wordless wednesday: in which I stake my claim at the wee, small house

ah, much better

the world needs you: on passions, life, and bleak seasons

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We interrupt our regularly scheduled wordless wednesday programming to give hope to the hopeless and to comfort those in despair.

Yesterday, Bernadette Geyer blogged over at She Writes on writing after kids — how it teaches one to write when the chance presents itself, how becoming a parent made her a more vigilant writer, how it forced her to make time. To all this I say “Yes!” I agree with everything Bernadette said, but I am here today to give hope and comfort to those of us who find/found writing after children (or after fill-in-the-blank) to be a bit more challenging.

The title of Bernadette’s piece is “What? It’s Possible to Keep Writing After a Kid?” But I know there are people out there thinking, Yeah, but what about two kids, or three? What about if your dog goes suddenly neurotic? What if the baby hasn’t slept through the night yet and won’t nap? Hey, what about rotavirus!? What if your husband comes home and says he’s been transferred to Shanghai? What if you’re the primary caregiver to an ill family member? What if you are the ill family member?

Life can be wild and crazy and downright difficult. Truth is stranger than fiction. The writing time you thought you’d have might evaporate before your very eyes for all sorts of reasons. The neurotic dog? Didn’t happen to me, but I know someone it happened to and it was a huge time-suck!

This year, for the first time in ten years, I have reliable writing time because all three of my children are in school. During the previous ten years, despite my very best efforts, there were many short and long stretches during which writing time was hard to come by. If I got up at 5:00 to write, you can bet one of the children woke up crying with a fever. If I tried to write during nap time one day, a Certain Someone would stage a nap time protest. If I put them in front of the boob tube to try to get a half-hour at my desk, they would quickly lose interest and wonder, Whatcha doin Mommy? Can I help? I wanna help! Mommy let me help! I wrote whenever I could, yes. I took advantage of small pockets. I stepped over piles of laundry, and even (literally) of children, to get a few minutes at my desk. But it wasn’t easy or reliable.

And then there are the bigger challenges. Those of you who’ve been reading for a while know that when my children were tiny I was very ill with a chronic autoimmune condition. For a while I couldn’t hold a pen in my hand, and it was painful to press on the keys of a keyboard. Not to mention the fact that every ounce of my dwindling energy was needed to make it through each day with pain, fatigue, and three young children. There were long stretches of not writing. There were no poems for months at a time. I thought I would never write again.

Other things can happen: parents die, a spouse gets ill, and on and on and on. There are bleak seasons. Life might keep you from your desk for longer than you ever imagined. You might think that grief or illness or whatever challenging episode you’re going through will silence you forever.

And I’d like to say that this can happen for non-parents, too! We hear a lot about balancing writing and parenthood, but Real Life happens for all of us. Just because there are no children pulling all the T.P. off the roll in the upstairs bathroom, doesn’t mean it’s not sometimes challenging for a writer to find his/her desk and wide open spaces of time. And all this applies to everyone, not just writers. Maybe your passion is mountain biking, or quilting, or throwing dinner parties. Maybe there has been precious little time for your passion lately.

I just want to say: Don’t despair. Don’t despair even if you haven’t written a poem in months. Don’t despair if you can’t see a way to write this week because the children have the flu. Don’t despair if you think grief has stolen all your creativity forever.

Things change. Bleak seasons end. Keep reading. Keep trying. Write a little note to yourself and stick it on your mirror: “I am still a writer.” Or, “I am still a quilter,” or whatever. Your poems and stories will wait for you; the open road will wait for you; the dinner party featuring beef wellington will wait for you.

It may not be easy. It may not be easy for weeks or months or years. But you will get back to doing what you love and what you are called to do. Because you wouldn’t be you without it. And the world needs you.

wendy in print

"Aunt Pearl's Watermelon, #1" by April Dobbins

calyx (n.) the sepals of a flower, typically forming a whorl that encloses the petals and forms a protective layer around a flower in bud; a cup-like cavity or structure; a journal of art and literature by women produced in Corvalis, OR, and now celebrating its 35th year.

Reader, last week this journal appeared in my mailbox. On page 39 is a poem I wrote about motherhood called “A Wendy House.”

I wrote “Wendy House” when I was in the thick of it — three very small children and in poor health from my chronic autoimmune condition, living far from family, winter. I had been reading Peter Pan to the children (or to the 2/3 of the children who were old enough to listen at that point), and came to the passage about the Darling children’s arrival at the island of Neverland. Do you remember that Wendy was struck by an arrow (Tink’s) and came down from her flight dead, or nearly dead? Then the lost boys built a house around and over her, hoping to protect her, or maybe hoping only to revive her. They wanted a mother.

This passage in the Peter Pan story made me think about life — the way we think our life is going to unfold versus the way it actually does unfold. The “island of make-believe and the same island come true,” as I quote in the epigraph to the poem. And also about motherhood, and the great needs of children, and how all mothers start out as “only / a girl. With no experience.”

This poem was an idea that brewed for a while. Then one day I said to myself, “It’s time to write the Wendy House poem.” I sat down and wrote it, worked on it for a few months, then began sending it out. It was rejected severally (as usual), but this fall I had a note from CALYX saying they’d like to publish it.

I am honored to have my work in the same volume as pieces containing these lines:

“… so slack / are the strings between my bones, so lucky / is my electric blood to be inside my skin.” — from “Reading Whitman in the Chemo Room” by Rochelle Hurt

“Tang was laughing a jellyfish laugh, with his hands on his stomach as it swelled and shriveled.” –from “The Vestige” by Rita Chang

“That’s all there was, it wasn’t much but joy is like that, / joy surprises: the scent of mint, a baby’s wrist, a woman / in a white truck, driving.” — from “Woman in a White Truck, Driving” by Sarah Rossiter

and, this bit from “The Apple Orchard” by Bethany Reid, winner of the 2011 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize:

“Spring mornings / it was a regular whorehouse / of an orchard, the trees / frowsy and bedraggled, / in nightgowns and slippers, / hair tangled, lipstick askew, / straps slipping from their shoulders.”

!!!!! a regular whorehouse / of an orchard !!!!! Reader, that line alone is worth the cover price.

And speaking of the cover, I find the cover photograph to be absolutely stunning. I think it’s my favorite journal cover ever. Have I  mentioned how much I love the cover?

If you haven’t read CALYX, let me recommend it. I’ve read it for years, either borrowing it from friends or subscribing. It never disappoints, is always full of good poetry, fiction, essays, art, and book reviews. It’s thick and varied enough that you can keep it on your nightstand and read through it for months. Happy 35th birthday to CALYX. And thank you for finding a home for Wendy in your pages.