#10. I Stood With My Sisters in the Queues of Motherhood.
We all need somebody to lean on. Or on someone else’s poetry.
For last week’s post, I wanted to make an offering of something sparkly and clever, something connected to the theme of gifts and commodities that informed my post from two weeks ago. It was going to be chiseled into a point, and so bang on that it would create, as promised, Order from Chaos, and delay the inevitable entropy of everything, even if for just a bit. But, I was unable to muster the tools or the time. I had no choice but to Let It Be. And in exchange, I received a lesson. A gift, if you will…
Ten days ago, I found myself at home and grounded along with Kid#1 and Kid#2 by The Flu. Perhaps was it the flu-that-dare-not-speak-its-name. But bygones, and in short: after a few days of sponge, sweat, and shiver, rolling with the punches and flowing as the river, my boys and I were back on track, but I was late on all the deliverables that come with my chosen territory - kids/school - house/hearth - work/words.
Clearly, I had to drop some balls. Of course, the balls first to go were the things I keep for myself, the things I wait in queues for. Many mothers (maybe not all mothers, and maybe some fathers too) are, by now, used to this. With the up-all-night, nursing, pumping, feeding, changing, playing, reading (reading and more reading) days of motherhood a dozen or so years behind now, wasn’t I supposed to do unto myself as I do unto others already? I tried. I tried to post that post. Edit that story. Email that email. But I could not. The Great Flattening had left my brain, fog, my body, log. Words fell on the floor. The centre would not hold! So I let it fall apart. I Let It Be. I did nothing. I packed a bag. I took a boat. I lay in a pool. I soaked up the sun. I re-read Mrs. Dalloway. I convalesced.
Clarissa had a theory in those days… It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not 'here, here, here'; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoke to, some women in the street, some man behind a counter - even trees, or barns…
- Virgina Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.
In three days of Woolf and water, a lesson emerged: To Be is to be able to Not Be. To fall away from the world. To let it fall away from you. To fall out of your head and into someone else’s. To lean on someone. Maybe on someone else’s poetry.
Relatedly, here is the best thing I have ever read on what Everything, Everywhere, All at Once feels like:
I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood
and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.
I handed over my clothes and took its uniform,
its dressing gown and undergarments, a cardigan
soft as a creature, smelling of birth and milk,
and I lay down in Motherhood’s bed, the bed I had made
but could not sleep in, for I was called at once to work
in the factory of Motherhood. The owl shift,
the graveyard shift. Feedingcleaninglovingfeeding.
I walked home, heartsore, through pale streets,
the coins of Motherhood singing in my pockets.
Then I soaked my spindled bones
in the chill municipal baths of Motherhood,
watching strands of my hair float from my fingers.
Each day I pushed my pram through freeze and blossom
down the wide boulevards of Motherhood
where poplars bent their branches to stroke my brow.
I stood with my sisters in the queues of Motherhood –
the weighing clinic, the supermarket – waiting
for Motherhood’s bureaucracies to open their doors.
As required, I stood beneath the flag of Motherhood
and opened my mouth although I did not know the anthem.
When darkness fell I pushed my pram home again,
and by lamplight wrote urgent letters of complaint
to the Department of Motherhood but received no response.
I grew sick and was healed in the hospitals of Motherhood
with their long-closed isolation wards
and narrow beds watched over by a fat moon.
The doctors were slender and efficient
and when I was well they gave me my pram again
so I could stare at the daffodils in the parks of Motherhood
while winds pierced my breasts like silver arrows.
In snowfall, I haunted Motherhood’s cemeteries,
the sweet fallen beneath my feet –
Our Lady of the Birth Trauma, Our Lady of Psychosis.
I wanted to speak to them, tell them I understood,
but the words came out scrambled, so I knelt instead
and prayed in the chapel of Motherhood, prayed
for that whole wild fucking queendom,
its sorrow, its unbearable skinless beauty,
and all the souls that were in it. I prayed and prayed
until my voice was a nightcry
and sunlight pixelated my face like a kaleidoscope.
- Liz Berry, The Republic of Motherhood
While at the pool, iced gin in hand, I witnessed a new mother in the thick of feedingcleaninglovingfeeding. I turned to my tween and my teen and said, we were there not long ago, do you remember? We do not remember they replied, bemused. I watched them lope to the next thing, the way they do. I floated on the water. I closed my eyes and listened to distant laughter, the thud of big kids, splashing, divebombs. I saw puréed pumpkin and soggy diapers float away from me, and towards me now, gorgeous smiles, asking where the snorkels are. I see their teeth behind snapped metal and a spectre of my To-Do list: Call the orthodontist - Urgent. Scratch that. Call the orthodontist - Tomorrow.
Such a poignant and beautiful piece. You have the skill to weave words together that speak directly to the heart I’m certain there are many more mothers like me, whom you might not even know, that your writing has touched, and more who have found comfort and solace in your words.
Looking forward to more . Thank you and big love x