Pamela Tanner Boll

The last two hours, I’ve spent dawdling at my desk; flipping through children’s clothing catalogues, a file of bills, checking on some orders of furniture and dipping into a biography of Anne Sexton– a housewife, like me with small children, averting madness by writing. And yet, the writing does not help her take care of her children. Can I do both? I read her poem Double Image about her child as a mirror; one that affirms her being and at the same time pulls her in and under. I know that pull, that feeling of nearly breaking in two.

Look at me–– my focus is on the children, their force so strong that it takes these two hours to journey back down into my own center; that place deep within me from where images spring: that of a woman singing as she tries to gather the stars; images of a fiery red flower cupped by two hands, of a band of turquoise so blue that it beckons. And never enough time; two hours of daydreaming, then who does the laundry, fixes the dinner, shops for groceries, looks for vases, pays the bills?

Wonder if I give myself the time, plunge into that dark well, and no images come? Better to scuttle into that dark center for short snatches; claiming the house, the children, the dog, my husband’s dinner, any other need, rather than admit that fear.

If I take that place, claim it as my own, I am afraid it will not nurture, but suffocate. I will be buried alone in the dark. Away. So I rush in quickly, scribble a few lines and rush out, breathless, to the children, to the house.

My children grow so fast and the image making takes up all of me: I wrench it aside, coming back up and out, as though from a drugged sleep, needing cups of tea and comfort, finally to focus on that other world I have created –that of my children and their constant whirling needs.

I cannot get enough of my children’s smooth bodies, their high voices, their quickness. I cannot help but touch their round bellies, to inhale their scent. Ian, at five, jumps into my arms with a shouted, “Mommy!” triumphantly locked around my waist after a morning at nursery school. Yet already I see him trying out other people, other faces. Alex, almost three, mumbling around his pacifier, as I pick at my cuticle, “Stop that Mommy, you will hurt your hand.” Cameron, my baby, my love, eighteen months old but thinking he is as big as the others- strutting around the kitchen, chest and belly thrust out, feet stomping- as he orders our dog Samantha to eat her dinner.

Periodically, I step aside from this heart tugging war and create a system. I plan the week, parceling out two hours for sitting at my desk, three hours for lunch and reading with all the children, one hour to take Ian to the library, two to spend playing just with my baby. I use graph paper and charts. But children cannot plan their hurts to coincide with the hours. And those images rely on dreaming time.

I ought to manage better, other people do it, why can’t I? I grit my teeth in a frenzy of patience, feel like screaming with the impossibility of control. What about me? Can’t you leave me alone? I give and give and give. And the children sense when I am not giving gladly and are made uncertain, demanding more. When I parcel, oh so carefully, divide my heart, then both worlds break into bits, diminished.

And yet, here I am using the images, the dream-time to make words on the page. Yes, not enough; but the words are there. And I am a mother. I am a mother.

Perhaps, I cannot control the dreaming time, nor schedule my children’s needs. I let them happen. And with the letting go, the rage at having to struggle between these two worlds lessens. I am trying to give in to grace; to listen to my heart.

I leave the dishes, the bills go unpaid, I trust that the writing will come and flop to the floor to wrestle with my children. And in that laughter, in those silky bodies clambering so easily, so without fear, over mine–the joy leads me to that place deep within from where I can make another world –a world of a woman keening to the stars, gathering the night sky to her belly, clothing herself in the heavens.

- Pamela Tanner Boll

Illustration by Gustaf von Arbin