I will not go gentle
I have been creating this article in my head since I birthed my first-born. I have been creating it not as an article but perhaps more as a manifesto, an ode to a previous life, a constitution or a heavily embroidered cloak to guard me against being submerged in the project of mothering.
To say that mothering is an all-consuming project is putting it lightly. You are solely responsible for the life and well being of a small person. A person who lays vulnerably in your arms waiting on you for food, care, cleanliness, stimulation, warmth, love and so much more. This small person evolves rapidly and as they do, their needs and wants change. You are perpetually staring into their faces and having to make quick, and slow, well-considered resolutions as to what they need now and how you can give it to them.
Mothering is very much doing. There is that cliché phrase that love is a doing word. This could not be truer for mothering. Sheila Heti writes, “The love, the child, and all those motherly feelings that mothers speak about in such an enticing way, as though a child is something to have, not something to do. The doing is what seems hard. The having seems marvelous. But one doesn’t have a child, one does it.” And as you are in the project of doing, you are also in the project of becoming undone.
“Having brought two small people into the world, I constantly fear being erased entirely.”
Having brought two small people into the world, I constantly fear being erased entirely. I am working on my individual project of growth in the utter margins of life. To have gone from working lazily on myself, existing solely within my body and possessing only myself to feeling like a faint trace in the margins of a forgotten book is difficult. Rachel Cusk says, “Motherhood, for me, was a sort of a compound fenced off from the rest of the world. I was forever plotting my escape from it.” This has been an overwhelming feeling for me, too. And as I am deep within the trenches of mothering a small baby, again, and a toddler, even more so. Cusk elaborates, “Looking after children is a low-status occupation. It is isolating, frequently boring, relentlessly demanding and exhausting. It erodes your self-esteem and your membership of the adult world. The more it is separated from the rest of your life, the harder it gets; and yet to bring your children to your own existence, rather than move yourself to theirs, is hard too.”
This dilemma of bringing my children closer to my existence remains barren terrain. I exist within their world. I live to respond to their needs. I am fully formed as mama and certainly within their gaze I am no other. Their gaze remains the strongest one, the dominant gaze that defines so utterly and so completely that other stories regardless of their breadth and depth are forgotten, rejected or abandoned. I understand that this is definitely exacerbated by the fact that they are so small and their needs are so entirely reliant on me for now. This will change. It always does. This is but a season, I am reminded by mothers with older children. I do fear though how much of me will remain?
It is unfair to think that small kids can hold and understand complexity. A few months ago I sat outside drinking wine with two friends – one pregnant and the other with a child who is the same age as my first-born. It was a summer’s evening and everything felt abundant. I was finally able to sit with friends, hold space, reminisce, encourage and be encouraged to dream while drinking good wine all while watching our kids play as the sun went down. Life was good. Someone said something particularly funny and we all laughed loudly. We cackled long and unapologetically. We hooted and relished in that moment until my son came over and said, “No mama stop it! Stop laughing!” He is three. He was quite adamant. I realized then that he had not seen this version of me and he did not know what to do with something that existed so far outside his image of me, his feeling of me. This reminded me of other times that he would pull my crop top down over my stomach and repeat, “No mama. Put the top on.” Or how he did not like watching me dance, often putting an end to it by changing the song from Lizzo to Baby Shark.
Going into the second child, I was certain that I would not go gentle into that good night. While this time is certainly easier in knowing what to expect and putting some systems in place, I do feel that part of mothering a baby is to expect to become undone. My doing is temporarily placed elsewhere on these two small people. This is the longest shortest time. Each moment of this kind of mothering and giving yourself almost entirely feels like it stretches into forever. I now know that it doesn’t. Each week that passes brings me closer to the end of this season. Each time my children gain some independence and are able to do something for themselves, means that I gain a bit more of my own time and space back.
“ I do fear though how much of me will remain?”
I have to think of the two roads – mothering and my own project of doing – as not remaining forever separate. Eventually they will coalesce in relatively harmonious ways. I have only now begun to think about what this looks like practically. Developing a parenting community seems to be the most urgent foundation. Dani McClain writes in her book We Live for the We, “Village life is the optimal environment for a child because of the way it breaks open the narrow, inward focus of the nuclear family and gives all capable, willing adults the role of caregiver.” The more capable and willing adults around to care for my sons, the richer their lives will be and the more air and fire I will have to reignite my own growth and keep the fire going. Another clear imperative is relentlessly bringing my children closer to my existence through a series of carefully considered decisions. I want my boys to bask in the glory that is their feminist aunties. I want my boys to be immersed in the comforts and discomforts of art exhibitions, plays, live music and social gatherings. I want my boys to revel in their world through travel and conversation as much as I do. I need my boys to constantly be questioning their world and how they exist within it. In doing so, I acknowledge that mothering will remain a constant project of doing, but it will not become my undoing.