Good Mom on Paper by Stacey May Fowles

Author:Stacey May Fowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book*hug Press
Published: 2022-03-19T20:22:51+00:00

Death of a Muse

S. Lesley Buxton

Our house is divided into two apartments. In the summer we rent out the upstairs apartment to vacationers and live downstairs, and in the winter we move upstairs. It’s like living two realities.

When we first moved downstairs to the smaller apartment, my husband, Mark, built me a set of shelves that remind me of an old haberdashery cupboard. All different sizes, they are now crammed with my favourite things: mason jars filled with buttons, tins of ribbons and threads, baskets of yarns and fabrics. Often, when I’m supposed to be writing, I distract myself by taking down one of the many containers and reorganizing it.

Alongside these things are books, photos, and strange keepsakes, like a toy double-decker bus with a broken wheel, and a vintage tape measure in the shape of a cat. There’s a small gold-plated Ganesh that I sometimes like to cradle in my hand for comfort. It used to belong to my daughter, Indy. An atheist friend of mine gave it to her. For years, the God known as the remover of obstacles sat on a little ledge over her bed. Now it sits on a shelf above her urn. Since her death it has moved many times.

Indy died eight years ago when she was sixteen from a rare neurological condition that began when she was ten. In six years, she went from being the kid who climbed the highest on the rope at gymnastics to having constant seizures that made it impossible for her to walk or use her hands. She was my only child.

When people find out my only child died, they often ask why I had only had one. They used to ask me this question when Indy was a toddler as well. Back then, I ignored it. I just figured they envied our closeness and freedom. When Indy first died, this question offended me. Now it makes me laugh. What do they mean when they ask this? Are they saying I should have expected to be bereaved, and prepared with an extra child? Or that if I’d had another child it wouldn’t matter? I don’t understand; I have two arms, if I lost one of them, I’d still want the other back.

I only ever wanted one child. Early on in my writing practice I remember reading an Alice Walker quote that said something like a writer should only have one child because she needs her other hand to carry her typewriter. I looked for this quote while I was writing this but couldn’t find it. I did find this about writers written by Walker: “They should have children — assuming this is of interest to them — but only one.”

Why? “Because with one you can move,” she said.

Did my child make me a writer or was I a writer before that? This is a question that I constantly circle back to.

Before Indy’s death, I never considered how entangled those two selves were: the mother and the writer. Now I find myself thinking about it often.

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