I am typing while nursing. Not a small feat in case you haven’t tried. Lucy nurses around twelve times a day. While we spend most of those nursing sessions gazing into each others eyes, I have tried to take at least one or two to write. This is most often an unsuccessful endeavor, but I have had a few days where it’s worked. Lucy is content at my breast and my hands are free to pound out a sentence, a paragraph, a page.
This time last July, I was readying myself for the final year of my Masters of Fine Arts Program. I had spent the previous two years learning what it meant to be a writer and mucking around with poor attempts at short stories and novels. I eventually realized that my strongest work was personal–intensely personal–and I began writing short pieces that eventually became my thesis which will eventually (let’s hope!) become my memoir. Two weeks after Lucy’s birth, I received my diploma in the mail. I had made a baby and I had officially finished graduate school. 2013 was quite the year. Feelings of pride might have swelled if I didn’t feel like there was still so much work to be done. My memoir is about 75% complete, but those last thirty or forty pages feel as distant as the moon.
I am now typing with one hand while I hold Lucy with the other. As you might imagine, it’s slow going. But because this experiment is essential, I press on. I’m on a new journey to find a balance between motherhood and writing. This little baby is my greatest gift, and I hope that one day I’ll be able to sufficiently capture in words how much she means to me. But as for now, I’m just working on carving out space for my long-loved passion. Somehow, I must mother AND write.
And so this is one of the first lessons I’m learning: to hold on to what makes me smile, to what makes me sane. Because I imagine I’ll inspire Lucy far more with the passions I pursue than with those that I sacrifice. I want her to have a mother who nurtures others AND herself. And so, somehow, I’ll find time to finish my memoir, to continue writing. I’ll continue to make breakfasts like this: a scrambled egg sandwich with heaps of spinach between two thick slices of honey wheat bread. And Ryan and I will find time to be together, just the two of us. Maybe one day, I’ll even go visit a friend in New York on my own. But I’ll always come back to my greatest creation and my greatest joy. Because this truly is what motherhood is about. Lucille Amelia, you are more than my world. Your sweet face has worked its way into the very center of me. You are life.
