I give my
three-year-old the tablet and tell her to pick a show; I give the baby a bath
and nurse her down for a nap; I give myself a shower. As I’m toweling off, my
husband, who works from home, knocks gently on the door. He has to reset the
router, which, due to the age of the house, is installed in the baby’s room.
Water
pools around my feet. “But I have to work on an essay.”
He’s
apologetic – he has a video conference scheduled. While I dress, I listen to
the baby fire up. Judging from her cries – more fuss than need – she will
likely go back to sleep.
I
grab the laptop from the kitchen and sit on the couch. My phone is unmuted
beside the keyboard; my seven-year-old is at summer camp and she’s been having
a hard time adjusting. My three-year-old comes down the stairs, scowling at me,
wooden spoon clenched in one hand, tablet in the other: “What are you doing?”
“Writing,”
I say. She crosses her legs beside me and puts on Super Why.
*
I wrote most
of my first book in a room of my own, fueled by walks along the beaches or
hedge-lined sidewalks of Vancouver; I wrote my second book in strategically-timed
bursts, mostly on crumb-covered tables in Starbucks, after I had exhausted my
baby at one of the parks in our Toronto neighbourhood.
In
Vancouver, I was a grad student and it was my job to write a book. I hadn’t
lived in an urban environment before and I was a flaneur not only of the city,
but also of my own writing process. What would I need to write a poem? I was hilariously
happy at coming across an office chair parked next to a piece of driftwood, a
tree planted in the trunk of a car; I was always searching for inspiration.
When
my second daughter was born, in Toronto, I felt a surge of energy that I figured
was probably another book. But that inspiration was capped off by the logistics
of having a baby and a kindergartner, part-time work, and no money for
childcare. I managed to find a way, when my oldest child was at school, that I
could write. I started meeting up with friends for playdates at parks. The
second the baby got good and sleepy, I’d pluck her from the swing, say goodbye
to my friends, consult the app and race to the nearest green mermaid. I’d order
a decaf coffee, unwrap a squashed sandwich from the stroller basket, plug in my
earphones and open my laptop, working from notes I’d written in snatched
moments earlier at home. The only problem was my low caffeine tolerance – even
two cups of decaf gives me the jitters – so I had to get good at stretching out
a cup over a two-hour period. I sipped slowly, periodically rearranging napkins
on the table. As I wrote, I rested my right foot on the stroller wheel so I
could jiggle the baby back to sleep during the lunch rush – lines of office
workers grabbing salads, gaggles of kilted teenagers ordering cups of whipped
cream – my hands hardly left the keyboard.
Sometimes
my strategy didn’t work. It would be too quiet and she’d wake, grouchy,
and I’d end up spooning warm yoghurt
(also from the bottom of the stroller) into her mouth, wiping it from the seat,
picking up the cast-off spoon. Sometimes, she would stir, squawk just a little,
and a
well-intentioned but clueless person would materialize beside me and bellow
into the canopy, “Someone’s up!” Sometimes I just drank my coffee.
When
my baby reached eighteen months and I had received some grant funding, I found
a daycare that could take her three morning a week. After drop-off I’d run up
the street to the library for three hours of guaranteed writing time. It didn’t
matter that the guy next to me was watching chainsaw demo videos on YouTube – I
tuned it out. And when the morning was over, my baby was so tired she’d crash
pretty much the second I strapped her into the stroller, which, followed by the
coffee shop routine, got me another two hours. Often I’d barely make it back to
my oldest daughter’s school in time to pick her up.
*
Since my
third baby was born in February, writing hasn’t happened without a complicated orchestration
of child naps, television, and snacks – and even so, often falls through. Part
of my writing process these days is dealing with that disappointment, not with
the writing itself; however, it’s helpful somehow to acknowledge that not writing
hurts. I recently read a profile of musician Father John Misty, who said that “songwriting
is like encountering a bear in the woods.” I know that feeling so well. I
console myself with making quick notes, here and there, when I can. There’s
lots to take in: the dusty guitar at the top of the stairs has been stuffed
full of crayons.
But
I’ve recently finished editing my second book, which I moved from coffee shop
to my baby’s room. I worked mostly in the glider, breastfeeding her, one hand
between her little shoulder blades and the other on the keyboard. (I was very
tired; my editor was very patient.) These are the moments when I’m so glad I
don’t play the pedal harp; I can pretty much write anywhere.
*
After my
first baby was born, I wrote, but not much beyond basic recording. I had no
idea if I would make poetry from what I’d written in the small notebook I kept
next to the glass of water on the bookshelf. I’ll confess that I was a little
in awe of what I’d written, not because it was any good, but because sleep
deprivation had produced some amazingly wild stuff.
Now
I’m whisking cheese sauce on the stove and hollering over the hollering baby
strapped to my chest – “Hey Siri! Make a note!” – because my older children
have wandered off with the ballpoint pens so they can write on the furniture.
Elizabeth Ross is the author of Kingdom (Palimpsest, 2015) and After
Birth, a second poetry collection forthcoming in the spring of
2019. Her work has been published in literary magazines across Canada,
longlisted for the CBC poetry prize, and selected for inclusion in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in
English. She grew up in Victoria and now lives in Hamilton, where she’s
working on a collection of essays.
Wonderful, Liz. Thanks so much for sharing this.
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