me alone long enough to let me break through the blockage and finish the book.
Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. It means revealing murderous rage, the marksman behind the writing desk, the inner demons that confound us all.
How can creativity be other than a terrifying force full of unexpected turnings? If you give your life to creativity, you give up forever the promise to be a good girl. Creativity will inevitably lead you to give away dark family secrets. It will lead you into the labyrinth to face the minotaur. You canât face the minotaur and stay a good girl. You canât look the minotaur in the eye and continue to silence the artist in yourself.
I imagine my mother at nineteen or twenty, worrying this same sad bone of female creativity. âI will defeat the dybbuks!â she must have thought. She chose a man who shared her loves. She chose a man who loved her art. But the sabotage of the world played nicely into her own self-sabotage. Art is hard. You have to be on your own side. And it is difficult for women to be on their own side when they are told they are supposed to be on everyone elseâs. The world reinforces all their doubts. And then comes the baby and the need to earn a livingâand what unequal opportunity doesnât kill, love lays waste.
A baby is a full-time job for three adults. Nobody tells you that when youâre pregnant, or youâd probably jump off a bridge. Nobody tells you how all-consuming it is to be a motherâhow reading goes out the window and thinking too.
All this assumes the babyâs normal and healthy. What if the babyâs sickly, or starving, or what if the mother is? Every mother who ever lived has faced that fierce moment when a baby turns its milky mouth to her breast and she knows she is all it has.
My mother panicked and went home to Mama and Papaâwith their clutching competition and their infantilizing care. She took the path of least resistance and hated herself for it. Harder to break with your parents when you depend on them. Harder to break with your parents when youâre a parent too. The dependency of an infant links women to their mothers. So one generation gets lost in the wars of the previous one. My grandmotherâs struggles were passed to me by my mother. My grandmother, with her crushing marriage to my tyrannical grandfather, with her barbaric abortions on the kitchen table and her inexhaustible maternal sweetness and nurturance, admired most of all her friend who was a woman dentist. She always spoke of her with awe and pride.
âHaving a friend who was a dentist somehow gave her status,â my mother says. âMama was a feminist tooâand she didnât even know it.â
Thus the generations of women are linked in their ambivalence. And so it goes. So it goes. So it goes.
I had waited until I was fledged as a writer before I succumbed to the seductions of motherhood. Fear of Flying was my emancipation proclamationâwhich also, by chance, gave me the material success to support the child I bore.
My mother didnât have this luck. Raised by immigrant parents who had left their own parents young and therefore needed to hold their children too close, she began her rebellion against her mother early and let it fizzle too soon. Faced with the unfairness of a world that didnât treat women artists equally, she retreated into a more acceptable form of female creativityâas women have done throughout the ages. Then she filled her daughters with feminist rageâas women have also done throughout the ages.
But that dynamic alone wasnât enough to fuel my ambition. My father also needed me to be his son. My drive came from a potent brew my parents made together. The ingredients were just right to make a girl who thought she was allowed to be a boy. But who also had to punish herself for this presumption.
This brew is certainly no recipe for contentment. I went out and
Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. It means revealing murderous rage, the marksman behind the writing desk, the inner demons that confound us all.
How can creativity be other than a terrifying force full of unexpected turnings? If you give your life to creativity, you give up forever the promise to be a good girl. Creativity will inevitably lead you to give away dark family secrets. It will lead you into the labyrinth to face the minotaur. You canât face the minotaur and stay a good girl. You canât look the minotaur in the eye and continue to silence the artist in yourself.
I imagine my mother at nineteen or twenty, worrying this same sad bone of female creativity. âI will defeat the dybbuks!â she must have thought. She chose a man who shared her loves. She chose a man who loved her art. But the sabotage of the world played nicely into her own self-sabotage. Art is hard. You have to be on your own side. And it is difficult for women to be on their own side when they are told they are supposed to be on everyone elseâs. The world reinforces all their doubts. And then comes the baby and the need to earn a livingâand what unequal opportunity doesnât kill, love lays waste.
A baby is a full-time job for three adults. Nobody tells you that when youâre pregnant, or youâd probably jump off a bridge. Nobody tells you how all-consuming it is to be a motherâhow reading goes out the window and thinking too.
All this assumes the babyâs normal and healthy. What if the babyâs sickly, or starving, or what if the mother is? Every mother who ever lived has faced that fierce moment when a baby turns its milky mouth to her breast and she knows she is all it has.
My mother panicked and went home to Mama and Papaâwith their clutching competition and their infantilizing care. She took the path of least resistance and hated herself for it. Harder to break with your parents when you depend on them. Harder to break with your parents when youâre a parent too. The dependency of an infant links women to their mothers. So one generation gets lost in the wars of the previous one. My grandmotherâs struggles were passed to me by my mother. My grandmother, with her crushing marriage to my tyrannical grandfather, with her barbaric abortions on the kitchen table and her inexhaustible maternal sweetness and nurturance, admired most of all her friend who was a woman dentist. She always spoke of her with awe and pride.
âHaving a friend who was a dentist somehow gave her status,â my mother says. âMama was a feminist tooâand she didnât even know it.â
Thus the generations of women are linked in their ambivalence. And so it goes. So it goes. So it goes.
I had waited until I was fledged as a writer before I succumbed to the seductions of motherhood. Fear of Flying was my emancipation proclamationâwhich also, by chance, gave me the material success to support the child I bore.
My mother didnât have this luck. Raised by immigrant parents who had left their own parents young and therefore needed to hold their children too close, she began her rebellion against her mother early and let it fizzle too soon. Faced with the unfairness of a world that didnât treat women artists equally, she retreated into a more acceptable form of female creativityâas women have done throughout the ages. Then she filled her daughters with feminist rageâas women have also done throughout the ages.
But that dynamic alone wasnât enough to fuel my ambition. My father also needed me to be his son. My drive came from a potent brew my parents made together. The ingredients were just right to make a girl who thought she was allowed to be a boy. But who also had to punish herself for this presumption.
This brew is certainly no recipe for contentment. I went out and
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