yes please(15)

We moved away to a not-so-neighboring town. Dad went to work every day with the car and you and I were alone all day, in unknown territory. No one knew about postpartum depression then, or dared to speak its name (“Snap out of it!” was the more common reply), but knowing what I know now, I am quite sure that the signs were there for me. I was often overcome with loneliness, unsure about my choices, missing my friends. Motherhood was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, all-encompassing job. It was the hardest job I had ever had. Everything that happened to you happened to me. I had once heard children described in a novel as “hostages to fortune” and certainly my happiness depended on yours. You were not a sleeping baby. You stared at me with those blue eyes at all hours of the day and night.

I would walk the length and breadth of our town, singing Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World.” It was the time of the burgeoning women’s movement and the National Organization for Women had just been launched, and I was curious and bewildered at the same time. Where did I belong in this new world?

Moving to a new suburban town when you were five made all the difference. Here lived some college friends and a host of other educated women. Most of them were also at home providing full-time child care. These women and I “volunteered” and you came with me. We made paths for a town walking trail, read to kindergartners, delivered meals to shut-ins, and constructed floats for the Fourth of July parade on which you and your brother sat proudly and waved. We were busy and productive, involved in town politics and issues. It was the beginning of networking for me, a time of making connections and defining goals and career plans. You were always part of all this, watching me become my own person, motivated and ready for change.

—EILEEN POEHLER

I WAS THRILLED TO HAVE A DAUGHTER AND SPECIFICALLY asked the florist to put a card on the arrangement that read, “Glad it’s a girl!” I have never forgotten holding you as a newborn, with your whole fanny fitting in the palm of my hand. I figured I would wait for the appropriate time to describe this to you, and now seems like a nice, private moment!

—BILL POEHLER,

also chiming in



That’s my birth story. I was small and fussy, and remain so as an adult. Three years later my younger brother and only sibling, Greg, was born. I remember my father dressing me to go to the hospital and my mother commenting on how he put the wrong pants on me. I remember loving my brother instantly. He was my first friend.

If your parents are still alive, call them today and ask them to describe the day you were born. Write the details down here, on the following pages. Tell the story every year on your birthday until you know it by heart.





sorry, sorry, sorry


I SAY “SORRY” A LOT. When I am running late. When I am navigating the streets of New York. When I interrupt someone. I say, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” in one long stream. The sentence becomes “Sorrysorrysorry” and it’s said really fast, as if even the act of apologizing is something to apologize for. But this doesn’t mean I am a pushover. It doesn’t mean I am afraid of conflict or don’t know how to stand up for myself. I am getting to a place right in the middle where I feel good about exactly how much I apologize. It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate.

I am still learning the right balance. Sometimes I go too far the other way. I have a quick temper and I’m not afraid to argue. Once, I was flying from New York to Toronto with Tina Fey and Ana Gasteyer on our way to shoot Mean Girls. We were flying in first class and spent the hour-long, ten A.M. flight chatting about life and work. The man sitting next to me was in an expensive suit on his way to a meeting, and I got the sense that he hated us and our friendly back-and-forth. A few times during the flight he sighed loudly, which I took as a sign that we were bothering him. I ignored it. Maybe that was a mistake, but sighing doesn’t really work on me. As we got off the airplane and headed toward the moving walkway, the man pushed past me and jostled me a bit.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Excuse me? Excuse you!” he said.

I looked up at his boring, rich-guy face. He was turning red. I realized he was preparing to scold me. He had bumped into me on purpose to teach me a lesson.

“You girls were talking the entire flight,” he said. “You should not be in first class!”

All of my lower-middle-class Boston issues rose to the surface. I don’t like it when bratty, privileged old white guys speak to me like I am their mouthy niece. I got that amazing feeling you get when you know you are going to lose it in the best, most self-righteous way. I just leaned back and yelled, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU.” Then I chased him as he tried to get away from me.

“You rich motherf*cker! Who do you think you are? You’re not better than me. Fuck you and your f*cking opinions, you piece of shit.”

And on and on. Tina was laughing. Or horrified. I don’t remember; I was in a rage haze. Also I was showing off, which can be at the very least embarrassingly transparent and at the very worst careless and dangerous. But who doesn’t love self-righteous anger? It’s great. When I yell at the dads drinking coffee and looking at their phones at the playground while their seven-year-olds play on the preschool monkey bars, I feel like I am fully alive.

But for the most part I try not to yell “f*ck you.” I try to say “yes please.” And “thank you.” “Yes please” and “thank you” and “sorry, sorry, sorry.”