More tenderness

I’ve woefully neglected this blog, and I’m beyond feeling bad about it. There are reasons. Among them:
1) I’m writing other things. Okay, I’m not writing that much, but I’m thinking about writing other things.
2) I’m re-building my reading habit, which suffered grave injuries in college and graduate school (all those gigantic, dry as dust tomes on European history and cancer etiology really killed my desire to lose myself in the latest literary fiction and memoir).
3) I’m forgetful. I’ll have a fabulous idea for a short blog entry while I’m walking with my baby in the morning, and by afternoon, that idea is history, along with my resolution to not have an afternoon cup of real coffee.
4) I have a one-year-old baby and two other kids (middle school and elementary school). So, after a long hiatus from diapers, I’ve re-discovered how little time there is for anything non-essential when I have a baby.

That last item is really the key to everything else. And that’s what I had forgotten. Sometimes it’s not that there isn’t time, exactly, but free brain space for creative work. At the risk of a laundry list of parental concerns and responsibilities, let me just say I’m not robotic enough to hop into writing mode every time I have 15 minutes* or more away from my family. But what really surprised me is how much this surprised me. There has been this creeping narrative I’ve told myself over the last several years, that I was particularly lazy and no good at creative work when I was younger and had children and that this was the case because I wasn’t committed, organized, mature, etc. That might be true, but it’s not the only reason. I now have recent evidence that this is challenging. I’m building in the handicap of three children but adjusting for the fact that I’m now really, really efficient compared to any other moment in my life. And — I don’t use this term lightly, because I think it’s fatuous and overused — I am grateful for the reminder. You know why? Because I think without the reminder of a baby, I would already be one of those middle aged people who smiles at other people’s babies and toddlers but has no real memory of the daily grind/delights/distractions. I’d secretly think artists with babies were lame if they didn’t produce work quickly, and I’d have regrets and judgment about my younger self trying to write. I might even like to angrily interrogate my younger self, the one who was raising toddler number one and baby number two, about what she did all day.

One interesting thing about empathy that I’ve noticed lately is how rare it seems to be. It’s not hard to find sensitive people. I have known many people, including fellow parents, who are exquisitely attuned to their own journey, particularly their own suffering and the slights they have endured. Sometimes this sensitivity makes them caring parents to their children. But to extend their own experience and imagine the lives of others, particularly adults, is rarer. I suspect that without my third baby, I would be someone who has conveniently forgotten what it’s really like when you have a baby to leave the house and be on time, to find time to read and write, to feel like your marriage might survive having children, to make an effort not to drink too much at night when half the night is spent cleaning up dinner and putting people to bed. I’m grateful (for real) not to be that person.

* Please, don’t get me started on people who advise parents to simply “write when the baby is sleeping.” That’s the worst platitude I’ve ever had to listen to with a grimace on my face, over and over again, for years. On second thought, that might work, if your creative work is writing porn.