People keep asking me: “Are you still writing?” My answer is not always enthusiastic, “yes,” but I wish it were. I have less time and most of my energy is reserved for my child. With some help from friends, I’m trying to accept the times I’m not writing.
Time is strained against bottles that need washing and naps that need taking (by son and mamma). I simply can’t write, or even think, as much as I used to. At times I feel more creative as I watch my son notice every detail about the world. His mouth a perfect, “o,” he holds his fingers out to explore new things, like a ball, piece of bread or flower. That creativity doesn’t always turn into a poem. Other times I feel much more decisive because of my lack of time; it is easier to edit and cut out extra words in pieces.
I’m working on accepting this less productive period to focus on our quickly changing baby. I’ve turned to friends for reassurance:
Fiction writer and memoirist Shasta Grant stopped writing for a few years when her son was small. She writes, “I was teaching full time online and kept my son at home rather than putting him in daycare so any and all ‘free’ time (when does a mother ever have free time?) was spent working. Since he started school I’ve begun writing again.”
Poet Komal Patel Mathew recently guest blogged for me on the subject and wrote, “I am grading student research essays four days into spring break while my babies are in daycare, while someone else is holding their hands and watching them learn. Here, I am not the mother or writer I had hoped I would be.” She’s decided to stop teaching and return to her twin children.
Poet Theresa Borgese writes, “For me, I have to just trust that this is a dormant time for my work and to really relish in the five minutes that he is so small. (…) One thing I try not to do is beat myself up about it. (key word here is try) It’s easy to feel like whatever we’re doing isn’t enough, especially for goal-oriented women who have had significant professional accomplishments. (…) Right now, in this March of 2014, it is enough for me to watch a foolish tulip peek out of the mulch while the boy learns to kick a ball around in the sunny cold. I am glad and grateful for the opportunity.”
We do what we can when we can. And that might change often.
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Chloe Yelena Miller lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son. She is the author of Unrest (Finishing Line Press). She blogs about intersecting roles at Woman Mother Writer (http://womanmotherwriter.blogspot.com).
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Chloe’s three poems “Italian Vocabulary: Gravidanza,” “Conjunctions,” and “Ciao, Ciao!” can be found in Issue 4: Mothers.
