In The Weeds

It is June and I have been trying to write this newsletter since Mother’s Day.

I wanted to write about a conversation I had with my mother a while back about how I can’t picture her in my childhood memories as easily as I can picture my dad. I can see my dad clearly, animatedly telling stories that leave everyone laughing. I see him on the sidelines of my soccer games. In the dugout, coaching my softball team. In his home office, on the living room couch, sitting out on the back deck of our house on hot days, always with a book in his hands. My mother was there too because she was always there, but looking back, I can’t see her. Somewhere along the line, she became more like a setting than a character in the story of my life, constant and consistent, fading into the background as the action of my adolescence played out.

I often think about how different it is raising kids now than it was when I was growing up, how we spent so much time alone and unsupervised and nobody thought anything of it. But it occurs to me now that in many of these moments of childhood independence, my mother was most likely right there, and I just don’t remember. The Guadalupe River ran behind our house and I marvel at how often my parents let my siblings and me swim alone in what was a fairly deep, and at times, quite swift stretch of water—but did they really? They probably did more often than parents would nowadays, but in all likelihood, most of the time my mother was sitting on the dock obligingly answering our calls for her to watch our dives and cannonballs. Or she was floating on a tube alongside us, gently paddling to a safer distance when our splashing became too bothersome. It’s quite a paradox: by always being present, she somehow disappeared.

I had many additional thoughts about this topic when I first set out to write this newsletter post back in early May—thoughts on what this says about motherhood in general, about my specific relationship with my mother, about mothers and daughters versus mothers and sons, about what any of this might mean for me and my own kids. What will they remember about their childhoods? How will I fit into that picture? By being so present, will I simply become the background of their lives? I don’t have the energy to tackle any of those ideas now, though. First I didn’t have the time and now I don’t have the energy.

May was a long month of too many things. The baby grew more teeth and took his first independent steps. My son had some friendship struggles, a little trouble sleeping, and has been running himself ragged as the school year races toward its end in an avalanche of spirit days and special events. The next issue of the children’s magazine I publish is coming out soon and that has been soaking up all of my dedicated work time. Our elderly cat is dying, or maybe not dying and is just sick, but will maybe be sick in some way or another for the rest of his days, however many remain. It is a mystery and veterinary mysteries are costly and exhausting.

We had so much rain in May that weeds took over our garden and climbed up our young trees. The task of getting it all cut back was made more difficult by the fact that it rained nearly every weekend for the entire month, so there was never any chance to get outside and do something about it. The vines along our back fence grew so wild that they began to wind through the net of our basketball hoop that hangs over the alley. Weeds came shooting through the top of the hoop and though we weren’t desperate to get out and practice our free throws, we didn’t want the vines to damage the hoop so my husband pulled a bunch of them down one morning when he got back from dropping our son off at school. His quick bit of cleanup revealed a robin’s nest tucked deep inside the vines. There were two blue eggs inside the nest, previously hidden and now at least slightly exposed to the world. As soon as he saw the nest he left the vines alone and we have crossed our fingers that the disturbance didn’t cause the robin to abandon the eggs, or allow some other bird or critter to swoop in and rob the nest.

Much of the past month feels like this little nest of eggs. I wrote five poems and I realized what needs to be the next step in writing the novel I’ve been working on for the past year. I had some really lovely breakthrough moments with my son that have made me thankful for the stage he’s in even though it’s been a harder age than I expected with social conflicts and insecurities arriving earlier than I assumed they would. My husband and I celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary by going out to dinner with both of our boys in tow, followed by a stop for ice cream on the way home. It was low-key and joyful and was yet another reminder of how lucky I am to have built this beautiful life with someone I love. It got hot and we broke out the splash table and our little pool and the baby had a blast getting wet. So many small treasures have been tucked inside the mess of weeds and chaos that dominated our month.

Whenever my anxiety and stress start to overwhelm me, I like to find a small project to focus on. Nothing too unwieldy or time-consuming (I’m looking at you, novel draft), but something intentional that provides a consistent and dedicated outlet for me to turn to when my mind and my life become their own tangled mass of vines. I have settled on a monthly poem project. This is not a goal to write one poem a month, but rather a series where each month I will attempt to draft a poem that captures my life from that month. I’m viewing it as sort of like a journal, but in poetry form. My plan is to go from April to April— April is my birthday month and next year I’m turning 40 so I figured having a collection of pieces that follow the last year of my thirties could be kind of fun. I am excited to see how it develops and what moments and experiences stand out. I don’t plan to share many of these “Month Poems” as I draft them, but I thought I would share my poem from May, as well as a poem I wrote for my mom for Mother’s Day that I had planned to share if I ever got around to writing the aforementioned abandoned essay. You can find both poems below.

As always, thanks for reading and for all your support!

A quick heads up for anyone in Baltimore: I’m offering another in-person session of my workshop The Written Womb at The Womb Room next Saturday, June 8th, from 12:30-2:30. It is $20 for the workshop. I have lengthened the session to two hours so that I can incorporate some bodywork into the end of our writing time. If you’re a new parent, an expecting parent, or a worn-out, beaten-down seasoned parent and you want to spend some time writing about it and then enjoying a nice head, neck and shoulder massage, register to join me on June 8th! 

The 8th issue of my magazine, Little Thoughts Press, is currently available for preorder. This is our PRIDE issue and all proceeds will be donated to The Trevor Project. If you have a young kid at home, or if you feel inclined to support writing & art that celebrates LGBTQIA+ stories and creatives, I would love for you to order a copy. If you don’t know any young readers you can share the issue with, you could always buy a copy and stick it in one of the Little Free Libraries in your neighborhood so that it’s there for anyone who might find comfort and community from reading it.

You can find more of my writing & contact information at clairemtaylor.com. If you’d like to further support my work, please consider purchasing one of my books, or a copy of Little Thoughts Press. I also have a ko-fi page.