A Woman's Life

Forgive me for not writing. I am trying to forgive myself, as is habit, of all the myriad ways in which I disappoint myself. I am a harsh critic of myself. And although I have had more social interaction outside of the house in the last week and a half than I have in several months—due to pregnancy, newborn Greyson, and not knowing many people after the move—I am furious with myself for the state of the house (a mess), the piling laundry (undone), the piles of laundry (washed but unfolded), and my lengthening to do list, which I have been delinquent in accomplishing. And much like exercise, the longer I went without writing, the harder it was to approach the task. And, whether this was inspired thinking or merely inspired procrastination, I told myself that a space begun to give me freedom should not become stressful. And so I dawdled and backspaced and convinced myself that I wasn’t ready to do it. I’m not sure I am now, but I must write today or I am in danger of leaving this off entirely.

But this is so often the trouble with motherhood—how to keep so many balls in the air without dropping one. I talked to my mom this summer about how difficult it is to cultivate an active mind. How I was worried that until the boys were in school I might never have the chance to be a thinking woman. I told her of all the things I longed to do. About the hours I’d spent in the sun on that silly old queen-anne sofa in the bay window of our San Francisco apartment, gazing out at the street and thinking; allowing my mind to wander, to muse, to go completely blank. I must say this is what I miss most about life before kids. The space to be completely still. And now, U2’s “Running to Stand Still” could be my theme song—where can I snatch 20 minutes to check my email; call that person back; eat lunch; pickup; shower. My life happens in tiny broken spaces of minutes scattered throughout the day. And the stillness doesn’t happen. I’m too busy, in the time I have, trying to accomplish everything I need to do before one boy or the other wakes up.

At the time of our conversation, my mom read to me from a book that she had picked up when she was a new mom. She had been, back in the 70s, surprised by the relevancy of a book published in 1955. Gift from the Sea was written by Charles Lindbergh’s wife. No, I shouldn’t do that to her. It was written by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Even in the inclusion of her own name you see her wanting her own life aside from motherhood and being a wife. Here’s an excerpt that sums up exactly how I feel about my position in the world.


…the problem is specifically and essentially woman’s. Distraction is, always has been, and probably always will be, inherent in woman’s life.

For to be a woman is to have interests and duties, raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of the wheel. The pattern of our lives is essentially circular. We must be open to all points of the compass; husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider’s web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes. How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need, and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living. How desirable and how distant is the ideal of the contemplative, artist, or saint—the inner inviolable core, the single eye.

With new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls—woman’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman-and-Career, Woman-and-the-Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.


And even now, rereading these words, I feel encouraged. I feel understood and justified somehow in the frustration I sometimes feel. I am absolutely in love with my life. I have the most spectacular of husbands—kind, compassionate, wonderfully communicative—and my beautiful boys are just delicious in their temperaments. Yet, inside there is apart of me that longs for expression, for strength. There is a part of me that needs to be taken out to the pasture and allowed to run and also to be put through its paces. There is the inner woman that longs for success and challenge.

Last night Gordon tried to get me interested in some sort of new telescope NASA put up in space, or is about to, I wasn’t listening very well. Finally I said, truly curious, “do you find it unbelievable that I’m just not interested in something you find so fascinating?” To which he responded, “Sort of, but I can’t understand how you can read Real Simple each month. You want to read about housekeeping?” I admit I got just a tad heated as I explained how nice it was to read something about what I do; about how to shave a couple minutes off of a task to buy some for myself, how to clean better, cook better and more quickly, save money, save face, save myself from drowning in a sea of the mundane. Eventually I hit the nail on the head and said “The fact that people sit around and think about all of this stuff which actually is mundane and distracting from the meat of life, the fact that they devote time to it and publish an entire magazine about it each month that hundreds of thousands of women read each day makes me feel less alone in what I’ve chosen for my life. And most of all, on some level, it valorizes the sticky details of running a house. It means that it’s worth thinking about too, even though it’s so ultimately stupid.”

I’m so far away from what Anne Morrow (Lindbergh) seeks—balance. The contemplative life. But the fact that there are so many of us out there vying with the same everydayness and distractions makes me just slightly more able to forgive myself for not having achieved it. For failing, most days, to even try.