Many moons before I took off on maternity leave, I had the pleasure of talking to Kerry Clare about her essay, “Love is a Let-Down: Some Lessons from the Storm of New Motherhood”, one of two runners-up in our inaugural Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest:

About the subject of your essay, new motherhood, you write: “I want to write it down though, how it was, because most people don’t ever talk about this. They don’t talk about it because it passes, and because of what you get to show for it, and because if everybody told the truth, pregnant women would start jumping in front of buses in droves.” I would also argue that most women don’t talk about this because they think they are alone in it, that the the Hallmark version of what new motherhood is like is the way it’s supposed to be and when it isn’t, they’re somehow to blame. Consequently, one of the words I found myself using often in reference to your work was “brave.” Was it scary to commit your experience to paper? I mean, did it feel like an act of bravery, telling the truth? Or was the feeling more like relief, the way confessing any “secret” usually does, no matter its nature? Or neither?

First, I feel a bit less original now than I proclaimed myself to be. People do talk about this, we talk about it all the time, but it’s so hard to articulate and experiences differ so widely that we find ourselves talking around and around the issue, and yes, trying to feel the way we’re supposed to feel is part of this problem. But I wanted to get to the heart of it, into the eye of the storm, as I said, or at least my storm. And yes, it was a relief it write it down, to finally make something coherent out of what had been so chaotic and awful, to be able to look back and say, “So that was how it was.” Because I’d also kind of forgotten, and that was scary too.

Your essay did not make me want to jump in front of a bus. In fact, I found it deeply reassuring, on several points in particular  — that the crying is normal, for one, because I’m already there. Not too long ago, I had a complete meltdown on the way home from a certain establishment that spells its name with a backwards ‘r’ simply because I (me!) had been in a place that spells its name with a backwards ‘r’, damn it. I couldn’t explain it at the time, but I felt like I’d just stood on the edge of a very slippery slope leading from the Me I Know to….who knows what, I couldn’t see the bottom, but I definitely didn’t like the looks of it, and it appeared the slide was unavoidable. Also, I found it incredibly reassuring to learn that you read, even in the first few days after bringing Harriet home. In addition to Colwin’s novel, what did you read, how did you manage it, and did you find it helpful (even if briefly)?

I am glad you were reassured, and that was my intention, actually– to let any other woman know that she’ll probably take to motherhood better than I did (because it would be hard to do much worse), but if she doesn’t, that it’s not the end of the world. I reread Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin recently, and identified so much with the protagonist’s experience of new motherhood, but unlike her (fortunately), motherhood and I grew to get along. It helps, I think, that it’s not as much of an institution as is purported– like marriage, I think, you can make it what you want and need to be, with the proviso that you’re working in tandem with another individual.

That said, there is a slippery slope with a new baby, but what I didn’t understand at the time is that you crawl back out of it eventually. In the early days, I was so determined to assert normalcy, setting stupid milestones for everything I was determined to do to show I was getting my life back– “when the baby is three days old, I will walk to the ice cream store. when the baby is one week old, I will go to the farmer’s market. We will go out for a meal. I will go out in the evening.” Just to prove it, but it was kind of ridiculous– I was also recovering from major surgery! I wish that I’d known that real life would return without me even trying, and I could have focused more on living in the moment. But then the moment was wretched, so there you go…

Regarding reading though, it was so important to me. But I read all the time, in ridiculous situations– knitting, washing the dishes, walking down the street. So it was not much of a stretch to read with a newborn, which goes to show that the most fundamental aspects of youness don’t go anywhere too far away with new motherhood.

I didn’t push too hard though– the Laurie Colwin book, with its serious lightness, was the perfect novel for me to tackle first, and I’d read it before so I knew what to expect. The second book I read was Tom’s Midnight Garden, which was a children’s novel, but an incredibly rich one, and it takes place at this strange time between day and night, with a clock that struck thirteen, and that seemed like my whole life at the time.

Also, I never turned on the television. People delighted in telling me that this would be impossible, but I’ve similarly delighted in proving them wrong. Daytime television to me was a kind of vortex, my slippery slope, and I didn’t want to go there. Though books are more awkward to handle whilst breastfeeding, I think they’re well worth the acrobatics.

Your essay is structured, elegantly, around a quote from Laurie Colwin’s A Big Storm Knocked It Over, which begins “Motherhood is a storm, a seizure: It is like weather. Nights of high wind followed by calm mornings of dense fog or brilliant sunshine that gives way to tropical rain or blinding snow.” Toward the end of the essay, you write ” … and then (though this is far from the point) one day I noticed that the storm had been over for a while.”  I have some idea of what the point is, of course, but this question is one we discussed at length in the adjudication process, I would love to get your answer.

The point is that the storm is. Yes, it passes, and thank goodness it does, but that passing means nothing when you’re living it. But I think acknowledging the storm itself does mean something, that you’re not merely failing to feel the right things, that other mothers have been there before. It would help to acknowledge these experiences as part of a natural process of adjustment. And this does not merely free a new mother from her isolation, but it also provides tangible evidence that the storm does pass, that such a promise is not simply platitudes, because so many of us have been through it, and here we are on the other side.

What are you reading now? And what is Harriet reading now?

I am now reading (and struggling with) another of Sheila Heti’s very strange books, How Should a Person Be. I am looking forward to reading Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris next, followed by Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. Harriet is really into the Hello Baby Board Books by Jorge Uzon, published by Groundwood Books– she is constantly bringing them to me to read to her. She also loves The Wheels on the Bus Pop-Up Book by Paul O. Zelinsky, but we have to keep it on a high shelf so she
doesn’t love it to pieces. Finally, together (with Harriet’s dad too), we’re reading and delighting in The Wind in the Willows, and a marvelous picture book called Sunday Morning by Judith Viorst (who wrote the Alexander books), illustrated by Hilary Knight (who did the Eloise books)– Harriet gets a bit more out of the latter.

As noted at top, I sent these questions to Kerry some time ago, so I can safely assume she’s finished reading all of the above and moved on to the selections for Canada Reads Independently, the highly entertaining reading project she started over at Pickle Me This last year. I must confess that I haven’t cracked the spine of any of the books on the 2011 list yet, but I have been following along, and hope to actually read the books some time in the new year—do join us!

What's new at TNQ?

Share the love!