Motherhood Vs. Independence

I've been asking myself the following question lately: where is the balance between motherhood and independence for a woman? This is a question that generation after generation of women must have asked themselves, even if subconsciously. What is indeed the sacrifice we as women make when becoming a mother? What societal and cultural forms of tradition trickle into our decisions, and how much of our craft or art is lost to our new indulgence, if any?

I saw two poets read last night at Cornelia Street Cafe: Annie Finch and Lee Anne Brown. I am a firm believer that ironic fate exists, and when Lee Anne Brown came onstage with her small, fairy-like daughter, Miranda, I witnessed a possible solution. As Lee Anne read her poetry, Miranda scurried around the stage, like a subplot or a silent narrative to her mother's writings. She placed her crocks on the music stand Lee Anne used to keep up her laptop, and strategically placed a paper napkin on its edge as a final touch. Joining in with her mother to sing original poems in the form of ancient hymns, the duo seemed to be placed on that stage, in the small, hall-way like basement of the lower Manhattan cafe, as some sort of ironic solution to all of my recent queries- or at least the beginnings of an answer to my lifelong quest for a balance between womanhood as is defined and expected, and that which lives inside of me in split phrases and lip-tilted expressions best known to the outside world as "Art," but better known to myself as necessary expression.

Later, after the performance, I spoke briefly to a giggling Lee Anne, telling her how much I appreciated her daughter being on stage with her, as an example of how motherhood and independence interact. In fact, motherhood was a sort of independence in and of itself, in that it was inspiration. Not necessarily in the way that it provided lovey-dovey phrases and moon analogies, although it did sometimes do this, but in the way that it provided conflict; conflict which I have found to be the most necessary and rewarding form of inspiration there is. As my boyfriend once said to me, "I feel bad for people without problems." He too, thrives on the strength derived from conflict, from challenge, from "problems." Call us masochists, but be it what it will, I enjoy looking back on the street corners in Manhattan I've cried on for the lack of money, direction and sanity I possessed at the time, and following the path of time to now, a couple months later where I still have no money, direction and an ominous level of sanity, and musing on the difference between the two points. It has been in times of struggle that I have found the outer limits of myself and for a change been able to feel where my physical being begins and ends and differs from the surrounding atmosphere. It is both a horrendously lonely realization, as well as strangely invigorating.

While life outside of me goes on, and customers continue to populate the Upper East Side Restaurant where I waitress, I fill glasses with ice, stack them on the bar with little pieces of paper listing what I need: 1 white sangria, 1 witt, 1 hefiwiesen (or as I wrote it the other day, not being from Belgium myself "hefivision") I silently occupying myself with questions that don't yet concern me, such as this one about motherhood vs. independence.

A friend of mine and I sat out on the balcony at another friend's birthday party on Friday, discussing the same question. We both knew women, including her late Aunt, who were extremely strong, independent females, the weight of their presence established by simply being. However, these women were single their entire lives, save a few losers they whole-heartedly gave themselves to, only to return to the comfort of self-involvement. Were these women fulfilled? I am not implying that a woman needs a man to be fulfilled, but does she need something that she cannot attain through art? And you see I use art and independence interchangeably- perhaps here lies my problem, for I see them as interchangeable phrases. I wonder what part of a woman is turned off to the world in pursuit of her passions? Or are there merely social constructs in place that lead us to believe a piece of us has been allowed to die if we are not romantically, and eventually motheringly involved? I know a part of myself lies deceased inside of me when I cannot write, but social constructs address no part of the importance of this self-preservation.

What I think is funny, is that somehow, all the disjointed parts of my literary life often come together to form a clearer picture of my reality than is provided by its own existence. For instance, I called my mother the other day to deliver her monthly reprimand, which usually involves some statement such as "you don't have anything to do with my life," and ends in an ultimatum to drive the forty-five minutes and see me or pretend she doesn't have a daughter living out of the house. Its a little ritual we have, and it usually results in her coming over within the next week and trying to bring me up to date with the latest dramas of the "Goldblatt Household." However, this time, I got both the most pathetic and most honest response out of my mother that I have ever received. In response to my question, "Don't you want to come and see me?" she told me that she "isn't good at this organization thing" and she "doesn't like change." SO dreadfully painful to her is the prospect of change that she would rather ignore the relationship she could have with me and keep on ignoring my existence. Perhaps in saying these things, she realized how ridiculously unsatisfactory these reasons served as excuses, because she came to visit me today.

Bitching that mothers don't get plaques to let them know they've done a good job with their children, or accomplished something in the past twenty-odd years, she highlighted the other side of the female spectrum of independence. Just recently having started a career as a personal trainer, she hadn't worked in twenty-five years, and was spasticly dis-organized in the face of the new stresses and obstacles that were surfaced by this. I can't claim to understand what its like to live your whole life behind the comfortable title of "house wife," and to then go out one day and change your mind, but I can tell you one thing I have learned in talking to my mother: self-deprecation is in fact a genetic trait.

How strange it must have been, for my mother to be in my new apartment, the one I just moved into with my boyfriend (whom she hasn't met), and think to herself that I was her first born. She did make an off-handed comment after my fifteen-year old sister called and asked what she was suppose to do about dinner without my mom home, saying "I shouldn't have to feel tied to my house because my kids can't figure out how to feed themselves," and this right before she took me to the store, because my fridge was empty.

Asked about the Salmon colored walls of my bedroom, I replied, "I can't stand the color. It's disgusting. I want to paint it blue. Besides, I can't stand how white my boyfriend looks against it."

Zora Neal Hurston said women are the mules of the world. My mother said a real man can cook, dance and buy tampons. "He doesn't just provide the money for the food, he actually knows what to do with it," she said, and she actually mentioned the word "sustenance." She is a mother, yet she still desires an audience. Perhaps its true, perhaps there is something wrong with us all. We crave something more than our dis-jointed roots can provide us with and in the absence of creating we become deadened. Perhaps motherhood is an Art, but one that flourishes parallel to an independent form.

I met an actress named Julia in Barnes and Nobles the other day and she said to me, "Perhaps its not a question of either or, but rather a question of both."