Perhaps There’s Hope for Me Yet
This is an excerpt from an essay called “Mother Tongue” by Sherry Thompson, published in Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers, edited by Ariel Gore and Bee Lavender, foreword by Dan Savage, Seal Press, 2001
It gives me hope for my creative pursuits.
“As most parents do, I look back over the period when I did not yet have children and exclaim at the months I could have used for working: The time I wasted! How much easier things would be if I had used that time to my advantage!
“Like a lot of simplistic laments, this one, too, is flawed.
“Although it is true that I do not have the time I would like to spend pursuing my creative path, it is also true that I am an artist because I have children. My skill as an orator has grown in direct proportion to my son’s delight in auditory stimulation. Only after giving birth was I able to follow the old adage “write what you know.” It is only here—in the midst of sandwich crusts, dirty diapers, trips to the doctor, bedtime stories, lost sandals, baby lotion, wooden trains, the whorl of hair on my baby’s head, piles of laundry, my son’s songs and the endless trips to the grocery store—that I have found my poetic voice.
“This is not to say that all, or even most, of my work is about my children. I write very little directly about them. Often I find my love for them too difficult, too raw a wound still, to put into words. My children appear just under the surface of the poems: the echo of the color of my son’s hair, for example, or the sound my daughter makes when she’s enthralled. However small my body of work, due to time constraints, I know that the quality of my work is only possible because of the authentic, transformative experience of motherhood.
“It is this truth I call upon when I hunch over my desk, one ear strained for the baby’s cry, the other tuned to the inner rhythm I attend to when I write. The pull between these desires creates a powerful tension within which I am able to work and to live. I can give myself to my children because I write. I can give myself to my writing because of the power I draw from mothering.”
January 26, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Lovely! Very well put:)
January 26, 2007 at 4:22 pm
You might be interested in this article posted by a mom who’s touring in a rock band with her baby. . .
January 29, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Neat! I’m not quite that brave.