Motherscope LLC | San Diego, CA motherscope.com Cover Illustration by Alexandra Harvey | Mothershaped The Mom Salon logo by Samantha Acker | Gemini Designs Copyright © 2021 by Motherscope LLC and the individual contributors. All rights reserved. Leonard, Jackie (editor) The Mom Salon | May 2021 The Mom Salon features the writings of Motherscope’s 2021 Contributors, appearing in rotation from Mar. 2021 through Feb. 2022: Kate Bailey, Eunice Brownlee, Kelsey Cichoski, Heather Cleaves, Laci Hoyt, Micah Klassen, Shanthy Milne, Alyssa Nutile, Holly Ruskin, Kaitlin Solimine, Colleen Tirtirian, Megan Vos, Melaina Williams
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In This Month’s Mom Salon: Kaitlin Solimine | If Mothering Slowly is Writing Quickly Then What is This?
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Colleen Tirtirian | Not a Baby Person
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Heather Cleaves | Family Photo and Other Stories
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Laci Hoyt | A Mother’s Worry
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Micah Klassen | Plagued
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If Mothering Slowly is Writing Quickly Then What is This? By Kaitlin Solimine Before I had children, during a writing conference in Lisbon, I devoured Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet in the meandering Alfama alleyways where even pigeons speak poetry. I sat on a bench and read, feeling transported to historical Lisbon — even in Portuguese, Lisboa, pronounced “Leeezboa,” transforms city to song. I was alone in Lisboa and that made time precious; my partner and I had been trying to get pregnant for six months. I didn’t know the extent of our fertility challenges. At sunset, I’d jog along the Tagus, counting the days until my period was due. I got my period three days early and cried in the arms of another writer-mother. A month later, I got it again. And Again. And Again. Until one day, over three years later, I finally didn’t. Now I re-read passages of Disquiet, desperate to know if Pessoa had children. I seek a line like: “The baby cried and I returned to the office, a palpable silence.” I find no mention of children. Why do I care? This judgment. Why? Because he writes about time. Because he writes about nothing. Because he has time to pay attention, to wander alleyways alongside meandering pigeons. He wrote: “I don’t know what time is. I don’t know what, if any is the truest way of measuring it . . . I wonder if a man meditating slowly inside a fast-moving car is moving fast or slowly.” Is a mother inside a fast-moving car mothering fast or slowly? I want the time to think about time. To hold time in my mouth like an old coin, size up its shape and worth. How to measure time as a parent? Time: how the second born speaks sentences now (“Big car car drive fast!”). Time: the firstborn begging me to let her hike alone into the eucalyptus 1
grove, her tiny figure shrinking as trees expand around her. Time: her body drifting away. Time: naps — no naps — zoo days — Zoom sessions. Time: $25/hour, the nanny watching the kids watch Netflix cartoons. Writing is a sacred act, a mother-friend says. You should light a candle. I think, Okay, I’ll make an altar to the creation of bad writing. Then I think, You won’t see children clawing at Madonna while she prays. Or will you? Google: image Madonna praying children lap. There are many images. In most, the holy mother isn’t looking at her children. She’s removed, not the intentional woman we read about in blogs, see on Instagram, and here I am too, in the garden, or the basement, or hiding in the car, or by blue light iPhone at midnight, attempting to write because it feels like devotion to something bigger than this. Is art bigger than motherhood? As soon as I ask, I cringe. Because it still feels important while I claw my way to a quiet space. While I beg for time. Enough time to think about time. Virginia Woolf didn’t have children but needed a room of her own. I need a city. A huge, empty city with space to walk among the pigeons. * This started as an essay about the irrelevance of motherhood in contemporary American society and devolved into an obsession with time. Of course the two are connected. As Karen Russell, a writer-mother writes: Who gets to live a spacious hour? Who gets to spend time with their children, and timedoing work that fulfills them? Raising children, writing books: risk is built into bothundertakings. But I can’t help thinking that they shouldn’t feel quite this risky — that thelow ceiling of dread so many of my friends and colleagues and students live under wouldbegin to lift if health and childcare were universally available. Everyone deserves this kind of radically free time . . . .
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