(This is an essay written recently for a contest. The prompt was to finish the sentence “I never thought I…” in terms of a personal risk.)
I never thought I’d have occasion to utter the command “Stop putting that brachiosaurus in your nose—NO, NO, NO—not in your sister’s nose either!” I say things like this all day long. I am a mother.
This essay is about risk, but not sexy mountain climbing/traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language/forbidden romance risk. This is not an essay about my first night in the city pressing my nose against the window wondering where New Yorkers buy shampoo at 10:30pm on a Thursday night and engaging in a dizzying cycle of conjecture as to my ability to 1) find and procure said shampoo and 2) not be violently murdered in the process. It’s also not an essay about working at a clinic in Center City Philadelphia right out of college making practically no money and spending a good portion of my week being puked on, cursed at, and threatened by the very people I put my graduate degree on hold to serve. It’s not even about earning two degrees that have rendered me bereft of anything remotely resembling a marketable job skill (at this point, I’d like to thank my mother for never failing to bring this to my attention). This is about a different kind of risk—one that involves the people I love best in the whole universe—one that has the distinct potential to be a huge disaster.
After amassing enough student loan debt to rival the deficit of most developing nations and working for about two years in my chosen profession, I quit. During a recession (gasp). I spent three years studying for professional ministry. I spent a little less than two years working in the field. Then I was done. I left to raise babies and pursue my dream of being a writer. I left a promising career and a substantial part of our family income behind. That takes ovaries, my friend. It may also be the most horrendously stupid and patently selfish action in the history of humanity. It depends on when you ask me.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning in a cold sweat because I realize that for the first time in my adult life I am not contributing to the Gross Domestic Product. What can I say; I was born during the Reagan era. I worry about my husband who works two jobs while earning his PhD. I am amazed (read: stupefied) by his ability to love my dream even better than if it was his own. I stand in awe of his unwavering faith in my poor neglected little book-in-progress even on days when I secretly want to scrap the whole thing and start selling cosmetics door-to-door. If you meet someone who gets you (I mean really gets what’s deep down in your guts) then you should marry them. Immediately. Use force, if necessary.
Nevertheless, it turns out that writing and baby wrangling are messy business. Allow me to clarify: caring for two children under age three is messy business. Anything added to that mishegas only exacerbates the madness. I love my children. Theodore is two and a half and Lucy just turned one and I am over the moon for them. I spend a lot of time removing various species of plastic dinosaurs from bodily orifices. Scrubbing peanut butter or yogurt or other sorts of stickiness off of walls, hands, furniture, faces, and floors has become a daily ritual. I have acquired the ability to imitate every animal in the known zoological world. I provide shuttle service to story-time at the library and I sing loud and dance big when the librarian chirps “Song time, everyone!” I carry a winded little man with scraped knees and a fussy little princess with sweaty curls pasted to her forehead home from the park. I am not afraid of poop. Bruce Lee would be impressed by the speed and accuracy with which I can slide my hand under the chin of a puking baby. But when everyone has been fed and cleaned and kissed and changed, naptime (when the planets align and both little people decide to sleep at the same time and I do not collapse in a heap on the floor and the house does not look like an active missile testing site) is when I sit down at my laptop. I love to write. My book proposal currently looks like literary Swiss cheese. I fill it in five words at a time. I am always doing research and I am constantly taking notes. Most of the time I do these things with a sippy cup in one hand and a dirty diaper in the other. When I am tired and frustrated and aggravated and disheartened (as writers and mothers are wont to be), I look at Theo and Lucy. I want them to see that their mother loves them fiercely and that she loves herself enough to do what’s in her marrow—to take a chance at her dreams. Even if she fails. Even if nobody ever reads her silly little book. Even if the general consensus turns out to be that she should be made to stay at least one hundred yards away from the English language at all times for abusing it so heinously. I want them to know that she took a risk. I want them to have the courage to take risks too.
I will keep chasing babies and writing. I will do this for as long as I possibly can. My penchant for focusing on the negative often eclipses the fact that I feel extravagantly blessed. I know there may come a time when circumstances make it impossible for us to exist on one income. I will enjoy every second with these babies. I will keep typing—even if I have to type with one hand while changing a stinky diaper and singing the Dora the Explorer theme song. I will do it with urgency and with a grateful heart.
