“I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.”
-Ernest Hemingway
I’ve loved this quote for a long time. And ever since Saturday night I’ve been thinking about it in light of Margaret Atwood’s provocative poem, Spelling. There are so many lines of that poem that echo in my head, but the one I’ve been mulling specifically is “I wonder how many women/denied themselves daughters…/so they could mainline words.” She beautifully refers to the age-old tension between creativity and procreativity that defined women artists for centuries. As recently as 1899, Kate Chopin’s Edna Pontellier walked into the sea as a way of avoiding the choice she could not make.
I feel so grateful to live in a time with more room for women to be both mothers and artists. Even more, for women to be both mothers and not-mothers, mothers and someone-other-than-a-mother at the same time. So glad because, ultimately, the subject that chose me clearly has a lot to do with my having had children. I don’t know that I would have come to the place that I am today, where my old way of being in the world simply does not suffice anymore, without them. It’s not precisely that my “subject” (if there is such a defining thing running through these diffuse musings) is my children, though clearly they are a big part of it. It’s more that the insistent awareness that I was missing something critical in this singular, short life of mine came only after I was a mother.
Of course it is not always simple, trying to mother and to write. Of course not. Adrienne Rich’s famous line that “Poetry was where I existed as no-one’s mother” speaks to the eternal trading-off of time, attention, and identity that we all engage in. But for me, one sphere enriches the other in ways I cannot yet fully articulate. They provide ample material, Grace and Whit do, but it’s actually more than that. It was they who woke me up to the sleepwalking way I was moving through my life, they who shook the foil in my eyes, they who said “Right here! Right now” loudly enough that I finally listened.
They, Grace and Whit, brought with them noise and sleeplessness and worry and chest-tightening love and most of all, a keen, bittersweet awareness of the fleetingness of it all. They brought stuffed animals and soccer balls and exercise pants and Harry Potter and sleepy whispers of love and a handful of dandelions offered with grubby hands and proud eyes. They brought my attention to my life, to a thousand million tiny moments, some of which glitter brilliantly, most of which blend into the slurry of memory. They brought me my subject. And how wildly, extravagantly fortunate I am that I don’t have to choose.
I remember reading The Awakening in school and thinking there was so much more I would one day understand about Edna Pontellier. Even as a naive teenager, I knew she had lessons to teach. Thanks for the reminder. Going to dig that one off the shelf and take another read …
Yes!
My favorite quote from the book:
“And in a day we should be rich!” she laughed. “I’d give it to you, the pirate gold and every bit of treasure we could dig up. I think you would know how to spend it. Pirate gold isn’t to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the gold specks fly!”
-Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Oh Linsdey, I love this post. It resonates with me as my children have been my catalyst toward creativity, awakening in me a depth I thought I’d lost during my souless corporate days. I too am so glad for the choices we have.
Writing and creating took a back seat in my life for years, until the kids came along… and I started blogging for family and then it turned into so much more. The irony of course is that the creativity comes when there is no time whatsoever to spill it onto the page unless the stars align and the moon is just right and children are off in dream land 🙂
{I have the Awakening in my collection, but have never read it… off to dig it out!}
I happened across your site today via a comment you left over at WSL, and am quite pleased at what I’ve discovered.
Amongst the pressures of the recent financial debacle and world news, it’s lovely to realize we have so many more choices today than our mothers or our mother’s mothers.
It’s quite beautiful, really.
Thank you for showing me more about the choices you have made, and letting me view them from your eyes. 🙂
Warmly,
Lori
While poetry may be where we are no one’s mother, perhaps blogging is where we are everyone’s mother, in a broader sense of caring about each other and the world—a place where we are each other’s mother in the service of both our kids and the muses… maybe even realizing that they are often one and the same.
My children have often been the subject of my writing, and they do absolutely inspire me, but I’m sad to say that I’m not sure that I have felt any awakening in a way such as you describe since their birth. It was something I expected to happen. I expected they would be born and I would feel that, this, this is what I’m meant to be doing. Be mother. Alas, I’ve never felt that.
Please don’t get me wrong, they enrich my life in ways I cannot begin to describe, but I don’t have a feeling that my children complete me. They are a part of me, but they don’t complete me. It’s something I struggle with often.
Oh Christine, I am so sorry that I so massively miscommunicated my feelings in this post … I could not agree with you more – I feel the exact same lack of … of what you describe. I’ve written often about how being their mother is the most important thing in my life but far from the ONLY thing, and that it’s not the single identity that solved all of my issues with this as I had hoped it would be. They definitely don’t complete me. Oh, I so relate to what you say! Thanks for commenting. This is a conversation to be continued.
Christine and Lindsey,
It’s been one of the great frustrations of my life that motherhood is not enough. I wanted it to be. I hoped it would be. I feel horrible guilt that it isn’t. Your honesty here has eased the weight of that burden for me. Thank God I’m not alone.
Damn that Jerry Maguire movie, anyways. Does anyone, really, ever complete us?
What if we aren’t meant to be completed, but rather an ongoing work in progress?
Another beautiful post, Lindsey. I just had the pleasure of hearing Margaret Atwood speak last week at the Earth Day conference I was covering. She’s wonderfully brilliant and funny.
And may I recommend to you and all your readers (I wish Jo and Corinne would see this) a book called Mamaphonic. It’s a compilation by women on art and motherhood. I’d go into it more, but my kids just stormed in. Google it – so worth it!
lindsey, oh my goodness how i have missed being here. it’s my fault entirely. have just done the usual: overcommitted to other people’s projects and doings. my children are young adults, and i have to tell you that while i love them to an absolute crisp, i am now struggling more than ever to find me, to recognize me when i look in the mirror, to feel comfortable with and confident in me. whoever that is. i am truly grateful that i could stay home with my chiclets, but damn. i mean, shoot.
I think you know that I happened upon motherhood quite by accident. I wasn’t anywhere near a place in my life where I was planning or not planning to have children. And then, just like that, motherhood chose me. It brought me back to my family in many ways. It flooded me with purpose on days when I was waffling. I know that I am still clawing at a way to find the me in it all, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, even as difficult as it can get.
Yes, our children draw our attention to life, to the moment.
My life is infinitely enriched by my children. As tough as it is to be mama, I would have it no other way.
PS: I appreciate your Rich quote, I love her work.