Dear Becy,
I wanted to start by telling you something about myself — the me before I had my daughter. But when I started, it became an essay and I got lost somewhere inside it all. Eventually I remembered something my family sometimes say — take small bites of the elephant. It feels apt, because Isn’t this what this is? An elephant. A huge, unwieldy topic. How many bites before you begin to understand yourself?
I suppose then, in the spirit of not eating an entire elephant immediately, I should start by looking at just one of your questions:
If women are constructs, is mother a construct too?
I never thought I wanted to be a mother. If you had asked me in my twenties if I wanted children, I’d have laughed. Maybe told you to
‘fuck off.’
Maybe I’d have told you that a woman does not have to have children to be complete, and that I was perfectly content. And I was. I was 35 when I found out I was pregnant with Rose, and if she had never happened I doubt I would have noticed the absence. Although I’d still have counted down the years, watched my biological clock tick-tick its way to death.
From childhood, we’re conditioned to think about ourselves in terms of certain things. Be a princess. Be pretty. Be quiet. Behave. Become a wife. Become a mother. Nurture. Nurture. Nurture.
MAN ON THE STREET: Smile sweetheart
ME:
At some point we either think of ourselves as conforming to these societal constructs, or consciously rallying against them. I was always proud not to conform. Ironic really, because unlike yours, my life is, on the surface at least, quite traditional (sorry Tess in her twenties, but it turns out that if it’s a choice, you don’t feel as shitty about it.) My partner works from 6 am to 5 pm. He doesn’t get back until at least 6 most nights. Sees our daughter for an hour before bed. I work, but it’s from home and sporadic now I have to fit it in around being a full time mother. When people ask me what I do, I have to pause to untangle the web. I’m a researcher, a writer, a student, a mother, a housekeeper, occasionally a photographer. (The order is interchangeable.) My partner works from 6 am to 5 pm. He doesn’t get back until at least six most nights. Sees our daughter for an hour before bed. He hates it. But it’s the only way we can do it. I stay at home. He works. It’s his income which we rely on every month. Mine is a bonus. Pin money perhaps. Except that I worked SO SO hard to grow it at all.
I have a question for you… do you know anyone who does conform to these feminine ideals? Do you know any women who fit the moulds we’re told we should when we’re little? I know of very few. These women do not really seem to exist.
The mothers then? Do they do what they should? Are they who they should be? Soothing soft voices, homegrown food, baking cookies and endless amounts of patience… I have lost five stone since giving birth 19 months ago. I’m thinner now than I’ve been in a long while. I carved away the things which made me traditionally ‘mother’ on the surface. Now I can feel my hips. My breasts are smaller, less feminine, less sexy perhaps? But, like you, I’m more comfortable like this. I remember tripping over when I was twelve weeks pregnant. I had been bleeding throughout those weeks. No one was sure what would happen. I remember getting angry at myself, shouting, I hate feeling fucking vulnerable. I do not possess endless amounts of patience. I do bake cookies though.
Is mother a construct? What is a mother at all? What should a mother be? As I write, I realise that while I think ‘mother’ is a construct, I cannot really answer those other two questions. Because the answer, as simplistic as it seems, is that we are individuals. I am Tess, I swore I never wanted children, but it turns out that now I have one, I cannot fathom my life without. I am Tess, a mother. I work, I study, I write, I keep house, I keep watch over a small human, but I am also many many other, internal things. I am not the mother who lives next door to me though we may seem similar on the surface. Nor am I any of the others in my area. Nor are they each other. How about you? Who are you?
Will this do to begin with? I haven’t even touched on desire here yet. That’s perhaps harder to unravel. Maybe I need a way into it. Because it’s a deep and complex area for me. As I’m sure it is for every woman.
I’ll leave you with this — a friend of mine sent me an audiobook the other day. She told me, it’s the sexiest thing she’d heard in a long time. Her advice —
‘listen with headphones.’
I haven’t found the time to listen yet. Make of this what you will.
Tess x
Dear Mother 