Cusk writes, “To be a mother I must leave the telephone unanswered, work undone, arrangements unmet. To be myself I must let the baby cry, must forget her in order to think about other things. To succeed at being one means to fail at being the other.” Cusk couldn’t make a clean break between the two, and instead she had to learn to legislate the two states. Although Cusk and every mother always have options, it seems that they never have choices. This, I feel, is because of an innate and maternal guilt, which takes over. Thus, Cusk tends to her crying infant, regardless of the growing disdain and unpleasantness of their relationship. I have seen this guilt render my own mother’s heart tired.
I have seen my mother let the telephone ring so that I could eat dinner before she would give up her Friday night to drive me (when I was younger) to a friend’s house. As I wave goodbye to her, she sits in the car listening to smooth jazz or occasionally (if things with my dad were exceptionally tough) a Christian motivational speaker and she waits until I am safely inside of my friend’s house. I take her protective care for granted. I am indifferent to her sacrificial lifestyle.
I have also seen my mother decide (occasionally) that enough is enough, washing her hands of her three kids (and their father), to enjoy a night out (or in) with her friends. I’ve taken a great pleasure in making her feel guilty for leaving us for a few hours.
She knows I love her and that is the driving force which keeps her going. Subconsciously she embraces the “motherbaby,” and we are an entirely sustainable unit. But although I continue to suck the energy right out of her, I no longer take her for granted.
So, Cusk is right. To succeed at being one, you must fail at the other. But I think she should add that despite success in one field (whichever it happens to be at the moment), appreciation is rarely an immediate reward, and that the resulting anger, confusion and resentment, ultimately yield unpleasant contact between mother and child.
When I was younger, I never wasted time thinking about why a father doesn’t face the same guilt as a mother, and instead gets to make his choices. Now, I consider it time well spent to ponder this question. My mother still feels “guilty,” and although I can only imagine from a daughter’s perspective how frustrating it is to swim through nasty and violent waters, "the dark side" of motherhood, wounded by an overwhelming sense of guilt, always feeling like the bad guy, I wish my dad would have made better choices.
As I continue to read A Life’s Work, and venture through Cusk’s stories of the dark side of motherhood, it seems to me, that aside from a mother’s initial choice to harbor her baby’s once small body inside her own, everything after birth is not a matter of choice, but a matter of trying to balance the self and the mother, trying to break free from, and at the same time embrace the entirely sustainable “motherbaby” unit.
Maybe the antics of the dark side of motherhood exist only to fill the void of the choices that a good mother gives up.
1 comment:
Jill---I think you have really sunk yourself into the rhythm and the voice that Cusk adopts to talk about these thorny subjects. Her voice, like yours in this post, is somehow both absract and precise at the same time. I like your distinction between "options" and "choices." I think you rightly say, and Cusk would agree, that no option seems quite exactly right. Mother guilt, Father guilt? This is also a good question, and one that I am pleased to see is worth pondering! Prof. KN
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