Postpartum + creativity = ....?
Learning how to mother for the second time
My mother and her grandchildren
The black cockatoos are large and loud, as strident as a hungry baby. I’m still a ways off the stand of gums they’re corralled in, but can hear the cracks as they feast on bits of the trees, dropping the remnants to the ground.
It’s nearing dusk and the hills peer blue in the gloaming. The air cools as I walk down a bank into a contour, the varying temperatures stacked atop each other like crusted strata. It feels like swimming in a dam; the skin of the water sun-warmed, quickly clawing cold a few feet down.
From here I can only make out five or six birds but as I get closer my eyes attune to their shapes and I realise the eucalypts are alive with them, tens of them, as large-bodied as monkeys. Their heft surprise me. They swoop from bough to bough, tails edged in lemon, fat with shrieking song. I stand and watch, my two sausies, Kip and Plum nosing along the creek, my baby snuffling against my chest in the carrier. Then the chattering take off and up the paddock towards the house, as cacophonous as frat boys.
They say black cockies bring rain, but the twilight feels dry, if a little breezy. I can smell the baked dirt after a hot day. I figure they can’t always. Surely they have to pull up stumps somewhere, with no weather change in sight? Later, however, the wind rankles our windows and Adam calls from outside in the dark to come and see. We stand in the garden, soak in the dry hay mulch mingling honeysuckle. The night blinks with a far off electrical storm, the wind carrying its charge, the gums seething with it. It feels eerie and vital.
My need to create is still there, even if it flaps, gasping on a bank like a reeled fish. This newsletter took several days to get down, in stops and starts, in between fussing and feeding. Saffron sleeps on my chest now while I sit in a weird pretzeled position that my shoulder will pay for later. It’s hard to attend to the natural world, to things around you, to observe and process and percolate and dream when there is little silence. It’s why I cherish the odd walk alone, for pockets of watching. Sulphur tailed cockies and all.
I’ve read writers who talk of the importance of solitude, of quiet, of daydreaming to hone craft. My attention feels utterly frayed, a ragged flag barely flapping in a puff of wind. The fracture lines splinter along the face of my attention from the blunt trauma of a toddler and a baby. The relentless hunger of their need. It’s ok, of course. My choice. A season. My loves. And also, I miss having whole thoughts, uninterrupted. I try to read, but my brain skips like a stone on water. I walk into a room and stop, try to remember why I am there. I open the fridge door and stare into it for whole seconds, wondering why. And the chat chat chat of that glorious boy child, his bright inquisitive sponge brain asking why why why, marbling in the background with the ever-loudening mewls of a new baby and the requirements of our lives and the admin that propels them. No wonder my brain is out to lunch.
I remember packing for a stint of backpacking in my early 20s. Someone told me to put everything I wanted to take onto the bed, then take half. That’s what I’m doing with my to-do list. Pare it back; maybe even leave a little wriggle room for noticing life.
And at night, lying on my side with the small bean of my baby curled into the softened husk of my body, I think. Sentences construct themselves, fitting together like Tetris shapes. Sinuous and smooth. They wait back there somewhere, hunkered down in the fog. Even if I can’t remember them come morning. My creativity will come back, blinking in the white light, lean and starved maybe, but whole still, after this hibernation.
I hope.
The list:
Has anyone not watched Netflix doco on the Beckhams? Loved it. They both came out of it so well. Posh, hilarious. Becks, handsome and very good at cleaning candles (lol). Can’t believe how terrible fans could be to a 23-year-old kid. Good watching.
Can recommend a new notebook to jot things down quickly when they come to you. I bought one of these last week at my bookstore and keep it beside my bed.
Am re-reading Anne Lammott’s wonderful treaty on writing and life, Bird by Bird. She buoys me.
I felt a little misshapen and enlarged the other day and I put on some fake tan and voila, I felt a little better. I used this one. No weird biscuit smell, no orange bits, fades alarmingly well.
I went to my wonderful pelvic physiotherapist last week, Megan at Proactive. It’s never too late to see one. She is so skilled. Gave me the go ahead for gentle riding and exercise. Have started Peaches Pilates postpartum program. 25 minute classes. Feels so nice to get the endorphins.
If you enjoyed reading this or found any value in the scribbles, I'd love it if you could send it on to a friend! Thank you so much for your replies, emails and comments. Sometimes I send these into the ether and wonder if anyone is there; to have your support means the world.
Until next time, keep well.
Em x