Get (Home) Schooled

Women Be Gathering!

I promise to stop going on and on about it, but last week’s event with Caroline Chambers and Eliza Dumais was MAGNIFICENT. Yes, the setting was dreamy with the valley sprawled at our feet and the (Wild Plum) wines were flowing, but it was the women who made it a night to remember. What is it about a room full of women that sets my heart aflutter? It just feels so nice to be amongst my people.

But, oh boy, do I need to work on my public speaking! In my head, I am full of delightful witticisms and tender anecdotes. Then I get in front of a crowd and all I can think to say is “it’s so nice to gather and get together and… gather.” I revert to some kind of strange foraging mindset. Gathering! But my abrupt introduction didn’t matter a whit once Caroline and Eliza started chatting and being charming and making the room erupt in peals of laughter.

I’ve realized how much this sense of community really fills me up and I don’t think I’m alone based on the sweet text messages and DMs that have flooded my phone since the event. We are hungry for connection. We want to stop scrolling and leave the dinner planning to someone else and schedule a babysitter so we can bask in each other’s company. Women!! You better believe I’m working on the next one.

⚡️ Exciting news!! ⚡️ The new and very shoppable Wild Plum Books website is finally live!!!! Browse books, shop for merch, get someone a gift card. The world is your oyster.

• Cherry red ballet flats to wear all spring long.

• Santa brought Faye an iPod for Christmas and it is hands down one of his best gifts. We keep adding music, but I feel a kind of pressure when it comes to shaping her musical experience!! I’m trying to give her a broad range: Roy Orbison next to Olivia Dean. KATSEYE and David Bowie. Billie Holiday and Lady Gaga. Also thinking she needs some cool punk-rock women like The Linda Lindas. Any other suggestions??

• This Loeffler Randall rain jacket!! Incredible.

• I love the matte 90s feel of this soft brown eye shadow stick. Also, I’m a sucker for a tinted lip balm and this new HydroBalm from Westman Atelier is fantastic.

Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block

Oh! This memoir about a boy and his mother is incredibly entertaining and it also broke my heart in a million ways. Stefan’s mom — who is increasingly paranoid and anti-establishment — convinces her 4th grader to give homeschooling a try. “Just for a year!” she says. She believes ardently that traditional schooling is dulling the potential genius in her kid.

But it quickly becomes clear that she is simply trying to keep him close. To turn back time. In an attempt to get his darkening hair to look like the sweet blond fluff of his toddler years, she peroxides his head until his scalp is burning and peeling and his hair takes on an unnatural orange color.

Convinced that Stefan’s bad handwriting is directly linked to the fact that he barely crawled as a baby, his mom makes him crawl on his hands and knees for months. Even after his palms are raw and his knees have purpled. During lessons in the pool, she holds him against her chest and rocks him, singing in his ear. He is 12.

This copy was damaged upon delivery so guess who got to take it home??

What doesn’t get nearly enough explanation in the book though is that fact that Stefan has an older brother! Who is at the public school! And a father who doesn’t once comment on the strange homeschooling experiment. They are very minor figures in the book and I had some big questions about their role in Stefan’s life. It is an incredibly insular world, just he and his mom for years on end.

Then Stefan has enough and enrolls in the public high school where your heart breaks in different ways. The actual loneliness of being by himself at home is replaced with the loneliness of not fitting in. Of being bullied.

There is the intensity of his mother’s love. The sheer force of it. Stefan is not cruel or blaming, he understands that everything she did, she did for him. For them. And he also comes to understand that, in order to live his own life, he will have to destroy hers. What a marvelous book.

1. They love to cruise around, blaring “I Get Around” by The Beach Boys. This 1983 tour tee would be perfect.

2. Feeling the full flush of college freedom, Stefan paints his nails and dyes his hair. I’m not one for wacky, glittery nail polish, but I do love a bright poppy red.

3. A colored sweatshirt to smarten up your loungewear vibes.

4. A bathing suit with full bum coverage! The dream. And Stefan’s mom will also want something modest for days in the pool with her son.

5. If you’re going to be home all day, then you’re wearing soft pants. Loving the red, but they also come in quieter colors.

6. Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block

7. House-bound calls for house shoes. I slip my Rothy’s on the minute I walk through the door. And they are machine washable! Genius.

8. A stack of Michael Crichton books to fuel young Stefan’s imagination.

9. I have these Kyoto pants in the chocolate color and wear them all summer long. They’re crispy and a little scrubs-ish, but they also look great on. Since Stefan lives in Texas, they’re absolutely a year-round pant.

10. To combat the painful sounding acne that Stefan suffers in high school, lets get him a Kim K approved LED mask to clear things up.

Hope you’re reading something good and recovering from the loss of that precious hour of sleep 💚