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Mommy Diarist
In the twenty-first century, there are very few choices one can make that
one can't undo if filled with regret. It may be expensive and painful to
extract oneself a hideous career, a bad marriage, an unwise bit of plastic
surgery, but it is possible. Lately (mostly in those nether pre-dawn hours
when reason is on hiatus) I've been considering these spoiled times, when
regret is a novelty and decisions can be revoked. I've been contemplating
choices that can't be undone because I made one. I am pregnant. My identity
will change very soon. I don't know when, but in a matter of days I will
become someone different: a mother.
Don't misunderstand. This kid is welcome, wanted, highly anticipated. But in
spite of this being something savagely intentional, I still feel
uncomfortable -- a spy in the maternal world. I wander through stores, read
articles and have conversations alternately desperate for any information
that could save me and disinterested, unable to comprehend how I will ever
casually use this strange equipment or respond to a child in any way that
could possibly be helpful. I fret that my inadequacy will expose me to so
much scorn that it will make me alternately embarrassed and furious to show
my face on the streets of New York with my child. I am daunted.
If my bones were found 856 years from now in an archaeological dig, my body
would be that of a mother. Since I am in the process of becoming something
else, now seems an appropriate moment to begin to think about the experience
and open up to it productively. This blog will be a sounding board, a rant
receptacle. I am full of questions, somewhat ready for adventure, and
longing to hear from you out there in the ether. All kinds of issues and
plagues have me bursting at the seams: How long will it take me to love my
child? What if the kid becomes a serial killer? Does anyone else dislike
Caitlin Flanagan with the savagery I do? Why does becoming a mother allow
everyone to mind a woman's business for her?
How is that for an invitation? Soon, soon (I hope) I'll be a mother both in
theory and practice. You'll hear about it and I hope you'll stick with me as
I wrestle with this new job, new identity, new life.
posted by Elise at 2:53 PM
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said...
thank you for the jab at Flanagan. how can you be a woman and hate feminism? on that note, how can pet peeves "feminism and homophobia" be uttered in the same breath? to be a woman and against feminism, isn't that like being African American and being against equal rights? Or being a journalist and being against freedom of speech? or...oh, forget it. she's a waste of typing.
4/11/2005 5:58 PM
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