Care and Feeding
I dedicated my book Many Seasons to all the mothers. And when I say mother, I don’t mean it literally because I know many people who are mothers regardless of gender or if they have children or not. Mothering to me includes creating art or enacting care for sentient beings or the natural world.
When it came time to dedicate the book, I realized that I had been in an intensive process of coming to terms with what it truly means to mother. What it means to create and to offer care.
When I became a mother myself, I had just lost my mother. And not only am I not the same person that I was before I reached that existential crossroads, I also have a different idea of what it means to be a mother and to mother. I was forced to redefine the term for myself, in order to live and to mother.
On a walk the other morning with a friend, we commiserated about growing up with mentally unwell mothers. How they would talk on the phone hours on end and how that often made us feel unseen, neglected, alone.
It’s fall here in the Pacific Northwest and even though it feels like so much is falling apart—the beauty and colors of the natural world are still striking. We had our dogs in tow, hers a mini cattle dog with severe anxiety and mine an elderly rescue with a sordid past. Every few minutes, we’d have to pull them aside to let another dog pass, since both of our dogs can be reactionary.
What a metaphor for our own challenged nervous systems.
I told my friend that when I was growing up, I often wished that I had a different mother. How I’d go to a friend’s house and wish that I had their life, their mother. She said that she felt the same. We didn’t blame our mothers for who they were. It wasn’t their fault that they weren’t well. But it was still hard having to continue to do the work to clean up the damages.
Ana makes her son morning tea like her own mother made her morning tea. She serves him avocado toast with sliced apple on the side. There is both a sense of duty and a sense of satisfaction in the caregiving, because she knows that the boy’s adult self will benefit from her care.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Lucien said to Ana a few months ago.
It was an early morning before school, and he must have been in a teen mood. She chose not to respond. He hasn’t said anything like that to her again.
Despite the morning tea, the care that Ana got as a child was inconsistent, chaotic, and at times, smothering. And yet, Ana knows that she did benefit from the special gestures that her mother offered her, because a lot of what Ana offers to Lucien she learned from her mother.
You can tell that Drew did not receive this kind of care, because he doesn’t offer it to Ana and Lucien. When Ana does offer it to him, he doesn’t know how to reciprocate. She used to think that Drew didn’t care, but she has since come to learn that he doesn’t know how to care.
Like my friend and I, my spouse also had an unreliable mother. She left when he was four; he and his brother were raised by their father. Sometimes it feels like I am a surrogate mother to him because had never been mothered. When I care for our child, my spouse often looks confused, because the care in my mothering is such a foreign concept to him.
I learned how to mother, I think, because mine loved me even though she wasn’t always capable of mothering.
The art monster is the woman who abandons the mothering to work on her art. I opted not to be the art monster. Instead, I took on the role of the incomeless householder and with that, I was beholden to my spouse for financial support. I relinquished a lot of autonomy in motherhood, like my own mother before she left my father.
When she died, I inherited some of my mother’s regrets, some of her grief, and what remained of her anger.
Ana takes no action, makes no changes.
She endures the endless unpaid housework and childcare, all the tedium of micromanaging and facilitating a spouse, a child, two homes, the bills, the groceries, the social calendars. She reads things by strong women who seem to have this shit figured out. These are women with powerful voices. Ana is just another
woman trying to make a fuss when she feels that she should just shut the fuck up already.
You don’t make money, so you don’t have a say. You don’t deserve to have a voice and you are deemed powerless.
Ana recognizes how people on the outside see her. Just be happy in your simple little privileged role with your boutique clothing and your unlimited yoga pass and your cute little writing projects.
Ana sweeps the kitchen floor and wipes down the bathroom. She starts the dishwasher; she puts a load into the laundry. She makes a list for the grocery store.
And then she leaves on her bike to go to a coffee shop to write for a few hours, because the writing is what gives her meaning in life. That and how much she truly loves her child.
I have realized through the book-writing that to identify as a woman, a mother and a writer is a radical act. I have learned that I don’t need to hide behind my gender, that I can embrace the care that I give my child, and that I deserve to do the work that is my art, even though it doesn’t make a significant income.
On that walk through the park with the pretty leaves, my friend asked me how I felt about the upcoming launch of Many Seasons. I feel good about it, I told her. But if I made more money from my writing, I would feel differently, I said.
We both fell silent as we approached a leaf-covered dirt path, the dogs a few steps ahead of us. After a few moments, she said she understood what I meant. We are both creators who provide a lot of care that doesn’t have strong fiscal value. Maybe someday that will change, I said to her.
It’s the third canvas in a triptych, my third novel, all of them for the mothers.
It’s the art that matters, the care that we give to the people and to the work that truly matters in the end. What comes of the mothering is what matters.
I see you, Ana.
I see your anger and your resentment, but these emotions don’t belong to you.
They belong to your mother.
Many Seasons just released. Read it, tell us what you think.
Ambient fall photo credits: John Phemister
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