I’ve been reading a lot of interesting stuff lately—a biography of Marie Curie (Obsessive Genius), an anthology of Jane Kenyon poems (Otherwise), and the latest Mothers Who Think collection, called Because I Said So. I really loved Rosellen Brown’s essay “No Blame,” in which she writes about being a writer and a mom. I’ve wished I could sit down and talk to her personally—a lot of what she says relates to things I think about as a working-outside-the-home mom as well as one who writes—but conversing with her essay will have to do. It’s hard to resist the urge to quote the whole thing.

She starts by talking about the questions she always gets at readings—when do you find time to write as a mom? She was writing poetry at the time her kids were young, and she talks about how the fragmentary nature of that genre lends itself to searching out a word here, a phrase there, in the midst of everyday life. Definitely. There are some other things that have helped her along the way—a supportive spouse, cooperative kids who nap well, enough commercial success to justify the time. Well, two out of three isn't bad.

She writes:

“A few weeks later I am indeed in the hospital, my beautiful little girl-baby beside me in her plastic bassinet, when my husband brings me the galleys of my first published story—and I correct them on the rolling bed table that has just accommodated my breakfast tray.”

I remember bringing C to a class on World Christianity, a few weeks after she was born. The class was looking at a handout and discussing it, and I remember C started fussing, so I stood at the back of the room, rocking her in one hand, holding the handout in the other. She settled down as I continued following along with the class discussion, and I suddenly realized, “I’m doing both of these things at once!” I can’t explain it—I just felt fully present to both tasks at the same time. It was a comfort, a sense of I can do this.

I wonder if it seems crazy to try to do this writing workshop. Part of me wants to use the week to think about how the writer/pastor/mom thing would really look. In that sense I’m excited about it. I’m also thinking… if I wait until it’s convenient to pursue this stuff? I’ll never do it.

At the same time, I have started daydreaming during this maternity leave what it would be like to work 3/4 time at the church, freeing up some time for family, personal projects, and writing. We’d need to crunch the numbers. Ideally I’d love for R to work 3/4 time as well!

“I still cringe at the memory of [my younger daughter] calling me from school when one of the class chaperones failed to show up to take her second grade [on a field trip]. She knew that I was a reluctant class mother; I protected (and taught her to protect) my time the way violinists protect their hands… There was no way I would say no. But it is the way her regret and apology and something almost like fear accompanied her entreaty that lives with me even now.”

I like this idea of protecting one’s time, that time is a priceless and irreplaceable commodity, necessary for one’s vocation. Just today I heard from our new office manager asking whether I would be available to do two weddings, one in May and one in June. They are non-member weddings, and the head of staff is unavailable on those particular dates. I declined. I think the June date won’t work, and the May date is free, but it would require me to come right back to work and get up to speed with church stuff while juggling several premarital counseling appointments. I just feel like church needs to be my priority during that time. And, of course, my family, especially the divine miss M who will be adjusting to me going back to work. But am I neglecting my pastoral duties by saying no? I have to tell myself it’s a not-right-now kind of thing.

I do wonder what kind of “class mother” I will be. Will my girls feel like the odd ones out because their mother works? Stay-at-home moms are the overwhelming norm in this area. Or will it not even register with them that I'm different, since ministry has such a flexible schedule and I can be present to them?

Regarding class mothering… I have to admit that I’m enjoying the time at home, more than I thought I would. This week is C’s turn to bring snacks to preschool, and I actually found myself calling the teacher to find out what the letters of the day would be so I could buy snacks starting with that letter—and perhaps make some letter cookies with the alphabet cookie cutters CG auntie gave us. I hung up the phone and thought, Did I just do that? Is that me?

BTW, tomorrow is G day—I bought grapes and Goldfish. Although I did buy pre-made dough for the cookies. I’m no domestic diva.

“It is thirty years later as I write this. Adina is, herself, a writer… If I were to ask whether she suffered for my occupation, and the concomitant pre-occupation, that so often accompanied it, I dare to think she would only laugh.”

“Why is it, I wonder, that no one has ever asked if I think that having a mother deeply committed to work like mine… might be useful to a child, might be a model of dedication against difficult odds, with an uncertain outcome and modest rewards. Instead the questions always seem to suggest a zero-sum game.”

“No one dares challenge those who have to work for the paycheck, but it seems that those who fulfill less visible, internal needs will always be suspect.”

“Somewhere in the equation I suppose there must be… faith that things will balance out; that for every choice that I would do this thing I had to do, with a different passion than the one I felt for my child but a passion nonetheless, that somehow she would gain something from it, too. Burying that passion is no solution; its denial will be smoke that rises from an invisible fire.”

Has anyone else read the Christian Century this week? There are some articles about marriage and divorce. There is apparently some evidence that kids are better off in the long run in an unhappy but intact marriage than in divorced homes with happy parents. I am a child of divorce myself, and I had no idea my parents were unhappy, so perhaps our family would have been a prime candidate for staying together—it’s not like there was a lot of fighting and rancor in front of our faces. Still, as hard as the actual divorce and aftermath were, I am glad my parents did not stay together for our benefit. Because what, we’re all grown, then they get divorced, and I would have to live with the thought that they were unhappy all those years just for me? Has anyone measured the impact of that kind of guilt on children?

The divorce stuff relates to this working/writing/mothering stuff because both reflect a sort of trickle-down theory of happiness—if the parents are fulfilled, the kids are better off. Yet I read this quote from Nora Ephron this week on another blog: “Some kids do not want you, mother, to self-actualize. They’d really prefer you to be suicidal but HOME.” I can see how that would be true too. But is that even reasonable?

No conclusions here.

But I did love how the essay ends, with a poem Brown writes about herself from the perspective of a neighbor:

“I have a neighbor
who is always deep
in a book or two.

High tides of clutter
rise in her kitchen.

Which last longer, words,
words in her bent head,
or the clean spaces

between one perfect
dusting and the next?”

Amen!

Let us all be about those things that last—whether they be words or something else that is good and satisfying.