Motherhood and Writing

Motherhood changed my writing life. I have gone from needing church silence to being able to write in my living room where my husband and son are loudly interacting with televised sports, or my daughter is playing piano. I’ve learned to ignore even the dog when he is in rabbit-mode, ears back and running through the rooms, then freezing into a John Bellushi-Animal House stance. I think this was a gradual evolution. I used to retreat to a corner in the attic when the children were toddlers and I convinced myself my emotional distance could be increased through stairs. I wrote several books up there, and only came down to work when my laser printer gave up the ghost, and my husband bought me a laptop.

Now, I am happiest writing near a window with a coffee pot close, and passersby in view. I like watching the UPS trucks come and go, the neighborhood dogs sniffing my dandelions, the gaggle of youngsters making its way down the block to the local theater from one of our neighborhood schools. I like being reminded of the reality beyond my keyboard even as I choose to ignore it. This attentiveness I attribute to motherhood.

At college, I remember causing several food explosions when I would try to cook and write simultaneously. I would park my blue, Brother electric typewriter on our dinette table overlooking the duck pond at our off-campus apartment, and settle in to work. Neither the rhythm of the machine nor the return bell distracted the voice in my head as it spilled onto the page. Unremarkably, I managed to work up an appetite moving only my fingers. I had staples on hand, eggs, bread, hot dogs, and M&Ms. I was always low-carbing then (except for the chocolate) so I stayed away from the bread, and would boil either hot dogs or eggs. It wasn’t so bad when hot dogs exploded. They quietly burst apart leaving pink shreds pretty close to the stove, and were greasy enough to be easily washed away. But when the browned and crusty hard boiled eggs blew, they released the worst of all stinks, and my roommates would be justifiably offended. They could never understand how I could lose track of time so completely.

Boiling eggs do warn you with aural cues; they rattle against each other, against the pot. I can promise you I hear them now from a room away. In fact, now I can hear through doors and walls. I can wake up running from a dead sleep and magically appear at the bathroom doorway when one of my children is sick. Motherhood sharpens your hearing, even while it allows you to tune out the most repetitive video game. You can discern the slightest inflection in your child’s after-school voice, and know lunch didn’t go well. You can take a temperature with your lips, sniff out a bad cold cut, read dejection on a ball field from yards and yards away, and feel each second pass until your child arrives home safely. Motherhood makes your senses that acute, and won’t ever allow you to leave a stove unattended.