good comic/bad mom

When I was a child, we lived next door to a family with kids our age. On the other side of their house was another family with kids our age. Our parents all became friends and are friends to this day, despite each family eventually moving away from the block. For years, we all had bonfires on our driveway in a round steel grill that someone dragged out from their garage. We went camping together at Jellystone Park. All of us kids road bikes around the block, and we played kickball in the lot behind our houses, occasionally getting yelled at by the old man whose property it was. 

The moms arranged for us to have swimming lessons at the same time. With this system, one mom could stay at home with the babies while another mom went to pick up those of us learning the backstroke. I don’t remember much of swimming lessons. I recall playing a game where we stood at the edge of the pool, crouched down, pretending to be seeds. Our swimming instructor dripped water on our feet and told us to grow. We announced what kind of tree we were. “I’m a cherry tree!” “I’m an apple tree!” “I’m a money tree,” inevitably declared. Once we were fully grown, the instructor chopped us down, and we fell into the pool. I remember thinking, “Now, this is fun.” 

One day after lessons, my neighbor Mary came to retrieve us - her daughter Sara, me, my sister, and perhaps Joe, too, from the next house over. It was summer, the windows were down. The pool was across town, and as Mary drove us back, she sang along to the radio. I was always a little intimidated by Mary, but sitting in that car, hearing her voice, I was mesmerized. I wondered, “Does she have any idea what a great voice she has?” And then I thought, “Wow, she could’ve become famous if she hadn’t had all those kids.”  

Already at age eight, I did not believe that women could have it all. You could not become a famous singer and also bear three children. 

And that’s what has stuck with me about that day. Mary’s lost stardom, and being a cherry tree felled into chlorine. 

—

We drive westward from our house, north of Milwaukee, toward the Twin Cities. I’ll be headlining a little club, the Comedy Corner Underground, in Minneapolis, and as we pass through little towns I passed through as a kid, I think about the last time I was in Minneapolis.

In October of 2019, I did a festival in Minneapolis called Ten Thousand Laughs. It was my first time performing in the Midwest in years, and I flew into Milwaukee and spent a couple days with my parents before the shows. They picked me up at the airport, and in the car, my dad asked if I wanted to have a cocktail with him when we got home. I said I probably shouldn’t on account of being pregnant. It was early in my pregnancy, so early that often people don’t yet make it public news. 

My mom and one of my brothers and I drove to Minnesota. My mom had never seen me do comedy before, had never been to any comedy show, and I said I would do a clean set for her. 

My friend Paige was doing the festival, too. Paige didn’t know I was pregnant yet. In most circumstances, we would have been drinking after our shows, but Paige and I were on different shows with different times and so it didn’t make sense to meet up afterwards. I was grateful to not have to give a reason for not drinking, and I was happy to go to bed early. In my first trimester, I slept half the day. 

The morning after that first night of shows, I went out for brunch with my mom, my brother, Paige, and Wanjiko, a comedian who started around the same time I did but who had since moved to New York. It was just warm enough to sit outside. I got pancakes. 

On the last night of the festival, I had a set at ACME, and I was nervous. I left the green room and sat at a table in the foyer. An Atlanta comic I just met came up to me, saw I was nervous, offered me some booze. “No thanks,” I said. “I’m not drinking right now.” He stopped, stared. “You’re pregnant.” I laughed. “I am!” 

I think about that weekend as I drive back out there, this time without having to board a plane, this time with my husband and my son. 

Doing this is harder now. We load up books and toys, snacks, the pack n’ play, diapers, wipes. After an hour and a half of my husband next to our son in the backseat, Raffi blaring, we stop for french fries and swap places. My son is not thrilled about being in the car. I read to him, growing carsick as I glance at the text on each page. I sing, “Papa-papa-bo-bapa-banana-fana-fo-fapa” for twenty minutes. I tell him about my friend we’re staying with, I remind him that she has blue hair and a cat. “Blue hair!” I say. “Cat! Meow!” He asks for more. “Blue hair! Cat, meow!” Over the five-hour drive, he naps twenty minutes. We are getting close to St. Paul, but I wonder how we will ever do the drive back. 

And in the morning, instead of wondering how I’m going to kill time before the shows, instead of sleeping in and going thrifting and enjoying a leisurely brunch, I wonder how we will entertain our toddler for twelve hours. 

—

Last year, when we move to Wisconsin, my first show back is at the Laugh Factory in Chicago for a JFL audition. It’s April, 2021, I have just been vaccinated, and it’s strange to be doing comedy again, to be doing comedy as a mother, and to be doing it in Chicago and not LA. After my set, I am complimented by a tiny blond woman. I ask her her name, and it’s Kristen Toomey. If I haven’t met her before, I’d at least seen her before. “I did shows in Chicago five years ago,” I tell her. “And you were headlining everywhere.” Someone next to us says, “That sounds about right.” I don’t say it, but I also can picture a comedian in a green room whispering to me about Kristen: “She’s really good. And get this, she’s a mom.”

Kristen Toomey is smaller than I remember. If I look at a person and think they’re small, they must be very small indeed. Is she shorter than me? I wonder later. I ask her what it’s like doing stand-up as a mom, if her kids mind it. Her daughter hates it, she says, but her son is twelve and he thinks, “You gotta do what you gotta do.” He doesn’t mind if she jokes about him. I show her a picture of my son. I tell her it’s hard. I tell her I don’t know what to do, about LA and Wisconsin, and how it feels dumb to leave because I was gaining all this momentum but I also want my son to have a yard, but I love comedy so much, was it dumb to have a baby? “With comedy, the highs are incredible, but the lows are low,” she says. “Comedy won’t always be there for you. But your kid? But that little guy? He’s always there. No matter what. You will never regret him.” She says, “It is a balance, and I am still always getting it wrong. Comedy, my kids, I am often failing at one or the other.” She asks me how old I am. “You’re young. You’ve got your whole career ahead of you. LA will still be there if you need it.” Kristen believes in God, and I wonder if she’s a sign that God’s real, because Kristen is exactly what I need in this moment. We hug. We cry. We take off our masks, we put them back on. Back at the Airbnb, I tell my husband about the conversation, and he says, “Thank Christ for this Kristen person.” 

—

As a child, I did not believe that women could have it all, but as I grew older, I changed my mind. When my husband and I decided to try to get pregnant, it was with the understanding that I would continue doing comedy. Other moms do it, we reasoned. And they do. But not that many. And the ones who do, how? How? The ones who are famous, okay, of course, sure. But the ones who aren’t famous? The ones with day jobs? HOW??? It is only after giving birth and returning to stand-up that I’m realizing actually, my childish understanding wasn’t too far off. 

It is hard to do comedy with a baby, but it is also hard to just do anything with a baby. Making a sandwich can be hard with a baby. Talking on the phone. Taking a shit. Washing your hair. All harder. A few months back, I spoke to an old professor on the phone. I told her I had moved back to the Midwest, that I had gotten depressed after my son’s birth. A mother herself, she understood. She said that the first few years of her son’s life were so consuming that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to finish another book. “Finish reading a book,” she emphasized. “But things do change, and since he’s been born, I’ve written three books.” She told me that it’s terrible, but it’s a phase, it’s not forever, and all you can do is remind yourself that it’s not forever and try to find some moments of joy in the place where you’re at. 

Someday my son will read books on his own. Someday he will play outside without needing me to make sure he doesn’t hurl himself into the street because he sees a butterfly on the other side. Someday he will have friends over, and they’ll prefer if I’m out of the room. Someday, I will look back and miss the days when he wanted me to chase him around the kitchen, when he wanted me to read If You Give a Pig a Pancake just so he could tell the little girl in the story that she shouldn’t be standing on a chair. 

Someday, it will be easier to be a mother and do stand-up. 

Until then, I wonder about Mary, belting The Supremes, lighting up the already-hot summer streets in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. A teacher herself, did Mary ever want more than that, more than kids, a husband? Did she even want to be a music sensation? Was it really the kids who kept her from it? Did she ever want to leave that town, or did she know that most of what she wanted was contained within the city limits, and whatever was left, whatever she desired beyond that, was not guaranteed, even if she got out?