"Why can't women do anything important?" Logan asked a few weeks ago. She's smart, that one. At eight years old she has already put voice to an age old question. A question that every girl struggles to understand and every woman struggles to answer.
It's a great question. A question that shattered a million glass ceilings. A question of historical import. A question that created female heretics and heros. A question that gave us The Suffragette Movement and Women's Liberation. I'm blessed by this question.
On the other hand, I'm injured by it as well. When asked what it is that we do, too many of us feel to answer, "I'm just a mother." As though motherhood has stolen something of our value. As though our cultural worth would be more significant if we were engaged in a "real" vocation. I am not against women working. I am a teacher by trade. However, I will always be a mother first.
With the birth of our first daughter I understood that like I never had before. I looked at Mr. Wicke and I said, "This is the job we can't screw up." Nothing before or since has held such enormity for me. It is, and always will be my primary calling.
And that perhaps is why I was most offended by Elizabeth Gilbert's insinuation that motherhood was a waste of intellect, curiosity, and talent. That somehow those things just disappeared into this enormous empty space called sacrifice and deprivation. What I got out of her words,
"Her marriage and her seven children, in a life of constant struggle and deprivation — it was heavy. And that beautiful mind, that beautiful intellect, that exquisite sense of curiosity and exploration, was gone," was the judgement that motherhood is robbing me of the very best parts of myself.
That, simply, is not true.
And if I listen to the cultural winds that insist that motherhood stands in opposition to my personal fulfillment, I am in for a lifetime of frustration. How will I ever find contentment if I am constantly torn between what I am and what I am told that has cost me?
Yes, I have chosen motherhood. And yes, that choice has required me to close some other doors on things I could have done, but we all make choices. My particular choice, in no way, means that my talents and abilities are gone or wasted or even dormant. I am still me, even when no one is watching. I don't need to dance across the world's stage to know that I am dancing. I don't need outside approval to be brilliant. I can be as bright, as curious, as creative as I choose to be.
Motherhood is hard sometimes, and it does require some amount of sacrifice. What career doesn't? But it can also be picnics, singing, literature, museums, mountains, zoos, bike rides, libraries and art. Children are the most curious creatures on the planet. They're ready to learn everything! My children have opened all kinds of new worlds for me. I can explain the cycle of precipitation, list more dinosaurs than I ever thought possible, answer the question do cats and dogs dream, explain the principles of a prism, give a brief history of King Tut and other discovered mummies, and recite The Tyger by William Blake by heart to name just a few of my newly discovered abilities. As we experience the world together, I get the happy priviledge of growing along with my children.
Admittedly there is monotony and drudgery in motherhood, but if my passion were Arabian horses and I had the means to have a stable full of them, I'd still have to dung out their stalls. The point is everything has a price attached to it. It's simply a matter of choosing my focus: The price or the payoff. Nothing can rob me of my inner life. I can still read, and write, and think, and create. I can fill myself up--and fill myself up I must! Without that, what would I have to pour into these little bodies and minds that I'm building? My fingerprints are all over them. Pieces of me become pieces of them. Some say mothers are divided. I say we are multiplied, and that is a beautiful thing.
That kind of mothering doesn't happen by accident. That kind of mothering--intentional mothering--requires focus, planning, organization, leadership, skill, and talent. Rob us? Hardly. It demands that we be the best of who we are. Intentional mothering requires a deep understanding of exactly what we are called to do.
"Why can't women do anything important?"
I want to be sure my daughter understands this one thing very clearly: Women, from the beginning of time, have always done the important thing. We give life. And then we take care of it. We protect it; we nurture it; we raise it up, and we can rise with it; however, so much of that personal development depends upon our attitude. Motherhood, like most other jobs, is what we make of it. We can choose to just get through it or we can choose to be brilliant at it.
I, for one, am not "just a mother." This is my chosen career. It is my calling. And the next time someone asks what it is that I do, I'm going to answer, "I build human beings." Who else can say that? Nobody is going to tell me that I'm wasting my time.
