For Catey & Jasmina & Jon

and all the artists who can and can't "do it all"

One of the categories of opportunity I strongly suggest to the graduate students I mentor is writing residencies—the chance to get away from home, in a new space with other writers, and totally focus on your work. Often they provide a studio, meals, perhaps a chance to hear or see another artist or writer share their work. They’re often free, or available for a nominal donation, as long as you get in. There’s the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, there’s the famous Yaddo and MacDowell—one of these, according to my colleague, made better picnic lunches than the other, but I can’t remember which.

Though my message to other writers is apply, apply!, I’ve never been to any of these. Most moms and primary caregivers of young children will recognize the impossibility of leaving home for a month, which feels like an eternity to kids (and longer to any adult you leave them with). Yaddo and MacDowell now allow for two-week stints (and I think VCCA and VSC always did), but that seems unmanageably long too. Before I had kids, I was wrapped up with fertility treatment, and after—well, as you can imagine, for the past eight years I have been a little pressed for time. Not that I am complaining—I am so lucky to live where I do, which is peaceful and inspiring, and also to work at a job I love that gives me significant space to do research and to write.

However! There is one place I have been able to escape to, which is Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities. This stately old home and nature preserve is just an hour away, in Southern Pines, and they allow one-week visits… which, I discovered this week, can still be kind of long to your family. Bea was under the weather when I left, Harriet is three and doesn’t understand time, and Richard was working on a project at his job that the kids just kept interrupting. Catey (bless her) chatted with Jill, my fairy god-sister, who sent a message of support and an offer to share stories of her own kids’ difficulties when it was time to get away and work. I appreciated this message and Catey’s words of support more than I have been able to tell them. I found Jill’s portrait in a poster of North Carolina women artists in a sunny room where I was working, and imagined her beaming strength at me:

I also brought this book along:

In Nelson’s first essay, “Art Song,” in the subsection “Coerced and freely given,” she writes about a journalist’s emailed follow-up question to an interview: “‘Did you say you pick your son up from school every day, or just some days?’” Nelson declined to answer:

My reassuring anyone that mothers can “do it all” would allow my staggering privilege to obscure the excruciating burdens so many face in their attempts to construct livable lives; it would also disrespect the inevitability of maternal conflict and failure. One of the lessons of this conflict and failure is that while providing (or seeking) care may feel better—more enjoyable, more rewarding, maybe even more moral—when it feels (or truly is) uncoerced, when it comes to caretaking, the distinction between the mandated and the voluntary is often far murkier than we sometimes hope or desire.

Nelson goes on to write about her resistance to simplifying (or making metaphor of) the maternal: “I am a mother who is also someone’s daughter, which means that I am familiar with the pleasures and difficulties of wanting and needing to devote myself entirely to someone else’s needs, while also wanting and needing to differentiate and contend with my own.”

On Friday morning, I reassured a tearful Bea (who’d just had a painful blood draw for her mysterious stomach ailment) that I would come home and not leave again. I drove back, took Bea and Harriet out for tacos that night, we decorated the house and read books together. Then Saturday afternoon, I did leave, to finish my residency—but I took Bea, and a pile of books and art supplies, with me. We’ve had a good time, Harriet is having fun with her dad, and I’ve still had time to work. So far (we're still here) we’ve made tiny books with Amber Smith (a YA and middle grade author whose work I’ll tell you about soon), looked in all the mirrors (“let’s play Bloody Mary!” Bea suggested), read, gone to dinner outdoors, and gotten kicked out of a fancy party.

So, how is this a pep talk for Catey and Jasmina and Jon, three writers with young children who might like or need to go to Weymouth or somewhere like it (and would want, as I did, the whole week)? I suppose it comes from Catey herself, who after learning that I brought Bea back for a night, texted an encouraging “Bea is so self-sufficient,” which made me think about how perhaps we can shift focus (and encourage our partners/other caregivers to shift focus) away from the removal of the primary caregiver (the person who has to leave, to do their work) and onto the strengths of those we leave for a time. So, fellow caregivers taking your turn while your partners leave for a time, you can:

-Remember that it’s hard to leave—the writer/artist leaving may be really excited to have this time, but going on any trip when you have young kids takes a lot of planning and work that is physical, logistical, and mental.

-Remind the artist who’s leaving that the things your child loves to do are still available to them. Remind the kid too, and set them up with expectations that they will be able to swing/have a playdate/watch a movie/make slime/whatever they like to do.

-Point out strengths of the kid to the leaving partner: self-sufficiency, the ability to get lost in a book or a puzzle or a drawing, positivity, an ability to FaceTime for hours with a friend or grandparent, whatever! It’s very likely these things grew from the leaving partner’s care, and that’s not a bad thing to remind them too.

-Send happy photos and texts! Like this one, which Richard sent me of Harriet and Julius last night at dinner:

Finally, I’d say to Catey, Jasmina, and Jon that whatever time away you do manage is valuable, your work matters, and I love you!

P.S. Also from Freedom, I learned about Tala Madani’s “Shit Moms” paintings, and I love them so much. Check them out.