i, being a grown-up, am faster than you and, if i run, i am able to pee for four seconds before you burst through the door and find me.
i found the above sentence written in the notes app on my phone, and i felt it encapsulated motherhood for me: trying to meet my own needs while (sometimes literally) being chased by another’s, never sure when the next interruption or break will come.
in the intro to ART MONSTERS by LAUREN ELKIN, she discusses writing the book:
“Looking back over it now, it occurs to me that it could only have been written by a woman who was pregnant, and then breastfeeding, and then mothering. In its shape, its rhythms and interruptions, in the things it notices, in the way it makes meaning, or fails to.”
unrelated to motherhood, she also talks of not being able to borrow a library book for more than two days at a time, and how this limit added its own rhythms to her writing.
this got me thinking about how i might reframe limitations in my life as ritual and rhythm, and so see them as a necessary part of what i am trying to do with my writing, see them as integral to creation, particularly as a mother. interruptions, adaptations, shapeshifting practices and tools, creative use of snatches of time, etc., are all a part of maternal creativity, and if they result in non-linear odds and ends then their very form tells a story, is imbued with meaning.
writes beautifully about “writing around the edges” in the post below:
maternal creativity reminds me of MARGAUX WILLIAMSON’s work Moon, which a friend at work told me about. there’s something magical about this painting, the way it depicts three moons as she returned to complete the painting at different times.
i know it’s not always the case, but i started wondering: why do we often try to erase the passing of time within creative projects? we return to our work, our writing, as if no time has passed, we neaten out the edges, the interruptions, to present a smoother, cleaner piece of creativity, removing signs of editing, of the rhythms of our creative days, even of ourselves returning to our work, after a break, different than we were before (i know a lot of amazing books on mothering and motherhood use experimental forms to convey the very nature of creating as a mother. they embrace motherhood’s rhythms and repeated acts, they document the interruptions, they let maternity shape their work, but it feels generally that we favour the clear and coherent over the disjointed, the “clean” over the messy).
seeing how MARGAUX embraces time, and the reality of working on a creative project around other life duties and happenings, made such an impression on me — i’ve not really stopped thinking about it since. it leaves me asking, how can i document such rhythms more, notice the patterns in the process of my creative work, and see what story they tell about my life and mothering? what happens if i return to a project over and over at different points in the week or the year, not to remove more and more of myself from it, not to make it more acceptable, linear, comprehensible, rounded, but to overlay different times and experiences on top of what is already there, to make it more dreamy, convoluted, layered and, ultimately, more accurate?
perhaps i’ll have some answers soon…
in the meantime, i recommend listening to a lovely maiden, mother, crone podcast in which the maiden, ALISHA, said something along the lines of “you are never old, in each new moment you are new” — and its this newness that i seek to explore more of in my work: the nature of circling back on myself, returning to the page, slightly changed, and the places i’ve been in-between.
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