In the 5 a.m. darkness, I slip out of bed, turn off my alarm clock quickly and slide on whatever clothes I can find on the floor, careful not to lose my balance and fall. I cannot afford to make a sound. I tiptoe out of the room, relishing the sounds of open-mouthed breathing coming from the bedrooms. In my head I am already writing. The half-written story, started the previous morning, is sharp and clear, and I am eager to enter into it. But halfway down the stairs I am interrupted by a terrific wail. And there is the dilemma: Do I let the baby bawl herself to sleep — and run the risk of waking up the four year-old? If so, I would have two people awake and no writing done. Or do I wake up the sleeping husband, hand him the baby and attempt to write while listening to unhappy baby yelling at unhappy daddy and, eventually, unhappy big sister?

Three people awake. No writing done.

I sigh and pick up my child. Her skin, soft and pliant as bread dough, smells of sugar and milk. Instantly, she buries her face in my neck. We lie down next to her sleeping father, curl up and relax. The story I was writing in my head slowly ebbs away until I no longer remember what I was doing out of bed so early. I rub my baby’s back, her legs, her tummy, breathe in the scent of her sparse hair, love her with my guts.  

In the disappearing moments before I drift asleep, the black-and-white image of that English woman reappears in my memory. Her hair is falling out of the knot at the nape of her neck, her wool jacket and loose silk scarf at her throat fade at the sharp pallor of her face. Her eyes look past the photographer, out of the doorway, into the other room.

Her own room.

God damn you, Virginia Woolf. You were right, you are right, you always will be right.  

Happy?

I now detect a gleam in the motionless gray eye, a slight curl of the lip that was not there before. It says, I told you so.  

The life I envisioned at 20, with a copy of A Room of One’s Own stuck in my backpack, is a far cry from the life of interruptions and revolting tasks that I now lead and love.  

For me, it begins with a tumor.

Let me explain.

I am sitting in the lobby of the student clinic writing in very small letters. I can barely fit my name in its designated spot. Under the heading “Reason For Visit” I write this inside a 3 cm by 1 cm box: “cessation of menstrual cycles but don’t even bother giving me a pregnancy test because i’ve taken four already all negative and i think i have some sort of tumor.”  

Date of last period: October 20.  
Today’s date: January 8.

The nurse smiles. I don’t think she even read the words that I painstakingly jammed into that tiny box. She takes a pregnancy test off the shelf and sends me into the bathroom to pee. This is fine, I tell myself. I now see why our health care costs so much — a bunch of nervous-Nellies and their insatiable desire to order more tests.  I perform the usual routine. Wipe with alcohol pad. (Ouch.) Spread legs apart. Hunch over. Lean in to get a better view. Pee on hand anyway.  

I place the sample in the metal cupboard and slide the door shut.  

On the other side, a door slides open, and the lab assistant takes the sample out.  

I wash my hands confidently. Perhaps now we can get down to business.

My mother had a uterine cyst several years before, so it would make sense that this is what I have. This is the reason why I am so bloated all the time. This is the reason for my insane cravings for milkshakes after two years of veganism. This is the reason why I have been falling asleep at the computer, on the bus, in the student lounge, at the library. This is the reason why I nearly threw up on two heavily-perfumed girls, as they walked into the Creative Writing class I was student-teaching. I am ready for surgery or drugs.

I just want to feel better.

The nurse walks me to the exam room. She is chipper and bubbly and says it will take a few minutes. She is not looking down at the test. I am. I am walking down the hall behind a nurse holding a small white plastic square with a gigantic red “plus” sign.

I sit in the exam room and cry. I see every plan my boyfriend and I have made over the last two years disintegrate. Thailand, Guatemala, New Zealand, Tibet. These were places I could teach, and he would tag along. I could finish my novel, he could write travel essays. We would come back and work for the Park Service again.  He would study architecture. I would teach for five years in the roughest schools I could find and then go to school myself for that MFA. I would write essays. Publish a volume of poetry. We figured we would have children in our thirties, if at all, but now …

Were you trying to get pregnant?

The nurse is kind, concerned about my puffy eyes, my gray skin.

No.

Are you married?

No.

Did your boyfriend have any idea that you might be pregnant?

No.

How do you think he is going to react?

I don’t know.

Do you want to keep the baby?

I don’t know.

Have you ever even thought about motherhood?

Maybe. I can’t remember.

Would you like information on …

Wait, I say. I don’t want her to continue.

I’m sorry?

Yes, I say. My eyes begin to burn. My hands tremble, grip my jeans, tremble again.

Yes what?  

Yes. Yes. I do want the baby. I do want to be a mom.  

I imagine that I have grown taller. That my hands are claws, and my eyes, flame.

The nurse looks at me. Her eyes are blank.

Yes, I tell you!  

I am crying freely now. It is a relief, and my face relaxes. The nurse looks at me as though I’ve gone crazy, horrified that I have just shouted.  

Yes, I whisper.  I put my hand instinctively on my stomach. Haven’t yet learned that the womb is actually much lower, but never mind. The nurse purses her lips and gives me a stack of brochures. Crisis counselors. Midwives. Abortion clinics. Anti-abortion clinics. A social worker. Discount maternity clothes. Adoption information.
  
I shove it all into my school bag and head for my car.

Seven months later I am pushing so hard that my eyes bug out and my skin rips open. My sisters are there and my mother and all are gasping with joy and revulsion and pain and astonishment. After three colossal pushes she emerges, knees and elbows moving chaotically through the birth canal, spit out like a watermelon seed and almost slipping out of the tired and cranky doctor’s hands. My baby is laid upon my belly, and she is red and gooey and bellowing. Prettier than prose. Sweeter than any poem I will ever write. Her heart-shaped face and rosebud mouth are wrinkled with rage and confusion as I vainly attempt to shade her eyes from the overly bright room.  

“Can we turn down the lights?” I ask.

“No,” says the cranky doctor with a look that keeps my mouth shut.  Apparently I have already been enough of a bother.  

I imagine that we have already returned to our apartment in South Minneapolis, with its lilac walls and pale green sheets on the bed. I have already prepared a little spot for her between her father and me. As she screeches and squirms, sucks and falls asleep, I plan out our days lounging and writing together — baby at the breast, pencil in the hand, notebook on the knee. She would play quietly, amuse herself while I explored the vast terrain of linguistic possibility.  

Ha.

Two months later and only one paragraph into the master’s thesis (the computer is currently covered in diapers, receiving blankets, and toys), I discover that the daily poetry journal’s last entry was two days before my daughter was born. A simple, four-sentence note to my landlord takes six days to compose. I discover that I need to re-evaluate my relationship with writing and re-learn.

My first attempts went like this:  

Day one. Find notebook. Place notebook on table. Find pen. Place pen next to notebook. Sit down. Baby starts to cry. Decide to let baby cry, and maybe she will calm herself down. Wait six very long  seconds. Pick up baby. Sing to baby. Read story to baby. Take baby on walk. Forget about notebook.

Day two. Put baby down for nap. Discover notebook on table. (What luck!) Sit down to write. Consider writing ode to dirty diapers. Consider writing sonnet about spit-up. Decide to free-associate, writing down words and allowing the poem to form. Inexplicably, the word “whereas” is written 16 times down a neat little column.  

Day three. Head out with baby in backpack, blankie around waist, spare diaper shoved in jeans pocket, notebook and pen in hand. Lay baby on blanket in the grass. Lie down next to her. Smell the warm soil, the fading grass, the falling leaves of early autumn. Write. Time, space disappear. Three poems and the first eight pages of a story later, I am satisfied. Roll around in the grass with baby. Show baby colored leaves, flowers, grass, sky. Kiss baby. Bring baby home. Forget notebook at the park. It is gone forever.

At night, I dream of Virginia Woolf. Words first encountered in college have lain dusty and ignored in the recesses of my brain, but now, like the dry bones in that barren and wasted field, suddenly spring to life, animation, and power. My new life as mother, teacher, wife, and frustrated writer has opened a window between our lives, and I can’t get Woolf out of my head. A life superimposed on sadness and despair, her writing life transcends gender, class, illness, and expectation. Every limitation falls away on the page, every prison disintegrates in the freedom of her own room.  

And now, five years into the new millennium, I discover that I am the woman that she wrote about. I am the woman who lays art aside to play the mother to my kids, my adult siblings, my neighbors, my friends. I am the woman whose soul-crushing love for her children creates disorganization of thought, disordered creativity, and desperation. I am the woman who feels guilty for any minute spent in the pursuit of art.  I am the woman in desperate need of a room, not just in my house, but a room in my head. Like the millions of other women who haven’t picked up a paint  brush in years, who can’t find a sitter when her band practices, whose desk has been co-opted by fingerpaints and crayons, I have allowed motherhood to trump artistry.

The sun glares on my computer as I write this one-handed. My squirming baby tackles my shoulders, tugs on my hair, struggles against my arm crooked firmly around her waist. My nose wrinkles at the acrid smell of her diaper, but I decide to let it slide for a minute.

“Nuss, nuss,” says the baby, peering under my shirt to make sure they were still there.

“In a minute,” I say, “Mommy is finishing her sentence.”

My room, unfortunately, has an open door and often invites wrestling children, half-done art projects, a rancid diaper pail, and the constant cries of rage and protest. But at 5 a.m. it is just me, the stories forming from my fingers and the click-click of my computer, if the baby doesn’t cry.  

STORY INDEX

PEOPLE > WOOLF, VIRGINIA >

Biography
British author, feminist
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf

WORKS > A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN >

Stub
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Room_of_One%27s_Own

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In The Fray Contributor