Hobbies

The tough thing about motherhood is remembering who you are. Not who you are in an existentialist sort of way, but who you are as in: I am someone who takes exercise classes. Who experiments with gourmet dessert recipes. Who works on Chopin’s ballade in F minor. Who goes to the mall and movie theater. Who reads magazines in bookstores. Who swims. Who makes up songs on the guitar. Who reads poetry.

Just because I have to plan in advance to go to the bathroom nowadays, much less naturally have time to do any of those things anymore, doesn’t mean I’m not still that same person. Just because in the past, I was too busy studying for a big test, or didn’t have access to a guitar or a pool, doesn’t mean I wasn’t still that same person. But often those things fade out of your life so gradually you don’t even realize they’re gone.

I’m sort of cracking open the door on some of those things. I bought a lovely bound sketchbook and have been filling it up with pencil drawings (bad ones of the kids, better ones of still life) and ink doodles. I’m working on that cable throw. I cracked open our Norton Anthology of poetry. I make some effort to write every day. I did an exercise video.

In a life filled with work and kids, where everything boils down to what is functional and necessary, it feels good to do a little something just for its own sake. It’s like using an atrophied muscle. It feels good in a healthy, restorative way, and it brings something of myself back that I’ve lost. I’m learning that it’s okay to donate some time and energy for these things. There is some part of me that is what I do, or that becomes what I do, and it feels good to remember.