The Magnum Opus & Motherhood

The Magnum Opus & Motherhood

Sitting up at night with my infant child, my feet rocking the glider on their own, plots begin to stir and thicken as characters bob to the surface in the sleepy cauldron of my mind.

Tomorrow, I think, swaddling my daughter and lowering her into dreams. Tomorrow, I’ll find the time.

But as the fireflies burning outside our French doors vanish with the scalding dawn, so do these aspirations. Instead, I find that breakfast — a lumberjack breakfast: eggs, oatmeal, coffee to wash away the sand of sleep — is top priority followed by laundry, then dishes. By lunchtime, my creative aspirations have condensed down to peeling an orange with both hands.

In the afternoon — post dusting, pre supper — I tie a striped hat under my daughter’s chin, and we sit in the grass beneath the bonny spring sun. While the warmth penetrates through my cotton shirt, melting the fused rod of my spine, I turn the pages of a book with one hand and cup my daughter’s supping head with the other. The author’s words simmer in my mind. I taste the sweetness of consonants on my tongue and the beauty of them sates my creative thirst.

In the kitchen, a timer goes off. The casserole is done. I unspool my legs and struggle to my feet while being careful not to disturb the magnum opus of my sleeping child.

Inside, I know, the sink is full of dishes, but the cauldron of my mind is not empty, for tomorrow — maybe tomorrow — I will find the time.

Today, for the first time in over five years, I reread this post, “Stargazing,” which I wrote when my firstborn daughter was five weeks old.

I remember writing it with an infant balanced on the nursing pillow on my lap, just like I am writing this post now. But the difference is the frustration I felt as I struggled to balance pursuing my art and embracing motherhood.

I still don’t always have it figured out. But what I do understand now–and what I didn’t back then–was how quickly this time really does go.

That firstborn daughter of mine is about to enter kindergarten. Right now, she is sitting at the opposite end of the kitchen table; her light brown bangs in her eyes, curls springing up around her ears, bottom lip pinched in concentration as she rolls a piece of Play-Doh flat with a rolling pin and presses a cookie cutter over it that is in the shape of a duck. “I like pink, Mama,” she says, out of nowhere.

“You like pink?”

“Yeah, is that why you got me a pink Hello Kitty toothbrush?”

I nod and smile, and she looks back down at her project, pleased.

As I read that post, and write this post, my heart aches for the young woman I was back then and for the little helpless child who was balanced on my lap, who was in the midst of balancing so many scales of my life, and yet had no clue of the magnitude of her weight.

I want to hold that child again. To surrender to the beautiful, challenging, unpredictable journey of motherhood from the moment that baby girl was placed in my arms. Instead, I went on a journey.

In some ways, motherhood frustrated me because I feared I was giving myself up in order to bring another person into the world (I was); I feared life was never going to be the same (it wasn’t).

But now, three children and five years later, these girls’ names are so carved on my heart that I cannot imagine life without them. I cannot imagine pursuing art without them.

For they have balanced me. They have forced me to live life rather than just writing about it. They have forced me to prioritize my time, soaking up the rays at the splash pad or pushing a child in the park rather than staring at a screen.

And that is what I thought of two weeks ago, when I had lunch with the wonderful woman who helped make my author dreams come true. I thought of that balancing act of art and motherhood, priorities and children.

I thought of the next fifteen years, and what–more than anything–I will want to glean from this time. And what I will want to glean from that time is this: that my children will always know that, though they have changed my life, they have enriched it; though raising them has–and will–require sacrifice, they have given more than they have taken away; that their beauty, their laughter, their determination and wit is the melody to my life’s daily song. Simple though it is, it is truly my magnum opus more than any of my books, and I am so blessed to be their mother.

What is one major difference you have noted in your life in the past five years?