Chronicles of Chaos

November 18, 2009 | Print

On Becoming a Mother

For three years, I’ve purposefully overlooked Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother. Every so often, I glance at the book holding its place on my bookshelf like a dare. I know the gist of the story enough to fear that Cusk’s revelations might undo me in some way: she writes with brutal honesty about the loss of self in motherhood. I find being a mother complicated, or rather being a woman and a mother. I don’t expect that Cusk knows my stress points, but hearing about hers might muddy the waters.

Finally a few weeks ago I pull out A Life’s Work feeling curious and wary. Cusk’s writing has a suspended quality, like the world I live in when seriously sleep deprived. The shadows look darker and the light parts fuzzy or too bright. She sounds like a literary version of the first time moms who returned with their newborns to the prenatal yoga class I took during my Oliver pregnancy. Very smart, successful in careers and social lives, these women described feeling stunned by birth and motherhood. Whether they said it directly or not, I could feel their confusion, isolation, euphoria, love and desperation. Back then, I felt some responsibility for my yoga classmates. I’d been through it twice already, I should have prepared them. But other than sharing a few compassionate thoughts during our bathroom breaks, we didn’t have a gathering place or the time. And even if we did, I’m not sure we would have indulged ourselves.

Cusk also struggles to find answers. She comically takes down the nurses, health advisers, parents and books that don’t help her figure out how to care for her child or redefine her identity. She feels like an outsider to other mothers and communities which seem to embrace the sacrifices and strains of raising young children. In the chapter “Hell’s Kitchen” she credits fathers for revealing their parenting horrors. Cusk’s synopsis of one dad’s description of weekends with his kids is so perfect I laughed out loud. It’s worth reading just to hear someone else describe what it’s like trolling the streets in your car at 7.30 in the morning on a Sunday looking for something to do with the kids who are screaming and wailing in the backseat.

I’m not rattled by Cusk’s depictions of motherhood. I remember viscerally some of the newborn nights she describes, and I understand the separation she feels from herself and the life she led before becoming a mother. I feel like she wrote the book when she lived in the bubble of new parentdom, and it is that fresh perspective which gives her story such force. If she were to write looking back on those experiences, she might have less edge, more warmth–but that softening would cost the book its forceful momentum.

While reviewers praise the book, some mothers find Cusk too harsh. In a recent interview about her new novel, The Bradshaw Variations, Cusk talks about feeling labeled as critical and depressive, which started when she published A Life’s Work. Her humor is critical in the book, and funny. I don’t see her as uncaring, more confused and isolated. She wants to connect with someone about her experience, yet can’t seem to match up with anyone.

Now that women figure out motherhood on our own–our learning style altered by the distance between extended families and the fast pace of life which keeps us from seeing the whole picture of our friends’ parenting experiences–we work to fill in the gaps. Writing about motherhood becomes an effort to create a foundation and a place to relate to one another. Our honesty in these points of contact, which extends to talking with other moms at the park, makes us vulnerable at the same time it helps us connect. The impulse to compare and contrast, to look for the best version is hard to resist. When I read those funny paragraphs in “Hell’s Kitchen” I laughed and laughed and then suddenly I was crying–because I felt understood. And really, as I spend more time with motherhood I realize this desire to explore all the edges and illuminate my own path. For me, I like to hear about the messiness and hope, in those conversations I find the most strength.

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