I've been reading various reviews from The New York Times this morning. I've been listening to interviews on the radio. I've been trying to finish a novel All the Light We Cannot See. I've also spent a day at a Writer's Festival. It's quite fascinating to see the ideas contained in this stimuli merge, not necessarily forming one clear and complete idea, but rather reminding me what delicate creatures we are at the same time as how resilient we are; how capable we are of healing from past blows.
Richard Glover, a radio presenter here in Australia has written a memoir and as I listened to him being interviewed about the book he has written I am reminded that without proper parenting we truly are at risk. Richard's mother clearly lived in a fantasy of her own making and his father became a hopeless alcoholic. They probably tried in their own way to be good parents but at age 15 his mother had run off with his English teacher and his father left for a time too leaving him in the house alone. As one of his friends remarked, 'Richard didn't run away from home but rather home ran away from him'. This instability in his life led to all sorts of issues, but I think writing it all down has helped him to be philosophical: If you can't get the love you need from those you'd assume would provide love, stop beating your head against a brick wall and find it elsewhere. He did.
An earlier radio interview related to Merryl Streep's most recent movie Ricki and the The Flash with a couple of local aging rock chicks remarking that they didn't feel the movie had much of a believable plot - why go work across the country leaving your family behind if it isn't creating a decent income? Both women had managed to have their singing career and a family, though with the help of husbands and their own mothers to lighten the motherly burden.
I read a comment about motherly guilt made by Streep in an interview about the film and I have to admit I did wonder to myself, 'What if there was no motherly guilt about leaving your children? Is that an outcome we want? Does a lack of a sense of responsibility to the children we bear lead to good things?
Anne Enright writes:
When desire is in the air, motherhood becomes problematic. This despite the fact that sex causes motherhood. It is a fact worth stating sometimes that sex, in itself, cannot turn you into a whore, no matter what the nuns told you then or pornography tells you now, but it really can turn you into a mother. After which, of course, you are never allowed to have sex again.
And then a little later she writes:
And when the child grows up, and when the child becomes a writer — a male writer, usually — such sins will be endlessly rehearsed. Because, in the fantasized perfection (or the experienced perfection) of the mother-baby bond, each is entirely fulfilled by the other. There can be no one else.
It does give pause to wonder if Anne Summers was onto something when she wrote all those years ago that women could either be Damned Whores or God's Police. (I heard Summers in interview a few days ago since it is 40 years since she wrote that book, her doctorate in fact.)
Recently I was talking to a Russian psychiatrist, now retired, who shared his opinion with me after a lifetime of caring for troubled children that 'not all people are meant to be parents'. (He is a prone to making heartfelt understatements.)
To be a parent is to be prepared to sacrifice bits of yourself, at least for a time. If you can't make some room in your life for the care and responsibility of another human being, then it's not the right time to be a parent. It may never be the right time in your life.
It's more profound than even that: You can aim to be the perfect parent but you won't ever be the perfect parent. Personally, I encourage the children to air their grievances. I heard a biographer talk yesterday who said that it was his job to reveal and that a secret was more toxic than a revelation. I found myself agreeing with him.
Rod Jones wrote The Mothers, a story in part about a young girl who was forced to give up her baby for adoption when she fell pregnant at a young age, and all the repercussion around that one decision. In his book, the adopted child never blended with his adopted parents despite their best efforts to love him and care for him. Of course, many people have very different experiences with their adopted parents.
I read recently of a woman writer who cared for her dying parents and nearly stopped reading altogether. She read a little of many stories but could finish nothing, as if endings were too difficult for her. Nine months after their deaths when she did start reading again she read 'coming of age' stories, as if she had to somehow come to terms with beginnings again before she could go on with her life.
In an interview Lorri Moore talked about "creating ruptures" as a writer; interrogating ways people observe and talk to each other, "where unbearable and lovely humanity dribbles through".
Hugh Mackay says that a happy life is made up of selflessness; forgiveness.
All these people saying something similar in their own way, something that Clarie Underwood of all people used to say to Francis often:
How can I help?
Richard Glover, a radio presenter here in Australia has written a memoir and as I listened to him being interviewed about the book he has written I am reminded that without proper parenting we truly are at risk. Richard's mother clearly lived in a fantasy of her own making and his father became a hopeless alcoholic. They probably tried in their own way to be good parents but at age 15 his mother had run off with his English teacher and his father left for a time too leaving him in the house alone. As one of his friends remarked, 'Richard didn't run away from home but rather home ran away from him'. This instability in his life led to all sorts of issues, but I think writing it all down has helped him to be philosophical: If you can't get the love you need from those you'd assume would provide love, stop beating your head against a brick wall and find it elsewhere. He did.
An earlier radio interview related to Merryl Streep's most recent movie Ricki and the The Flash with a couple of local aging rock chicks remarking that they didn't feel the movie had much of a believable plot - why go work across the country leaving your family behind if it isn't creating a decent income? Both women had managed to have their singing career and a family, though with the help of husbands and their own mothers to lighten the motherly burden.
I read a comment about motherly guilt made by Streep in an interview about the film and I have to admit I did wonder to myself, 'What if there was no motherly guilt about leaving your children? Is that an outcome we want? Does a lack of a sense of responsibility to the children we bear lead to good things?
Anne Enright writes:
When desire is in the air, motherhood becomes problematic. This despite the fact that sex causes motherhood. It is a fact worth stating sometimes that sex, in itself, cannot turn you into a whore, no matter what the nuns told you then or pornography tells you now, but it really can turn you into a mother. After which, of course, you are never allowed to have sex again.
And then a little later she writes:
And when the child grows up, and when the child becomes a writer — a male writer, usually — such sins will be endlessly rehearsed. Because, in the fantasized perfection (or the experienced perfection) of the mother-baby bond, each is entirely fulfilled by the other. There can be no one else.
It does give pause to wonder if Anne Summers was onto something when she wrote all those years ago that women could either be Damned Whores or God's Police. (I heard Summers in interview a few days ago since it is 40 years since she wrote that book, her doctorate in fact.)
Recently I was talking to a Russian psychiatrist, now retired, who shared his opinion with me after a lifetime of caring for troubled children that 'not all people are meant to be parents'. (He is a prone to making heartfelt understatements.)
To be a parent is to be prepared to sacrifice bits of yourself, at least for a time. If you can't make some room in your life for the care and responsibility of another human being, then it's not the right time to be a parent. It may never be the right time in your life.
It's more profound than even that: You can aim to be the perfect parent but you won't ever be the perfect parent. Personally, I encourage the children to air their grievances. I heard a biographer talk yesterday who said that it was his job to reveal and that a secret was more toxic than a revelation. I found myself agreeing with him.
Rod Jones wrote The Mothers, a story in part about a young girl who was forced to give up her baby for adoption when she fell pregnant at a young age, and all the repercussion around that one decision. In his book, the adopted child never blended with his adopted parents despite their best efforts to love him and care for him. Of course, many people have very different experiences with their adopted parents.
I read recently of a woman writer who cared for her dying parents and nearly stopped reading altogether. She read a little of many stories but could finish nothing, as if endings were too difficult for her. Nine months after their deaths when she did start reading again she read 'coming of age' stories, as if she had to somehow come to terms with beginnings again before she could go on with her life.
In an interview Lorri Moore talked about "creating ruptures" as a writer; interrogating ways people observe and talk to each other, "where unbearable and lovely humanity dribbles through".
Hugh Mackay says that a happy life is made up of selflessness; forgiveness.
All these people saying something similar in their own way, something that Clarie Underwood of all people used to say to Francis often:
How can I help?
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