I came upon childrearing much like lubricant finds its way into your grocery cart. You consciously put it there but pretend otherwise. We got pregnant…no, I got pregnant! I freaked out openly one time while no longer being able to run with my husband because the ‘bump’ was in the way, shall we say. My hubs was privy to my tantrum about my world ending as I knew it and that I never wanted to have a baby and that it was all his friggin’ fault/idea. But that was not true. Having a child was mystifying and terrifying and I had no idea what to expect. Boy, was I in for a shock.
I don’t do nor have ever done a lot of things in my life because that’s what others wanted me to. I often turned the opposite direction of expectations and tried my own, stubborn version – whether I’d fall on my face or not. Sometimes I’d find myself broke and alone wandering the streets of London with only three minutes left on my phone card to call the States.
Who would I call to save me in three minutes?
Exactly.
No one. But this very character-building sort of experience was the closest thing I had to an event that prepared me for what happens after you leave the hospital with your baby. After countless nights of not sleeping and not being able to be chivalrous about taking it all on by myself, forcing my husband to get up in the middle of the night and try his hand at consoling our son, I tried to convince myself that sleep was overrated. Rumor has it that Clinton only needed five hours and he was President! I thought. I wanted to be angry but at who? Whom? The baby? No, duh. Many people promised me “that mommy thing would just kick in!” I had Pre Parenting Dyslexia instead of post partum…wait, is that what people get after being in Iraq? In a way, yes. PTSD. Everything was mother fucking backwards!
But what was really eating Gilbert Grape? Not my exhaustion but the fear of never writing again… the writer vs. mother issue. Please tell me what a writer who becomes a mother is supposed to do when she finds herself trying to be both?
This entire debate harps back to advice I received, unsolicited, from my writing teacher at Trinity College, Dublin. This was the summer of 2000 and I had survived a divorce two years prior, was sort of employed, had a shitty but working car and applied to a creative writing workshop. I was committed to writing. I was committed to not have sex, smoke or drink beer while in Ireland, too. What?
I digress. Fiona
was a well-published poet who taught half of the program with another Irish writer who was single, male and nervous
. As the final days approached and we had bonded as a group of writers, we bonded with the Irish countryside and I bonded with my soul. Fiona the teacher/poet/mom came up to me and said she had one bit of advice for me. “Don’t become a mother,” she lowered her voice. “It will kill your writing life.” As she finished and glanced over her shoulder at her husband and two children sitting at a table I laughed an awkward ‘I hope you’re kidding, I’m waiting for the punch line’ chuckle. Silence followed and my soul was just a little deflated. I’ve never planned on having children, I thought, as a retort but I said nothing and sucked on my cider wondering if I could have her job and get to teach at Trinity, drink beer every day, have bad sex with Irish men.
Ten years later and married (happily) to a writer that I met on that Irish adventure, I am supported as a writer. My writing life is respected, my husband wants me to take time and write and get published on a large scale
. Yet I can’t help but feel I have disappointed Fiona from Trinity College.
Have I?
Another anecdote that informs my picture of mothers as writers was inspired by a Slate interview with poet Joan (?). Joan remembers finally learning that she was pregnant and it was an immense relief because she had had a multitude of miscarriages. When she was well into her third trimester she visited Emily Dickinson’s grave and home in Massachusetts. (What better pilgrimage for a reminder of the awesome power of women wielding a pen). As Joan approached the grave-stone she rubbed her belly against the stone as if asking for luck. What she asked Emily from beyond this life was if this (baby) was the death of her poetry.
I replayed that interview a few times while my son rocked it with the Wiggles
tunes in the background and danced. The irony was that there didn’t seem to be an answer from the ethers. When Joan asked to visit Emily’s writing room her writing desk had been sent on loan to a museum. In its place was a chilling substitution: Emily Dickinson’s baby crib!
So what does that story mean? Women who write fear their writing life could be taken away – as if it is as fleeting as blowing out a candle. It’s a reminder that we’re born and start in a cradle and that our creative life is fragile and needs to be protected or defended. But we make our own destiny, n’est ce pas? Why am I so adamantly set on needing to know if my childrearing wasn’t the death of my creativity? I’m writing now. I’m producing more now than I have in years. But I can’t help but consider what another writer friend/mom told me after the birth of her son: ‘I just want my son to be able to call me a writer.’
My mom is a writer.
There doesn’t seem to be a better sentence in the English language.
