Fundación Valparaiso
The Price of Being a Poet and Mother
I’ve been thinking on and off about Joy Katz’s post in January where she shares her worry that adopting a son would silence her as a poet. Since I had my son 10 years ago, I have managed to write 3 books of poems and one of them had an entire section of poems about being a mother with a baby. It’s mind- and body-draining work, I would argue, that silences poets who are parents, not child-rearing. Granted, that for the first 9 years of my son’s life, I was lucky enough to have had a husband who gave me a room of my own (so small I called it a cubby) and the time and financial security so I could raise my son and write and only do a minimal amount of teaching—a traditional arrangement for which I will now have to pay the price.
So what have I sacrificed as a poet in becoming a mother? Among other things, in the summer of 1998, when my son Sam was still in utero, I was invited to this artists colony in the south of Spain. I vexed and vexed. I really wanted to go, but should I / could I put my unborn child at risk? I would be there in July—when temperatures could surge to well over a hundred degrees—walking up hills, with the nearest hospital an hour away. Of course, I did not go, since mine was considered a high-risk pregnancy due to my age. I played it safe. Had the child. In the last month, I remember listening to the fetal monitoring of my baby’s heartbeat: brrrump-brrrump-brrrrump bum-bum. On the monitor, it sounded like a race horse coursing through my belly.
Now, 10 years later, I have finally arrived here at Fundación Valparaiso in Mojácar, Spain. So many years when I felt I could not leave my son at all or for more than a few days. I do not think many men who are poets and fathers are troubled by leaving their young children for weeks at a time. (Okay, dads, send in those comments to the contrary!) This is the first time I will have been away from my son for this long a time—one month—so I feel an extra heavy burden to be fruitful in my writing.
The view from my studio window
Horses and Pears
I arrived in Mójacar last Monday. Today is Saturday and the
founder, Beatrice Beckett is in town and all the artists have been invited to
her house down the road this afternoon to help her celebrate her 80th
birthday. As I walked up the road I saw a huge white trailer truck that barely
fit coming down. The driver got out. “Caballos?” I asked. And he said “Sí.” The
sound of their hooves stomping in the back of the trailer sounded like thunder.
It has been overcast and rainy today, and I hope we are still going to be
treated to the horse show as promised, due to take place in the small corral in
front of Beatrice Beckett’s house. We all decided to make her a work of art (I
am surrounded by 6 visual artists, though Wilfriede, the German artist, says he
also writes poetry.) I had to quickly pull something from my notebook, an ode
to drunken pears, peras borrachas, that
we had for dessert the other night, done in the style of one of Lorca’s
Andalusian songs. As Ying, a Chinese painter who now lives in New York, put it,
unable to get enough of the sweet wine sauce, “It is the best dessert I have
ever eaten!” And my attempt at a watercolor of the pears made me realize once
more why I am not a painter.
The artists colony Fundación Valparaiso was founded in 1989
by Paul and Beatrice Beckett. (Paul Beckett was related to Samuel Beckett.) He
was an artist in search of some place “drier” than Denmark. He found it. His
ashes and a memorial stone as well as some of his pipes now hang in the garden.
Every time I post, as today, I have to climb 25 minutes into
the village to go to the library, the best place for free wi-fi. So these posts
are a sweaty labor of love, at the least. And now I realize I forgot my pears in my studio.