distance

One day, I hope to write a memoir about being a birth mother. One day, when I have enough narrative distance and perspective, if that day ever comes for me. In the mean time though, I blog occasionally about it, when I can find a way to shape words into something like what I feel.

I heard once that an artist is a person who can translate what is in her brain into something tangible. A person who can take what she feels or imagines and share it for other people to feel and see too. That is the hard part: the creating. That is the part that differentiates the artist: the ability to do that—the very hard work of getting thoughts onto a canvas or paper. The artist who sketches and the writer who writes are determined, dedicated people. It takes so much practice and work to get it right, or close enough to right that people will understand it. So for now, I am practicing.

Five years ago, I wrote about Mother’s Day:  A few weeks ago, I went to a baby shower for my college roommate. I hadn’t seen her in quite some time and she was one of the few people who didn’t make the situation awkward; she asked me how I felt. It was the first time I said the words out loud, because it was the first time anyone had honestly asked; I said, “each year it hurts a little less.” And once I said it, I knew that’s how I had been feeling. 

Then today, I read this by Tobias Wolff: ...how do you forgive yourself? You don’t, really. Yet one day the weight is lighter, and the next lighter still, and then you barely know it’s there, if it’s there at all (from his short story “Deep Kiss”). I thought, damn, that’s good. Here is an artist. Here is a man who can write what other people feel. Because he wrote about something completely unrelated to being a birth mother, but I felt what he meant from my own experience.

I’m aiming for narrative distance and perspective. But in the meantime, I’ll write, even without it.