Welcome to the Commian podcast. This is Jeff Krasno. Okay, so today's episode is a reading from my

doting and long-suffering partner, Skyler, from her essay titled The Blessing and the Curse.

She is referring to motherhood, of course, and this is a topic

that she is well qualified to address. I dutifully delivered three X chromosomes, and she's done

the balance of the rest. Sure, I have been a devoted, affectionate, and loving father.

But Skyler's dedication to our children and their dance classes and dentistry and school applications and self-esteem issues is nothing less than heroic.

And today I am enveloped by a profound sense of awe and gratitude, not just for her, but for all mothers

who walk the razor's edge of both baking and earning the bread, nursing both child and parent.

I envision Skyler somewhat ridiculously as Durga, the Hindu goddess with a dozen arms, bearing not the weapons

of ancient India, but the tools of modernity, battered iPhone, corporate prospectus, digital

thermometer, cast iron pan, reusable diaper, kitty litter box, father's bedpan, and wheelbarrow

of mulch.

Mothers manage not just to tame chaos, but conducted into symphonies.

So without further delay, here's my beloved Skyler, reading her Mother's Day musing titled

The Blessing and the Curse, a mother's ode to her mother in five parts.

Part one.

Bittersweet fruit.

I didn't lust after motherhood,

except for a brief interlude in my early teens

when I desperately wanted an itty-bitty helpless baby

that loved only me.

Oh, evolutionary biology, you crafty old bastard. My mother, Anne, or Annie,

...