Only A Mother

In case you’re wondering why there haven’t been any recent updated to my blog, I can summarize the reason in two words: summer vacation.  As of the middle of June, those wonderful long breaks, called school days, ceased.  Like many stay-at-home-moms with some resemblance or existence of a budget, I cannot justify putting my kids in an all-day camp. 

As a result I am left with the task of filling the time in-between scheduled summer activities with long meaningful, educational, and emotionally rewarding experiences for my children.  In short, I keep them away from the T.V. and from fighting with one another. 

At the end of the day, once the little darlings have gone to bed—one of them with a lot more fuss and struggle than the other--I can’t wait to jump into bed myself.  Words like “Google search hits” and “key words” just don’t carry the same weight as a “good night’s sleep.” 

I miss writing.  A lot!  Luckily, with much encouragement from my husband, I got myself into a creative writing class through an extension class at a local university.  I started at least writing, if not blogging, again regularly.

One of the recent class reading assignments was a short story by Edward P. Jones, The First Day.  It is about the first kindergarten morning in the life of a five-year-old girl.  Well actually, the story is not about the child, who happens to be the story’s narrator, but rather about the child’s illiterate mother’s struggle to enroll her daughter in the right public kindergarten.  The story openes with a beautifully-crafted, seductive sentence:

“On an otherwise unremarkable September morning, long before I learned to be ashamed of my mother, she takes my hand and we set off down New Jersey Avenue to begin my very first day of school.” 

I slowly savored the story, admiring its flawless poetic narration.  Then, shortly after finishing it, I called it a bluff.  The five-year-old narrator is so aware of her mother’s struggles with the public school system paperwork and placement that she seems to completely ignore her own childhood fears about starting kindergarten.   While the mother may be noticeably upset about not being able to enroll the child in one of the schools, the five-year-old remains calm and attentive to her Mom.   Her observations of what her Mom’s going through that morning shine with the emotional maturity, wisdom, and perception of an adult.  (And how many adults recall their first day of school with such clarity?)  Any mother whose child started kindergarten in a not-so-distant past would call this story a bluff.   If such five-year-old existed, she would be auctioned-off to the highest-bidding couple for billions of dollars.

 The First Day is included in the prestigious volume, “The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories,” edited by the literary giant, Tobias Wolff.  Needless to say, neither the story’s author nor the editor is a mother of a kindergartner.

Noticing this lyrical story’s fau pax makes one feel good about being a mother, about knowing something from direct experience.   Life and writing seem to require a strong and steady balance.  If you lean too much in one direction, your miss the other.  Forgive me, Edward P. Jones and Tobias Wolff!