What’s The Hurry? Patience and Writing

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

Photo: Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

We received about fifteen inches of snow last week, and the temperature has hovered around twenty, without factoring in the wind chill. To say we’re housebound is an understatement. So against my better judgment, I took my kids to the grocery store, just to get out of the house. It actually went pretty well, comparatively speaking. They stayed in their designated cart and I didn’t have to yell too much. All in all, a good trip. Except that they were wearing sleepers—you know, footie pajamas. But in explanation, they don’t actually wear those to bed—they call them “Supermans.” They’d taken off their actual pajamas earlier in the day in order to put their Supermans on. I didn’t really think about the fact that they were wearing footie pajamas until we were in the grocery store and they insisted on removing their coats. So, I was that mother with kids in pajamas in the middle of a Thursday afternoon in the grocery store taking up the greatest width of any aisle in which I happened to be. It took me twice as long to do the groceries than if I’d been alone, but it was nice to slow down a little and look at things that I normally don’t see through my hurrying tunnel vision. Things like the lobster tank and the giant fan up in the ceiling and, of course, every foolish trinket they hang right at kids’ eye level in all the aisles.

I’ve written about my children here. Our walks and our ill-fated grocery trips. Our guest blogger this week, Shara McCallum, wrote a piece entitled “On Being a Writer and Mother,” and, of course, I couldn’t wait to read it. (I’ll take all the advice I can get.) She draws a lovely parallel between the patience one must cultivate as mother and as writer. She inspired me to spend a little time this week writing on the topic of Mother/Writer as well. I know it’s not Mother’s Day—it’s not even May. But since Moms never stop being Moms, and we’ve been around for a long time, I figured I could give us a little attention this cold January week.

Alice Munro wrote short stories because it was an easier form to fit around the care of her children: “I took to writing in frantic spurts, juggling my life around until I could get a story done…” (Alice Munro, Selected Stories). She said, “In twenty years I’ve never had a day when I didn’t have to to think about someone else’s needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.” (Wikiquote) Oh my, does that sound familiar.

I have a terrible and stomach-gnawing sense of urgency about my writing which does not serve to motivate me, but instead paralyzes me, not to mention cheats me of the joy. Creation is supposed to be joyful, right?

So, I ask, what’s the hurry?

One of the regular trains of thought running through my poor brain is I’m not getting enough done I’m not getting enough done. But, when my zen mind appropriates my thoughts, I recognize that I am getting the right amount done. I am writing in exactly the right amount of spurts to get the job, eventually, done. Like an unhurried trip through the grocery store with my Super Girls, with a little patience and piecing the writing around the kids’ needs, a lovely life quilt, the work will get—joyfully—done.

How do you balance being a Mom and writing?

Related posts: