“He said that the difference between the male and female modes of thought were easily illustrated by the thoughts of a boy and girl sitting on a park bench, looking at the full moon. The boy thinks of the universe, its immensity and mystery; the girl thinks, “I must wash my hair.” When I read this I was frantically upset. I had to put the magazine down. It was clear to me at once that I was not thinking as a girl thought; the full moon would never as long as I lived remind me to wash my hair…I wanted men to love me, and I wanted to think of the universe when I looked at the full moon. I felt trapped, stranded; it seemed there had to be a choice where there couldn’t be a choice.” – Del Jordan, Alice Munro
Moody and brooding, I walked down to the North West Arm. It’s a walk that has comforted me throughout this pandemic, as freedoms are stripped daily. I cannot trust my emotions lately, which is a difficult place to be while writing a book. I need them to inform an older self, her patterns, her intuitions and frustrations.
My writing mentor gives notes “so many beautiful passages here and so many juxtapositions of words,” and she pokes “make this more explicit” and then prods, “say more about how the narrator felt…that can be infuriating, that he wasn’t getting it.” When I read her notes, I know she is right and I only see the latter, ignoring the compliments, honing in on the deeper work. I stick to the surface in this chapter I submitted because I fear what I might find if I’m honest. I’m afraid of the rage and the anger. Sorrow is easier, an acceptable emotion.
In winter I suddenly wanted a child. I’ve never before wanted a child the way I did around the New Year. Not even when I was married. I considered that if I don’t have one, I could be betraying my body as a woman. I looked around at families, huddling close together, these tiny bodies of and not of their parents. I watched friend’s bellies expand and carry life and I think it’s a miracle. I marvel over it like when I look at the full moon. Something fleshy and formed, something meaningfully evident. A heartbeat underneath a heartbeat. I have a pile of tattered fragments I’m piecing together and as I write this I’m aware that wanting a child to feel I’ve contributed something meaningful to the world is not the best reason, though it felt very real to me for months. The encroaching feeling gets stronger as my body prepares for its monthly bloody release. The lining sheds. An egg drops. Tissue discarded. My body aware of what my mind refuses to do.
My angst around children has since passed. I think it turned up because the freedom I value and basked in with my choice to live a child-free life, was stripped from me this month last year. I’m sure there are biological reasons too. The clock as all women know is real. The animal body evolved to procreate, I feel this pull beneath my skin. A tussle under my flesh soil. I know I am grappling with this decision more than I ever have. Still, I wake up some days unrecognizable and wonder if this decision will ever feel settled in me. Maybe being eighty percent okay with a choice is enough. Or even sixty percent. Does it feel this way if you have children too? Is it part of the human condition to doubt?
I imagine a woman who hasn’t chosen children who wears an IUD, passes her prime, and is always slightly aware of the choice she didn’t make. Another woman with one child is asked or advised, “Have another. One isn’t enough.” Or the woman with two children who feels divided. I imagine a woman with three children with little time and space, questioning her choices as she gathers her littles. What of the woman who can’t have children and wants them and the woman who didn’t feel she had a choice? Does the lack of will ever feel like a gift? To be a woman is powerful, giver and taker of life, like earth, like ground and water.
This month I juggled the usual adult administrative tasks: a cervical exam, an obligatory dental visit (I now own a sexy night guard), a call to my phone provider to deal with the long distance charges I racked up because my good friend moved to North Carolina and I forgot I didn’t have a plan for that. I gathered all my T4s and receipts to embark on the dreaded tax season. It’s not enough that March is the longest, most muddy erratic month, cold and windy with sunny days that spike temperatures, teasing you. It’s like a terrible relationship where one person plans this gloriously romantic meal with your favourite wine, wooing you out to a patio to stare longingly into your eyes under the stars and then disappears for weeks saying they need space only to do it all over again, tugging on your heart. That’s March!
For some reason I’m hyper aware lately of how much of my brain is devoted to meal planning and prep. I’m not even that good at it, as I’d much prefer to buy whatever is in season at a market and make something up spontaneously the day of (I miss this terribly). We order in when I am in a funk. Still, I find myself worrying at breakfast what we’ll have for dinner and then I wonder if this is the most interesting thought I’ll have all day.
I’m unorganized. My receipt piles and T4s sit atop my bookshelf, beside my laptop on the desk, they’re also saved in my email somewhere. I woke in the middle of the night recently thinking about scrivener. You can only write a book with scrivener, I thought mid-dream. I still don’t have it. Instead I write in my iphone’s notes, I scribble questions and one liners on cue cards, I stick quotes on my corkboard, I have too many tabs open and the starts of stories sit on my desktop. One thing I have stopped doing to myself in my thirties is trying to make myself into someone I’m not. This is my messy way.
To counteract the annoying admin and daily monotony, I sought out purple. It started when I made myself a purple martini by mixing periwinkle gin (Compass Royale) with dry vermouth. It’s the butterfly pea blossom from the clitoria ternatea plant that gives this gin its distinct colour. Yes, the Latin of this plant comes from “clitoris” as you suspected when you read it. The shape of the flower much like a woman’s genitalia. All I can think is PLEASURE! This gin is pure bliss. I topped my purple martini with cerignola olives in all their buttery goodness. I also tried it with a lemon twist. The lemon intensified the purple. All of this a reason to love adulthood.
I hunted down purple. I picked out variegated hyacinths for my table, fat and dripping with fragrance. I ordered the Bulwark Thai Purple Mist cider when we went out. All of this purple felt extraterrestrial and playful amidst the masks and sanitizer. I would have bought a purple freezy if it were warm out. All this violet, inside and out. All this violet lighting up the sky.
Purple is joy and I’m starting to follow that trail. This month I read a LARB article that knocked me over. I whispered yes to myself at my desk. Sophia Stewart’s words familiar. She articulated something I have not been able to about the pressure to be serious in the literary world. In that spirit, I signed up for Molly Wizenberg’s class called ‘Taking Happiness Seriously.” Somewhere before entering into my MFA, I lost my funny. Articulating wit on the page and writing out sunnier emotions, proved challenging. I turn to other, more seasoned memoirists for help exploring the varied hues of feeling.
My friend mailed me a copy of Caitlyn Moran’s More Than a Woman, which I’ll read as Spring spreads green and chartreuse across the lawn, spouting in our gardens. I’ll laugh as buds strain and pop on the tips of naked branches.
Another friend got married this month. It was painful to be so far and not there by her side. Instead I attempted presence with distance, something I’m becoming skilled with loved ones scattered all over. We zoomed the day before and I watched as she cleaned flowers beyond the screen. “Which ones should I use?” She asked hovering the phone above the buckets, “those tall lavender and peach stock. The bushy line flowers.” I said trying to explain the ones I meant. “I would just make you do this if you were here,” she went on, stripping the leaves off the deep purple veronica. I made her a chapbook with a bridesmaid speech that I would have delivered with a toast had I been there. Stuffed a couple hand-dyed silk ribbons in the twine. I learned the art of craft and hand-made gifts from my mom, all her scrapbooking. My mothering energy goes to my friends now. Distance. Pandemic. None of us know how to be. All we can do is try.
I finished George Saunders book and it was everything I needed to keep trudging through my work. Intelligent and silly and freeing. His concluding method: “go forth and do what pleases.” I took an online master class through CityLit with him and we read more Chekhov, The Lady with the Pet Dog, which some people think is about love and being changed by it. I’m not sure what I think yet but the way Saunders pulled it apart in thirty minutes immediately shifted my initial reactions—reinforcing the power of pedagogy to inspire new thought.
Sadly, Earnaux stopped being for me at this time on p.57. I believe it’s important to mention because too few writerly people admit when a book remains unfinished, especially when it’s well received. Maybe I will return to it. Maybe I won’t. That’s freeing too.
I picked up Alice Munro’s The Lives of Girls and Women instead as we celebrated International Women’s Day. I’ve escaped into the touching and funny life of Del Jordan. I find myself having a reckoning with my own girlhood as I read it and that makes me excited to pick up Melissa Febos new book of stories. Today’s excerpt in the New York Times cracked me open. “You choose it, and it chooses you” Febos writes.
To end March I watched my sister successfully defend her Master’s Thesis over zoom. I held back tears, full of sibling pride. I remembered her when we were small, her chubby limbs and peach fuzz, me dragging her around as my living doll. She was brilliant, exquisit and humble as she spoke with assurance about her research. “Your work is pioneering” the psychologist with the rad glasses said.
Walking back from the park, atop the stone wall, growing out of brown leaves spouted bright yellow crocuses. The first patch I’ve seen this year. Their violet stripes across sunshine petals, erect and huddled together. They took me out of my wayward mind for a long exhale. When I returned to my house, I saw more, white with purple stripes, lavender pushing forth, violet cups scattered with the hum of bees, their woolly plump bellies powdered with pollen. My mood shifted observing the euphoria.
Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. We morph and evolve and move in seasons. I ask myself what pleases you? I notice growth.
Purple Martini Recipe
2 Oz Compass Gin Royal (if you can’t get Compass gin you can order Butterfly Pea Powder here and dissolve a little in your gin of choice)
1 oz Dry Vermouth
A squeeze of lemon
Shake over ice. Pour into a lovely coup glass or your favourite glass. Twist a lemon peel around your pinky finger and add it to the top.
** For those of you that don’t drink alcohol, you can still enjoy the pleasure of the purple drink. Mix butterfly pea powder with anything really. Use it as a tea, pop it in your smoothie, mix a bit with kombucha, or add it to San Pellegrino with lemon. If you really want to make a martini though, Seedlip makes beautiful non-alcoholic distilled spirits.