Elissa Altman, MOTHERLAND: A MEMOIR OF LOVE, LOATHING, AND LONGING
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[1:54]I am really excited to be here with Alyssa Altman today, who's the author of Motherland,
[1:58]a memoir of love, loathing, and longing.
[2:00]Alyssa is also the author of The Critically Acclaimed Book Trade for my life as an unorthodox
[2:05]atla, and poor man's feast, a love story of comfort, desire, and the art of simple cooking.
[2:10]She wrote The James Beard Award-winning blog by the same name.
[2:13]Alyssa's work has been published in O The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times,
[2:17]Saver and The Washington Post, where she wrote a year-long column entitled Feeding My Mother.
[2:22]Her work has been included in Best Food Writing for the past six years, and she was an
[2:26]novelist for the Frank McCourt memoir prize.
[2:29]She currently lives with her wife and can I get?
[2:31]Welcome, Alyssa.
[2:32]Thank you so much.
[2:33]Thank you for having me.
[2:34]This is great.
[2:35]Uh-uh.
[2:36]So can you please tell listeners what Motherland is about and what inspired you to write it?
[2:41]Oh, my goodness.
[2:42]Well, as I actually recently described Motherland as to someone as a story of what would
[2:49]happen if Anna Wintour gave birth to the Susie character from Mrs. Maisel.
[2:56]And the latter had to come back and be the caregiver for Anna.
[3:01]And please forgive me.
[3:02]Anna, I doubt that you will hear me saying these words, but I don't know, I don't know.
[3:09]It's a motherland is really a memoir of moral obligation and certainly a memoir of love.
[3:17]It's a story about what happens when we are called to make a decision about coming back
[3:24]to the fray, coming back into a relationship from which we have painstakingly extricated
[3:30]ourselves after a very long arduous and difficult relationship.
[3:35]Do we do it?
[3:36]Do we not do it?
[3:37]Some years ago there was a book written by a wonderful journalist named Jane Gross who wrote
[3:43]a long blog for The New York Times called The New Old Age and then she wrote a book
[3:50]that came out of that.
[3:52]And one of the questions was what happens when a senior needs their family and needs their
[4:00]children and they have a terrible relationship with those children.
[4:05]And she actually tells a story about the fact that some people would drop their senior
[4:12]parent off at their assisted living or the rehab or whatever, pay the bill and never be
[4:17]never to be seen or heard from again.
[4:19]Could I do anything like that?
[4:21]No, I couldn't.
[4:22]My mother and I, as you know, as you know, through the book, have this crazy addicted relationship
[4:29]codependent to an extreme.
[4:32]And so the story was really born out of this experience.
[4:37]I live two and a half hours away from my mother.
[4:40]I took me years to get here, years to get away and in 2016 she suffered a significant
[4:48]injury and I had to make the decision or the decision made itself.
[4:53]How is I going to care for her and survive?
[4:57]I mean it's like I call it like modern family meets postcards from the edge.
[5:02]It just is, it's who we are.
[5:04]And I do believe that we have a moral obligation to care for the seniors in our midst
[5:08]whether or not they make us want to put our heads in the oven.
[5:13]And why now?
[5:14]What made you, after she had her injury, what made you say, okay, I have to write a book
[5:18]about this?
[5:19]Well, I had actually started writing the book before the injury happened.
[5:24]I had a year-long column in the Washington Post called Feeding My Mother and I have a long
[5:30]history as a food writer but feeding my mother was really about nurturing and sustaining
[5:37]someone who will not be nurtured and not be sustained.
[5:41]You know, my mom is a former model.
[5:44]She was modeling as recently as 15 years ago.
[5:48]She's really, she is a force of nature.
[5:51]She hates food, she just wishes that she will not be nurtured that way.
[5:58]And of course the universe works in mysterious ways and she wound up with a food writer
[6:03]as a daughter because that's what happens.
[6:06]So I wrote this year-long column about tending to her nurturing and sustenance needs
[6:13]as she's getting older.
[6:16]And I had done a TEDx talk that was connected to the same column.
[6:21]And so that was really the launch pad for the idea of the book.
[6:26]You know, how do these two incredibly different, you know, mother and daughter?
[6:32]How do we navigate this world?
[6:36]When our roles have reversed, you know, I'm now charged with caring for her.
[6:40]How do we, you know, how do we do that?
[6:42]And so I started writing, I was writing essays, I was writing a lot of pieces about it.
[6:47]My second book had come out, I went off on a book tour, I came home, it was a Saturday
[6:52]night, I sat down, I put my bags down, I might have had a glass of wine.
[6:57]And I thought, okay, I'm just going to give myself this day and I'm going to, you know,
[7:02]and then I'm going to start working on motherland and the phone ring.
[7:07]And at the other end was my mother saying, I fell.
[7:10]The two words that we will all of us will hear at some point, I fell.
[7:16]She was two and a half hours away, I had to get into the car with my partner, drive
[7:20]down, and that began the unraveling of this, of what ultimately became this memoir.
[7:27]Wow.
[7:28]Yeah.
[7:29]I also think as much as your book is about taking care of an elderly parent, it's also,
[7:34]I felt, a real coming of age for you, even though it's later in life, it's still like
[7:38]a, how do you create your own boundaries and how do you sort of separate from the close
[7:44]relationships you have from your childhood and sort of become an adult, which I think is
[7:48]relevant at any age, like somebody 21 could be reading this book and completely identify
[7:52]in somebody, you know, 80, you know, who's dealing with their 100 year old parents.
[7:56]So I think there's a lot of attention.
[7:58]I say that the 80 who's dealing with 100 year old parents, you know, but that's the way
[8:02]it is, right?
[8:03]I mean, people live so much longer and my grandmother's 95 years old, you know, my mom
[8:09]is 70 and she's still, you know, I mean, anyway, so yeah, yeah, but you write so beautifully.
[8:16]I was hoping to just read a passage if you don't mind from the beginning of the book,
[8:21]which was just so beautiful.
[8:23]You had just come in from Iran, you say, on this day, the sun isn't all the way up
[8:27]and the interior of the house is a murky gray.
[8:29]I have just come in from Iran.
[8:30]I was never a runner, but I began recently because it creates a kind of porosity.
[8:35]It allows air and light to filter through me and loosens the knot that snares me every
[8:39]morning before eight when I answer the phone in that slim moment between the ring and
[8:44]my mother's voice, a rest, a beat, a break in the symbiosis that has defined us and
[8:49]the universe in which we've lived.
[8:50]I stand in the kitchen and stare at the phone.
[8:53]I inhale.
[8:54]It rings.
[8:55]The dog barks.
[8:56]Well, I choose my response.
[8:58]The seconds between stimulus and reaction, Victor Frankel, called it in which lies
[9:02]my freedom.
[9:03]Ah, that's so good.
[9:05]Thank you.
[9:07]You tell us so much in that passage.
[9:08]It's like your mother's calling you every day.
[9:11]You pick up anyway, like why do you, you know, and you're, you dread it, but you do
[9:15]it, right?
[9:16]So I know a therapist and your partner at one point said, what about not picking up the
[9:21]phone every time?
[9:23]Talk to me about that and how this sort of entreasiveness in your daily life came about
[9:27]and how you learned to cope with it.
[9:29]My fear and I think it's the fear of any adult child of a senior person, always when
[9:39]the phone rings, it's like, oh my God, did they fall?
[9:42]Did this happening?
[9:43]Is it, it's, it's crisis management and I'm sure I don't have children, but I'm sure
[9:48]it's the same with children, you know, you never know what's going to happen.
[9:51]You never know when the phone rings and, and that's, that's the switch in me in my brain
[9:58]that flips every time the phone
[10:00]And it's definitely Pavlovian.
[10:02]There's no question about it.
[10:03]And she knows that, but my mother's need to reach me.
[10:08]And my need to be reached by my mother.
[10:12]It's very, very old.
[10:13]And I recently wrote about the fact
[10:16]that when I was in college in Boston,
[10:19]these are the days long before cell phones
[10:22]when everybody had a wall phone and she figured out
[10:27]that my number was ended in something like 8, 8, 5, 4.
[10:32]And then she tried, she called me, she couldn't reach me.
[10:36]She tried my next door neighbors, number 8, 8, 5, 5.
[10:39]Couldn't reach them.
[10:41]Called the next door, 8, 8, 5, 6.
[10:43]And I literally, instead of just unplugging my phone,
[10:46]I took the entire phone off the wall.
[10:49]And she made it around the entire dormitory floor
[10:53]until she finally reached somebody
[10:55]who would then go knock on my door.
[10:58]And I was studying.
[11:00]I was hanging out with my boyfriend
[11:02]at the time, any number of possibilities.
[11:05]So I was raised to believe that when your mother calls you,
[11:09]even if it's 14 times a day, you answer a phone.
[11:13]And that is, it's such addictive behavior.
[11:18]It's so, I'm sure that there's a dopamine component to it
[11:24]in the same way that your phone buzzes
[11:27]and you're automatically compelled to look to see, oh,
[11:31]did my Instagram feed get blah, blah, blah,
[11:33]did somebody trying to reach me?
[11:35]Was the same thing with my mom.
[11:37]And I was trained very, very early on that way.
[11:42]She had that same relationship with her mother.
[11:44]Her mother was gifted keys to our house
[11:48]when I was a child.
[11:49]And Saturday morning, my poor dad,
[11:52]long-suffering father, the door would open
[11:56]and she would show up and there was no boundaries at all.
[12:01]And so it has taken me a very long time.
[12:05]I mean, I'm in my early 50s.
[12:07]It's taken me a very long time to understand
[12:10]that every single time the phone rings,
[12:14]I don't have to answer it.
[12:16]If there is a problem, if there has been a fall,
[12:19]if there's been, I will know.
[12:22]I will definitely know about it.
[12:24]I called her in the morning, I called her in the evening
[12:27]and getting to that point has been a real struggle.
[12:32]And I actually went through something
[12:34]that can only be described as the DTs.
[12:37]I mean, I went through like a detox,
[12:40]not hearing her voice,
[12:41]not answering the phone, making the decision
[12:44]to let it ring and step outside,
[12:46]take the dog out, go for a run,
[12:48]take the phone off the hook, any of those.
[12:51]Because if I say to her, you know,
[12:52]you think about older people,
[12:54]a lot of older people are like children.
[12:56]If I say to her, this is what, here are the boundaries.
[12:59]I'm going to answer the phone between this time
[13:01]and this time, it means nothing.
[13:04]It means nothing.
[13:05]When we stop doing this conversation interview,
[13:08]I'm going to go online and send you
[13:10]an old-fashioned answering machine
[13:12]that you can hear when she talks.
[13:15]And then you will know.
[13:17]And if she says, I've fallen and it's an emergency,
[13:20]you can walk over and pick up the phone.
[13:22]And the funny thing is that, you know,
[13:24]we all have these sort of digital answering services.
[13:27]Now those of us of dinosaurs like myself
[13:29]who still have landlines.
[13:31]And she just, she thinks that I can hear her
[13:33]and then I'm choosing to not,
[13:34]and of course I am choosing not to answer it.
[13:36]Right, right.
[13:37]But I think it would give you some peace of mind.
[13:39]I'm just saying it's a cheap fix
[13:41]as opposed to the therapy that you may
[13:43]not look into.
[13:44]I'm just kidding.
[13:45]You know, it is a question though,
[13:47]because then it's a very fine line.
[13:49]I mean, as people get older,
[13:51]you have to be aware of the fact that there will be a fall.
[13:55]Right.
[13:56]And this will happen and she'll forget the pot on the stove.
[13:58]And it might be the neighbor and, you know,
[14:02]so that's been challenging.
[14:04]But I was sort of wondering as you told this whole story
[14:07]and her need to call you so often,
[14:09]if she was aware of that she was doing it so much.
[14:12]And then when it got to the point
[14:13]when your father passes away, which was so sad,
[14:16]and she says to you,
[14:18]okay, I've given you a month off,
[14:20]but now it's all about me again.
[14:22]I like could not believe she said that.
[14:25]She actually said, she gave me,
[14:28]as I think I described it in the book
[14:29]as being a wide berth.
[14:31]For the month after he passed,
[14:35]he died as a result of a car accident.
[14:38]And so beyond the grief,
[14:41]sort of, you know, encasing the grief
[14:44]were issues of practicality.
[14:46]There were, you know, the insurance issues
[14:49]and the car and the other people
[14:52]who were involved in the accident and my stepmother.
[14:55]And it was a very, very hard and very, it was gnarly, you know.
[15:01]And I don't have any siblings.
[15:03]And so it was just, you know, me having to unravel this.
[15:07]And my mother stepped back.
[15:09]And it was like the first time in our lives
[15:11]that she gave me that period of time.
[15:13]And I think that part of it was the fact
[15:15]that my mother does not do grief well.
[15:17]Grief is something that is not controllable.
[15:21]It's you can't plan for it.
[15:22]You don't know when it's gonna hit
[15:24]or how it's gonna hit.
[15:26]It creeps up on you.
[15:27]It sometimes is something that just,
[15:30]you just never get over.
[15:31]It just changes.
[15:32]I think, you know, I had a conversation at a event
[15:36]with Claire bidwell Smith.
[15:37]And we were taught, we talked about that.
[15:40]She was on my, she was on my podcast.
[15:42]Absolutely amazing.
[15:43]Well, I'm an amazing writer.
[15:45]And it just changes.
[15:47]And so my mom gave me that month for whatever reason.
[15:52]And part of it I think is because she couldn't deal
[15:54]with the grief.
[15:55]And then it was like the day 30 or day 31.
[16:00]And the phone rang and she said,
[16:02]it's been a month.
[16:04]And it is now time for you to focus on me.
[16:07]And those words will stay in my brain
[16:11]in the crevasses of my brain for the rest of my life.
[16:15]And that was really the moment when I realized
[16:19]that this is not a normal situation.
[16:24]And she is in fact suffering from NPD.
[16:29]And people who suffer from NPD,
[16:31]which is narcissistic personality disorder,
[16:34]it's not something that can be cured.
[16:36]They need what they need when they need it.
[16:39]And they will go to any link to feed that narcissist,
[16:44]those narcissistic coffers.
[16:46]And when she said that, it was like that moment in time
[16:51]where I realized what I had been facing all along
[16:55]and what I was going to be facing for the rest of my life
[16:57]and the rest of her life.
[16:59]People who senior citizens often need a lot more.
[17:03]Emotionally, they become like babies.
[17:06]They regress, that's something that just happens.
[17:10]This is that and more, a different version of that.
[17:15]And so it was a shocking revelation.
[17:19]The world around you says, of course, we all knew this.
[17:24]Why didn't you know this?
[17:25]And I didn't know it because I was living in the center
[17:28]of it.
[17:29]I was at the eye of the storm that is my mom
[17:33]and the storm that was our relationship, that is our relationship.
[17:36]And so when that happened is awful as it was for her
[17:39]to say that and for me to hear it,
[17:41]it puts so much into perspective for me.
[17:44]And of course, my partner was sitting there
[17:46]and she said, of course, this is, she's verbalizing what
[17:50]we all have known to be the case with her and her truth.
[17:55]And the problem, because I've read a lot
[17:58]about narcissistic personality disorder
[17:59]is that the person who has it often
[18:02]doesn't acknowledge that they have it.
[18:04]So they don't respond well to treatment.
[18:06]So the only thing you can do is deal with it yourself, basically.
[18:12]And also I've read that oftentimes,
[18:15]and it sounds like obviously this did not happen with you,
[18:17]but that children of parents with narcissistic personality
[18:21]sort of often marry people who also have it.
[18:25]Well, I'm happy to say that I went so far in the other direction.
[18:30]Very, you know, a wonderful woman who is like a quiet,
[18:33]Connecticut Yankee, just very much an observer
[18:37]and a brilliant book designer.
[18:40]And again, very sort of quiet, observant person
[18:44]and probably an impact to an extreme,
[18:48]which is the other side of the spectrum.
[18:50]So, yeah.
[18:52]So a lot of the book was spent describing your mother's appearance
[18:59]and her focus on it herself, right?
[19:01]Her former glory and her makeup
[19:05]and just how she had to look perfect all the time.
[19:09]And your response to that.
[19:10]So I had one question is, like after I read the book,
[19:13]I meant to go online and sort of Google your mom
[19:16]because I was dying to see a picture of her.
[19:18]And I was like, that's creepy, I'm not going to do that.
[19:20]But the way you wrote it made me so curious,
[19:23]because you make her sound like, you know,
[19:26]well, she really that amazingly core.
[19:28]I mean, she sounds like, yeah, she really less.
[19:30]All right.
[19:31]And she still is.
[19:32]And she still is.
[19:33]Oh my gosh.
[19:33]Yes, I'll send you a picture.
[19:35]Okay, please do.
[19:36]So make up in general.
[19:38]Let me just talk about that for two seconds.
[19:40]At the end of the book, you have her in the scene
[19:42]surrounded by bags and bags of makeup.
[19:44]And you have a scene, another scene where you go
[19:46]into her medicine cabinets, you rose
[19:48]of this Clinique red red red red that she wears all the time.
[19:51]And I feel like makeup has so many meanings
[19:53]because I feel like you are trying to make up
[19:55]with your mom throughout this book.
[19:56]And here she is putting on more and more makeup.
[19:58]And I don't know.
[19:59]I just.
[20:00]felt like that was a yeah there was something to it right i mean right right she you know yeah
[20:07]i mean i i i also you know describe early on in the book her longing to put me into a makeover
[20:14]situation you know yeah i was 11 you know and the definition of a makeover is to undo that which
[20:21]that which exists that's i think the actual dictionary definition of it i don't know that so
[20:28]much that i wanted to make up with her i wanted to have a sane life with her we have struggled
[20:37]together and it has been a parallel struggle because as frustrating as it has been for me to
[20:44]have a mother with whom i share zero in common except for a sliver of DNA maybe just a tiny
[20:52]little bit of struck in strand of DNA i look like my dad i talk like my dad i built like my dad
[20:59]i respond to the world around me like my dad i sound like him he was a great writer and so i
[21:06]attribute a lot of what i do and who i am to to my father i think i was a source of great
[21:11]frustration for my mother that she couldn't understand why i was not this person who looked just
[21:20]like her and acted just like her and you know we were as different as different as nine and day
[21:26]and so it's been frustrating for her it's also been very frustrating for me why can't you
[21:32]understand who you know who i who i am so make up perhaps that might be a way we might have made
[21:40]up would have been to come to terms with the fact that we're very very different we love each
[21:45]other anyway and we're almost there we're at that you know we're at that point i don't really
[21:52]get sucked into the engagement of you know the the whole animosity thing anymore she that again
[21:58]that's another dopamine rush for her she loves the fight she loves the argument and it's just not
[22:04]who i am i was for a long time when i lived there and it was very difficult but so i think where
[22:11]makeup is concerned that's the you know another central is absolutely a central meaning of makeup
[22:17]in our lives for my mom you know makeup was that which she was able to hide behind she grew up
[22:26]believing and being told by her mother and her father that she was very unattractive as a child
[22:33]and that this and she grew up you know when in the late 30s early 40s at a time of you know the
[22:40]bombshells in the movies in the war and the pin up girls and so on and so forth and so
[22:45]every time she looked in the mirror as a child she felt that there was this terribly unattractive
[22:52]person staring back at her and she started to she claims that she was heavy as a child i've seen
[22:59]pictures of her and you know she was a little chubby little girl but not in any way that you would
[23:04]be like oh my god this child's gonna be ill and you know and she was not anyway like that but
[23:11]she was a tremendous fan of the movies as a child her parents would drop her off at the movies
[23:17]and pay them like you know 75 cents just to let her sit there all day and and again she was
[23:23]also an only child and so she wanted to be like these people she saw in the movies and so
[23:29]she was a singer as a very young child on radio and then with the advent of television
[23:36]in the late 1940s she was like that's what i you know she thought that's what i want to do
[23:42]and she went to uh what was the school uh perform high school performing arts in New York
[23:48]and basically starved herself lived on cigarettes and black coffee as a 16 year old
[23:54]sold her lunch sandwiches and and tells this to me you know all the time and she changed her body
[24:02]like met from a metabolic standpoint and she's very long and thin and wide and she's always been
[24:10]that way like 117 pounds when left leg weighs 117 now and she just she fell in love with makeup
[24:19]she just fell in love with it and it became the thing that saved her and so she put it on
[24:26]and looks in the mirror and she's the person she won't always wanted to be and so she you know
[24:33]she hoards it i think she has always hoarded it so there was that scene in the book where you
[24:38]know where we go back to her apartment and we find 31 tubes of Clinique red red red lipstick I
[24:44]mean it was my mother kept clean you know keeps Clinique in business and i used to get really
[24:48]crazy and upset about that and then i realized it's her nurturing it's her sustenance
[24:54]it's the thing that she needs to excess there's definitely an addiction component there
[24:59]but i'm not at the point where i can say okay mom enough you know how does your mom feel about
[25:06]this book my mother believes that all publicity is good publicity as a my mother is a is um it's
[25:12]also a long time singer and she was on television she still sings from time to time publicly
[25:18]she read all of the washington post articles uh grumbled about them a little bit i think grumbled
[25:23]when uh the post reveals her age that was the thing she complained about she knows that we have
[25:30]had a very difficult time of it and i have said to her you know i'm hoping that this book is going
[25:36]to provide hope for other mothers and daughters who live at polar opposites and don't know
[25:44]that there is a way to find peace together because you know what i don't want to give away the
[25:49]end of the story but we did find a way to really understand and love each other that is possible
[25:56]and she knows that's there and i think as long as she knows that's there it's okay she's got
[26:02]the galley she hasn't read it yet oh my goodness she walks into Shakespeare and company on
[26:08]the upper west side waves it around that's two she is oh my god she got to recoverance
[26:14]has this is me you know this one's me and this one's error so yeah that's just crazy i mean it's
[26:20]perfect it's just so perfect is there anything you would tell like let's say you were starting
[26:25]life from the beginning again let's say from when you're 16 years old or somebody you know somebody
[26:30]else's 16 year has a child or is going through something similar with a similar type of mother
[26:35]or at older age from all of your experience with your mother do you have advice for that person
[26:41]step away and learn who you are as an independent person and with that independence
[26:48]you will be able to step back into your into relationship with her and find love
[26:53]where you might know it think that it exists that break that i had you know the physical break
[27:01]the move away from new york my mother doesn't drive so it's not like she can just get into the
[27:06]car and drive up to you know Connecticut where i live that move away from her was an emotional
[27:13]break from her it was a physical break it was a psychological break from her had that not happened
[27:20]i probably would not be having this conversation with it was very very important it was the hardest
[27:26]thing that i could do i didn't have to go to california to do it i didn't have to go to japan
[27:33]to do it i moved a couple of hours away i created i had the possibility i found the possibility of
[27:39]my own life and finding love and meaning in my own life and once i was able to do that and to honor
[27:47]my own needs i was able to step back and be her caregiver with boundaries it's something that
[27:55]i never thought was going to happen when i was living in new york city in the 90s it was like
[28:00]oh my god this is now i used to come home from work and find her sitting in my lobby she would
[28:04]show up at my office and you know my boss would come downstairs and say she's here again you know
[28:11]and she just thought that that was okay you know um had i not made the move away i don't think that
[28:18]i would have ever been able to make the bound i never would have been able to see her as a separate
[28:24]person and see myself as a separate person and honor her as a separate person she's an
[28:29]incredibly extraordinary and interesting person i was far too close to her to really see that
[28:36]until i left and you're such a talented writer i mean i truly am not just saying this i loved
[28:42]the book and some sentences i just like had to pause to reread and i love when books make that
[28:47]happens me do you have any advice to other authors out there i know you've done tons of essay
[28:52]writing and memoir and food writing any advice i think primarily in the the world that we live
[28:59]in now it's such a distracting world i think a lot of writers say this and offer this as
[29:04]as advice it's really really important to disconnect from the digital digital universe
[29:11]but and by that i mean social media a lot of our a lot of us use our cell phones is our
[29:17]primary phones myself included shut it off put it in another room
[29:21]the need to pick it up and look at it absolutely pulls you away from
[29:26]the time and focus that you need to create something that is longer than a sentence long
[29:32]so that's that's one thing i think in a social media um you know dany shapira once wrote
[29:38]a few years ago it was quite a while ago and it was a prophecy i think uh that uh it was a piece that
[29:45]i think ran in the new yorker dot com it was a status update is not an essay a status update is not
[29:51]a memoir use your social media that's fine but give yourself the time away from it to create
[29:58]the longer form work
[30:00]So that's my first suggestion.
[30:01]My second of always is read, read everything you can,
[30:06]read out of the genre that you work in
[30:09]or that you want to work in.
[30:11]Think about sound when you write,
[30:14]think about economy of language.
[30:17]All of those things, a lot of us don't think about sound
[30:20]when we write, read out loud to yourself,
[30:23]read your workout loud to yourself,
[30:25]and just listen.
[30:26]And the oral A-U-R-A-L quality of words
[30:32]is as important, I think, as what we read on paper.
[30:37]And it's something that very few people
[30:38]I think really think about.
[30:40]So that's really important.
[30:42]Everything I ever write, I read out loud to my husband.
[30:44]Good, yeah.
[30:47]Not like I have a book like yours.
[30:49]Anyway, well, thank you so much for coming on mom.
[30:51]So I have time to read books.
[30:52]I feel like I could talk to you about this all day,
[30:54]but, and we probably will.
[30:57]Yeah, that'd be nice.
[31:00]All right, well, thank you.
[31:01]See you again.
[31:01]Bye.
[31:02]Bye.
[31:03]Thanks again to my sponsor, Libro FM audio books.
[31:07]Thanks for listening to mom's don't have time to read books.
[31:09]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
[31:13]to read books and at zippy Owens
[31:15]and my new podcast at Kids Do Have Time to Read.
[31:18]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[31:21]for the sound editing.
[31:22]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[31:24]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[31:27]Thanks for listening.
[31:28]You can always email me at zippy at zippy Owens.com.