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Lately I’ve been thinking deeply and how I miss how desperate I am …
It’s 9pm Monday night and I’m writing this to my seven-year-old baby sitting in front of me, eating apples (“cut into thin slices, okay?”) And eating almond butter. She is already wearing pajamas but decided that the right time to say she was still hungry was not yet when we had dinner at a friends dinner or even when we walked in the door, but only after washing her. teeth and I was in the toilet. My husband is playing the piano and the sound fills our apartment. I’ll have to get into his room soon. He will not sleep for long hours. Until then, there will be plenty of negotiations.
There you go, to start the whole process.
Over the last few weeks I’ve tried, as we slowly get out of our pandemic coughs, to delve deeper into how much I’ve missed writing: sitting alone, for a period of time, with my thoughts. Writing or not writing, but being able to slowly sink to the bottom of something, to walk in the depths of an idea, image, to walk in the depths of a scene, not to bother washing air, clothes, or getting a timer or doorbell. calls or “Mom!” he called
But, in a naughty plot that no one would find unbelievable, I only have a few sentences in my last attempt – headphones tied up, husband making lunch in the kitchen, eyes fixed on the screen – my phone rang. And I hit it again and again. Mine, not my husband’s. Unknown number. Decline to decline, I’m working, I’m writing about being able to go deeper.
Hello! This is Mrs. Pierce! The daughter’s teacher said when I finally took it.
No, he doesn’t …
Calm! All right!
You scared me!
It’s just that Noah has to take a math test, and she needs to forget her email address at home and access the school website. Can you go find it? Does he say he’s at his desk? On a blue paper?
In the years following Covid, won’t there be books published by mothers? Will all primary caregivers lose the ability to access beyond the immediate and urgent needs of the rest of our family? Whether we perfect the art of writing, composing, or choreographing (in our heads) lying in bed, talking and laughing (as I am now) about LeBron James, for example, about LeBron James, or the sound of families struggling ridiculously. klipak? Will we learn to have dinner about our despair and send messages and hand out assignments (somehow) and give classes to kids with feet (somehow) and go to school and make food during the school day (three hours!). undo and list the perishables, and find, register, and pay for the camps, while we lose ourselves, our deepest selves, in the middle?
For some reason, I keep thinking about the summer of 2019, before any of us knew what was coming. My husband, daughter, and I moved from Los Angeles, where we live, to Montreal, where I grew up, looking for a quieter summer. We introduced our girls to summer camps, had a lot of support from the family, and dedicated my heart to a project that could eventually become a book. I felt that way inside him, returning to the story over and over again, every morning, trying to find the words and their meaning and meaning to move from one thought to another. I would follow up on my outing, with ten thousand words generated at the end of the summer. How gratifying that time was!
In other words, I found the opposite of all the writing I’ve done in the last 15 months: scattered, last-minute surface. Paint thrown on a wall.
And then my smallest and most horrible voice whispered to me, Where could my book be if I could find that quiet, deep place, to carve, to persevere, even through this? If he hadn’t made his way to the pandemic, prepare banana bread and clay and find email addresses at the messy table?
I feel lost for myself now, at the time, that skill.
Yes, I know he will return. The children will return to school. Once again we will be working outside the home, already on top of each other. The spaces we once occupied can only be found in our own. I’ve learned so much this year about survival and community and multiple tasks. Proverb about keeping balls in the air. Just move on. About the power of a walk or a quick biscuit to get in quickly with a friend or just out of the oven. About being a new kind of mom, she says yes to everything, more curls, more TV, more ice cream, being late.
But I also lost a lot. Only time. Time to think. To create silence, fear somewhere in the room. Constantly writing without interruption. To be on the hook. Time to wait, to refine. To go to places that are unexpected and amazing in my head. This is the luxury of space –
My daughter wandered off. I can’t sleep. Pajamas dragging pants on the floor. Ilea mussed.
Let this thing end –
Abigail Rasminsky is a writer, editor and professor based in Los Angeles. She teaches creative writing at USC’s Keck Medical School and writes a weekly newsletter. People + Bodies. He also wrote this story about marriage.
PS 21 amazing parenting tips and motherhood mantra.
(Photo by Lauren Lee / Stocksy.)
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