Oh, hi.
I had that baby I was growing in my last post. She’s an amazing little person. She’s learned to clap her hands in the last week, and I am full of wonder and delight. She’s been sick, and I fretted for hours about her rash. (Should I call the doctor? Should I not? Is it a purple rash? Is it getting worse.)
I’m back at work, sitting in my office, relieved to have time to read and write and teach, and missing her fiercely. I feel this all at once: the relief of time and space away, and the missing. I think about her all the time, but also get bored by the way motherhood enfolds me.
At home, we walk in endless circles around the house as she holds out a hand for mine, demands the other hand, then drags me off to open cupboards or visit each room in turn. (At the same time, I love to see her do this: so clearly show me what she wants, so clearly refuse if I put my right hand in her left, or give her only one hand.)
Motherhood has changed me, and I don’t know how I feel about that. (I don’t have much time to work out how I feel about anything.) It is almost physically painful to think of parents losing children to war or violence. Of wanting to feed a hungry child and not being able to. I have the luxury of being able to look away, to take a break from imagining these scenes.
For the last few months the change to my work has been in the time and energy available. Everything needs to be broken up into smaller, more digestible chunks, to manage in nap times and evenings and while so very tired most of the time.
As I finished my undergraduate, I decided to focus on researching movements that gave me hope. Imperfect, complex movements with many flaws, but nevertheless full of people trying to change things for the better. I wanted, and want, to believe that we have the potential to change this. That hungry children can be fed, that we can look after our neighbours, that we can resist and fight back against tides of hatred and fear.
Last year, I found myself writing a presentation and a book chapter that shifted to focusing on the flaws in these movements. I was tired, and I got snarky and impatient with the imperfection of activists (particularly white men) who didn’t listen and try to define what counts as ‘radical’ and what doesn’t. I still feel that impatience, but that work was depressing. The snark of it was satisfying, but I’m not sure of the use of it and frankly I am subject to many of the same critiques.
As I try to find my way back into research and writing, I’m trying to recommit to finding threads of hope. Critique is important, especially the critiques I need to listen to from the margins of academia and activism: of white women’s role in feminism(s), of settler societies, of academic power structures. In my own writing I want to be finding materials to stitch into alternatives. I want to be finding spaces where my voice can be useful, rather than just adding more noise.
And it’s a terrible cliche, but the urgency of it comes through when I look at this tiny person and imagine other parents doing the same, hoping for safety and flourishing and care for these wonders we are trying to nourish.
leftover words 