Maybe, maybe I can't write about motherhood right now.
Maybe,
maybe I don’t want to write about motherhood right now.
Maybe that’s why there have been no words.
Maybe there are not enough characters, or a setting worth describing.
The conflicts are mundane and never resolved.
Who will my reader move with?
Consumer culture has taken all of my imagination. I know all the instagram accounts. I know of the wooden figurines perched on top of antique card catalog cupboards turned into cabinets. I know of the warmth of the long afternoon shadow on white enamel cast iron pots heating up a pumpkin and leek casserole for three kids and a husband that works an unknown job to support the household, the wrought iron bed, the wool bonnets and the rainbow stackers. I know of the brands, the toys, the seasonal sartorial choices; I know of all I do not have. I look. I gaze. I grab. I don’t want to be looked at. I don’t want to look at myself other than through the eyes of others, through the artifice of the Other.
Motherhood is the moments that are in between the scrolling. But I don’t know how to write about that right now. I don’t know how to re-mediate my life through my own gaze rather than the instagram frame.
I don't want to write about motherhood because I am too consumed with a fantasy of buying it; a cruel optimism that won't wane.