My Trade is Mystery: Meditations on Motherhood
carl phillips' book on craft, a babymoon, a bath
This is something I wrote in November 2022 for my writing group. I am missing them, I am missing writing. I miss being in the flow of words. I came back to this piece today wondering what I might find, and as it turns out, I found myself. Whenever I think I’ve lost her, she’s right there, naming thoughts I still have, sharing fears I had as recently as this morning. We are each other, and wow, what a relief.
I’m sitting on a couch that faces Tomales Bay. I am nestled by walls of windows, scattered boat docks, and water. I’m up early, waiting for sunrise, wanting to write, wanting to, as Carl Phillips says in his book My Trade is Mystery, practice. I’m waiting, it seems, for a lot.
There’s the baby, of course, the baby who, with each passing day, stretches into new corners of my abdomen and reminds me that yes, they’re still here. There’s the two slices of sourdough in the oven, crisping and heating and waiting to be smothered with grass-fed butter and raspberry jam. It’s the last morning of a two-day trip and in a few hours we will pack up, check-out, and endure the long drive home.
Despite the view (and the wood-burning stove! and the quiet!), I’ve been surprised by moments of homesickness. The dog who usually greets me each morning with a low rumble and wet tongue isn’t here. The structure of time, which I’m usually happy to be rid of, has me floating and untethered, much like the way this loft feels hovering over the water. I am waiting to feel ready for parenthood, as though this is an achievable goal. This trip, I thought, might help. And in some ways, I guess it has.
On our first day I drew a bath in a tub that was cavernous enough to hold the depth of my body. I dipped my toes in the flat water and mourned the lack of epsom salt and bubbles, wondering why I hadn’t thought to pack any. Regardless, I sunk in. An audible groan escaped my throat. To be submerged in fluidity and warmth, to feel the weight of my pregnant belly release—this, I thought to myself, was rest.
The tub faced a window that faced more water and the CA-1 highway. The window’s glass was covered with a thin, black film that allowed insiders to look out while also remaining hidden. The film was peeling in one corner and I couldn't help but wonder if someone, out of curiosity, had picked at it until the corner unfurled. The sounds of tiny waves crashed below me, and I imagined the wooden beams anchoring this bathroom breaking, causing me to fall into the waters beneath.
As I always tend to do in the bath, I dozed off. But I want to read, I kept thinking as my head knocked gently left and right, falling and rising, slumbering and waking, slipping between consciousness and surrender. In the wake times I’d poke my stomach, fearful still from the one internet voice who said bathing while pregnant could be dangerous for the baby. So many things could be dangerous for the baby that I’ve not only lost track, but also lost the implicit enjoyment that comes with so many of those things. A glass of wine is okay, but stick to 4oz, and if you start feeling buzzed then back off. A bath is okay but it must be warm not hot and if you feel dizzy or faint it’s definitely too hot. Don’t even mention hot tubs, of which there is one, behind me, on the deck outside, also facing the water, of which I declined to use and thus opted for the bath instead. I didn’t want to risk it.
There are rules that have rules that break them, and for someone who was raised to respect and obey rules, this is difficult. Phillips writes about his students asking how to have a “writing practice.” They want specifics, details, a step-by-step process. They want to know they are doing it the right way; they want to know they are being themselves the right way.
These are the words I would eventually wake up in the bath to read, the words that would linger with me and reframe my ideas about what I’m doing when I’m sitting down to write. His words would remind me that mastery is not the goal and never should be, and that mistakes are, in fact, hardly to be called mistakes for where they bring us after.
I am trying to enter motherhood the right way. I am trying to find someone else who I think has done it, someone who has become a master and no longer makes mistakes and has the practice of parenting down. I won’t admit this to myself—I know better than to believe it exists—and yet I am clawing, desperately, to find a way into this that doesn’t equal pain or missteps or unknowns. I am waiting to give birth and wishing I didn’t have to. I am wanting to know, now, how motherhood will feel. How I will feel as a mother, if I’m able to endure it. God, I want to be able to endure it.
I wonder if maybe, just maybe, I can see it like Phillips talks about. If every late night feeding and diaper change, each silent-scream I let out in exasperation, any moment of calm, can all be woven together into a tapestry of practice. So that, over time, I won’t be a master, but I might be able to “think now without thinking about thinking”—how to keep the baby swaddled, how to write, how to live—and that instead, I’ll “lose this awareness” and let intuition take over. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to do this.
The sun has long since lifted over the hill’s backs, and half a piece of toast lays untouched on the plate next to me. My fingers are slightly tacky from eating while typing, but no crumbs litter the keyboard and, miraculously, no droplets of jam line the front of my sweater. The ducks are out now. They wade and then dive, sometimes gone for minutes on end, until their bodies pop back up to the surface, shake off the excess, and continue on.
Loving this word bath.
I loved this when I first read it, and I love it even more now. And we are missing you! And your writing. We're here!