Claiming my Light and my Shadow

School started for my children in early August. Six weeks later, my daughter's black school pants still lay on the dining room table, orange chalk marks indicating where to place the hem. I pass them nearly every evening, mourning another day that the job has gone undone. Until finally, last night, as I walk in after work carrying bags of groceries from the car, 12 says, without looking up from the computer where she is finishing a (late) report on women's roles in Egypt, "Are you still going to hem my black pants?"

"I'll do it tonight after dinner."

Do I need to tell you that it didn't happen? Likely not. Nor did I make the chocolate chip cookies which were my inspiration for stopping at the grocery, on a rainy evening, after a long day at work.

I do, however, climb into bed at 9:11, according the old clock radio on my nightstand, a glass of milk and two leftover Girl Scout cookies on the shelf above it. My husband and stepson are downstairs in the den watching the Colts play on tv. When Almost 17 wanders in, asking if I made the cookies, I look at her and shake my head.

I never get to everything I intend to do.

But today has been one of those rare gems: I wake early and make chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast; once the early shift is out the door, I sit down and hem, unevenly, my daughter's black school pants, lay them over her chair and call her to breakfast; I pick up my computer from the repair shop; I sit down to copy two pages of Anna Karenina, and end at four, when Levin concedes Kitty's hand to Vronsky and exits.

I am aware that I take on too much, as a mother and as an artist. And it would be easy to feel like a failure. Some days, many days, I do, choosing to stare at the long list of chores on my fridge, paralyzed by the Bigness of beginning the first story in a new collection, or hand-copying an 800 page novel.

Could it be that the secret to success is as simple as an early bedtime? In summer, when we are tempted into late-night games, my father-in-law says, "He who hoots with the Owls, doth not soar with the Eagles." And off to bed he goes. But some of the best times I have are in those late night hours, playing Euchre while bugs launch themselves against the window screens, or staying up late to finish a novel, or sitting in a rocking chair at 2am, staring into the face of a nursing baby. There is no making sense of it, no guarantee that what works today will do so tomorrow, or with the next kid or the next book.

Perhaps that is why I keep coming back to this line in Anna Karenina: "All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

 

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