Trigger warning: The following post might offend parents who 1. enjoy working away from home, or 2. wish they didn't have to work away from home, or 3. are highly sensitive, lack empathy and/or a sense of humour. It's important to remember that you are here, on my blogpage, which directly means that this post is about me, not you. Now, let's get on with it.
TRUTH BOMB: WITHOUT GREAT SOLITUDE, NO SERIOUS WORK IS POSSIBLE. BOOM.
Thanks, Pablo. And you would know what you're talking about. After all, as a man, solitude is an achievable goal, even if you're a dad. Men have always been the achievers of great things because they have the luxury of solitude, if they so wish.
I never thought I'd find myself longing for solitude. As if it were a craving for chocolate after an untimely diet (lets be honest, all diets are), the thirst for rain following a drought, the desire for a reunion with a loved one, a true yearning of the soul. If I could be left alone, for just a day, a week, a month! Oh, the work I'd produce; the maniscripts I'd edit, the poetry I'd compose, the blogposts I'd write.
Surely, to be left in peace, undisturbed and untethered to reality without interuption must be the holy grail for any creative soul.
But alas, I am a mother. And not just any old mother, I'll have you know. I'm a rarity - or so it seems to me - a creature on the brink of extinction, often frowned upon by peers (I'll admit, sometimes I smell funky), a threat to third-wave feminists: I am a stay-at-home-mom. Gasp.
I like to call it present mothering. And this is my job. My 14 hour workday consists of feeding, bathing, wiping bottoms, and playing poppies (somedays nonstop, that is, now that my 4-year-old has stopped napping during the day) with an only child. And inbetween we go to the park, to the beach, to the library, to playdates. I endure singalongs, musicals, cartoons, and nursey rhymes - repetatively. I teach colours, shapes, good habits and manners. I discipline. I pop Calmettes at least 3 times a week. I'm the housekeeper, the nanny, the teacher, the sibling, the kisser of ouchies. Everyday. All day.
I am mother, and this is all I've been for four years. I've made personal sacrifices, finacial sacrifices, and social sacrifes in the pursuit of present mothering. And I'll be honest: sometimes it sucks. Sometimes I feel as though I don't exist. But then I look at her looking at me and I realise, I do exist and to her, I am EVERYTHING. And then I know I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
But when you mother like I mother, the way my mother mothered and my grandmother mothered, you literally have no time to be anything but a mother. Sometimes I even forget that I'm a wife as well, that I was a wife before I was a mother, and that I'll be a wife long after my child leaves home. With this type of mothering there are no breaks, no time-outs, no solitude.
And solitude is one thing I desperately need to be the one other thing that defines who I am as a human being: a writer.
But do not pity me, dear reader (or roll your eyes when you ask about my writing and I say "I have no time", dear friend, or say, "but Erica, what on earth do you do all day?!"). I know the time I invest in my child will pay off threefold in the future. I do what's best for her, for now, even when it means that sometimes it's not best for me. For me happy child = happy mom. Toddlers are egocentric, after all.
So, here I am, knee deep in mothering. One day you will read my novel, but not now. Now is not your time, nor mine. Now is her time.
Speaking of time, in the meantime, I will leave my musings here, perhaps to let fellow maverick moms know that you are not alone. One page a day is how the book will get done. And all of the time we invest in our children's days is worth more than anything that exists in heaven or on earth.
All good things are wild and free.
x
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