Zibby Mag

By Rita Cameron

At first, the plan was simple: Go to college, spend a year as a paralegal to build my resume, get into a good law school, and score a job at a big firm in New York. That all seemed to be working out until the moment when the birth of my first child coincided with a major recession and financial crisis, which made my finance-adjacent job disappear almost overnight.

With my maternity leave rendered permanent, I collected my house plants from my former office and crossed look for a good daycare off my to-do list. It felt impossible to find a new job during a recession, with a 4-week-old infant occupying most of my days (and nights). I was fortunate—we were able to get by on my husband’s salary—and so I settled, at least for the time being, into staying at home with my son. I was also harboring a secret: I wanted to write a book.

I planned to stay at home for a year, which would allow me to spend that precious time with my son and turn out a draft of a novel. It shows how much I knew about writing a novel—or caring for an infant—that I thought I could master both in a matter of months. It wasn’t until a few years later that I finished that book, a work of historical fiction. By that time, I’d moved across the country, had another child, and flung myself into parenting with all the drive and energy that I’d brought to becoming a professional. I was now a professional parent.

Writing was something that I did in my “off” moments: during nap time, early in the morning, or late at night, and only after the laundry was folded, dinner was made, and stories were read. I didn’t put my writing first, and so it always came last. At the time, this made sense to me. Writing wasn’t a real job, because real jobs paid the mortgage. It felt wrong to take time away from my family to work on something I was afraid might be no more than a glorified hobby.

Being a parent is a bit like being a celebrity with a small but adoring fan base watching your every move.

When I imagined going back to work, I saw myself donning a slightly out-of-date suit and rushing into an office. In some ways, having that distinction between home and work might have been easier. But just as I started writing my second novel, the world was upended once again, this time by the pandemic, and suddenly the line between work and home collapsed on itself.

Despite (or perhaps because of) all the turmoil, I felt a new sense of urgency about writing this book, and I was forced to finally set boundaries around my time. I had to train myself not to jump up from my laptop when the kids needed a snack or help with their math homework. But my husband helped me hold the line, reminding the kids that they could ask him for help. He made my work a priority, and they should too.

After years of being the primary parent, it was difficult watching my husband and kids go for hikes without me as I stayed home to rewrite a chapter or brainstorm new ideas. But in the end, the work paid off. The book got picked up by a publisher, and I felt, for the first time since I’d had kids, like I had a “real” job.

Being a parent is a bit like being a celebrity with a small but adoring fan base watching your every move. I often think of my children as paparazzi, thrilled by each little change or variation from routine. If I step out of the bathroom wearing lipstick, they’ll always comment on it. The hours I was now spending writing and editing my book were a subject of endless fascination to them.

Deep in the last round of revisions on my new novel, I gave up any semblance of running the house or putting the kids first. Planted in my seat at the dining room table for hours on end, I did little more than glance up occasionally as my husband ushered the kids to and from playdates and activities. Whenever I had to tear myself away from the world of my book, I felt like a sea creature breaching the water’s surface, disoriented, blinking at the sun, before descending back into the more familiar depths.

It was in one of these moments that my son gave me his own worried look and said, “Mom, you look so sad when you’re writing.”

“Mom doesn’t look sad,” my husband quickly interjected. “She looks serious. She’s working.” And then he whisked the kids outside to ride skateboards, leaving me in peace—or as my kids apparently saw it, agony—to finish my revisions.

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Rita Cameron is the author of two novels, The House Party (William Morrow, forthcoming 2022) and Ophelia’s Muse (Kensington Books, 2015). She studied English at Columbia University and law at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a 2022-23 Graduate Steinbeck Fellow in the MFA program at San Jose State University. She grew up in Philadelphia and Bucks County, PA, and now lives in San Jose, California, with her family. She enjoys hiking, cooking, traveling, reading, and throwing overly-ambitious theme parties.