Chamomile Bubbles & College-ruled Lines.
Struggling to create with kids around.
“There is a crack in all things. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen
I have been a mother since I was 18.
My daughter is grown.
Last winter I took her daughter’s into my home.
For a time gone, and now again this spring I find them here again.
I love these girls—all of them.
I love their mother who crawled from my own womb when I was barely a woman myself and now I love them—my granddaughters, the two of them just as much, more maybe if possible.
There is more of me here that is capable and skillful at loving.
Having lived mostly alone for quite some time I have grown accustomed to the sound of my own thoughts.
They break from my chest and spatter out of my fingers often filterless.
I sit back and watch words appear as they are summoned from the quiet, the sound of a cat’s feet or magpie’s claws on the tin roof the only interruption.
A mug of coffee, a glass of wine my companions.
In retrospect, I feel I was ungrateful and lackadaisical about the leisure of my own creative space and time as it now feels precious and near inaccessible to me.
Joanne K. Rowling wrote 7 novels on buses, between being abused by a husband and raising her own daughter. How did she do it?
My own thoughts flee and turn to tears as I lie in the bathtub at 7am anxiously awaiting the sound of much loved little feet coming for me.
Coming…
for my precious silence.
Thoughts that used to seem to bypass my mid brain and flee straight from my cortex not to be cried over until I could re-read them myself after cryping them.
But now those same thoughts get stuck in my belly and turn to tears that mix with lavender chamomile bubble bath and get entangled in Mermaid Barbie’s pink tresses.
These are not the thoughts I would summon.
Nor the actions, either.
These are a desperate attempt to keep my own daemon from abandoning me.
Are they working?
Daemon…are you there?
Misty-eyed muse I seek you. I court you. I beg you…
Write with me.
Dishes that need doing. Nails that would like painting. Paperwork that haunts me…
all await.
I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
―Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves
This is not me…
No, it cannot be!
There will always be dishes and laundry and cleaning to do,
but children cannot wait.
The hungry belly of a 5 year-old demands food.
The 2 year-old needs changing—again.
Bodies do not wait for writing.
Small bodies are not compatible with quietude.
The MOTHER~ the great, the powerful, the All~ embraces,
but the caretaker lurks
and she, too, must be satiated.
Though I may give up people pleasing again and again…I cannot give up children pleasing and no, I am not all that all the time pleasing to them anyway.
I am tired.
I am snappy.
I am impatient.
I play games and chase them as my creativity chases me,
and something bitter grows behind my eyebrows.
Something resentful and shameful.
Soften…
please!
I do not like being impatient. I like being quiet and still. I do not like being snappy, I like listening to my body and moving when it tells me—but these little bodies move so much more than I want to and they move way faster than my writing.
In the tub…
Quiet.
No laptop.
No kids….
yet.
A journal: spiral notebook pen tucked in prayers and promises and frustrations and dreams spattered on college ruled paper with lavender chamomile scented bubbles spat out by a fine ballpoint pen.
Creativity,
come to me.
Come.
Come.
please!