Motherhood is Art
I’m writing from an SUV, in the parking lot of a hockey rink, in the 30 minute window before driving to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. These aren’t my chosen hobbies, but the passions of my sons. My passions are left to squeeze into the margins and the front seat.
I had both of my sons while a graduate student, working on a PhD in Sociology. Each time I was able to take a semester off before returning. After my second child, maternity leave, and returning to the program, I realized that parenting a 3yr old and newborn while writing a dissertation with no childcare or familial support was not a mental or financial sacrifice my family could continue to make. At the same time, my dreams were…shifting. I had worked so long to get to my graduate program, but at home with my boys the future looked suddenly different. I wanted to chase them and not tenure.
It was my choice–to leave my program when I was ABD (All But Dissertation). It was my choice but it also seemed like the only one available to me at the time. The irony of my research being about gender, culture, economic sociology and the decisions women make in order to be a “good mother” in American society will never be lost on me. Nor will the moment a (male) professor told a very visibly pregnant me “sometimes things get in the way of our lives.” It was the same day I allowed myself to purchase anything for a future child. I had a high risk pregnancy that I wasn’t certain would allow me to bring a baby home. Those tiny Converse were a sign of hope that I wouldn’t allow him to dash.
My son wasn’t in the way of my life, he (and his future brother) were my life, and everything else was in the way.
Matching Chucks on my first Mother’s Day.
The next six years were spent at home, and in the midst of play dates and carpool lines, blanket forts and a 24hr work day, I found myself writing. It was in bursts, and reactionary, but with a breadth I could not have accessed without the deep love and loss I acquired in motherhood. Now, as a parent of a tween and teen, I feel more freedom than I have in years. Physically, but also mentally. There is a room in my brain that has been crowded with the work of caregiving. The crayon art has been removed from the walls and packed away, in its place are windows to an open field of possibility. I know that I will find myself again out there, and writing is helping to lead the way.
Being a parent and a writer means that I must create time to write where it may not exist. But it also means that I have two live-in sources of motivation and inspiration. I want to finish my book for myself but also for them. To show them that life may not look the way you planned it in high school, but a dream deferred isn’t a dream denied. They see me writing, reading about craft, asking them questions about scenes. They see me running after something even still, and my hope is that they do the same–that they never stop learning, growing, and trying new things.
My children are great works of art. Built with care, precision, hope, fine-tuning, repetition, steadfastness, audacity and the necessary dash of delusion that all artists possess. I have poured myself into them and am ready to bring this same level of care to myself, and to my writing.
