Mother
Dispensing with role-playing may be, I think after reading Dederer’s book, necessary to becoming a fully realized adult. And if I am to become a mother, as “a fully realized adult” is the only way I want to do it.
What many mothers might consider anathema, and what Paul herself describes as sacrifice, was the very thing necessary to being both mother and artist.
To have a child is to surrender one’s will rather than exerting it. The child does not exist as the perfect external realization of an internal intention. His own will interferes in the determination of his outcome.
The problem isn’t and never has been motherhood itself. The problem has always been me—my fragile focus, so easily shattered; my delicate ambition, easily spooked but not as easily relinquished.
The irony of this entire inquiry is that I spent most of my twenties trying and failing to throw my self away.
I wonder: would having babies motivate me? Would it supercharge my focus and force me to finish my book?
So why, we might ask, doesn’t she have manuscripts, notebooks, cocktail napkins—all the anticipated ephemera of the working writer?
It’s because she is a mother.