Working Mother The most efficient thing can be to stop and listen, to take hold of your hand – but look at this desk piles of to-do lists and no air between them You are old enough to say I just want to be with you When only a few years ago you stumbled over consonants You cried instead of spoke And I’d sweep you up then, as if pressing our cheeks together could fix the world Was it true for you? Was that all it took? I just want to take care of you, and so I work But you look at me as if this is backward as if taking care is what works
When I was pregnant, I had this idea that I’d be back out in the field cultivating and harvesting within a few weeks of giving birth. I could picture it: me with my babe snuggled against me in a wrap, moving down the rows in late afternoon light.
I’ve always been good at picturing the ideal.
Or what I imagine the ideal is.
Once I gave birth, it took nearly a year before I was back out in the field in any meaningful way. Scratch that – what I mean is it took my body nearly a year before I could physically work in the field again (and once I did attempt to work with W strapped to me, it was sweaty and he squirmed too much, and we only got down the length of one 100 foot bed).
But I was out there: slow walks through the flowers; sitting on the border of the vegetable beds with W laying under the shade of a make-shift tent; taking in the view as I nursed.
What is meaningful is not always what is productive.
That first summer gave me permission to rest in the high season of farming. In many ways, giving birth in late July is what brought me back to reading year-round. Before, I had the idea that there wasn’t enough time in the summer to read. Too much work to do, sunup to sundown, and any spare time must be spent cooling off in a nearby river.
Children are masters at teaching us how to simply be – especially in summer. How imperative it is to stop working and to take care in different ways: to go on impromptu scavenger hunts, to learn the names of every fern we pass on our forest walks, to pause in particularly mossy areas and make fairy houses, to read in the middle of the day, to snuggle, to rest. How in taking care of W, he was giving all this to me.
Mothering and farming isn’t all fairy houses, of course. But that tension is for another time.
Right here, right now, I want to hold this: the possibilities that open when we care for one another.
What I’m reading now:
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day by
I have so many underlines in this book On the subject of the possibilities that arise from taking care, here’s a line that deeply resonated with me:
“Whatever I do with this heart, with this body, affects you; it travels across that thread and finds its way to you. And whatever you do or embody travels to me, to the ants, to Grandmother Moon, to someone across the world we’ve never met.”
Good Bones by
I always have a stack of poetry books near me, and I picked this one up after loving Smith’s memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful (a line from her title poem in Good Bones). Some poetry books I like to open at random, but I’m enjoying reading this one chronologically and feeling how the poems build on one another.
The Wheel of the Year: An Illustrated Guide to Nature’s Rhythms, by Fiona Cook and Jessica Roux
This is a book always on the windowsill next to my tea cup and journal. It’s a beautiful illustrated guide for all ages, highlighting eight seasonal turning points throughout the year. Beltane, or May Day, is coming up soon!
What are you reading right now?
And what is one way you’re taking care that isn’t part of your job?
I’d love to know — let’s grow more care together.