nap studio

on artist motherhood

A baby’s nap is not a spacious place for a mother. I always think the baby’s nap will be a break for me, and then it doesn’t feel like it. I’m on pins and needles, always bracing for the cry. To be a mother with children of any age at home with her is to be prepared for interruption at any time. I know this, but I always forget, or wish for it to be different. Tommy goes to school now (for a grand total of six hours a week), and spends a few hours with my mom in the afternoons. But the baby is always home. My only time away from him is when he naps. I allow myself to sink in to my reading, my writing, my working, my making something to eat, just for a moment. It feels like just at the moment that I actually let go of the listening, waiting, pins and needles, that’s precisely the moment that the baby cries, and sometimes I literally jump, jolted out of my own mind. Time to dash away and soothe, replace the pacifier, or pick him up and start a new wake window, begin all over again the gentle repetitive tasks of caregiving that use my brain just enough to render it nearly useless.

I thrive in deep work. I thrive in the kind of writing where you don’t realize time is passing, you look up and it’s been ninety minutes and the sun is in an entirely different place in the sky. I thrive in whole days with nothing to do but make things. I thrive in throttling through an impulse to complete a project that I can see complete in my mind. Work done in short spurts is difficult for me, too piecemeal. But those short spurts are all I have right now, the only space in which I have to work. My studio is interruption. My “room of one’s own” contains a sleeping baby.

Can I survive as an artist here? As a mind? As a continuing person? Sometimes I’m not sure — it’s hard for me. I love my children more than I ever have before, feel that love all over my body. My desire is to be a very good mother. And sometimes I am. But the neglect of the most needy parts of myself, the most essential parts, wears me down, makes me irritable and flooded. I begin to be a bad mother, at least in my own eyes.

No, the baby’s nap is not a haven for me. I really want it to be, but it isn’t. I need true escapes. But I’m disappointed by my own needs. They feel like too much. But they are obvious, standing right out in the open like a third child. I need to wait a while, till the baby is just a little older, until I feel comfortable leaving him and Tommy with my mom for an hour or two in the afternoon. I don’t feel ready for that yet, not sure when I will. When the toddler’s away, being well-taken-care-of by someone else, I am able to work. I have so much help, I’m very lucky. But now that I have an infant again I’ve been reset back into breastfeeding and never really being alone.

How do I regard my own dignity, my self-worth? The worthiness of my creative work alongside my caregiving work? I don’t want to set down my art, even in this season. I continue making things. Publishing zines, sneaking words into my novel draft, scheming new sewing pattern projects, wanting to knit sweaters. I remind myself — you co-wrote and edited a whole complicated book while postpartum with Tommy! Big, beautiful, good hard work. But doing so was costly, crashed me into big burnout, and I was a much more unreliable collaborator than I wished to be. In fact, I was a BAD collaborator. I learned so much doing that, and one of the biggest things was that I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. Since then, my relationship to work has intrinsically changed — I’ve set down so many of my old expectations. So much, “later.” So much, “someday.” But, then, do I make no promises, even to myself?

My studio space has become messy, piled with laundry. (It’s the laundry room, so that makes sense). I put a baby swing in there, hoping to placate the baby with swinging enough to steal fifteen minutes to work every once in a while when he’s awake. But I can’t help but feel guilty when I do that. To see him there in the swing while I think about things that aren’t him. That’s a “me-problem” I think. if a friend were telling me they did this, I’d say to them, “That’s awesome!” But I feel bad the whole time, like I’m doing something wrong, not showering my child with undivided attention. This is where mothers begin to be crazy, this guilt we can’t set down, that we know is irrational. It’s different with a baby than a toddler. The toddler lets you know when they’re disappointed to displeased with you, and you can set boundaries a little more and feel good about giving them time on their own. But babies? They just need you! They were so recently inside your body, constantly held and nurtured. I like to let Ben play by himself with his little bell hanging over his playmat. He will happily ring his bell for ten minutes sometimes. But, oh I don’t know, there’s just this guilt I can’t shake sometimes, when I try to do my own thing in his presence. And maybe that’s a signal that my mind just wants to focus on him while he is so small. I will only have little babies for such a short season of my life, will only get to gaze at them for so long.

Before I ever became a mom, I learned about Artist Residency In Motherhood, an open residency for caregivers created by artist Lenka Clayton. I knew this would be something I would do someday, once I had children — but then when my first was born I didn’t really think about it again. It leapt back to mind again recently, made me realize that this is what I’ve been doing all along. The residency includes a manifesto that really moves me, especially this part: ‘I will undergo this self-imposed artist residency in order to fully experience and explore the fragmented focus, nap-length studio time, limited movement and resources and general upheaval that parenthood brings, and allow it to shape the direction of my work, rather than try to work “despite it”.’

Oh this moves me almost to tears. To see myself in this manifesto, all my frustration and acceptance both, my changing all my ways of doing things and pressing on anyway, my falling in love with motherhood and not wanting to ignore my children to make my art. My nap-lenth studio time, my fragmented focus, bracing for interruption. My sorrow! It is part of it! As is my joy.

It just makes me think about how the work of motherhood is difficult and honorable. How we give away so much of our selves, our ideal ways of being. We are existentially interrupted by our children! And that is how it should be! It is such dignified work, though culture and capitalism will never honor it as such. It is. It has so much in common with making art. And to do both at once is not impossible, I remind myself. It’s what I’ve been doing all this time. I just need to remind myself — this is real, this is your life, this is worthy, this comes naturally to you even though it feels so hard. When I am interrupted, I need to allow myself to feel the jolt, to say “there’s that hard feeling again.” Perhaps I need to give myself the gift of not trying to work while my baby is awake — or try it sometimes and see how it feels. All these things I parse out for myself, little by little. Maybe I will make less money. Maybe I will be a bad friend, a bad collaborator. Maybe I need to be devoted only to my family and my little projects, the ones I can accomplish little by little, during naps, amidst interruptions and waves of misplaced guilt. Maybe I need to stay present to my children’s childhood, for myself, to not try to rush through it or wish it away for work’s sake. But still steal the moments I can to make what I can in this time. Forfeiting deep work, allowing interruptions, making that part of the process. Sometimes having very bad days!

Oh, it’s all easier said than done. It’s been hard for me recently, I’m trying to hype myself up. I’m exhausted by the 24/7 stress cycle of mothering two kids who need me fully. I need more of a break than just a nap can offer. I need 72 hours of quiet beside a big body of water or something. I need to go dancing with my best friends who live very far away. I need to be in a play. I need to sew like six new garments. I need someone to ask me a million questions and listen to me ramble for hours. I need to finish my novel, I need to eat food I love, I need to go on dates with my husband and feel desirable and interesting, I need to make my art, I need so many things that for so many reasons just aren’t possible right now.

For now, I’ve written this during nap time, and my baby has stayed asleep. No interruptions. A little exhale that feels somewhat complete. I don’t feel satisfied, but at least I don’t feel jolted or frustrated. I look out the window, watch a blue jay fly across the yard. Maybe after I publish this I can even get a little snack to eat. Read a few pages of my book. Read stuff on the internet. Feel a little free. Then the jolt will come and I’ll be with my baby, let myself sink into the little time I have with him while he is exactly the age he is. It will be ok.

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My new birth story zine, Second Birth is out now and still in print for a while longer! And I have a new zine, a workbook for writing your own birth story, nearly finished. It will be available soon, I’ll let you know when! These writing projects and starting my small press, Imaginary Lake, have been exactly the right-sized work for this season. I feel so generative making zines, sharing writing here and there both. So grateful for the enthusiastic response they’ve received. If there’s anything you’d like for me to write about, let me know! Maybe those topics will make their way into a future newsletter or zine. More coming, always always, in my interrupted studio that fits into nap time.