January 9, 2011

"For never in our lives has anything so extraordinary happened…"

My friend Julia sent me a copy of Joyce Carol Oates’ essay “A Widow’s Story”, because the prose was “stunning”, and she admired Oates’ transition between past and present, and how “though the present is horrid (he’s dying), [Oates] knows, in retrospect, that it’s so much better than the future.”

I am so glad Julia sent it, because it’s a wonderful, devastating essay, but also, though it’s perverse to admit, because I have a thing for examinations of widowhood– also The Year of Magical Thinking, and Calvin Trillin’s About Alice (which was also a New Yorker essay before it was a book). Mostly because these are also fascinating examinations of long and enduring marriages, but, yes, because I can’t help it too– worst nightmares vicariously are the safest kind, a bit like staring at a car wreck, and also because I have this ridiculous notion that if just I read enough books, I could come to the moment prepared.

This final point bringing me to motherhood, which is where a similar plan has already failed me– I read enough books, but I read them all wrong. But, nevertheless, upon reading Oates’ essay, I had an ephiphany about the way that we talk about motherhood, or rather about how often we end up talking about motherhood. That these conversations about motherhood and widowhood are so often similar in approach and in tone. This I realized in particular when I read a line from just after her husband has died, ab0ut her amazement at the impossibility of such a thing occuring: “For never in our lives has anything so extraordinary happened between us…”.

For so many of us who are so fortunate, life doesn’t tend to happen to us. We live in a blissful, lucky, unaware state– what Oates’ describes as “the vanity of believing that somehow we [own] our lives.” Perhaps the most startling upset of new motherhood is the sudden awareness that we don’t, exactly. That another life owns ours and all at once, the world no longer bends to our wishes. That whole cliche about hearts outside our bodies as well, and though none of this has the same permanant rent as widowhood, there are parallels. The adjustment seems impossible.

Similarly, we are otherwise so insulated from the stuff of life, from birth and from death, which usually are enacted in the same place and restricted from public view, that these perfectly ordinary events do become extraordinary. Foreign, unimaginable, except for remnants we’ve gathered from movies and TV and the gulf between these scenes and reality makes the experience all the more difficult to actually process. The disconnect results in the fixation, the never-ending conversation– we’re putting the pieces together over and over again, hoping for something we’ll eventually recognize.

January 4, 2011

The eye of the storm

A while ago, I answered some questions for The New Quarterly‘s blog “The Literary Type” about new motherhood and my essay “Love is a Let-Down”.

An excerpt:

“The point is that the storm is. Yes, it passes, and thank goodness it does, but that passing means nothing when you’re living it. But I think acknowledging the storm itself does mean something, that you’re not merely failing to feel the right things, that other mothers have been there before. It would help to acknowledge these experiences as part of a natural process of adjustment. And this does not merely free a new mother from her isolation, but it also provides tangible evidence that the storm does pass, that such a promise is not simply platitudes, because so many of us have been through it, and here we are on the other side.”

Read the whole thing here. And thanks to TNQ’s Rosalynn, who is expecting her own baby any day now! Best of luck and congratulations. xo

January 4, 2011

Miscommunicado

Recently, I was speaking to someone who felt it necessary to commend me for having interests beyond my child, which sort of galled me, because I wondered what business was it of his where any of my interests lie. It continues to be very important for me to engage with the world in various ways, but what if it wasn’t? It is easy to make being a parent an all-consuming business, but I can think of worse things to be consumed by.

And then I was recounting this to a friend of mine who gave me her definition of an all-consumed parent, which is that friend who has a baby and never calls you again. Another, I suppose, would be the parent who is unable to talk about anything except their children (which would be fair enough if they ever asked questions about your own life, but they never do). The problem with these people, I would think, is not that these parents are all-consumed, but that they’re crappy friends, and totally rude. (Or maybe, maybe, they’re totally overwhelmed by new parenthood and require your support? Though this excuse should definitely come with an end-date).

Anyway, from all this discussion, it occurred to me how rarely any of us are ever talking about the same thing. How careful we should be in giving opinions, in taking things personally, and how important it is to be articulate. That perhaps so much of what divides us (and I am thinking of women in particular, for there  is no group more division-prone, except perhaps the Protestant church) is quite illusory, and how easily we might be able to clear things up with a bit of conversation.

December 6, 2010

Scientifically conclusive long-term effects of horizontal parenting

When I first began horizontal parenting, I admit that I was far more lazy than I was confident. For seven months, my child would only nap whilst lying on me, and I wondered if I was setting myself up to become a doormat (albeit a mattressy one). For ten months, my child spent most of many nights in bed with me and breastfed like a drunkard, and I wondered if this was going to be the rest of my life (plus, my shoulder hurt, but it was better than not lying down at all). Though I gave my child everything she demanded of me (because I was too tired to challenge an indomitable infant, and whenever we made it into a power struggle, she won every time), I wondered what kind of pattern we were be setting. Would I be that mother with the screaming toddler in the grocery store pleading for a small piece of our power-share? Was I falling down as a parent in failing to set boundaries with my six week old? Shouldn’t I be encouraging her to be an independent six month old?  Was this the precedent, and now forever I’d give her everything she demanded with a screech?

The thing is though, and I know this now and I didn’t know it then, that your six week old is a whole other person three weeks later, and that six month old is such a more completely evolved amazing being in comparison that you can’t remember she was ever small. And then six months starts being small, because your baby is a year old, and a year and a half old, and she’s walking, and talking, and pouring you endless cups of imaginary tea. And you’re now negotiating with someone altogether different than that screaming newborn, and it is here where setting boundaries and discipline does become important, but now you’re dealing with a(n almost) person rather than a helpless creature. It’s a whole different game– certainly not an easier one, but one that is not very much affected by anything that came before.

When my daughter was six weeks old and I was racked with guilt over my desire to buy an infant swing rather than rock her to comfort myself, somebody told me to do “Whatever works” and thereby set me on the road to horizontal parenting. I trusted the advice because it was easy, but eighteen months later I can now report with scientific conclusiveness that she was right. There are no harmful long-term effects to taking the easy way out in babyhood and shutting that screaming kid up however you can manage it. Hooray for soothers, and co-sleeping, and baby swings, and long walks in the stroller. Hooray for putting the baby to sleep in a sling, having her eat only avocado for a week, and for having the baby nap on your chest while you lie on the bed gyrating your hips to put her to sleep with the motion. (It works. How did I discover this works? I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.)

November 23, 2010

Talking In Circles and Coming Full Circle: Talking About Talking About Motherhood

Marita Dachsel’s first book of poetry All Things Said & Done (Caitlin, 2007) was shortlisted for a ReLit Award. Her poetry has been published in many Canadian journals, in a recent chapbook, Eliza Roxcy Snow (red nettle press, 2009), and as part of Vancouver’s Poetry In Transit Program. Currently, she is working on a novel as well as finishing Glossolalia , her second poetry book, in which she explores the lives of the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church. After twelve years in Vancouver, during which she received both her BFA and MFA in Creative Writing at UBC, she now lives in Edmonton with her husband, playwright Kevin Kerr, and their two sons.

Kerry: Marita, I think I’m beginning to change my mind. You see, I’ve been fascinated by narratives about motherhood since before I was a mother, and as I prepared to become one, I devoured the modern “ambivalent motherhood canon”.

But I’ve been reluctant to pursue such narratives myself. When I interview writers, I insist that their work is what’s important, and I avoid questions about writing and motherhood that would probably fascinate me as much. I worry that such questions would undermine the writers’ works, would undermine the individuals as artists, would undermine me as an interviewer and a reader. But I can’t shake a suspicion that these questions are important, that perhaps we just have to carve out a time and space for them. Or not. I’m not sure.

Did you feel any similar qualms as you embarked upon your Motherhood and Writing interviews?

Marita: When I first conceived of the Motherhood and Writing interviews, I had no qualms at all. I think that may have been because I really wasn’t aware of all the books written about motherhood and writing. I’m sure if I had dug a bit, I would have discovered them and not felt the need to start the interview series.

The interviews came from purely selfish place. I wanted content for my blog, but more importantly, I really needed to know how other writing mothers did it. My boys are twenty-two and a half months apart. When my second child was born, I panicked. I remember clearly breast feeding him while reading a biography of Margaret Laurence and having the terrifying flash that I would never write again. I knew I wasn’t as driven as Laurence was and couldn’t make the choices she had. My nascent career was over.

After my husband helped talk me down, I realized that of course my career wasn’t over. There were many, many writing mothers out there who were kind, loving, stable mothers. I wanted to talk to them simply to know how they did it. How does a mother balance all those things mothers do and make time to write. And I wanted to talk to women who were in various stages in their careers–from award winning to not yet published.

The project was supposed to be just for a year, but I’ve managed to draw it out longer, partly out of laziness and partly whenever I think it’s time to shut it down, I’ll get an email or a comment on the blog from some writing mother out there to thank me. It’s important, especially in those early difficult years, for those in the trenches to be reminded that they are not alone, that there are other women out there who are struggling, too. And, of course, that it will get better.

That said, recently I’ve begun to have qualms. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer in the trenches, or maybe because I’ve become sensitive that I might be contributing to the creation of a “motherhood ghetto”.

We would never ask a man how he manages to write while being a father, so why do we feel it’s relevant to ask a mother? Is it because there is an assumption that the woman is at home with the babies and that the man is not? And that if she isn’t, she should be? It’s insulting to both mothers and fathers. But I don’t know what I’d rather see–interviewers asking fathers what they ask mothers, or stop asking mothers what they don’t ask fathers.

So, yes, I am now quite conflicted. I hope that in the context of my interview series, the questions I ask aren’t insulting because that is the point of the interview. But I don’t think if I was interviewing a writer in another context, I would feel comfortable about asking about their relationship between writing and motherhood, unless the writer brought it up or it was clearly related to the writing.

Kerry: But yet, beyond domestic drudgery and “how does she do it?”, fascinating connections abound concerning art and motherhood. These interest me the most, and they’re questions that could serve to illuminate artists’ works and the experience of motherhood in general.

But there’s the matter of the ghetto, which you mentioned, and that, as Rachel Cusk mentioned in the introduction to A Life’s Work, that “motherhood is of no real interest to anyone except other mothers.” Why do you think this is?

Marita: I think there are a few reasons and they’re interconnected. The first that popped in my head is that it isn’t paid work, it’s part of the spectrum of “women’s work” (this label makes me want to scream, but I’m using it anyway). Also, because it seems anyone can get knocked up and therefore become parents (which anyone who has struggled with infertility knows how false this is), there is no understanding that parenting is a difficult job. I mean, how hard can it be, right? Turn on the t.v. and feed them and the job is done, right? Um, no.

It’s also invisible work. In public, unless you are a mother or you’re at a child/parent place (playground, school, etc.) you really only notice mothers when their children are in melt-down mode. Mothers are noticed when they are “failing”. I don’t know about you, but once I became a mother, I noticed how invisible I suddenly became.

But there is the inherent sexism of women’s work, too. In a patriarchal society, women’s work isn’t valued work. For mothers, the outcome is important–we want children to become obedient, hardworking adults–but how it’s done isn’t important. The idea of the loving mother is celebrated, but please keep that mechanics of that behind closed doors. We want to see smiling mothers and quiet children–not the day to day drudgery.

All these economic and feminist reasons I’ve been obsessing about since I became a mother, but this morning I woke up with might be the most basic reason: because it’s shop talk. Who likes going to a party and have to hear workmates talk about their jobs the whole night? Maybe it’s that simple with motherhood. People who aren’t mothers don’t care because they can’t relate, don’t want to relate. The politics and theories don’t interest them because they don’t affect them. (Although, I think the politics of motherhood does affect the wider society, however I’m sure the banking industry has an impact on my life, but I don’t really want to hear about either.) It seemed like such a revelation this morning, but now writing it down to you, it feels a little weak. What do you think?

Kerry: I actually love that idea, that it’s shop talk– it is! And it’s easier to think of motherhood being boring for that reason rather than motherhood itself being inherently boring. And yet, putting motherhood up/down there with dental hygienisthood and geography teacherhood isn’t quite right either, is it? Or perhaps it undermines what I’m most interested in about motherhood– how it changes how we understand the world, how we understand our bodies, other women, our own mothers. Issues of empathy, bonding.

I think that motherhood is mostly boring for a reason you mentioned– that it’s so ordinary. Everybody’s mother was a mother, and a lot of daughters will end up being one too, and quite a few of them even managed to go about it without waxing ad nauseum on the subject. Without having conversations like these.

Do you think it’s a phase, this obsession with motherhood? You’ve mentioned that you’ve moved away from it as your kids grow out of babydom. Was it a necessary phase? A useful phase? And how do we make it about more than navel-gazing (which so much online conversation about motherhood, I regret, never manages to do)?

Marita: On a personal level, I think it is a phase, at least at this level of intensity. I wonder if it is a product of our society, this need to analyse it so much? I can’t imagine mothers of our grandmothers’ generation dissecting it so much. Is it because we generally have children at a later age? We’re having less children? We’re not as physically (and perhaps emotionally?) as close to our families as generations past, so it’s more foreign to us? So many questions I don’t know how to answer.

For myself it was both necessary and useful. I was the first of my close girlfriends to have a baby and other than my small, immediate family, I have no relatives in North America. My husband had some friends with children, but I wasn’t in his life during their early years. Despite always knowing I would have a family, I had no idea what those early years of motherhood would be like. I became obsessed. I think that’s normal.

I learned so much about motherhood, about myself. I especially needed to see my position as both a writer and a mother reflected back at me. It’s almost silly now to think how desperate I felt, how much I needed to see that yes, I could be both a writer and a mother. The day-to-day life of writers and mothers can be terribly solitary. I needed to know that I wasn’t alone.

How do we get past navel-gazing? I don’t know. Partly we need it to be navel-gazing, because we need to see ourselves, our situations reflected back to us by others, and how can we do that if we don’t talk about ourselves?

Motherhood is incredibly transformational, especially for those of us lucky enough to have been able to conceive, carry, and birth our children. The physicality of pregnancy and birth is so intense, so raw and life-changing. Birth changes you. You battle through this profound visceral event, and on the other side of it, you have a new title, a new job: mother. It’s crazy. Of course we’re going to talk about it, analyse it, try to make sense of it.

I’m curious about your desire to take beyond the navel, that’s my impulse too, but I’m not sure what the forum should be. Are you specifically talking about the online world?

Kerry: Oh, I’m talking about the whole wide world, but online in particular. I think that’s what I liked about your motherhood and writing interviews– that they were looking at motherhood in the context of something bigger, and that was so interesting to me. Perhaps I also needed a reflection of mother/writers, to know it was possible.

Whereas the whole mommy blog circuit was just depressing, uninspiring. Once I’d grown accustomed to being overwhelmed by my crazy blown-apart new life, I didn’t so much want that experience affirmed, as some bloggers delight in doing. Maybe I am unusual in this, but I wanted to believe in the possibility of something better, something more. That I wasn’t limited to this entrenched idea of motherhood– of being forever harried, depressed and stretched to the point of exhaustion. I mean, of course it was nice to know I wasn’t alone in the hardships, but when life is really awful, how much do you really want it reflected back at you? And how far can that kind of reflection really take you?

If we’re talking beyond navels, I’ve been really inspired by the work being done through the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI, formerly the Association for Reseach on Mothering). Their book Talking Back to the Experts was a real tool of liberation for me as a new mother, and I also appreciated Mothering and Blogging: The Art of the Mommy Blog, which gave me such an appreciation for what blogs about motherhood have done in particular for marginalized or isolated mothers. These books had me understanding my own experience in a wider context, and also addressing issues of feminism and motherhood and how these ideas support and contradict one another. That motherhood was a job that required a great deal of thinking, learning and understanding. Worthy of an area of academic study, even– I liked that.

I wonder if the level of analysis and need for understanding you so astutely addressed is particular to artists– writers tell these stories over and over again, but would an architect fixate on the narrative quite so much? Does our artistry give us the means to engage with motherhood as we do, or do you think it happens to everyone?

Marita: Thank you, I’m glad you liked the interviews! I think you nailed how we can take the discussion of motherhood beyond the minutia–by talking about it in relationship to something else. Perhaps that is why we talk about it so much now. Our mothers’ generation was fighting for our rights to be anything we wanted to be, and now, our generation is figuring out how to negotiate our place within so much choice and what that all means.

As a huge, sweeping generalization, there seems to be two types of mommyblogs. The negative, complaining ones you mentioned and then the ones on the other end of the spectrum, where everything is perfect and idealized. No chaos, all domestic bliss. It’s hard to be in that place, too. Neither options feel honest or a reflection of my reality. But I must to admit that I still read a couple regularly, and one of them is the “perfect life” kind. (However, if she didn’t post every day, I probably would stop that one, too.) I can’t read the negative ones at all.

Your last question is a hard one. My hunch is that most mothers want to reflect on motherhood, at least early on and I think that’s why mommyblogs are so popular. That said, artists have the creative vocabulary to fixate, which many people do not, but more importantly, it’s our job to fixate. A new mother who returns to work at her architecture/accounting/law firm has other work she’s paid to do, but as artists, one of our jobs is to obsess. So many artist-mothers that I know try to work from home at the same time as trying to be a SAHM. Both are full time jobs, so it makes sense to me that this obsessing ends up being reflected in our work to some degree. Writers specifically create narrative, so of course we’re going to examine and dissect how this new character is changing our personal narrative arc.

I believe that every experience we have somehow influences our work. I haven’t read Emma Donoghue’s Room yet, but my hunch is that it would have been a very different book if she wasn’t a mother. You’ve read it. What do you think? And do you think you can tell if an artist is a mother? Would you want to?

Kerry: I think an artist can imagine her way into motherhood, and I say this with assurance because I’ve read Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. I remember reading the novel The Almost Archer Sisters by Lisa Gabriele too, and being stunned to discover that Gabriele wasn’t a mother– it’s a funny, popular novel, but her depiction of mothering a disabled child is stunning. I asked Alison Pick if she’d made changes to how she wrote about parenthood in her novel Far To Go after her daughter was born, and she said she’d pretty much got it right the first time (and she did).

What was remarkable about Room to me was not how “right” Donoghue got my experience, but that she’d actually managed to articulate aspects of my experience I hadn’t before been conscious of– which is really incredible. I’m at home all day alone with Harriet, and I remember as I was reading that everything I said and did was taking on a new resonance. I had never realized (perhaps because Harriet is still so young) how much a mother constructs her child’s universe in the various real-world Rooms in which they find themselves– the womb, the empty house alone all day.

I think if Donoghue hadn’t been a mother though, Room would have had a different kind of emphasis. I recently read James Woods’ review of the novel in the LRB, and he wrote about its lightness, its readability, the cutesy focus on Jack– and how the actual story that inspired the novel would not have such a rosy tinge. Because of her focus on the mother-child bond, Donoghue was able side-step a horror story, the fact that an actual mother probably would not construct such a fair and happy world for her child, would have neither the tools nor the capacity to do so. Room is a fairy-tale, really. Perhaps as a mother Donoghue was unable to look the real situation in the face (and I can’t blame her). Her story is a hypothetical one rather than a particular one, and there is safety in that.

And I must say that you’ve just answered my question, Marita! Well done. You ask, “Can you tell if an artist is a mother?” and I think, perhaps, one can’t. (Though sometimes, with bad artists, you can tell when they’re not a mother cough cough Christos Tsiolkas). Which means that my longing to ask or not to ask questions to artists about motherhood is kind of beside the point of the art. Has more to do with my own life and my own interests at the moment than art itself. (Ah, sweet navel, nice to gaze at you some more…) Which doesn’t mean these questions don’t matter, and can’t be incredibly useful/interesting in some respects. But perhaps my aversion to dwelling upon them comes from a rational place?

I think, Marita, that we’ve come full circle, and in a satisfying way. Do you think so? Can you tell if an artist is a mother?

Marita: Yay! I’m glad I helped you find your answer. I agree, I don’t think you can tell if an artist is a mother, and one wouldn’t want to. There are things that only some mothers can know, like what let-down feels like, or when your water breaks, but those details are so small that they are insignificant when it comes to the creation of art.

Someone once told me to not write what you know, but write what you want to know. This seems rather relevant to this conversation. I’m more drawn to writing about certain subjects and themes at the moment (my polygamy project) because of motherhood, but I know I won’t only write about those for the rest of my life. As artists, it’s what interests us in the moment, and for some it is motherhood.

I do think, however, that we still need to have conversations amongst writing/artist mothers, even if it is simply to compare navels and say, yes, that’s normal too.

November 11, 2010

"Love is a Let-Down"

I spent the first six weeks of my daughter’s life amazed at her fabulousness, but also spectacularly miserable. It was really truly the worst time of my whole life, which was far from what I’d expected from my intro to motherhood, and I really thought that there I’d just gone and destroyed my entire life. I remember being terrified that my husband would leave me, which had never crossed my mind before, but in the awful stupor of that time, I couldn’t think of  single reason why he’d stay. I remember crying with the windows open, with the hope that somebody might pass by and come in to take the baby away.

I maintain that I didn’t have post-partum depression, but just a bad case of the baby blues, but moreover that life with a newborn is generally awful. And though at the time I feared my bad introduction to motherhood might set the tone for everything that comes after, it didn’t. They were so right, those friends who told me that the first three months are all about survival, and they were so wrong, those other people who told me to make sure I “enjoyed every minute”. Ha.

Anyway, life got much much better, but I began to notice a pattern. Whenever anyone I know had a newborn, I’d speak to her around the one-week mark, and she’d tell me that things were going okay. She’d note that she was more than a little sleep deprived, and I’d recognize a slight waver in her voice. And then I’d confess that at the one-week mark, I was more unhappy than I’d ever been before or since, and the person I was speaking to would breathe a sigh of relief then, that she wasn’t the only one. That these feelings she was experiencing were more common than she’d thought. I’d assure her that things would get  better, and she wouldn’t believe me at all, but as the weeks went by, she’d come to see that it was true, and soon she’d be out on the other side herself, and we’d even laugh about it.

I wrote my essay “Love is a Let-Down” this spring after a friend of mine had been suffering through the awful, and our conversations had brought up everything about new motherhood that I’d actually nearly forgotten. I entered it into The New Quarterly‘s Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, and was so happy to discover in August that it had placed as a runner-up. And I’m happy now to announce that my essay appears in TNQ 116, which is out now or soon, and will be available at your favourite bookstore. I urge you to pick up a copy, because it’s a piece that I am really proud of, that is terribly important to me, and I think has the potential to help somebody who’s where I was then.

Also because the fantastic issue contains work by some great writers, a disproportionate number of which have been interviewed on Pickle Me This: — Jessica Westhead, Rebecca Rosenblum and Kerry Ryan. I’m also looking forward to Sarah Selecky (of Giller fame!) and A.J. Somerset (of the Metcalf-Rooke award).

Update: A lovely post up about my essay at the Utne Reader Blog “Great Writing”. Which is definitely some nice feedback. And a nice blog.

November 10, 2010

The kind of mother I wanted to be

I’ve read two really excellent pieces on mothering blogs lately, the first being “I was a better mom before I had kids…” and then Her Bad Mother’s “On Being a Good Mother In Spite of It All.” Both play with the expectations we set for ourselves before we become parents, and what the reality turns out to be, and I think these kinds of discussions are useful actually, to a point. HBM rounds out her piece with the idea that trying to be a certain kind of mother when your heart’s not in it isn’t going to be good for anyone– for example, baby-wearing because you think you should, but your back is killing you and you hate it, or quitting work to stay home with the baby when it makes you miserable. She was writing in response to a recent article by Erica Jong about the ridiculousness of attachment parenting (“On the Madness of Modern Motherhood”).

Now I am fortunate, because I came into parenting completely unaware that “attachment parenting” was even a thing. Or rather, I knew about it, but simply as one of the faddy things I learned about from reading Christina Hardyment’s Dream Babies (along with Baby Whispering, and airing your child in a cage suspended from an apartment window). So my idea of the kind of mother I wanted to be didn’t come with a doctrine. My parenting philosophy, if I have one (but I don’t) has kind of grown up with me– for example, I learned that strollers are awkward in narrow Bloor Street shops and many places have steps, so I became a Baby Trekker convert (and we’re at 28 lbs and still going). I learned that some nights the only way anyone in our house would get some sleep was if Harriet came to bed with me and so (I guess?) we became part-time co-sleepers. It has always been important to me to take responsibility for having brought a child into the world, thereby doing some extra laundry instead of contributing to landfill, so I am a bit of a cloth diaper fanatic. I still breastfeed, but was never able to pump, so Harriet had formula when I wasn’t around. I don’t buy plastic toys We don’t own a car or a television, and I don’t want to own either, and it has been important to me to learn how to be a parent without both of these things.

I really am writing this now not to be a smug pain in the ass, but as reassurance for women who aren’t moms yet but who have an idea about the kind of mothers they want to be. If that idea comes from an authentic place within you, if you’re doing it because you want to and you believe in it (as opposed to the unsustainable arrangement derided by HBM of what you think you should be doing), then it’s totally possible. Of course, half the equation is your baby, and all bets are off as to what he or she will decide, but I want to assert that motherhood as an institution does not necessary push you to the bottom of that slippery slope. You’re exactly as indomitable as you feel.

October 15, 2010

There is no other way

“Nevertheless, Friedan raised a critical point: “The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way.” What Friedan understood, but what many of us ultimately forgot, is that simply landing a job does not guarantee self-actualization. At the same time, the homemaker who simply learns to cook dinner, keep a garden and patch blue jeans will probably not find deep fulfillment either. Those who do not seriously challenge themselves with a genuine life plan, with the intent of taking a constructive role in society, will share the same dangers as the housewives who suffered under the mystique of feminine fulfillment; they face what Friedan called a “nonexistent future”.”– Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture by Shannon Hayes

October 14, 2010

On Bolting, and Bolters

One good thing about rereading What Maisie Knew was considering the character of Maisie’s mother, Ida Farange, a rather loathsome woman, and not just because she abandons her daughter after manipulating her or ignoring her for years. At one point, they refer to her “bolting”, to her being a “bolter”. Which made me think of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, which is the story of the Radlett family as narrated by their cousin Fanny. Fanny lives with her cousins because her parents have abandoned her as Maisie’s do (though in a far more light-hearted fashion), and her mother is referred to as “The Bolter”.

Perhaps Bolters were a blip in maternal history, a brief early twentieth century phenomenon amongst the English upper classes. (There is a biography called The Bolter as well, of someone called Idina Sackville). But I think we could actually do with a bit more literary bolting these days, mothers who take off without compunction. It was suggested to me that Alice Munro wrote about bolters, but we decided it didn’t count– her boltings always required sacrifice, but bolting doesn’t, by definition.

It occurred to me early on in motherhood why a mother might leave her children. (Not that I’d leave my children, but I have to say that, don’t I?). Because motherhood is all-or-nothing, overwhelmingly so, and if you discovered you just weren’t cut out for it, that you were terrible at it, and if you had financial means to flee, well then, wouldn’t you have to?

This is all assuming that there are women who just don’t “take” to motherhood, which I think is a healthy idea to be considered because of the number of times it turns out to be true. And I kind of admire the stance of the bolters, who don’t take to motherhood but don’t have to pretend that they do. They don’t have to run away and pretend they’re all torn up about it either. Which isn’t to say that the kids are all right, but maybe they are, or at least they will be, and the bolters don’t care regardless.

Now I’m not advocating bolting itself, though yes, undoubtedly, I’m glamourizing it. But I think these kinds of characters are positive figures in what they represent, in their freedom and their shamelessness. Adding the “bolter” to maternal archetypes, I think, would elevate maternity in general. Those of us who don’t care to bolt might be better mothers for carrying a bit of their spirit within us.

Update: See comment below re. Mrs. Brown who bolted from Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. And I just now thought of the mother from Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Replace Your Name, who had her own reasons.

August 9, 2010

Something like a monopoly

“If only one way of infant feeding is permitted to be shown on television, in the moviesm and on social networking sites on the Internet, that way of feeding, becomes something like a monopoly. If women are made to feel anxious about their breasts or ashamed of them, breastfeeding becomes a less likely option for them. Needed information about this way of feeding is effectively blocked in the public media on the false basis of “modesty.” The choice for many is narrowed to which brand of infant formula to buy and what kind of bottle to put it in. Consider, for instance, how the symbol of the bottle has become the metaphor for infant feeding in the public media of cartoons, magazines, children’s books,a nd movies; there is little federal effort to counter the impression that bottle-feeding of artifical milks is better, more reliable, and more socially acceptable than breastfeeding for a human infant.” –from Ina-May’s Guide to Breastfeeding by (everybody’s favourite midwife) Ina-May Gaskin (via Meli-Mello)

From Chapter 16: Creating a Breastfeeding Culture