Review
One of Esquire’s Best Nonfiction Books of the Year
One of NPR’s Favorite Books of the Year
One of Lit Hub's Best Books of 2019
One of the year's Most Anticipated Books: BuzzFeed, Bustle, HelloGiggles, LitHub, She Reads
"Mary Laura Philpott is relentlessly funny, self-effacing and charming as she tells the story of living as a triple-A-plus perfectionist. Everything in her life is done on time and exactly right, until, of course, it all starts to fall apart. In her willingness to tell her own story, she taps into a universal truth for so many women: We plan to do it all until we find we can’t do anything anymore. I Miss You When I Blink made me laugh, it made me cry. I miss it already.” -- Ann Patchett, author of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Commonwealth
"Mary Laura Philpott is a writer, artist, and creator of singular spark and delight. I adore her, and I love her work. Thank God she has finally written a memoir! By offering these dispatches from her own life experience, she leaves us thinking about ourselves—where we've been, where we're going, and who we really want to be." -- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic
"Infinitely relatable. Beautifully written. I'm ready to read it again." -- Jenny Lawson, author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy
“What I love most about Mary Laura Philpott and her wonderful book is that she—self-proclaimed type A, obsessive achiever—gives herself permission to change. This book is inspiring for those of us with small children underfoot and forty close on the horizon. Mary Laura is a generous and funny guide to the midlife conundrums.” -- Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers
“At once rueful, hilarious, brave, and inspiring, I Miss You When I Blink is beautifully relatable and reassuring, even as it makes you pause and think. This marvelous collection of essays belongs on the bookshelf sandwiched between Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron. Mary Laura Philpott is going to make a whole lot of readers feel seen and understood.” -- Dani Shapiro, author of Hourglass
"Mary Laura Philpott is the friend you call when you want to cry but need to laugh. What a treat to spend time with her distinctive voice as she plumbs life’s quotidian moments to unearth deeper, universal truths. Wry, intelligent, and searingly honest, this book is a joy." -- Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest
“I Miss You When I Blink is a delightful, thought-provoking collection of essays, written with such spark and vulnerability that I was alternately laughing out loud and gasp-sighing at its poignancy. Mary Laura Philpott shows us her real, flawed self in these pages, sharing when she's made mistakes, when she’s been less than charitable, or when she wasn't sure who she was 'supposed' to be. It's easy to connect with her honesty, and damn fun to laugh at her jokes. This book is totally irresistible!" -- Edan Lepucki, author of California and Woman No. 17
"I've spent my adult life prowling bookshelves for the modern day reincarnation of my favorite authors--Nora Ephron, Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, and Lawrie Colwin--all rolled into one....Good news: I have finally found their successor....refreshingly honest and funny...her real gift lies in making the connection between the small moments and the big ones, so you feel you've walked into a complicated, glittering web...delicious." ― The Washington Post
"Be forewarned that you'll laugh out loud and cry, probably in the same essay. Philpott has a wonderful way of finding humor, even in darker moments. This is a book you'll want to buy for yourself and every other woman you know." ― Real Simple
"I Miss You When I Blink" by Laura Philpott is what happens when you live life according to a piece of paper. It's a memoir about following the rules and what happens when you veer off track. Spoiler: happiness ahead." ― The Skimm
"In re-examining her own priorities with warm and self-effacing humor, she makes a persuasive case for chucking to-do lists and rethinking life's 'right' choices." ― Newsweek
"At once a love letter to type-A people everywhere and a gentle reminder that it's okay (necessary, even) to change, this full-hearted book is a warm embrace of a life lived imperfectly." ― Esquire
"There aren’t many books that have made me tear up from both laughing and crying – on the same page. Mary Laura Philpott’s essays truly capture the emotional pull of mothering beyond the baby stage – coexisting, for some, with a midlife crisis-esque period." ― Meghan Collins Sullivan, senior editor, NPR Books
“This wonderful memoir-in-essays from Nashville writer Mary Laura Philpott is a frank and funny look at what happens when, in the midst of a tidy life, there occur impossible-to-ignore tugs toward creativity, meaning, and the possibility of something more.” ― Southern Living
"Witty, and poignant, and a page-turner... If you have even one type-a bone in your body, it’ll leave you nodding your head, and—forgive the crude appropriation C.S. Lewis—but thinking, 'What! You too? I thought that no one but myself.'" ― Town and Country
“[A] delightfully personal but relatable collection of essays-as-memoir that puts Philpott in league with Elizabeth Gilbert, Nora Ephron, and Cheryl Strayed.” ― Garden & Gun
"In her memoir-in-essays, acclaimed writer Mary Laura Philpott addresses the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood and that inevitable "stuck" feeling so many of us become familiar with. Part confessional, part pep talk, I Miss You When I Blink is a reassuring read about learning how to accept that doing things wrong can be the way to do life right." ― Bustle
"Philpott offers wisdom about finding happiness even if your life isn't quite the hair-raising adventure you'd envisioned." ― Refinery29
"Her collection of essays reads like a brutally honest conversation with your most relatable friend. It’ll make you feel infinitely less alone." ― HelloGiggles
"A funny and self-effacing memoir-in-essays from a bookseller who thought she had her whole life figured out (and had done everything right and gotten everything she wanted) only to wake up one day and realize that . . . she hadn’t. Relatable!" ― Lit Hub
"The Best Books of 2019 to Add to Your Reading List: What happens when you get exactly the life you wanted and realize you want something completely different? You could run away from home ... or you can make like Philpott, who's been called 'the modern-day reincarnation' of authors Nora Ephron and Erma Bombeck, and enact some mini life changes that pay off in major happiness." ― Good Housekeeping
"Checking boxes doesn’t automatically equal happiness. Sometimes, you can do everything 'right,' like getting married and having kids, and still want more. With titles like 'Ungrateful Bitch' and 'A Letter to the Extremely Type A Person in Distress,' Mary Laura Philpott’s essays will remind you that it’s okay to reinvent yourself—no grueling three-month hike required." ― Hello Giggles
"Brimming with vulnerability and sparkling humor." ― BookPage
"Philpott simultaneously provides levity and illuminates the tragi-comic nature of modern American life, wherein even the most fortunate of us struggle with a search for meaning. 'I Miss You When I Blink' is a generous collection, written as if to say 'I see you; you are not alone' to the many readers who lead outwardly happy lives yet privately wonder why they don't feel as happy or fulfilled as the world tells them they should." ― Nashville Scene
"Laugh-out-loud funny....Mary laura Philpott's hilarious and comforting essay collection will reassure women questioning their abilities and choices." ― Shelf Awareness for Readers, starred review
"It feels like we are sitting at a table together and having the best conversation about all the things that truly matter. The tone is so perfect -- calibrated and balanced -- and I don't know how she pulled that off. The result is a kind of wisdom in these essays that comes from making so many wrong turns they strangely add up to something that is exactly right." -- Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal
“Heartwarming… Philpott’s prose is conversational and easy to settle into....Comforting and reassuring." ― Publishers Weekly
“Warm, candid, and wise, Philpott’s book is both an extended reflection on the pressures of being female and a survivor’s tale about finding contentment by looking within and learning to be herself. Delightfully bighearted reading.” ― Kirkus Reviews
“A mosaic of a life changing in subtle rather than radical ways . . . Readers with their own sets of anxieties should be charmed by the author's friendly tone, warm sense of humor, and relatable experiences.”
― Booklist
“By injecting dire moments with self-effacing irony and slapstick humor, Philpott simultaneously provides levity and illuminates the tragi-comic nature of modern American life, wherein even the most fortunate of us struggle with a search for meaning. ‘I Miss You When I Blink’ is a generous collection, written as if to say 'I see you; you are not alone' to the many readers who lead outwardly happy lives yet privately wonder why they don’t feel as happy or fulfilled as the world tells them they should.” ― Chapter16
About the Author
Mary Laura Philpott, nationally bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink and Bomb Shelter, writes essays and memoirs that examine the overlap of the absurd and the profound in everyday life. Her writing has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post,and The Atlantic, among many other publications. A former bookseller, she also hosted an interview program on Nashville Public Television for several years. Mary Laura lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her family.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I Miss You When I Blink I Miss You When I Blink
It’s the perfect sentence, but I didn’t write it. My six-year-old did.
I was sitting at the desk in my home office, on a copywriting deadline for a client in the luggage industry, wrestling with a paragraph about suitcases. I leaned forward, as if putting my face closer to the computer could help the words on the screen make garment bags sound exciting. My little boy lay on his belly on the rug, “working” to pass the time until our promised walk to the park. He murmured to himself as he scribbled with a yellow pencil stub on one of my notepads.
“. . . and I miss you when I blink . . .” he said.
It stopped me mid-thought. “Say that again?”
“I miss you when I blink,” he answered, and looked up, pleased to have caught my attention. He turned back to his notepad, chattering on with his rhyme (I miss you in the sink . . . I miss you in a skating rink . . .). When he ripped off the page and tossed it aside, I picked it up and pinned it to the bulletin board on my office wall.
I turned those words over in my mind while I folded laundry that afternoon. I thought about them while I brushed my teeth that evening. I repeated them to myself as I lay awake in bed. I said them out loud as I sat in traffic the next day. I miss you when I blink. I thought, How cute.
Over the next several months, I saw the note on the wall every time I walked into my office, and the phrase lodged itself in my head like a song lyric. I played with the words when I had writer’s block, tossing them about like a squishy stress ball. It would make a great title for a sappy love poem, I thought, one where the poet can’t stand to lose sight of his lover even for a split second. Or an album of goodbye songs, dedicated to a time or place that’s disappeared. Maybe a country ballad about a lost hound dog. The one that got away. Anyone could be the “you.”
It was a few years later when it occurred to me: You could even say it to yourself.
We all keep certain phrases handy in our minds—hanging on hooks just inside the door where we can grab them like a raincoat, for easy access. Not mantras exactly, but go-to choruses that state how things are, that give structure to the chaos and help life make a little more sense.
A friend of mine uses “not my circus, not my monkeys” a lot. It helps her ignore her instinct to get involved in things that aren’t her business, and it also makes her remember that people have all sorts of reasons for the things they do, many of which she’ll never understand. It’s useful for both behavior modification and acceptance.
“No one’s getting out of here alive” is one of mine. I find it motivational and comforting. I say it to myself when I’m marching along on the elliptical machine, because it reminds me that there absolutely will come an end to my time on earth, and if I want to push it off as far into the distance as I can, I need to get my heart strong and work off the sugar I consume every day. I say it to myself when I’m trying to calm down and deal with a jerk, because it helps me put things in perspective. We’re all going to die, and would I really die with more points if I took this person down, or should I have some empathy and grace and let our differences go?
Over time, “I miss you when I blink” became another one of these phrases. It helps me live in the moment. It slows me down and makes me absorb each instant instead of rushing, because I know already how much I miss things that happened in the past—how they’re right there behind my eyelids but also gone forever. When my now-teenage son is doing something very teenage son and I’m having to ask him for the eighth time in one evening to pick up his inside-out pants from the bathroom floor, “I miss you when I blink” helps me be more patient. He was six just a second ago. He’ll grow up and leave me in another second. “I miss you when I blink.” It captures the depths of my love. Could he have meant all this when he was little and scribbling, or was he just trying to rhyme with “sink”?
There’s no way he could have known.
So he also couldn’t have realized how perfectly “I miss you when I blink” captures that universal adult experience: the identity crisis. But there it is.
The old stereotypical identity crisis happens in midlife, to a man, and it features a twenty-five-year-old dental hygienist and a pricey sports car with an engine that sounds like a helicopter. The new stereotypical identity crisis happens to a woman, often when she’s turning forty, and it involves either a lengthy stay in Tuscany (ideally in a picturesque cottage) or a very long hike (maybe the trail to Machu Picchu? preferably with a large backpack). But the “I miss you when I blink” kind of identity crisis, that’s something else. Something under the radar, much more common.
For so many people I know, there is no one big midlife smashup; there’s a recurring sense of having met an impasse, a need to turn around and not only change course, but change the way you are. It can happen anytime and many times. As we leave school and enter the real world, as we move in and out of friendships and romances, as we reckon with professional choices and future plans, and sure, when we hit midlife, but earlier and later, too.
I think this repeated need for recalibration happens partly because so many ways of being are pitched to us—particularly to women—as either-or choices: You can have a career or a family; be a domestic goddess who cans her own strawberry jam or a train wreck who flaunts the wine in her coffee mug; wear a blazer and tote a bullet journal or stick pencils in your messy bun and wipe paint on your jeans. Pious or profane. One thing or the other. Even whether or not you buy into those dichotomies seems to be an either-or proposition: You believe in “having it all” or you believe “having it all” is outdated bunk. Pick a way.
And it’s true that at any given second, a person is doing one thing or another. I can swallow a bite of toast right now or I can whistle the theme song from House of Cards. I can’t do both at the exact same moment or I’ll choke. But our lives aren’t one suspended moment, a single either-or choice; they’re a string of moments, a string of choices. Going from one moment to the next is not always a comfortable process. Sometimes it hurts, like when you realize your child no longer needs you to be his daily sidekick, and you have to adjust to a new role in his life. Sometimes it’s a comedy of errors, like when you decide you’re ready for a fresh start and you buy a whole wardrobe of pants and blouses that seem sleek and smart in the dressing room but in the light of day make you look like you’re about to give a PowerPoint presentation on a golf course. Sometimes you know one phase of life is ending—you’ve outgrown a relationship or reached the end of a long project—but you don’t know what the next step is supposed to be. You feel sure you can’t go forward and you can’t go back and you absolutely, positively cannot stand still one minute longer, all of which is insanely frustrating.
That’s what small identity shifts look like in everyday lives. Not the stereotypes.
The kind of crucial points in life I’m talking about are the ones that often go unseen, that most of us would feel embarrassed to call crises. They’re the ones a friend might talk about while sitting on your front steps in the dark at midnight after a dinner party, stalling because she doesn’t want to go home. Or because she hates her job. Or she’s scared something’s wrong with her kid or her spouse. Or she just saw one of her notebooks from college in a drawer, and she feels so detached from the person who wrote those brilliant notes about Virginia Woolf, and she’s worried that smart twenty-year-old has disappeared and she’ll never get her back, but she thinks she might want to try. She misses herself when she blinks.
I miss you when I blink. I have felt it so many times in my life, at points where I didn’t really know who I was anymore, where I felt that when I closed my eyes, I could feel myself gone.
I still have that scrap of paper my son wrote on all those years ago, before I had any clue that what he was writing would become my touchstone. I didn’t know then what a versatile refrain it would become.
I use it all the time. When I feel pressure to do the one exactly right thing—which I feel all the time because I am a human and a perfectionist—I remember all the selves I simultaneously have been, am, and will be. I miss you when I blink means I know all my selves are here with me, and I know we can do this. Saying it to myself is like a coach pushing a player out onto the field and saying, “You’ve got it. Just do what we practiced.” It’s like a parent placing a hand on the shoulder of an almost-grown child heading out the door to the prom, saying, “Remember who you are.”
Sometimes I think, Dammit, I will never be fifteen or twenty-five or thirty-five again. Those lives I’ve lived are over. And I get a little wistful, thinking I might like to get some of that time back. But then I remember my twenty-one-year-old self sitting in my cubicle at my first job out of college, feeling utterly confused and wishing she could disappear, and I think, Hey, young-me, it gets better. I swear. Worse sometimes, but also better.
And when I have anxiety attacks about the future—What if right now is the happiest I will ever be and I’m not appreciating it enough? Will I reach the end of my days having never lived in France or made enough people happy or learned everything there is to know about outer space or being able to do a split? Am I eating enough anti-oxidants? What will I be doing in ten years? In twenty?—I say I miss you when I blink to myself, and it means, Get a grip. Don’t panic. To figure out where to go next, look at where you came from. If you got here, you can get to the next thing.
Sometimes, in moments of memory or daydream, I feel the different iterations of myself pass by each other, as if right-now-me crosses paths with past-me or imaginary-me or even future-me in the hallways of my mind. “I miss you when I blink,” one says. “I’m right here,” says the other, and reaches out a hand.
Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other ExplosivesHardcover$9.66 shippingGet it as soon as Wednesday, Oct 23Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
