I'm returning to this blog, five years later...hard to believe so much time has passed. On the other hand, not so hard, considering my son's passage from babyhood to toddlerhood to young boyhood and all that has occurred in our lives.
I left the blog out of a sense of frustration, thinking that I had better ways to spend my time as a writer; but looking back on it, I realize that it wasn't as much of a waste of time as I thought. Not every entry was worthwhile, or even mildly interesting; but the daily-ness of it meant that certain important moments were captured, moments I'd since forgotten about; and I find that they still resonate through my life in interesting ways.
It's like re-discovering stashed-away treasures in the attic of one's house; we pull something out of a box and suddenly, the rush of excitement we experienced at the moment of discovering that thing or that person washes over us, overlaid with the knowledge that "I am not that particular person any more"; and we are once again changed by the original event. Life is a kind of spiral, I've always believed; and coming back to this journal could be a way of spiraling up to something that needs to be rediscovered.
My son has occupied at least ninety percent of my thoughts and my time these last six-plus years. Life has been so full of him, since his birth, that I come to this moment more than a bit dazed and overwhelmed. Here once again, this blog, which is supposedly "me"--a woman, 50 now, with a young son, still struggling to find time to write...but what is this "me"? Does she have any significance, any reality, beyond the "Mommy" that her son knows?
I've been a stay-at-home mom, writing and doing a small amount of video work (none of it for money). We moved twice, redecorated and renovated twice, and after all that, almost moved out of California; so I could say that at least two of the last six years were swallowed up by perusals of real estate listings, plus visiting open homes, then working out the details of buying, moving and renovating. I didn't particularly want this to happen--have almost zero interest in interior decorating, for instance--but it happened, and now, thank goodness, it looks like we're not moving for at least the next few years.
In many ways, then, I have been immersed in banalities. But there has been nothing banal about watching my son grow and develop. He is a constant source of joy (even when he drives me nuts).
Once again, to protect my son's privacy, I will not discuss his every accomplishment here--the academic or sports triumphs/failures, the social breakthroughs and defeats...why? Why do I need to share those with anyone? I've always thought that blogs and social media in general are too often used for grandstanding, too infrequently for soul-searching. (What are we all on this earth for? I don't think it's for self-aggrandizement.)
I will continue to use this blog for the same purposes as before, I think. (1) To reflect on being an older mother. (2) To bring to life the present moment (and to offer these moments to my son when he is an adult). (4) To reflect on the challenges of writing when motherhood seems to demand close to one hundred percent of my time, and simultaneously, to carve out an identity beyond "Mommy."
For the first time in six years, I have about sixteen good hours a week in which to devote to writing. I volunteered at my son's school several hours a week last year, while he was in kindergarten, and though I'm still volunteering, I've scaled back quite a bit. My son is in first grade now, more firmly settled in the routine, and I can step more into the background (though I'm still center stage in his life when he comes home from school); I can finally develop something like a "career."
When I stopped posting here, I had twenty or thirty short-short stories written; now I have one hundred. A feeble effort in six years' time. But why dwell on that? The difference between zero and one hundred is vast. Not all of the stories are worthy of being published. I will attempt, over the next several weeks, to weed out the worst of them, the bottom ten percent, and write fifteen more...
Some writers think of their output as, in some way, their "children," and I do understand those feelings. But I don't fully share them. The difference in depth of feeling is too great, at least from my perspective...but at the same time, the parallel is this: nothing matters to me more than being a writer, and, nothing matters to me more than being a mother. My stories and poems are everything to me, and my son is also, everything. It is in that paradox that every writer and full-time parent carves out an existence.
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