The Interview

Friday, I needed to give my full attention.

I posted on Facebook that despite needing to tend to a number of household chores like

and

and

, I was going to get all dressed up for a business meeting, and head out to breakfast with Loretta, the protagonist in the story I am currently revising. My writing group workshopped the story November, three months ago. Since then, I have carried around the piled of marked-up pages, meaning to dig in. Finally, last Tuesday, I sat down and read through them, circled images and words that kept coming up (shoes, feet, femininity and work). I knew then that I needed to dig deeper into what Loretta really wanted. What is she yearning for?

So, I pushed 13 to get read and ride the bus to school. I showered and carefully selected appropriate busines attire: pearls, skirt, gray high heels. I fed the dog and wrestled him into the car to take him to doggy day care. I looked a small cafe where I could sit in a cold unwanted corner, the one by the door that opens every time someone entered or left, which meant I could there without feeling guilty of cheating the server out of her morning tips.

I had ordered tea and pulled up a new document when 17 began texting me about feeling ill. Knowing it wasn't life-threatening, I pushed back, telling her that I needed an hour to finish up my work.

Yes, I put off my sick child in order to spend the morning writing about a fictional character. No, my writing has never been published. My work does not buy groceries or pay the mortgage. It doesn't provide benefits. But neither does much of the work that I do, like running a food pantry, chaperoning school field trips, waiting on repairman, planning menus and grocery shopping, and all other chores pictured above. I suppose I have become accustomed to not getting paid for my work.

But I want to get paid. I hate not having an income.

And so what on earth possessed me, six months ago, to decide to copy Leo Tolstoy's manuscript? I still have not found a clear way to explain this project to people who ask what I am doing. I would like to say that I am building my platform as a writer, or that I am hoping to turn the project in a book, and then of course, a movie, in which Julia Roberts, who is coincidentally my age, would play me.

But the truth is that I began doing this so I could figure out how to be a mother, a wife, and a writer. A strange method, you might think, taking on additional work in order to find time to do my own. And for the first six months of this work, I have been more enamored with the words of Leo Tolstoy, and often critical of Sophia, for not taking more responsibility for her own creative dreams, and for trying to take credit for helping Leo write his novels. But the tide has turned.

These past three months, though I have left my own stories unattended, I have faithfully and doggedly copied page after page of Anna Karenina. And often, I have chosen it because it was easier to do that than to do the hard work it will take to revise my stories. There are so many ways we women can trick ourselves into believing that our work as mothers is more important. Some of it is. But I don't think that a mother's essential work is about planning annual themed birthday parties and cooking dinners that look like color wheels on a plate.

What if my job as a mother is about being a good writer?

What if I am being a better mother by asking my daughter to wait one hour in the nurse's office, so Loretta can tell me that she really wants to love her work and love her children and love wearing beautiful shoes? She wants it all.

And so do I.

 

 

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Road Trip

When a writer friend invited me on a road trip with her, I impulsively said yes. It would be part fun, part work, reminiscent of the days when my job sent me to a conference for a few days. She picked me up at home, and we took off toward our destination. The first twenty-four hours were the most relaxing I have had in several months. We drank wine, dipped spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream from the container, and shared stories on a range of topics from lucrative part-time jobs to strippers (Hmmm....that might sound misleading....). The next morning, we slept until we woke up. We eased into the kind of parallel play that writers do: reading, writing, and drinking tea or coffee, interspersed with conversation. We went out to lunch, debating whether a long walk or a nap would come next.

Somewhere along the way, after breakfast but before lunch, I said, out loud, this feels so good.

Then came the phone call from school, and the self-doubt. What was I thinking? Can I ever get a break? What makes me think I can be a writer and a mom? Is she going to be okay? Do I need to go home? Am I a bad mom?

I did return home, the next day, one day earlier than planned. There was nothing I could do that my husband could not do for the kids. I didn't set to work making comfort food; we ordered pizza for dinner, and I set up my binder to copy the day's Anna Karenina pages while we waited for the delivery guy. The next morning, my husband made omelets for all of us. The kids cleaned their rooms and did laundry. I finally packed up the Christmas ornaments.

Is it a coincidence that I am reading a book called Bad Mother, by Ayelet Waldman, who was criticized for admitting to loving her husband more than her children. I highlighted my favorite passage: "There is nothing sexier to a woman with children than a man holding a Swiffer." This is where I confess to never cleaning the bathroom. My husband does it most of the time; when he is not available, I pay my youngest daughter five bucks to do it.

I know how lucky I am. Not only because someone else cleans my toilet, but also because I have the luxury of being home for my kids and my work. And yet, there is something I long for that I rarely get: uninterrupted time. When I was a single mom, I worked ten and twelve hours days when my kids were with their dad. When they were with me, I was home by the time they got off the bus. I was able to set up my time so that I could focus on either my work or my kids and home. But with writing, there is no separation. You will quite often finding me writing or reading alongside my kids while they do homework. This does not, I realize, count as me helping them with their homework. I cannot claim any credit for helping my daughter with her science fair project. But as I often tell my kids, I have already been through seventh grade. When did being a good mom come to mean giving up my own work so that I could help them finish theirs? If you read the Little House books, Ma was doing her own work, mending and churning butter, while Laura read to the family. Ma's priority was feeding and clothing her family. If Laura wanted to learn to read, that was her job. What would the public say about a mom who chose her writing over her children? Is there any work a woman does that can compete with being a mother? Is it possible to be a good at both?

My friend emailed me this morning to see how I was. I told her that I knew I had made the right decision, coming home, not because there was anything for me to do but because my daughter needed me to be here.

She responded: "I don’t know how we navigate this weirdly strange road of artist mother, and I suppose that there is not a narrow path either. That there are as many ways as there are artists or mothers and that finding our own way is the hard thing because a road map would be so fucking nice."

Imagine this: the ability to plug a completed, published manuscript into a GPS that gives me an exact route, with detours for traffic jams and other obstacles. I know this is never going to happen. I have to write and live the way I drive, turning left at an intersection, knowing that it means I will never know what would have happened if I had turned right.

 

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Craftivism

My mind is whirling with thoughts about work and pleasure and art and life. Levin is mowing grass with the peasants. I am sewing aprons. Darya Alexandrovna is bathing her children in the stream. 17 is knitting a hat. And I am reading a book called Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism by Betsy Greer.

Greer defines Craftivism as craft that is motivated by social or political activism, and says that "the creation of things by hand leads to a better understanding of democracy, because it reminds us that we have power." Acts of craftivism tend to be small: DIY hankie kits, tiny banners with words of kindness, embroidered samplers pinned to chain-link fences, handknit basketball nets. I am intrigued by this form of quiet activism, rooted in hands-on creation, that is directed at change and personal connection.

I see it over and over again when I work with children. They can take an old tire, splatter it with paint, all the while discussing what they hope to do with their creations. Grace will armknit a hammock and attach it to create a comfy seat for her bedroom. Elsie with plant hers with herbs in her front yard. Emme's is a tribute to the wife of Jackson Pollack. "Her paintings got bigger after he died," she tells us, going on to explain that Jackson had used the large studio space while his wife was relegated to a spare bedroom. Emme meant exactly what she said: Her paintings got BIGGER, because when he was gone, she had more space in which to create.

Is there value in smallness, or is the ultimate goal to become bigger?

Tolstoy's ramblings on mowing a field, resting under a tree with an old peasant man, sharing bread dipped in water, and looking back at a field of haystacks led to an entire movement, in which Tolstoy was their prophet. Meanwhile, Sophie went about copying his words and creating photographs, developing recipes which are still used today in the cafe on the Tolstoy estate.

Which of their life's work could we categorize as craftivism?

I feel like the sand and rocks at the place where the ocean means the earth, being pounded and softened and molded and polished. The more pages that pile up in my black binder, the less sure I am of what this project is teaching me.

 

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