Mother, Can You Not? (15 page)

I would like to thank: My followers on social media—truly, you were wonderful and kind throughout this process. There were at least a dozen occasions on which a lovely comment or message from you made me feel like less of a human pile of garbage (and by the end of writing this, I hadn’t showered for five consecutive days, so that’s something!).

Julia Weigel…oh my, I definitely cannot express my thanks and love for you in a single sentence, so I’ll just say: “Who cares? Live ya life!” Moira Weigel for being one of the only forces keeping me sane while I wrote this book. Actually, the entire Weigel clan: Kathy and Bill Weigel for years of kindness and for putting a roof over my head on more than one occasion of homelessness. Also, Jack Altman for having a truly enormous face.

Jacob Loewenstein, Yael Nachajon, Ben Weisman, and Joanna Loewenstein for being
okay
people and for
letting me write about them by name! Kham Kidia for agreeing (in advance of receiving his MD) to perform all my mother’s future Botox injections. Jon Miller for being a boss and for loving Kathy Griffin’s early 2000’s Bravo series,
My Life on the D-List,
as much as I do. Sophie Greenberg (and Julia again) for answering hundreds of disgusting questions about STDs. Jed Weintrob for protecting me from electromagnetic radiation.

Morgan Shanahan for igniting this whole adventure. Tony Etz, Darren Trattner, Rachel Adler, and Olivia Blaustein for responding to emails far earlier than any of them should have been awake. Mary Wyatt for saving the day. Robert Profusek and Mary Kosearas for listening to my angst. Cait Hoyt for her support and guidance (and for listening to my angst). Suzanne O’Neill for making me a better writer and Trish Boczkowski for carrying the torch to the finish line (and letting me camp out in her office for forty-eight deeply neurotic hours). Jenni Zellner and Jesse Aylen for keeping the wheels on this process.

Zachary Glass for tolerating multiple forced readings of half-baked chapters. Team Kegels for
everything. My entire family for being supportive of my hibernation and understanding my absence at holidays while I wrote this thing. All United States law enforcement agencies for not pressing charges against my mother (please)!

Jonathan Bradford Glass for being a truly enormous Matzoh Ball and for tolerating me (and my mother). Also, I’m sorry for revealing your ridiculous middle name. Moo.

And my mom and dad for more than I could possibly articulate in the last line of a book that in all likelihood no one is even reading. I imagine you (the reader) closed the book after the last page (if not after the cat-stealing chapter), and thought, “Huh, I probably should have bought
The Girl on the Train
instead.” But if you
are
reading this: (1) Thank you. (2) Know that my mother and father are two of the best human beings in the universe, and I love them with all my heart. I hit the genetic jackpot getting them as parents, and I feel like the luckiest human to have been raised by them. Also, to not have been dropped on my head as a child…my mother has exceedingly poor spatial reasoning skills.

Illustrations by guteksk7/Shutterstock

Photo:
Mary Wyatt

Photo:
Craig Amerkhanian

Photo:
Jackie Bello

Photo:
Jeffrey Wachman

Photo:
Lauren O’Jea

All other photos courtesy of the author

KATE SIEGEL is a writer and a social media guru who started the hit Instagram account
@CrazyJewishMom
. She has been featured on
BuzzFeed, Elite Daily, The Huffington Post, Cosmo,
Today.com, Vogue.com, in
People
magazine, and on
Nightline
and
The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
She previously served as an associate producer for Condé Nast Entertainment, overseeing digital video for
Teen Vogue, Bon Appétit, The New Yorker
Festival,
Condé Nast Traveler,
and
Self.
Prior to joining Condé Nast, Kate studied English, creative writing, and theater at Princeton University. Her one-act play
Sam the Man
was a winner of the Sondheim Young Playwright’s Inc. National Playwriting Competition and was produced at their annual New York showcase. The play was also selected by the Blank Theatre Young Playwrights Festival and received a full production at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.