[In honor of
this wonderful chance to celebrate some of the most
wonderful people I know, how one of the great American short stories can
help us remember the toughest and most inspiring sides of motherhood.]
On a short story
that helps us remember and celebrate one of society’s toughest and most vital
roles.
I would be the first to admit
that I am doing what is without a doubt my most important life’s work—as a dad
to these
two crazy and crazy cute young dudes—in near-ideal conditions. However you
slice it, from past role models to present support from family and friends,
economic security to good health, neighborhood and community to (at least when
it comes to something like mixed-race identity) a very tolerant and open-minded
historical era and time period, I can’t imagine there being more positive
influences on my ability to be a good dad (don’t worry, I’m knocking on wood
while typing all that). And still, it’s hard.
It’s hard especially on two distinct and crucial levels: on its own terms, it’s
hard to feel day in and day out like I’m doing everything I can do for and with
them, to prepare them for the best and happiest and most successful futures and
lives; and in a broader context, it’s hard much of the time to feel as if I’m
balancing out parenting and my career in ways that are mutually productive. And
I don’t think those things are even vaguely distinctive for me—quite the
opposite, I think they’re indications of just how hard these questions are for
everybody.
But of course the reality is that
these questions are much, much harder for a great many Americans. If even one
of those positive influences that I listed above is replaced with a negative
one—if one doesn’t have much familial or social support, if one’s financial
situation is unstable or disadvantaged or bleak, if health issues become
prominent, if one’s community is dangerous or threatening, and so on—the difficulties
increase exponentially. And if multiple or even most of the influences become
negative, if in fact being a good parent becomes an effort to rise above
(rather than, in my case, to live up to) all of what surrounds one—as, I
believe, is the case for many of the impoverished families and parents with
whom my
Mom worked for many years in a Head Start-like program in Central Virginia
(although she and that program are, just to be clear, one
extremely positive influence in their worlds)—well, I can’t even imagine
how difficult it becomes at that point. And yet, as if so often the case, a
singular and singularly amazing work of American literature allows me to
imagine, even in a small way, what it feels like to be in that situation, to
try to parent well, or even perhaps just to parent at all, in the face of most
every single factor and influence and aspect of one’s situation.
That work is “I Stand
Here Ironing,” a short story by Tillie
Olsen. Olsen spent the first half of her life living with these questions,
as a working single mother who was trying both to be a good parent and to find
time or space to hone her considerable talents as a creative and critical
writer; when she finally achieved success, with the book of short stories Tell Me a Riddle (1961) that
featured “Ironing,” she spent the second half of her life writing about (among
many other things) precisely these questions, such as in the unique and
important scholarly study Silences (1978) which traces the
effects of work and parenthood on women writers in a variety of nations and
time periods. Yet I don’t think she ever captured these themes more evocatively
or perfectly than in “Ironing,” a brief story in which a mother imagines—while
performing the titular act of housework—how she might describe her relationship
to her oldest and most troubled daughter (named Emily) to a school official who
has asked her to do so. Although the narrator is now in a more stable
situation, the first years of her daughter’s life comprised her lowest point in
every sense, and for much of the story she reflects with sadness and regret and
pain on all that she was not able to offer and give to and be for her daughter
during those years. But she comes at the end to a final vision of her now
teenage daughter that is, while by no means idealistic or naïve, a recognition
that Emily is becoming her own person, that she is strong and independent, and
that she has the opportunity to carve out a life that, at the very least, can
go far beyond where it began.
It’s a beautiful and powerful story,
and a very complex one, not least because no parent can read it with the
perspective of simply a literary critic or a distanced reader in any sense. It
pushes us up against the most difficult aspects of this role, makes clear how
much more difficult still they can be than most of us (fortunately) will ever
know, and then finally reminds us of the absolutely unalterable and singular
and crucial meanings of what is, again, the most important thing we’ll ever do.
Word to your mother. Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Mother’s Day texts or contexts you’d share?
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