When I started writing this blog I didn’t have a baby. When Eliana came along I still didn’t want to blog about motherhood. There are enough Mommy blogs out there (aspiring writer blogs; there’s a real shortage there).
But regardless, being a mother colors and shades every part of my life, so occasionally it will sneak its way into a post. Most recently, I’ve noticed that being a mother has changed the way I read. When a parent and child were separated in a book I was reading, I always identified with the child. I felt their fear, but also their resilience and the tinge of excitement that comes with being on your own. Now I might read the same passage and feel nothing but terror for the child set adrift in the world without the parent. I feel the pain of separation much more viscerally than I ever did before.
The circumstances are the same. I think I feel it differently because a child doesn’t assume they can control the world. A child is more content to adapt and move with the current than swim against it. I should know better than to expect to control the forces of nature that will affect my daughter or myself. I would like to read that way and I would like to live that way as best I can.
Ideas In Things 