Mothers Talking

“The wild velocity of motherhood, an enforced momentum forbidding contemplation.” —Sarah Manguso

Outside the Jackman Humanities Building, on the penultimate day of our public writing workshop, a balmy February afternoon, we are two mothers talking without their children.

Mothers Talking: a genre.

Me and E—’s exchange begins in the classroom, and moves with us, into the kitchen as we wash our coffee mugs, through the lobby, in the elevator, and onto the front steps of St. George St. Our words move like a time-lapse of a doctoral dissertation mind map. Every idea teeming between the borders of what needs to be said to make it make sense. Every idea framed by an exhausted race against the afternoon pick-up-child clock; our internal circadian rhythm even if today we are being given the time (because time is not ours to have?). This week there have been no children to pick-up.

We are mothers talking becoming friends: we enumerate quickly, excitedly, self-deprecatingly, because each node of the mind map brings us more parallels and connections.

“You too! Yes, I do that too! I love Deborah Levy too!”

We can move through years of experiences in seconds. Squeezing past, present and future into every declaration between our outstretched arms.

Eventually E—’s tongue speed catches up to her.

“Um… What was I saying again?”

She laughs, and I laugh, because I get it. I remind her, although it also takes a minute. We aren’t not paying attention, but our selves, exhausted, can only hold so much. Eventually we both forget what we’re talking about, and move onto something else. We are mothers talking.

Earlier that day, we had spent our given time around a very long table. I always sit near the head of the table, beside Irina Dumitrescu, our brilliant workshop facilitator, because it faces the class door, and except for the first day, I always arrive late.

“Elegance is arriving somewhere without a commute story,” echoes in my head.

C’mon, Magda!

I am staying an 8-minute walk away and I have nothing else to do but be present here, at the table, to practice craft for an entire week, while my partner stays in Montreal with our two children. Coming in late, I smile like a person invited to a party by someone who isn’t there, but will stay to the end anyway.

During our discussions, I am unwillingly parsimonious. There is no lead up to my points and I answer in text message parlance, like to my partner in the middle of the night when our daughter is up for the fifth time.

But no one is in a hurry here, and there are no distractions.

I listen to the words, clumsy, spilling out of my mouth, like the winter gear from my son’s school locker, surrounded by moat of clammy mismatched winter boots.

My ideas and I are wedged between these uneven bursts. The people who aren’t, command attention and disarm us. They make time for us to enter into their stories.

There is one woman who speaks carefully and slowly, without squeezing in the past, present and future into every sentence. Instead she sets up elaborate scenes for us to imagine, even to the most straightforward questions. She reminds me of Mitsu, who often speaks in allegories, or answers questions with stories that require work and presence from the listener. They both have grown children.

Will my paragraphs also grow alongside my children?

Sara Manguso, captures the seismic refraction in Ongoingness—"Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us—by taking everything."

Mothers talking have been trained to speak on playgrounds, in spurts, between children demanding a snack that we will have to wipe off their sweaters or that squirrels have eaten quicker than they have, between breastfeeding, a leaky diaper, pooped underwear, scraped knees, between waiting for another coffee, or the magical stroller nap.

“Hang on, just a moment…” we say to other mothers, to our children, to ourselves.

And a new thread begins again and again, jumping from the books we are trying to read, to why our toddlers won’t drink water as they demand juice, to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, to the optimism of making our own challah for Shabbat, or going for a run, while we try to chase tiny humans across the park.

We are always living two worlds, which is as bountiful as it is exhausting when you don’t want to temper either one.

How to be present as a mother, to your children, and to yourself?

Perhaps that is also what our Art Monsters book club is about—the joy and pleasure of mothers talking having time.

“The wild velocity of motherhood, an enforced momentum forbidding contemplation.”—Sarah Manguso