Women and Writing

Read this essay from The Guardian online, by Rachel Cusk, on women and writing. I'll quote a passage from it:

When a woman in 2009 sits down to write, she perhaps feels rather sexless. She is inclined neither to express nor deny: she'd rather be left alone to get on with it. She might even nurture a certain hostility towards the concept of "women's writing". Why should she be politicised when she doesn't feel politicised? It may even, with her, be a point of honour to keep those politics as far from her prose as it is possible to get them. What compromises women – babies, domesticity, mediocrity – compromises writing even more. ... Her own life is one of freedom and entitlement, though her mother's was probably not. Yet she herself is not a man. She is a woman: it is history that has brought about this difference between herself and her mother. She can look around her and see that while women's lives have altered in some respects, in others they have remained much the same. She can look at her own body: if a woman's body signifies anything, it is that repetition is more powerful than change. But change is more wondrous, more enjoyable. It is pleasanter to write the book of change than the book of repetition. In the book of change one is free to consider absolutely anything, except that which is eternal and unvarying. "Women's writing" might be another name for the book of repetition.

Domesticity, babies, our bodies. Repetition; change. Are we circling perpetually around the same questions and problems of how to balance our own lives and needs while meeting the needs of those for whom we are responsible because what underlies these questions does not change? Because we are our bodies.

Twenty Years

I found this interview with Nathalie Provost, in the Globe and Mail, very moving. Ms. Provost survived the shooting at the Ecole Polytechnique, which happened twenty years ago. She is protesting the federal government's proposed changes to the long-gun registry.
According to the Globe and Mail, 5.6 percent of victims murdered by hand-guns are women; 41.1 percent of victims murdered by long-guns are women.

How Does She Do It?

How does she do it?

How does the Perfect Mom manage to care for her children 24 hours a day, cook fresh and healthy meals from scratch, source her food locally, keep her house tidy and clean, launder her family's clothing, arrange regular doctor and dentist appointments, read books to her children, spend special time with each individual child, ferry children to after-school activities, cope with conflict creatively, stay patient and calm amidst the great and constant storm of chaos, spend meaningful and romantic time with her partner, and even do paid work on occasion? Oh, and still make space to nurture herself.

I ask because this is the kind of mom I strive to be. And because we're all familiar with that Perfect Mom ideal. We're bombarded with images of her.

I also ask because it's the kind of mom that I'm not.

I'm not against setting the bar high. I want to learn and achieve and strive to do better. But when I look at that list of Perfect Mom achievements, it becomes really clear that the ideal is not just impossible, but improbable, even mythical.

There is no way, for example, to do paid work while caring for children. I might be able to involve my children (with effort and time lost and extra mess afterward) in helping to cook a meal, but I can't involve them in helping me write a story (my paid work). In fact, as anyone knows who's ever chased a toddler around house, in order to do that work, I need my children to be elsewhere entirely, being looked after by someone else (though the television is also an occasionally effective babysitter). Which completely nixes the possibility of Perfect Mom-dom.

In fact, the answer to how does she do it? is: She doesn't. Those of us who occasionally look like we're achieving the impossible are working with smoke and mirrors. We're magicians of special effects. We're faking it.

And I wonder whether there's something intrinsically wrong with that, have we created an image of motherhood that is both alluring and ultimately disappointing. And yet ...

I strongly dislike wallowing, complaining, whining. I think negativity is corrosive and infects others, too. Part of my mothering goal is to be as positive as possible, to create an optimistic family culture, to live inside even the most difficult situations and cope with grace and humour. To forgive my own mistakes and be careful not to judge others, too.

Part of faking it is reminding myself of what is possible.

But maybe I should be reminding myself that there's an imperfect human being behind the curtain. And sharing that conflicted, often harassed and frustrated self.

Are those ideals even my own, at heart? Really? How do I know?

One more question: Is there a Perfect Dad?