Sometimes when you take
your child with you on the road to your artistic or semi-professional
obligations you come out looking like a super-hero. As in, wow, that child
slept the whole time while that mama did her thing. As in, wow, we women really
can do everything! And with such grace and ease! When I was twenty-two I saw an
independent film director answer questions after the screening of her film. Her
some-month-old baby was there and the director, cool as a cucumber, would pick up
her baby, lift up her shirt, and nurse that baby in front of one-hundred or so
people while intelligently answering questions about casting and funding and
writing and directing. I have always wanted to be that woman, not so much for
myself, but for the other young, impressionable, not-yet-with-child young women
in the audience who might be wondering if they can be both artist,
professional, and mother. I want them to know they can, and that they can do
all of it well. That it doesn’t have to be an either/or equation. That our
breasts and our babies can be an integrated part of our professional and
creative weft and weave.
So that’s what I was
thinking about yesterday when we took Owen Cricket to our lecture at Dartmouth
College. Only it didn’t turn out quite like I’d planned. First of all, there
were only six students in the class, and they were all boys between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-one. Not that boys shouldn’t see a mother/artist at work,
but I didn’t think it would have the same inspirational/impressionable impact
as it could have had on girls. Or, it might have been impressionable in a way I
wasn’t at all interested in impressing. Secondly, Owen started making a racket the
minute I started talking, and wouldn’t settle down in his chair. He didn’t want
to nurse, or shake his rattle, or chew on his expensive French Sophie. Which
meant that the co-teacher ended up taking him out into the hall so we could do
our thing, and that I kept bopping in and out of the classroom to check on
them, and thus missed out on half our lecture and half the discussion and ended
up feeling like both a mediocre mother and a mediocre semi-professional.
In other words, not a
super-hero at all. Of course this is all to be expected. Of course there are
times when it works like a charm and times when it doesn’t. And it’s all fine—it’s
almost always fine. One of the things motherhood has taught me is that true
catastrophes are very rare. And that most days demand, like a mother giving
birth, surrendering with ease to exactly what comes your way.
So surrender I did, to the
imperfection of yesterday afternoon. And today? To this early fall splendor.
Happy day to you all.