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Posts tagged ‘children’

Oct 28

Amanda Craig on motherhood and creativity

amanda-craig-01I came across a worthwhile blog post from Amanda Craig, British writer and journalist, about writing and motherhood. Interesting (or depressing?) to note that she doesn’t think it really gets any easier as the kids get older. An excerpt:

To write properly demands unbroken concentration, and solitude. You can just about manage a couple of hours early in the morning when they are sleeping in, but it’s in many ways worse that when they were very little and needed constant 24 hour attention. Teenagers get into scrapes, and need rescuing from the place where they’ve lost their Oyster card/mobile etc. They probably are less resilient than my generation, but when I think what that cost me in terms of fearfulness (catching an international aeroplane every three months aged twelve, alone, and having your passport stolen or getting on a flight diverted to another country are two of my least pleasant memories) then it’s something I’d rather not put them through. I don’t believe in that  nonsense about what doesn’t destroy you makes you stronger.

So, no woman novelist of my acquaintance works at fiction during the holidays. It’s the same reason that you never find women with children going on those tempting-sounding writer’s retreats in places like Hawthornden Castle or Lake Como. Though, let me tell you, we need them rather more than the chaps and childless women who do go there, get served hot and cold repasts and bond.

It may be hard going, but Craig has done it, nonetheless. She has published six books and a number of short stories, at least some number of which she completed after having kids. Read the full post here.

I can’t resist including this passage from the author’s bio page:

…I continued to rewrite my first novel, which was a comedy about a spoilt, snobbish young woman discovering Italy and love. Along the way, I won a couple of prizes for my journalism (Young Journalist of the Year and the Catherine Pakenham award)  each of which had the effect not of advancing my career but getting me fired from staff jobs I desperately needed. I led a very hand-to-mouth existence, cycling everywhere, reading newspapers in libraries and shopping in street markets. The Pakenham prize brought me to the attention of a well-known literary agent who asked to see my novel. I sent it to her, and she promptly lost it. Unfortunately, it was my only copy as I could not afford the photocopying costs.

So I sat down to write it all over again, and that novel became Foreign Bodies which was bought by Hutchinson, and published in 1990 to disastrous reviews. The second, A Private Place, was published in 1991. Its slightly more positive reception led to me becoming a critic on various national newspapers including The Independent. Since then, I have continued to combine writing fiction with reviewing it.

Can you imagine, an agent LOSES the ONLY copy of your manuscript, and you have to write the whole damn thing all over again? OH. MY. GOD.

You’ll also find an interesting blog post on this page, the second one down, entitled “What is the point of keeping on writing?” There are a few other goodies at Craig’s site. Enjoy.

Oct 22

13 Comments

The dissonance of music and motherhood

clarinetShortly after blogging about Rachel Power’s important book The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, I came across a personal essay by Diana Cassar-Uhl that poignantly illustrates the pain of a “divided heart” that so many artist mothers experience. When you’re devoting time to your children, you’re alienated from your creative work. When you’re devoting time to your art, you’re alienated from your children. When your art is your profession and you’ve spent a lifetime becoming an artist, this dichotomy can be intense — as Diana expresses so beautifully in her essay, which appears below.

This essay originally appeared in ICView, the magazine of Ithaca College, and won second place in the magazine’s 2009 arts and literary contest. Reprinted with permission. (Many thanks to the author and ICView.)

Conflict of Interest
By Diana Cassar-Uhl

I’m contemplating ending my career as a clarinetist. It’s a choice I never expected to face. I thought I’d stay at my job until retirement. Music chose me. I know I could never have pursued anything else without feeling paralyzing regret.

I’m not sure how I got here. One might assume that giving birth to my first child was the turning point that ripped me from my commitment to music, but I experienced a career-defining performance when Anna was not yet eight months old.

About two years ago, at what might have been my last solo recital, another musician was amazed that I, a mother of two young children, could give a recital. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t balancing my career with motherhood the way it seemed I was, that I was losing my mind and felt completely out of control.

My recital program spoke of my past, my present, and my future as a musician and as a human. I had no idea just how connected to that music I would feel until I was giving the performance. It was the first time in years that I wasn’t just playing the notes. I had a lot of things to say — about who I was, what I am going through, and what I desire.

I finished my recital with Appalachian Spring, and it was the stuff dreams are made of. My heart was on my sleeve during those 25 minutes of my life. There were exquisitely musical moments, and the big, sweeping statement of “Simple Gifts” told everyone what I really want — to be simple and free!

I sobbed, right there on the stage. I was filled with joy and sadness and direction and confusion all at once. I crave the simplicity of motherhood, without the shackles of all this “otherhood” . . . the tangible pain that has crept into my musical experience; the despair I feel to my core because I can’t ignore the dichotomy: there are instances of humanity and beauty in my job, but they are overshadowed by cynicism.

This is why I struggle with the difficulties of balancing my hard-sought career with my even harder-sought family. I can’t pretend to feel proud that I’m leaving my children. This negative force brings me frustration and illness. My children are infected with my anger.

I don’t know whether I’ll stay or go. Music has forever claimed a part of who I am. I don’t know whether I’ll find a way to satisfy that need, or if that part of me will go unanswered.

~~~

It’s hard to come up with words to ease Diana’s heartache, isn’t it? I think it takes another professional musician to speak with authority to Diana’s experience. About two years ago, I interviewed classical guitarist Berit Strong for the book I’m writing about artist mothers. Because Berit’s words might be of some comfort to Diana — and the rest of us, of course — here is an excerpt from that interview.

Berit Strong: Music and motherhood

Berit Strong, an award-winning classical guitarist, lives in Acton, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children, 10 and 12 years old. She has performed in hundreds of concerts around the world. She also teaches students at all levels, privately and at area organizations.

When her children were first born, Berit took a break from performing. But a few years later, when her children were 1 and 3, Berit received an invitation to play a concerto with a large orchestra. The piece was one of the hardest in the guitar repertoire, and one that Berit had dreamed of playing since she was a teenager — Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Although it would take a year of preparation, she couldn’t say no.

With an infant and a toddler at home, Berit cobbled together practice time through part-time preschool, a few hours of day care, her husband, and capitalizing on any opportunity to pick up her guitar. Sometimes she’d take an evening “nap” and then get to up practice from midnight to 2:00 a.m., or wake up at 5:00 to get some time in before the children work up. “I needed time to memorize really hard music. I couldn’t get that time free of interruption otherwise. And sometimes I’d let them watch an hour of TV in the morning. I tried to be really strategic and practice during every moment of that time. When you want to keep your fingers in shape, just as a baseline, you need to practice your scales for 45 minutes a day. I think with writers, they say your daily output just to stay ‘in shape’ should be 1,000 words a day. It’s the same with any discipline.”

To find enough time in the day to practice scales, learn the new music, get it down perfectly, and memorize it, Berit made conscious concessions. “I got in the habit of doing the house and the dishes at 3:00 in the afternoon. I had this rule that I wouldn’t do any dishes until then. I had to make the most of my biorhythms. Once the kids were occupied, I would practice. I think that made me a better mom than being a goody-goody and doing the dishes in the morning.”

The intensity of Berit’s life during that period made her laugh at the idea of having it all. “When people used to ask me how I balanced my life, I would say ‘You must be kidding!’ There is no such thing as balance. The ancient Chinese didn’t believe in balance; you have to be really intense about your life. Certainly when I was preparing for that concert, balance was a ridiculous concept. I didn’t see anybody, I didn’t socialize. I was getting ready for a concerto. I was happy to sacrifice anything else. No time for jogging, I didn’t promote my career, this was the chance of a lifetime. I once lived in Italy for two years. They think that Americans are laughable in the concept of balance. You can’t have both — it’s really hard to have everything the way you want it.”

Despite the sacrifices, Berit made it work, and focused on the positives. “I didn’t feel guilty because I had really good daycare and my husband was really great. Well, maybe I had a little bit of guilt, but not much because I knew I was a better mom. I was watching them carefully, though, because they were so young, and if you have a workaholic mom, who knows what will happen. It was a finite amount of time, but it was really hard. My husband was really supportive, even though he’s not a musician. He has no vision of what I have to do and how much work I have to do. And there were times when the kids just wanted Mommy. I think there were a couple of instances when the kids were screaming and I had to practice. It was expensive, too. They paid me, but I had to get extra time at daycare. But it was worth it. It was an investment in my career.”

And then, after a year of work and stress, it was all over in a few hours. “When the concert was over, my life really did go back to normal, and I am more of a stay-at-home mom. Being a musician, you get depressed and sad when the concert is over — something you worked so hard for is over in 35 minutes. It was a great moment, but it was over. When you go to a museum, pieces hang there for years. But with a concert, that’s it.”

Today, Berit is still performing, but hasn’t advanced in her career as much as she might have. This was another conscious choice, and an adaption. “I haven’t gotten my first commercial recording out yet. I might be kind of burned out. It’s a wavy thing. It’s hard to keep going sometimes. How can I be a happy person and perform? Classical guitar is so detail oriented — I’d rather play something easier.”

So Berit has found a new outlets. “I keep dreaming of finding more time to be creative. I’m performing more on the viola de gamba now. I met this instrument in college — my husband got me one three years ago. It’s an early music instrument of the 1400s, sort of an early cello, but it has frets and six strings. It’s easier, in a way. I can sit down and sight read and have a blast — it’s really hard to do that on the guitar. I play in two early music groups. We have metal bass strings and gut strings, really gorgeous. When you’re in the guitar world for so many years, it’s nice to have to an instrument that I can sustain — a bow — there’s something about the sound that gives me strength, especially in dealing with my parents. It makes me feel very good. It’s important to have an instrument that you like. My dream is to be better at the gamba.”

For schedule, Berit can usually push for a finite period. “I can go really hard for two or three months. If I worked really hard, had a few concerts, I’ll take two or three weeks off because it’s better for my ear.”

Despite peer pressure, Berit is satisfied with the choices she’s made — for now. “I don’t think that fame is really important. Before children, I was performing in Europe and everywhere, but in terms of quality of life it’s pretty cool to hang out with your kids and watch them grow. I could have chosen to be all over the place, performing and recording constantly. I didn’t want to push myself like that. My colleagues are doing it, but I’d rather do a good job as a mom. I love traveling and meeting people, being taken to places that no tourists have ever gone to. I do want to go back to that, one day.”

For women in similar situations, who can’t travel and focus on a performance career in the way that they’d like, Berit recommends teaching. “I’ve been teaching for 18-20 years, and I think teaching is great. It’s a baseline for your creative identity. You don’t want to lose that completely. I make money, it keeps me in the music world, and I’m telling the students what I need to hear myself.”

~~~

Voices from the chorus? If you were Diana, might you feel buoyed by Berit’s story — or deflated?

Afterthought: I believe that my son, who is a freshman at Ithaca College School of Music — Diana’s alma mater — will probably never experience the division that Diana faces. One day he may have a child, but I don’t think he’ll ever consider hanging up his guitar, no matter how much he falls in love with his offspring. Somehow it’s just different for dads. Even artist fathers who are committed caregivers and are deeply involved in their children’s lives don’t seem to grapple with the “choice” that mothers must face. Men are for the most part “allowed” to follow their creative genius wherever it takes them without being accused of abandoning their children. They also don’t seem to feel that leaving their children behind “by choice” is frequently synonymous with having their hearts ripped out. And of course, they don’t seem to carry the blame when there are no clean socks and the fridge is empty.

Why is that?

[photo courtesy aussiegall under a Creative Commons license]

Oct 15

14 Comments

Kelly: Love Is Time

Partially cross-posted from my personal blog…

In my SLS class last night, we talked about values and time management and how our value structure plays a huge part in managing our time.  I show an inspirational video in each class, and the one I showed last night struck a chord with just about everyone in the room. Click here for the video. I showed it at the close of the class and at the end of it, I heard “awwww”s erupt from the room and then saw a few tears as they quietly filed out of the class.  It has the same effect on me every time I watch it, so I thought I’d share it with you here. It’s a good reminder that time is precious and you may never know the effect you have on another person, simply because you took an extra moment to connect. I think this rings so true to the message Brittany shared in her Creative Journey post.  Those boys will remember that day forever.

timeIt seems that we’ve all been traveling along similar paths and experiencing some of the same frustrations here lately, as evidenced by some of our posts. We all come at this combining motherhood and creativity challenge from a little different perspective, i.e. writers vs. visual artists vs. stay-at-home-moms vs. work-outside-the home moms, but as I mentioned in my rant to Cathy recently, the percentage of  stay-at-home-moms in the blogosphere seems to be very high. I’d wager that at least 80% of those who regularly subscribe to the Mom Blogger’s Club are stay-at-home-moms.

I was telling a friend of mine about my recent rant on Cathy’s post and she had an interesting perspective. She’s divorced, has no children, and is definitely not a creative type, but she most definitely never hesitates in speaking her mind. Her thoughts were that maybe instead of spending so much time on the computer blogging about how little time they have, they could be using that time to actually do something a little more productive. I know that suggestion may ruffle some feathers here, but I also know that the lesson didn’t escape me either. Regardless of where we work — in an actual office away from home or right there at home — maybe we all spend a little too much time complaining about how little time we have when we could be using that time more productively, like in my case anyway, spending more quality time with my girls. A bit reminiscent of our Someday is Today discussion, don’t you think?

Oct 13

4 Comments

Brittany: Creative Journey

*cross-posted from my personal blog*

Today was a good day.

We all have runny noses around here, and since the weather is pouring-down-crappy and there’ve been confirmed cases of swine flu at the preschool, I decided that was reason enough to let Sam play hooky today.

After John took his morning nap, the three of us went to paint pottery at a nearby studio, which has quickly become my go-to activity with Sam. The boy has some untapped artistic abilities, and he really seems to enjoy it. Sam and John worked in tandem on a Christmas gift (I can’t say for who because they might read my blog on occasion) and I bounced back and forth between them, pouring more paint and encouraging them to go nuts.

When I pictured motherhood, this is not what I saw of myself, strangely enough. I know I probably come across as artsy fartsy and free-wheeling, but I really have a hard time with the whole “going nuts” aspect of life.

If you think about it, all my hobbies have pretty stringent rules. There’s writing, with enough rules regarding structure, grammar, and spelling to give anyone a migraine. Embroidery, with its color-only-in-the-lines patterns, as well as the edict from above that the back should look as seamless as the front. And although I’ve tried it a couple of times, I’ve never been able to pull off anything but a realistic-looking doll.

In my personal life, too, I can’t look back on any period of my life and say “I was totally out of control then.” I attempted, on a few rare occasions, to get drunk and throw caution to the wind, but my conscious, an internal-harping-elderly-kill-joy quickly badgered me into returning to the straight and narrow. I’m just not comfortable saying “Do whatever you like.”

But I did it today.

The pottery the boys made today is going to look gorgeous after it’s fired, and it is 100% their work. I have a strict “Mommy-Hands-Off” policy when it comes to their artwork. And that is why there are drool marks in the paint, handprints, finger-painted swirls, drips, streaks, brush strokes, sponged dabs, and streams of colors not found in nature.

There is a saying for teachers — “The one who’s doing the work is doing the learning,” which basically means that if you want someone to learn something, you as the teacher must facilitate the experience, but then take a step back, and let your students do it, explore it, internalize it and learn it for themselves.

In stepping back, I’m learning a lot from my boys. Little boys can make stunningly beautiful objects with minimal supervision. There are no bounds to their creativity. They know how to go nuts. And they do it spontaneously and joyfully, just like they do everything else in life when they are allowed to act freely. It makes me happy watching all that joy pour out of them. They are overflowing with pleasure and satisfaction and a sense of “I did that” without feeling constrained by any pre-conceived notions.

It’s a lesson I should put to use in my own work. Lately, even though I have a new-and-improved plot for my novel, I have a pre-conceived idea in my head of what it should look and sound like, and I can’t even get an outline written that will translate to the page. I wish I wasn’t so overburdened with plans and could just let go and write.

But even though my own creative output has currently slowed to a trickle, I can feed my need to create, at least vicariously, by facilitating the boys’ creativity. It gives me the same rush as if I’d done the art myself, because art is all about exploring possibilities, and wherever my boys go, my heart travels with them.

Oct 9

6 Comments

Kelly: Let the Crap Go

Spill It OOlivia created this canvas with me on Saturday. I was working on my Spill It! assignment for Carmen’s class, and Livvie decided she wanted to try along with me.  (Sarah chose to paint an “Open” and “Closed” sign for their room instead.)  She was following along with me for the most part when I looked over at her and realized she was crying. Oh goodness. I immediately went over to her with my paint covered hands, tried to give her a hug without getting paint all over her, and asked her what was wrong.

“I keep messing it all up, Mama!”  Livvie is a bit of a perfectionist.  The one thing she was doing differently than me was that she was using a paintbrush, not her fingers, because she didn’t want to get paint all over her fingers (which surprised me because the child has no issue getting completely covered with mud in the back yard). But I guess—maybe because of her art resource period at school?—she thought that painting with a paint brush was the “correct” way to paint. I quickly took her over to my laptop and showed her some of the canvases our class had posted in our ning group…to show her that, like mine, none of them were “perfect.”  (No offense to my Spill It! friends!)  After that, I asked her to consider putting her paintbrush down, and I helped her smush some paint around with her fingers. Then I showed her how we could take the opposite end of her paintbrush and draw smiley faces in the wet paint.  That got her. 🙂  From there, she tried a little of the bubble wrap method and then dipped the heart shaped cookie cutter I had given her into her pink paint and added the heart you see in the middle. After the addition of the stickers, she declared it done with a quiet smile on her face, remnants of tears still on her cheeks.

I’ve been thinking about that all week, particularly in regards to the expectations we put upon our children and our selves. I didn’t have any expectations for Livvie’s painting; I just wanted her to have fun. But because of her own expectations, she wasn’t having any fun at all at first. She’s been struggling a little at school, and we’ve had to meet with her teacher.  Boy, did that break my heart. I was heartbroken for her because she was struggling, and I know that she notices that Sarah hardly ever struggles with her schoolwork, and I was heartbroken for me because she wasn’t meeting the “standards.”  Terrible of me, huh. What standards? My standards? No, I guess they weren’t my standards, they were the school’s standards, but I realized my standards when it comes to academics are probably pretty high, too. She’s in first grade, for Pete’s sake! I have to admit, I never struggled in school. Not even through grad school. School just always came easy to me. But I see that it doesn’t come easy to Livvie just yet. She’ll get there; we’re committed to helping her at her pace, in whatever way she needs, providing mountains of encouragement and positive reinforcement along the way. We’re spending more one-on-one time with the two of them while they are doing their homework, so Livvie doesn’t have that in-your-face opportunity to compare herself with her sister.

Back to my expectations of myself…  I guess because I was always good in school, I expected that I’d be able to help my girls be good in school. I’m finding that that’s going to be a big learning process for me. And then I think about my expectations in regards to all this art stuff. I’ve always played with art. But when I started playing with mixed media, I realized I was definitely going to have to lower my expectations for myself.  The first mixed media piece I created with Wyanne taught me a big lesson. Like Livvie, I too, was a perfectionist! Wy sweetly told me that I was just going to have to let that “crap” go, just play, and not worry so much about the end result. Maybe that’s a really good life lesson too.  Let the crap go…just play…and maybe everything will fall into place as it’s meant to be. That’s definitely a good lesson for me right now.

Aug 24

3 Comments

8/24 Weekly Creativity Challenge and New Prompt

Only one entry for this week’s challenge, “grade school”.   Does the August rush have everyone extra busy?

From Kelly Warren:

Today is my girls’ first day of 1st grade.  Where has this summer gone!?  This morning I’ve been thinking about that and realized that the older I get, the older my girls get, and the more scattered-brained I become.  I suppose it’s the constant juggle of full-time-work-outside-the-home mom, wife, creative artist, friend, sister, and every other role I have in this crazy life of mine.  I’m forever losing and misplacing things these days.  Last week it was my wallet.  After a day and night of panic, I finally found it under my desk at work.  I must have missed my purse when I was trying to put it back in there, and it just ended up on the floor.  DH has found the peanut butter in the fridge and the milk in the pantry on many occasions (well, okay, I’ll admit I’ve had that strange form of dyslexia for as long as I can remember…I’ve also been known to sleep walk and move furniture in my sleep but that’s a whole other story). 

Comtemplative Sarah

Car keys are also a big thing for me.  I’ll leave them in the typical absent-minded professor places like on top of my van, in the front door after unlocking it, or in the bathroom sink.  But I must admit that the strangest place I’ve found them is probably the freezer.  And no, it’s not the girls putting them there; I’m quite certain it’s my missing brain.  A few weeks ago, walking out to my van after having lunch with a friend, I couldn’t find my keys yet again.  I finally found them…in the van…with the van still running.  I should have just left a banner in the front windshield that said, “Free van!  Here for the taking!  Already started and nice and cool for you!”  I’ve caught myself almost doing that same thing more than once. I guess my brain is just thinking about other things when I park and I just get out…  Thank God for OnStar.  It’s a little creepy the things they can do, but their service is one of the main reasons I drive a Chevy.

Contemplative Livvie

I don’t remember being this scatter-brained before I had children.  But then I guess my life is far fuller and far richer than it was before I had children.  Funny that I didn’t decide to take on a creative business on top of my full-time job until after I had children.  Though I’ve always been creative, I do know that having children has brought out even more creativity in my day-to-day life.  These top two pictures are two of my favorites from this summer, and they seem appropriate for today…almost like the girls are saying goodbye to summer vacation.  The bottom one I took this morning, saying hello to a new school year with their new teacher.  Yes, where does the time go?  Those tiny little babies that were born no longer than the length of my forearm are getting taller and taller every day.   Any first day of school memories you’d like to share?

1st day 1st grade nolan      

This week’s prompt: “dog days of summer”
Use the prompt however you like – literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by midnight eastern time on Sunday, August 30, 2009. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly challenge, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 48 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Aug 13

10 Comments

Brittany: Fly Anyway

There’s something about that line that speaks to me.

Lately, I’ve found myself having a near-obsession with birds. Not real birds, but folk art birds. The kind in profile, that are painted and embellished, and look as unlike real birds as it is possible to get. During my latest trip to Asheville, my grandmother insisted that I go through all my great-grandmothers old craft books. And in them I found pattern after pattern for these birds. Bird statues, bird mobiles, bird appliques, bird sculptures, paper birds, cloth birds, clay birds, wood birds… It was like some kind of sign, because I had previously spent hours scouring the internet for folksy bird patterns and came up empty handed.

I don’t know why I’m so drawn to the birds, except that they’re colorful and friendly, a little quirky, and make me feel happy. People who know me well know that I’m a deeply grounded sort of individual. I dislike flying — literally and figuratively. If you had to describe me in zoomorphic terms, I wouldn’t be a bird. And maybe that’s where the attraction lies.

I read an interesting interview today about Lady Gaga’s new tattoo. What, I’m sure you’re thinking, does that have anything to do with the conversation topic? Bear with me.

First of all, I like Lady Gaga’s music. It’s catchy, fun, better than some other options on the radio. But Lady Gaga herself? I hadn’t given her much thought, to be perfectly honest. But according to the article I read, this is what she recently had tattooed down her arm: “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?” It’s a quote by Rainer Marie Rilke. I’ll admit I was a little impressed. I don’t really have a thing for tattoos (although I could probably be persuaded to ink a 1940s pinup to my bicep as a conversation piece), but as a writer, I can’t think of anything more appropriate to permanently etch on myself. And then she added something else in this interview that I can’t quite get out of my head. The article said “Rilke’s ‘philosophy of solitude’ spoke to her. The New York native called solitude ‘something you marry, as an artist. When you are an artist, your solitude is a lonely place that you embrace.'”

We talk here a lot about the demands on us as mothers, about how we’re pressed for time and space and energy to write. But one thing we don’t talk about is the inherent loneliness that comes with our chosen occupation. Recently, on my personal blog, I wrote about how being creative and near-mental illness go hand in hand. Part of that is likely due to the fact that creative people have deep, complex inner lives. As such,we’re driven by the compulsion to write (or create) that Rilke speaks of, and soon live mostly in our creative mind. Add to this the loneliness that is inherent to motherhood and you really do have to learn to embrace the solitude or you lose yourself in it.

Which brings me back to the birds…

I said it once before, but it bears repeating. Creative mothers are like caged birds. Our children have clipped our wings, our families, and the sheer domesticity of our mothering lives have become our cages, as have our responsibilities, and financial obligations. We can’t escape from any of it, but then again, maybe we don’t want to. Motherhood was a conscious choice we made. As was following the creative path. And yet we all yearn to fly around. See the world. Live in it a bit.

But ironically enough, life isn’t so free and easy for birds either.

They spend an inordinate amount of time caring for their young. According to a birding website at Cornell University, “Sitting on a nest may look easy, but it involves more trade-offs than meet the eye. When birds sit on eggs, they are not simply relaxing. They are regulating the temperature of the clutch… Although most people think of incubation as a warming process, birds may need to cool their eggs by shading or moistening them in hot environments. For example, one pair of Black-necked Stilts at southern California’s Salton Sea made 155 trips in one day to soak their belly feathers in water to cool their eggs.” It went on to say that, “Incubation requires a balance between sitting on the eggs to maintain their temperature and leaving the nest to refuel by foraging. Incubation thus involves a series of trade-offs: a female gains energy by leaving the nest to forage, but she must expend energy to rewarm or cool the clutch after returning.”

Isn’t that an apt metaphor for the life of a creative mother? And what bird, or mother, has the time to carve out time for relationships with all that traveling back and forth? Sitting on her nest, creating life, is not different than one of us being holed up alone in her studio/office/corner of the sofa working on her latest project. I look at birds differently now. Sure they like to hang out in flocks and travel the world, but when parenthood enters the equation, they are as tied down, lonely, and exhausted as any of us.

I think back to Cathy’s most recent post, where she described the temporary nature of parenthood. And I think of the yearly cycle of nest building, baby hatching, and nest leaving I witness each year in my own backyard. My boys are bigger now than they were yesterday. Soon they will fly away from me. Soon I will have plenty of time for free-flying and writing. But I will not want it. I will want my boys back.

Maybe I am more like a bird than I thought I was. And maybe I should look to the bird as a symbol for the course my life will take. Right now is my time to hatch my clutch, but soon I’ll have to fly anyway.

Aug 11

5 Comments

8/9 Weekly Creativity Challenge and New Prompt

We had three entries for this week’s “sprout” challenge, all from the same art table!  Kelly Warren and her daughters created the pieces below on an art-filled Sunday afternoon.  Kelly’s piece is on the top, then Sarah’s and then Olivia’s.  Guess who the diva of the household is?  Yes, those are rhinestones. 🙂

sprout kelly117

sprout sarah119

sprout livvie118

This week’s prompt: “old friend”
Use the prompt however you like – literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by midnight eastern time on Sunday, August 16, 2009. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly challenge, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 48 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Aug 10

13 Comments

Cathy: This too shall end…

This was posted on my blog before I retrieved my sons from their month-long visit with their father. I must have been missing them. A lot. I have them now and am not feeling nearly as wistful, typed with a grin.

I’m a Capricorn and I’m a parent. Capricorns are known for their penchant to give advice, and I have this penchant in spades. Being a parent, of course I give parenting advice all along, whether I really know what I’m talking about or not, but I’ve learned a few things over the years, including in the business of education pretty much since I left college. Kids are what I do. I even babysat from the time I was eleven years old. So if I know anything, it’s kids. Or to be more precise and professional about it, I know child development. As a parent of a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, I know child development intimately, and what it looks like when it is skewed. Small advice on that, trust your instincts, mom. If you think something isn’t quite right, tell your pediatrician and don’t let him or her give you the “oh, it’ll all even out eventually” speech. Get to the specialists, get the testing. If your kid is ok, it’ll show. If not, early intervention is the key to your child’s success.

But that is a topic for another day.

Today’s spouting of advice is to let you know, whatever you are experiencing as a parent will end eventually. This phase of development will end, whether it is the constant demand of a newborn that exhausts you all hours of the day and night, the toddler exploration that drives every tiny piece of muck from the floor into her mouth or the destruction of your home environment in ways you never imagined possible, the I wants and whines of a preschooler to a preteen or the back talk and eye rolls of your pre-teen to teen.

The nursing that seems to suck the life out of you will end. The nursing that gives the special closeness you never dreamed possible will end.

The constant curiosity and amazement with everything around him will end. The nice spitty sucked fingers in the outlet guaranteed to give a charge will end.

The exuberant jumping on or off the sofa will end. The intense focus on dinosaurs, legos, drawing will end. Well, maybe not, you may have an artist, builder, archeologist or Olympian long jumper on your hands, but what an incredible place to start.

The eye rolls and flip flop of hormonal emotions, the sneaking and secrecy, intense friendships and heart pulled deeply in any direction away from you will end. So will the late night or car ride talks when you have your teen alone. Those times when you’ll get a glimpse of this young man or woman and who they’ll be, how they are likely to handle the world on their own, and whether or not you will think, alright, they’ll be okay, or have to let go even if you think they won’t be okay. Then hope they’ll at least be alright, eventually.

In every phase of childhood and parenthood, you and your child will rise to meet each other, negotiate the constantly shifting sands of your landscape together to rise into an adult. A day will come when the constant aggravation of his climbing the stairs when the gate is undone, or opening the kitchen drawers or inserting paper or bologna or puzzle pieces into the VCR, DVD, Wii slot will become family lore to share and look back on wistfully or in hysteria. Remember the time Junior jumped off the garage roof and broke one wrist and sprained the other? Yea, that was hysterical! And then he’d ride his bike around the neighborhood no handed, cast and splint up in surrender! Remember the time the police brought Junior home because he was riding his bike around town center at midnight? Yea, what was he, twelve? Yea, yea! Remember the time Suzy smeared poop all over her bedroom wall by her crib? Hahaha!

The seemingly impossible to survive times are survived, and eventually reflected upon or laughed about. But don’t forget to mark and hold the good moments, too. The intimate moments bed snuggling with the newborn, their sweet, warm, musky smell, their translucent skin and peaceful sleep. Don’t forget to hold the full–out preschooler laughs over farts at the dinner table, the spaghetti covered face, the midnight bad dream slip into your bed by the nine year old. The sofa snuggle and popcorn on movie night. The way the sunlight hits her hair in the off-shore beach breeze, the scent of salt and sunscreen on his skin, snow angels and snowball fights. The moment your teen looks at you in one of those deep conversations that appear to be on the surface, and says, only with his eyes, yea, I get it, even when the rest of his body language says otherwise.

Don’t forget the milestones and everything in between, because all of it will come back to mind, rise to the surface and you’ll wonder when that phase ended, when the sands shifted and created these new dunes in her life. The old dunes were so familiar.

This too shall end and you can hold it dear, or let it slip away. Let the tough stuff wear away with time. Keep it all close to your heart, because it’s not just your child’s life that is growing and changing. It’s yours.

Jul 13

6 Comments

Kelly: Working Through Creative Mama Frustrations

So, we’re all creative mama’s here, right? We create, in whatever form, and we try to instill that creative juice in our children.  So what happens when those two worlds collide and you throw shoes?

My girls love to create art. I’m happy about that. We create art together all the time—at my art bench, at their art bench, on the side porch, on vacation—and they are developing a nice little talent. But after I checked my email this morning, I came downstairs to find that Sarah had broken one of our number one house rules, yet again:  Art supplies do not come upstairs; they stay downstairs in the play room/art room/room that does not contain furniture that we actually care about and would like to keep looking presentable. Caught your interest yet? So what art supply did my darling curly red-headed child bring up stairs?  Oh, only the most permanent of art supplies…that famous permanent marker we all call Sharpie. Yep, Sharpie….nice little Sharpie lines and squiggles drawn on my two-month-old, $3,000 Pottery Barn stone-colored sectional. When I made this particular furniture selection, I even talked with the salesperson about which fabric would be most kid friendly and went with the canvas twill at her suggestion.

I’m trying to find the humor is this situation and am failing miserably.  Sarah selected a hot pink Sharpie.  There is no hot pink in the room. Perhaps if she had gone with the orange to match the orange floral rug or bring out the orange in the terracotta walls…or the green to compliment the weathered green coffee table…or the aqua blue that shows up in my accent pillows…or heck! even black would have at least matched the piano!  Nope, she chose hot pink. Now I will say this is not the first time she has demonstrated her Sharpie love. There’s been a wall and a kitchen cabinet, and most distressing up until this point, my mom’s antique needlepoint footstool, which now says “I like Ike.” I don’t know who Ike is unless Sarah’s been channeling Dwight D. Eisenhower in her sleep.

So back to the throwing shoes part of the program. Yep, I threw shoes…I slammed doors…I even uttered a few choice expletives. I don’t do that often—lose my temper—but I did this morning, and I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.  Granted there are worse things in life to deal with. No one here is battling cancer or suffering from a heart attack. It’s just a couch (though I will repeat it is a brand new $3,000 couch that I haven’t even finishing paying for yet since I took advantage of that one-year no-interest financing offer). So what do you do when this happens at your house? We’re having a garage sale tomorrow. In it, I had hoped to sell our ten-year-old couch that was replaced by our now Sharpie-decorated sectional; Sarah took the scissors to that couch. Maybe I just need to put it back upstairs.

May 18

2 Comments

Kelly: The Things They Say About God

catch

[Cross-post from my personal blog] The girls and I were eating breakfast Friday morning when Livvie noticed that the roses they gave me for Mother’s Day were dying. I told them that, yes, unfortunately flowers die; things here on Earth don’t live forever. Then out of the blue Sarah said, “I miss Kitty.” Admitting I missed her to, I asked her what she thought God did for us after Kitty died. “He sent us Tink.” Yep, he sent us Tink, the sweet little stray kitten that appeared under my van one day on campus. This turned into a longer conversation about God and angels and how Kitty is up in Heaven with Mommy’s Mommy and Daddy’s Mommy. Sarah said that we never really die; we just become angels (this out of the mouth of a soon to be six-year-old). And Livvie responded with “Will you still be our Mommy when we are angels?” Me? “I will always, always, always be your Mommy, even when we are angels.” Then Livvie looked outside and said, “Maybe when God made our river, he sat on our dock to rest. I think he sat in the pink chair.” Indeed, he probably did.

We are not a go-to-church-every-Sunday family, but we do believe in God and try to instill that faith and those values in our girls, and sometimes their clarity of it all truly astounds me. I know they say the two things you should never bring up in conversation are politics and religion. Oh well, here’s my two cents. 🙂 I don’t care much about politics, but I’m thankful my girls are finding their faith.

Mar 31

15 Comments

Kelly: Woman, Know Thyself

I had an interesting conversation over lunch with a good friend last week. Dana and I are both very creative souls and we both work in education, but that’s about where the similarities end. I’m a Student Life director, so by nature, I’m quick to act, easily juggle, rarely have time to analyze, and frankly, don’t like to analyze. I’m just more of a “do-er.” Dana is a counselor and psychology professor. ‘Nough said? She was telling me about some books she’s been reading…all in the self-help variety…and I was trying to feign interest but just couldn’t do it. I’m currently engrossed in the Twilight series. I must admit, I’ve never read a self-help book in my life. Honestly, I can’t think of a non-fiction book I’ve read that was outside the scope of school or college homework. Is that terrible? We’ve had some long talks about relationships (hers mainly) and though I love her to death, she frustrates the hell out of me when she comes to me for advice because, in my eyes, she analyzes things to death. I’m more of an “it is what it is” kinda girl.

We started talking about planning and goal setting and laying out some future plans for her life. Do you see where this is going? Do you remember me saying here how forced the Monday Page feels for me? So I admitted I’m not much of a planner or goal setter either. She just laughed at me and said, “Well then, how the heck do you do all that you do?” and I had to think about that for minute. All I could come up with was “Um, I just do it.” Lame, huh?

I’ve mentioned True Colors here before and I think that’s where my “Orangeness” comes into play. Here’s a basic rundown of an “Orange”: I act on a moment’s notice. Witty, charming and spontaneous, I consider life as a game, here and now. Impulsive, generous and impactful, I need fun, variety, stimulation, and excitement. Optimistic, eager, and bold, I value skill, resourcefulness, and courage. Physical, immediate, and fraternal, I am a natural trouble shooter, performer, and competitor. I value freedom, adventure, play, spontaneity, and variety, and I’m frustrated with schedules (particularly being on time) and unnecessary routine. I’m independent, action-oriented, flexible, energetic, and optimistic.” Blah, blah, blah…. Hmmm, which should explain why I’m so easily bored and even more easily distracted.

I’ve been a True Colors trainer for about nine years now, and it’s amazing how much knowing the principles behind it has helped me in my life. Most of the actual training is a blur to me, but one moment I remember very clearly. During the introduction, our trainer—Roosevelt something or other—cautioned us that because of the nature of the training, we’d be learning a lot about ourselves first and might have some epiphanies that surprise us. I definitely had one of those. My best friend Jim was going through the training with me (my DH calls him my “other husband”), and he saw the moment happen, and lucky for him was the one who had to help me work through it later that night. Our training was in June 2000, six months after my mother’s suicide. I can’t remember what Roosevelt said, but I clearly remember the thought that immediately popped in my head. My 54-year-old mother thought she had nothing to live for, yet she had me, a 34-year-old pregnant-with-twins me, and my 24-year-old sister. That realization hit me like a ton of bricks. All I could see right at that moment was that we weren’t reason enough to keep her alive. I wasn’t reason enough to keep her alive. My flexible, energetic, optimistic self crumbled right then and there. Jim saw me shut down and got me out of there as soon as the moment allowed. Also being an “Orange,” his first instinct was to “do something,” so he dragged me up to my room, got me to change into workout clothes, and took me out for a ride. We were in Atlanta, and the Olympic mountain biking training course was nearby and open to the public. It was a rough ride; he pushed me harder than what I was used to (he’s done three Ironman triathlons), but it was exactly what I needed. He helped me work through that moment physically so my mind didn’t really have much time to think about it. And later that night he sat there listening as I blubbered through my tears. But I got through it. And I think that Orange nature is what helped me get through it. It took me about another six months to gain back the self-esteem that plummeted with that realization, but I did bounce back, and I know I’m a stronger woman for it.

Maybe that’s where the title to this post comes from: Woman, Know Thyself. I had to remind myself of my worth, and I had to remind myself that “it is what it is,” and I can’t control the actions of another person. So back to Dana, no matter how much someone tries to analyze a person or even your own life, your analyzing isn’t going change anything. But your action will. As the saying goes, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Maybe my experience is what keeps me from being a planner and a goal-setter. I’m a child of five divorces and a mother who killed herself. I live in the here and now, most definitely. It reminds me of Miranda’s “someday is today.” In my typical rambling fashion, I’m trying to figure out what the heck my point was in all this, but I think maybe just “knowing thyself,” first and foremost, and not worrying about the goals and expectations that others put on you, is the first step to just “doing it.” I think that’s ultimately the advice I gave Dana: stop analyzing and just do something. And now, distracted by two little redheads dressed in fairy wings and calling my name, my train of thought has gone down the track of knowing thyself needs to go play with her children and enjoy this beautiful Spring Break day.

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