Hiatus: Mothers of Invention

Okay, so let me start with my sappy admission. Yesterday I was at the gym on the elliptical machine watching a rerun of last season’s Project Runway finale. And I do mean watching: my headphones are broken. As I flipped it on, one of the finalists was practicing sashaying up the runway. She was the forty-something, pregnant redhead architect who has five kids at home and a doting husband. Although she’s wearing an uptight Chanel black dress, I’ve got admit that she looks incredibly groomed. Soigné comes to mind. Plus, it takes moxie to live in a dorm with a bunch of tattooed kids.

Cut to a commercial. Then we return to find all of the seats in the tent filled, the room dark save for a single light that shines from behind the opaque screen to reveal the silhouette of a giant belly and a pair of nonstop legs. From behind the curtain appears Heidi Klum in eight-month maternity glory! And me? I’m crying. Sweating and crying, because isn’t it incredible that on a show all about an art dedicated to the human form there are two magnificently pregnant women?  

Incredible? Heck, yes! A wonderful turn of events from the days when a pregnant woman was expected to retire gracefully? Of course! But is it all perhaps a bit daunting? For most of mortals, motherhood usually throws a wrench into things. Unless you have a coterie of assistants, à la Heidi, or the impetus of national celebrity, it’s hard to keep the creative flow going just before and after the arrival of a newborn. Artist Nikki McClure tried to return to a project that she’d started pre-baby only to discover that a project that had once taken two weeks now took two months. And poet Jane Roper feared that once she had her twins, she’d never write again. Ten months later, she’s happy to be up to seven hours a week of writing time. Not exactly blistering speed, but enough to feed her hunger for wordplay.

So maddened was I by having my creative time and energy impeded, that a therapist once suggested I stop writing. More likely, he asked whether I could take a break from writing for a year or two and return to it when my kids were more independent. But what my brain heard was a demand for self-sacrifice. I cried all the way home, and then told my husband that I was quitting.