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One word sums up why I’m not a more prolific writer -- teenagers -- and if I clarify that slightly with my teenagers, you’d probably think “Soccer Mom.” Not an unwarranted guess, what with it being the modern-day default for many families, but when your oldest child is an agoraphobic sixteen year old who won’t leave the house without a parent and then can’t tolerate public noise and commotion for long when he does, soccer doesn’t even enter the picture. Somehow, though, I write, despite his uncertainties. I build my writing life around wisps of opportunity, trying to accomplish enough dribs and drabs in paragraph form that something measurable emerges. I write when the respite worker visits, when my husband takes over the evening routine, when an unexpectedly burst of stamina graces me. Stealing moments, it’s all stealing moments. I seize what I can grasp and release that which I can’t. For a time, I had a few hours a day in which to carve out my successes, but over the last year, my son’s condition -- a mental illness that has worsened, despite dedicated medical, therapeutic, and educational support -- increasingly claimed more and more of my time. His school attendance grew increasingly dicey, and his outbursts of instability in school meant phone calls home and dismissals. More than once, the outbursts degraded into breakdowns, necessitating several hospitalizations and almost exhausting our insurance’s annual allotment of hospital days. Finally, shortly before Thanksgiving, he had to leave school all together. In an instance, I went from harried mother and barely productive writer to fulltime, fully immersed caregiver. I don't want to move today. I'm bone weary. He didn't go to sleep until after midnight and then woke up a 5:30 a.m. He tried not to disturb us -- he quietly went to the bathroom, then fetched himself a drink before going to the computer -- but my maternal radar doesn't let me sleep through that. I don’t have the energy to think about the bedding that he wet overnight, let alone launder it. How can I create characters and plot when I don't even have enough energy to think? That which fuels him exhausts me. Writing requires solitude and energy. Its recipe includes the space to think and to daydream, uninterrupted stretches of time to write, and enough daily routine to allow forward progress. I had those ingredients at one point in my writing career. But now I can’t even fold a load of laundry without my son having to check in on me, his separation anxiety is so pervasive. I can no longer count on those long stretches of morning hours in which to indulge my creative drive. Even worse, when I do have the means, I don’t always have the motivation. Sometimes, when opportunity does arrive, I’m already drained of all emotional and physical stamina. Writing is impossible. The drama of having a psychiatrically disabled child is one of rapid pendulum swings. He might have a manic episode that complicates the better part of a week. Or maybe he’s fixated on one card game and needs to play it several times a day to keep from agitation. Or maybe he begs me to take him on a scenic drive to soothe him. The at-home therapists tell me that I’m his transitional item. He looks to me for redirection and when I give it, he can then self-soothe. I am the teddy bear of a sixteen-year-old bipolar-disabled man-child. Snippets. I live on snippets of time. Writing in the dentist’s office while my son gets his teeth cleaned. Writing while my daughter does her homework at the library. Writing during those rare mornings where he sleeps in -- and I've slept well enough wake with energy. It's the kiss of death, having people in your house almost every day of the week. It's not that I resent forking over time to them. They do, after all, provide something valuable to us and give my son contact with the outside world. It bumps up against me because I’ve been robbed of all my solitude, the very thing I need to ready myself for writing. And if I can't center myself, how can I coax the beast of creativity to work its magic for me? I miss my morning sprint of writing. I’m supposed to get back my freedom now that my kids are teenagers. But that’s not what’s happened. Instead, it’s like I’ve returned to mothering toddlers. I’m hemmed in and, today at least, I don’t like it. Writing is a greedy creature. It sucks you into its demands and then insists on your complete attention and dedication. It’s egocentric. Just like children. When mine were little, I almost completely abandoned writing. I tried writing short observational essays -- what would now be labeled creative nonfiction -- but no sooner would I draft something and the muse would hammer me for line edits, than my toddler son would take his toy hammer to my foot and demand equal time. I gave up when the first wave of morning sickness welled up inside me, hinting at my daughter’s presence. Writing became impossible with two in diapers. In some respects, it didn’t matter. Reading Goodnight Moon took the place of creating my own fiction and, as the kids moved out of diapers and cribs and into underwear and beds, we graduated to E.B. White and Marguerite Henry novels. My kids would even hear all the Narnia books before they were halfway through elementary school. Eventually, though, the urge to write would return to me. Little did I know my days of writing freely would be so few and far between. Why don’t you write about your son, they always ask me? I still indulge the question, but man, I’m getting tired of it. Profoundly so. I’m still too close to the pain and suffering of my son’s loss of self to write about it. And writing about the grief is a lot like talking about it. Repeat the story and you relive every emotion that goes with it. Recollection can traumatize you. Maybe someday I’ll be able to write about it, but not now. Not while I’m this deeply immersed in it. Writing is my refuge. It started out as a way to live creatively, as a facet of my identity, but it has evolved to become so much more. Now, it gives me space from the demands of my son’s care. It gives me a richness and reward that, other than lovemaking, is almost impossible to capture. Much like that bumper sticker about fishing, a bad day when I can’t turn a phrase without editing it several times still beats a good day without writing. I ache inside when I’ve gone too long without putting ideas to paper, without pounding my storytelling out at the keyboard. My heart literally itches. When the push to create becomes too strong to ignore and the compulsion must be appeased, I write until either my mental stamina cries uncle or I reach that last sentence of satisfaction. Often, it doesn’t matter what I write -- a diary entry, my weblog, a review or a piece of fiction -- the results are the same. I’ve gotten my fix and that’s satisfying enough. I am, however, all too aware of how mortal one’s writing is. I think of my mother, who stopped writing years ago when doctors found a melanoma, easily removed along with the eye that encapsulated it. You’d think that an encounter with a rare and spectacular cancer would have moved her to write as if there was no tomorrow, to hastily get down on paper everything that had lived in her imagination and memory for decades. But the eye was her Samson’s hair. An inertia born of situational depression and fatalism overtook her. She would never write those stories of her family living in a boxcar during the darkest days of the depression, of the Midwestern girl who was so innocent that, after following her husband to England, she didn’t even realize they’d been adopted by gay and lesbian locals, of the mother who listened to the planes flying maneuvers while her husband was “restricted to base” in a red alert that would have a name: the Cuban Missile Crisis. All those stories, lost because her perspective is gone. Several years later, that melanoma returned, this time to her lungs and her liver. Her final battle was brief and her last sigh a relief, but all that was her creative soul -- her memories, her tales -- would vanish with that last breath. Forgive the cliché, but life is too short. The at-home behaviorist said a lot yesterday, but four words stood out: More respite for you. But not respite as in someone coming into our house so I can go out for a couple of hours at a time, but respite as in finding day programs for my son. Life skills programs, possibly with vocational elements. Our caseworker agreed, said job coaches exist who understand the cycles of mental illness. Interrupting my son’s reclusive habits now will ensure a more likely success in the future. Such a change, though, from the brilliant child of years past, the one so gifted in mathematics that we joked MIT might come knocking. His future now isn’t what we dreamed about then. Neither is mine. Once my children were in elementary school, I could afford to let the greedy creature of writing back into my life. He could come in and devour my time between 9:00 and 300 and I, in turn, could dream big. Novels! Short stories! Essays! Articles! Acclaim and visibility! That’s not exactly what happened. I haven’t written a novel since the year before my son’s brain chemistry did him in. I struggle to write enough short stories in a year to keep sales and my by-line out there -- and if some very generous and giving editors hadn’t supported me during the “downed” months of 2002, my vitae would’ve sported an unstylish void. I’ve had to learn to accomplish with less: less time, less leeway, less tolerance for writer’s block. I’ve had to learn to be efficient in my writing, as if every chance to write for publication might be my last for months to come. I’m almost Machiavellian about it. It’s uncertain what the near future will bring my son. We will, in the near future, look at residential facilities for him -- basically boarding schools for the mentally ill that have a high degree of medical oversight built in -- but it’s not certain he’ll go there. An alternative plan centers on keeping him home where he thrives within our strong, committed, loving family, but get him into a day program that combines life skills with vocational job training. Each path has its strengths and weaknesses. Residential would have tighter oversight, less demands, and 24/7 respite for the family for a long period of time. I’d be able to resume writing fulltime during the duration of his stay. But he’d come home from residential less able to cope with daily living -- no matter how good a facility might be, it’s still an institution -- and he’d need a day program to adjust to standard living situations. My time, when he returns, would once again become limited. Putting him in a day program would give me daily, routine respite, reduce “the closeness” as they say, but won’t wholly guarantee a fulltime return to writing for me. And, while a day program might well prove the better option for my son’s success, most programs are limited by funding or exist at the whim of the state budget ax. Precarious positions, both. But I do know that regardless of how and how long my son leaves home, writing will fill whatever void is left in the wake of his absence. Writing will smooth over the potholes of my lessened care giving. It will be the macadam of my freedom. Perhaps I’ll fulfill my hopes of the recent past. Perhaps I’ll write novels, take a writer’s retreat to Vermont, tackle a short story for every anthology that comes down the pike -- without the stress, interruption, and unpredictability that typified last year. Writing will rescue and renew me. It’s a well that quenches my soul, never runs dry, and only asks that I drink in it regularly. Its waters never fail me, no matter how often I’ve failed it when life’s brought me up short. Through all these upheavals, I haven’t given up on my dreams.
I’ve simply deferred my expectations and cautioned patience of
my hopes. I’ve had to take success in small measure and in all
things, not just my writing. But one thing I know: Writing will
be there when I can be there. It will wait for me, just as it
did when my children were little. Many things in life may be
uncertain, but writing? Writing, I can count on. |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
on an extended hiatus. The web has changed, we've changed, and
we're trying to figure out how we both fit together now, which isn't a process we want to rush. If you're looking for more current SL-related content, you can
have check out upcoming books from editor Heather Corinna and previous co-editor Hanne Blank, check out Heather's current sexuality sites, or explore sites through the femmerotic network. We hope to be back with you soon, as fresh, challenging and
unexpected as ever.
In the meantime, by all means, enjoy our years of past content,
all of which still remain in the public and subscription areas.
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