Mom Singing Heart

This post is sort of a shout out to my friend Perry. We saw her the day she was trying out for a part in a community theater production, which she got, and she said, “I wanted to do something for me, just for me,” or something like that.

My entire 30s were spent pregnant and nursing. I do not regret a moment of it. But it is really the summer after the child turns two before the mom gets to stretch out and do anything except be one of a nursing dyad. I’ve heard people say that the infant doesn’t experience himself as separate from the mother but I’d posit that the mom (at least the mom who is attached) doesn’t experience herself separately either.

So I think it can hit us mom’s, and maybe especially stay at home attached breastfeeding mom’s, hard. But I think it is a common experience of humanity, the need to do whatever it is that makes our heart sing. Of course, sometimes we don’t know exactly what that is, or sometimes we’ve convinced ourselves that whatever it is couldn’t really possibly really matter. It is the forks in the road thing where there isn’t one big huge single thing but numerous more mundane things.

For me one huge thing is horses. And it seems small beans and even smaller potatoes, but just having the big boy out there is enough. When I was younger and dreaming (and working) horses, only big beans would have been enough. This right here, well, it might not be all there is (by that I mean, bigger things may well come, or not), but it is enough.

And writing, that is something. I don’t know what it is, but it is something I have always done. Unlike the horses, I haven’t ever had any big dreams for it. I just wrote horrid hormone poetry in high school and lots of letters at other times and I wrote the best college papers and enjoyed doing it too. And I just kept writing, even with no platform and then I took on a little newsletter for our homeschool group mostly because it gave me an outlet to write. And now I have this blog that satisfies some of that creative streak. I saw a notice about a short story contest and thought, maybe I’ll try to come up with something for that but I don’t generally like the idea of contests yadda yadda yadda.

I don’t know what else there is for me. Something to do with some business I think, but I don’t know how or what exactly yet. I think it is something from my father and grandfather because it is like their spirits talking to me, some success thing, but business success measured on my own terms, with my own measure, and the spirits understand that.

And another kernel in this is that I think our kids can only learn to allow their hearts to sing if they see ours singing. What could possibly be more important to me than my kids, and their being their whole unadulterated square peg never forced into a round hole selves? Nothing. I have to find ways to sing, at least hum, for them.

It would be nice if I could find a way to help husband sing too but that is a subject which totally baffles me.