poems. And, I remember my mom being like, “Well, you can’t be a poet.” And I’m like, “I am, What do you mean that I can’t? That’s just my life now.” And, it’s always stayed that way. 

I look at my kid now and I’m like, “Oh my God, how did I know when I was seven?” I can’t imagine anybody knowing that. But I started writing and then I started journaling when I was seven. I wrote poems. My first poem was about a hummingbird. I’d never seen a hummingbird. I still have that poem somewhere. 

I wrote obsessively. I just was obsessed with the poet Sara Teasdale, which is not a poet seven- or eight-year-olds are usually obsessed by. I remember sitting on the floor of the library just reading her poems over and over again and checking them out. 

I have so many journals—hundreds of them. Then, when I got to high school, I started writing plays, parodies of my older sister’s high school life, which I still have. I wrote all these plays about my sister and her friend. I did poetry as an undergrad, and I didn’t switch to fiction until I was in grad school. The first poem I’d ever published was as an undergrad. It was about my grandfather in Pittsburgh who worked in the steel mills all his life and who was a Croatian immigrant. The steel mills shut down. Just seeing the effect on him and my great uncles and the steel community around us fascinated me and so I wrote my first poem about that. That was published and that was kind of the seed of my first novel Thirsty. When I got to grad school, that became my first novel. 

I switched to fiction at that point. I do essays too, but mostly, now I do fiction and essays. I keep meaning to get back to poetry. But I remember, I think it was at Bread Loaf, the writers’ conference, I was still writing both poetry and fiction, and this somewhat famous male poet told me that I couldn’t do both. For some reason, that really froze me in my process of poetry. Now, it irks me that I allowed that to freeze me. Eventually, I’ll get back to it.

Lara Ehrlich  

I have so many questions. First of all, commiseration because in college, I had wanted to take an essay writing class, and you had to submit an essay for the class and this famous essay writing journalist didn't allow me into the class and he didn’t give me any reason. He just said, “I’m sorry, but you’re not cut out for this class.” And so, I did not write nonfiction again for at least 10 years because this literally old, old-fashioned journalist rejected me. And I was like, “Oh, I must not be good enough to write non-fiction.” So, what is it about these paternalistic experts who tell us we can’t do something? Why does that sit so deeply with us?

Kristin Bair  

I have no idea. But, it’s funny because I’m such a mouthy person otherwise, but when those paternalistic buttheads would speak to me at that point, I’d crumble, which just pisses me off now. I’d love to call them up now and let them have it. But, it did inform the way I teach. At this point, whenever I teach, I’m so careful with what people are interested in writing, what the already write and what they hope their potential will be. And I never, ever say, “Nope, that’s not gonna work for you.” I make it a very welcoming, very nurturing environment. I hope that everybody always expands as opposed to shrinks.

Lara Ehrlich  

It’s one thing to provide helpful criticism—constructive criticism. It’s another thing to hold responsibility for somebody within a period of their writing career at which they're vulnerable and then smash them, intentionally or otherwise.

Kristin Bair  

To have those moments—to just hold on to that—I think, “Now, what in the world am I holding on to this for 10 million years for?” But, I remember that exact moment, the breakfast, what I was eating, and just how it stunned me and it’s just, it’s so debilitating. First of all, what was his problem with himself that would cause him to feel either threatened or just want to close ranks as opposed to open them? Now, I know it’s a flaw of his, not a flaw of mine. But back then, youth and just learning the ropes just froze me.

Lara Ehrlich  

No, you’re not alone in that. Tell me more about writing journals. I was also an avid journal writer and I have these mountains of books. Specifically, I would say between the years of 12 and 16, those very emotional years that we were just talking about, where I chronicled every moment of my existence as if it was very urgent to get it out on paper. And I’m wondering how that will come out later. I’ve seen it come out in my writing as far as how it’s informed stories I’ve written about nostalgia and youth and puberty. I’m interested to see how it might inform my mothering when my daughter reaches those ages. So, can you talk a little bit about how the process of documenting your youth has played into both your writing and your mothering?

Kristin Bair  

Well, the first thing I hope is that nobody ever reads them. They’re so funny. Why do we have that urge to retell what we’ve already experienced?  I think about them all the time. I remember exact lines. I dream like a crazy person. People tell me, “You shouldn’t tell people, because they’re so weird.” But, I write them all down and so, I think this is how I’ve been able to deepen my own dream life. I’ve written them down. And, the minute that I go back to a journal from whatever year—from when I was 10, or when I was 16 or when I was 24—if I read three words of that dream, the entire thing is like seeing it all over again. I don’t need to read anymore. It’s so interesting how it connects so deeply into the brain and the soul too. 

This is one of the ways it’s played out in my own mothering. From the time my kids were tiny, every single morning, I’d say, “What did you dream last night?” Neither one of them is an active writer though my daughter loves to write. She keeps a journal off and on. But, I feel like if they’re able to do that, if they can access that subconscious, then it deepens them in some specific way that I think is really important. It’s weird because during the pandemic, I haven’t been dreaming. I don’t think I’m sleeping enough to remember my dreams. I’m sure they’re happening. But, over the past two weeks, I’ve had two amazing dreams and nothing excites me more in the morning than waking and being like, “I dreamed! I’m okay.” I feel like I’m okay if I can get up and write down this dream as kooky as it is.

Lara Ehrlich  

Has a dream ever inspired a story for you?

Kristin Bair  

Yeah, for sure. They work their way into all kinds of stories. There’s one that made its way into Agatha that my agent made me chop. She was like, “You gotta get rid of most of this.” I was like, “Argghh.” But, she was right. They make their way in there all the time. One of the dreams I had last week was that we have this cabinet that we brought back from China. It’s this whole wedding cabinet, this huge thing that fits nowhere. But I dreamed that I was in it with a family of lions, like a big male lion. The goal was for me to survive this and it was like, “this is symbolic.” So, when the door opened, and I came out with the lions being my pals, I was like, “I’m gonna survive this damn pandemic.” 

Lara Ehrlich  45:02

That’s wonderful. I love that. We talked a little bit about that 3 AM wakeup—speaking of dreams—and how you use that time to write. Tell me about that sacred writing time and the logistics of writing a project, and how you find your narrative each morning to be able to continue a story across days, weeks, months and possibly years.

Kristin Bair  

Many years. I’m not one of these plotters. I have never plotted the story. I don’t know where it’s going when I start something. Like the one that I’m working on now, I don’t know where it will end up. I have a general idea and I need to know within two weeks for the synopsis. I have this term I use: “writer head.” I get into “writer head” and I just start to sink. 

It’s weird because this week, if you go look at my Twitter feed, I’m suddenly obsessed with cinnamon. My character has this thing about cinnamon. It’s slowly starting to make sense to me as I write about her. But, I just follow the scenes and this thing starts to occur to me and I write a little bit about it. And then, I need to know a little more and I start to do a little research and then, I discover all these things. Then, I’m like, “Oh my God,” and then I start to write. I just follow my nose with things. 

My husband and I married fairly late and it was a whirlwind. We met on September 8, 2005, and we were engaged by Thanksgiving. We were married in February and six weeks later, we moved to China. And so, I tell this funny story, because whether or not I have kids, I’m a morning person. We didn’t know all that much about each other when we moved to China, so it was kind of like you’re either going to survive or fail. But, I remember discovering he was not a morning person, and him discovering that I am not going to lounge around in bed on Saturday morning—I am up and I am going to go write and you can’t talk to me. I don’t want to be talking—don’t mess with my energy. I could just see him be like who have I married? I didn’t take breaks when we moved to China. I think it took a week to get over the jetlag and then, I was at my computer. At that point, it was like 5 a.m. But, I’m very militant about my morning hours, no matter what’s happening.

Lara Ehrlich  

How long were you in China? I think you mentioned in the emails we exchanged beforehand that you adopted your kids. At what point was that? What was the timeline here between meeting one another, getting married, living in China?

Kristin Bair  

We moved there in 2006. We’d signed on for two years and we ended up staying for five years. We adopted our daughter from Vietnam in 2008, so she spent her first few years in China. And then we came back here in 2011. We actually traveled back to China in 2015 and brought our son home. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Tell me a little bit about that transition. Before the interview, we were talking about—and I know I’ve talked about this before, about my four-year-old who’s sleeping with us because of pandemic loneliness and so on—you were saying, Kristin, that your daughter was in bed with you guys for quite a few years, particularly following your return from China right through that transition. Talk a little bit about what that transition was like both for them and then for you, as you became a mother in China.

Kristin Bair  

It’s a very different life there. I love it—I would move back in a second. My husband won’t move again, so we’re in debate over that. But, we had a very solid life there and then all of a sudden, we were moving. We were back in a country that my daughter didn’t know. We didn’t know anyone in the town that we moved to. We had moved from where we were living in downtown Shanghai on the 26th floor of a high-rise building in the middle of the city with lots of playmates in the building and that kind of thing. 

When came back to the US, we lived in a hotel for a couple months, and then in a townhouse before we bought a home, so it was very hard on her. She started sleeping with us during that time and it took about four years to end that habit. She just needed the extra connection, which was fine—except for our backs, physically. Emotionally, it was good. Physically, it’s very challenging. But yes, she weathered it, but it was a lot to get used to. 

Lara Ehrlich  

For all of you. So, tell me about being in China. It sounds like you had a good experience there. But, going through the transition of becoming a mother in a different country and having a child from yet a third country.

Kristin Bair  

Yeah. Our original passports are from four different countries because my husband is from Ireland and I’m from the US and then we have Vietnam and China. So, we’re quite the United Nations in our house. It was both simple and complex. I was so ready to be a mom and the nice thing about being in China—one of the wonderful things—was that I had a lot of time. I was not working in a job. 

We had some help in our house, which is one of the great perks when you’re in China. You usually have somebody who’s hired to help you out at home and that was great. I had a lot of time to both write and be a mom. I always tell my husband now that I was a much better wife there, because I had time. And here there’s no time. I’m not as good a wife. And there, it was just an amazing thing to be able to do both fully and I think that is something that it rarely happens in the United States. It was a real gift for five years that I don’t take lightly. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Was it primarily the ability to have help? 

Kristin Bair  

And, not be working a day job.  I didn’t work a day job. And we had an IE, which is a woman who comes and works in your house. For five years, I didn’t do laundry. I didn’t cook meals. I didn’t clean the house. It sounds all very spoiled. When I talk about it here, I’m always like, “Oh, God, this sounds snotty.” But, it’s a very common thing there and it’s how the society works. It’s lovely. Our IE was my main Chinese teacher for the language and she was really important to us. It was just an amazing gift. I wrote my second novel while we were there, The Art of Floating and I could be the best mom, the best writer-- not in terms of the quality of my work, but the most productive and also the best wife because I had time. I wasn’t strung out and exhausted and worried all the time.

Lara Ehrlich  

Can you talk about what the transition back to the US was like for you? Why are you as mothers and mother writers, such fractions of ourselves and always strung out and unable to be fully present in any of these roles? Why am I hearing that from so many women? It sounds like in China—or at least in your experience—it was definitely very different.

Kristin Bair  

It is very different. Because we’re tired. Because there’s so many things that we have to pay attention to. You have to feed your kids. You have to make sure you’re shopping for them. You have to make sure all the things in the house are taken care of. You have to clean up the rice after dinner. And you don’t realize how much energy goes into all of this until you don’t have to do it. I feel like I was given such a gift. But it’s also a curse because I know what the gift is. I know what it feels like. And, it does feel selfish to want it, to want that existence. But, once you have it, you can’t forget it.

Lara Ehrlich  

Is it selfish in China, though?

Kristin Bair  

No. 

Lara Ehrlich  

What is it about American culture that makes it feel selfish do you think?

Kristin Bair  

I think the way society is in terms of being able to hire somebody to work in your home, it’s not really possible here because it gets into a lot of different things. Who’s available to work? Who’s going to work that kind of a job? Who wants to work that kind of a job? How much money would it cost? What’s the value? Do people value that kind of role? And, it’s funny, because when we first got to China the first year, I would not hire somebody to work in our house. And, this is the way Americans are. This is commonly known. Everybody said, “Oh, you’re American, you’ll get that by the time of your second year.” It’s because you have guilt that you have to ask for help. There is a great amount of guilt. 

So, the first year we were there, I had a woman come to the house once every two weeks. People were like, “Are you insane?” Just do what everybody does and hire someone! And it’s like, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we’ve got this.” The first year was the hardest because I didn’t speak the language. I was studying, but  I didn’t know where anything was. I didn’t know how to get from A to B—all the things that got easier over time—I didn’t have, but I also didn’t hire somebody to help me because we’re not supposed to ask for help. 

That’s the thing. We are not supposed to admit that we need help. I think that’s at the core of it and again, I’m generalizing. But when French expats arrive in China, they’re like, “Come on in our house.” We had neighbors who were Spanish. They had a live-in woman. At first, they had no kids, and then they had two, and they had three. But, we Americans are much more reticent about these things. It was really hard to leave. It was really hard to give up that existence. And you also don’t feel like as a writer—and I think this is what the writing piece of this is—that as a woman writer, we are not accustomed to being allowed the time to write. I think male writers are male writers. They don’t have that kind of weight of responsibility and emotional responsibility for a family. And, I think women have a very different experience, so it’s hard.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, that guilt. It’s important to name the feeling of guilt and shame that accompanies asking for help because that’s such a vital thing. It goes back to “it takes a village,” and in so many other cultures, you don’t even have to ask for help. It’s built into a system of parenting. And so, I’ll share this with you: The other night, I was feeling very overwhelmed between my day job and pandemic and writing and this podcast, which I love but it takes a lot of time and effort, and I had a moment of weakness in front of my daughter where I was upset and my husband hugged me and he said, “It’s okay.” My daughter came over and as a four-year-old, hugged me and stroked my face and said, “Mama, what’s the matter?” And I said—trying to figure out how to talk to a four-year-old about it, “I feel like there’s lots of things that I need to do and I don’t know if I can do them all and so that makes me feel very scared.” And she said, “Mama, you need to ask for help.” She said, “You need to ask your friends for help.” A four-year-old could say that, because she doesn’t have that guilt and shame. We are now accustomed to that. It’s so easy. A four-year old-was like, “Well, of course, if you feel scared and you have things you need to do that you can’t do, you ask for help.” So, why is it so hard for us?

Kristin Bair  

But, I will tell you what. Most likely, by the time she’s a grown up, she’ll have all that guilt and shame. Hopefully not, but it’s so hard. I don’t know how we’re going to work it out of our culture.

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, it’s perpetuated, even if we, as parents, as mothers try to offer different messaging and say it’s okay to ask for help and to take time and to write things. My parents certainly did that. I never heard, “Oh, you should feel guilty for taking time for yourself.” But yet, that’s there.

Kristin Bair  

Yeah, exactly. I don’t know how we can change just the structure of our society to make that happen. 

Lara Ehrlich  

And, it’s so interesting that you had a very different experience in China. It is not a universal experience, right?

Kristin Bair  

No, no, and again, even talking about it, I feel guilty because I feel shame. I feel ashamed that I should even think that I deserve that ever again—that ability to write every day without distraction, which is really truly the only thing.  I’m not talking about family.  I’m talking about career and that kind of thing is really, truly the only thing that I want to do and then to be able to say that and to be able to achieve that. There’s shame and guilt even just saying it out loud. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Yeah, and here you are, saying that you still feel that shame and guilt as a published author with—is it three books, four books? 

Kristin Bair 

Yeah, three. 

Lara Ehrlich 

Your three books and one in progress. And, I hear that from women who’ve published fifteen books and I hear that from women who’ve published no books where they say, “I don’t have the right to claim that time because I’m not earning an income from it.” So it’s like, it doesn’t matter if you’ve not published anything. 

Kristin Bair 

Exactly. No, the internal struggle with it is the same no matter if you’ve published or not. And that is excruciating because I’ve always said—and people have argued with me—I can’t not write. And, different people have said to me, “Of course, you can.” Like, “No, I can’t not. I can’t.” No matter what the struggle goes on.

Lara Ehrlich  

And, why not be able to claim that, right? If it’s as important to you as breathing and you can claim the air to breathe, why can’t you claim the time to do something that feels as urgent to you as anything else?

Kristin Bair  

People go back and forth on whether we are born writers. I know that different people probably have different experiences with that, but I have always firmly believed that I was born this way. And, that for whatever reason, whatever cosmic reason, I am supposed to be doing this. But, the world doesn’t exactly work with you on that. So gotta keep pushing against it.

Lara Ehrlich  

Keep trying to change the world.

Kristin Bair  

Exactly, exactly—one book at a time.

Lara Ehrlich 

That feels like a great place to end, since we’ve reached the hour limit. 

Kristin Bair  

Oh, my goodness, have we? 

Lara Ehrlich 

It’s flown by. 

Kristin Bair 

What a great conversation!

Lara Ehrlich 

Thank you, Kristin, for coming on and sharing your experience and just for a really fun conversation too.

Kristin Bair 

Thank you, thank you. I know it’s hard, but you’re really putting something important out there and I appreciate it. 

Lara Ehrlich  

Thank you. It feels important to me to talk about these issues, so I appreciate your willingness and time to come on and talk. Thank you!