I had to take my feisty old Nana to the doctor's yesterday and as I was driving down to her place I was thinking of ways to maximize the potential of the trip. Seeing as it was in a working day and the drive is "down the coast" where there are shops etc I thought that maybe I should buy the kids new underwear. I looked at the car clock as we crawled along stopping at roadworks every five minutes and calculated that I'd have about ten minutes to get in and out of the shopping centre so I'd have to actually run as fast as I could. The thought of doing this and what I would look like, a demented person running through the shopping centre to buy undies, frown on face, handbag flapping stopped me from this exercise in motherlove/insanity.
The "working" day when the children are at school is so short and so prone to getting nibbled away by household tasks that when I can't work on a "working" day it makes me very anxious. Working as an artist is hard enough in the first place, withdrawing from the life of the house into the free, floating, quiet disciplined space needed to make pots and drawings is an impossible feat some days....... most days. Pots and drawings are a miracle, an a physical improbability like one of those old Laurel and Hardy gags where 20 or more people just keep pouring out of an impossibly tiny car.
4 comments:
great post..!
You and all the other working mums have my utmost regard - and to manage to produce such beautiful calm looking drawings is a miracle!
Thanks Shannon. I know that anxiety of not 'working' on a 'working day' so well and think your undies story sums it up perfectly. You've gotta laugh right?!
so glad i'm not alone. the more we share these stories and find humor the less guilt i feel over not getting into the studio, or not spending enough time on my kid or not finding the time to pick up eggs before dinner...thanks shannon.
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