Happy Hour Hack: Babies on fire escapes, Ursula K. Le Guin, and quickie Pilates
The Rose Marie Cromwell edition
Welcome to Happy Hour Hack! Each Friday, I share a tip from my interviewee of the week, along with any ideas or inspiration I receive from readers, plus some things that are piquing my own interest.
Hack
This week’s tip comes from the photo and video artist Rose Marie Cromwell. She has a book recommendation that could not better align with the ethos of The Creators Forum. It’s The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem by Julie Phillips. I ordered it immediately and am devouring it. Phillips explores where motherhood and creativity converge, looking specifically at the lives of Alice Neel, Doris Lessing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Angela Carter.
Rose describes it thus:
The book is about different writer and artist mothers and their stories throughout time. There’s a whole section of quotes about how motherhood helped them be better artists. And that was something that really resonated with me. The stories are about artists and mothers decades ago, and these women had it a lot harder than we do. Even if they were successful artists, they were still expected to do the majority of the mothering.
I have not read much in the past three years, which is something I really miss. I am just so tired when I get to bed. Even talking to you now, I’m exhausted. But this is one book I’ve read cover to cover since becoming a mom. It made me feel that I have it a lot easier than these women because I have a supportive partner and I made the choice to have a baby. But it was inspiring.
This book so perfectly touches on the conversation I had with Rose about her theme of matrescence in her book Eclipse. This is from the opening chapter of The Baby on the Fire Escape:
A woman who becomes a parent has to deal with two new relationships: one with her child, one with herself as a mother. Building these relationships—and for a creative mother, rebuilding her relationship to her vocation—involves redefining herself as a person, both in relation to her child and in relation to what she expects from motherhood. In effect, she comes of age all over again.
You can find the book, and help support independent bookstores, here.
The Forum
The Creators Forum is now one month old, and I just want to take a second to thank all the readers who are sharing it. As you may know, I long ago decided not to participate in social media (with the exception of a Facebook Buy Nothing group), which has been a very healthy choice for myself. But it is not conducive for spreading the word about new projects! But I’m thrilled to see that TCF is now being read in 26 states and 14 countries! So thank you and keep it up!
Books
For my son’s recent birthday, I bought him the first Harry Potter book (a beautiful illustrated one that is great for younger kids) for us to read together. I have never read the series or watched the films and always kind of wondered, but also didn’t really care, if they were worth all of the hype. And I have to say that reading it with my son was an absolute delight. He was so into it, and it was enjoyable for me as well. Although, it was not something I would have wanted to read on my own.
But it reminded me of the great Ursula K. Le Guin and her Earthsea series, which many consider the predecessor to Harry Potter. It’s been much written about that J.K. Rowling was not the first to come up with a story about a school for wizards, despite how the publishing world and critics and audiences behaved. Here’s the defining article on Le Guin/Rowling, and, in a snippet, this is Le Guin’s take on Potter:
[Le Guin’s] credit to JK Rowling for giving the “whole fantasy field a boost” is tinged with regret. “I didn’t feel she ripped me off, as some people did,” she says quietly, “though she could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn’t one of them. That hurt.”
I read the Earthsea series a long time ago, but as an adult, and loved every book. They stand the test of time and are adult appropriate but would also be great for teens or even something to try to share with a teen. (Was that a ridiculously ignorant/idealistic thing to say? Can you tell I don’t have a teen? Maybe just slip the first book under their door?)
To tie this together with our tip of the week, Phillips’ chapter on Le Guin in The Baby on the Fire Escape is fantastic. Le Guin handled the duality of being a mother and author in a fascinating way. She truly loved being a mother and loved being with her kids while also needing to be a writer. “Writing was always my inmost way of being in the world and the only thing I was ever sure justified my existence as an individual (rather than as a wife, mother, social being).” And she had no guilt about that. Her way of managing both was to compartmentalize them. “Other artists use mothering as material, but ‘Le Guin approached mothering and writing as two distinct projects that happened to occupy the same place and time.’” And, most interestingly, she did it by making her protagonists male. It was the only way her brain could escape her domesticity to create other worlds and other people. “With her children, she was a mother, with a mother’s shared identity and interests. In her fiction, she could write about people who were solitary, searching, alienated, learning to be themselves. When she became a man in her fiction, though, it was also because she couldn’t imagine what a woman’s liberty might consist of. She didn’t know how to give any women, especially mothers, the powerful destinies she dreamed of for herself.”
(I’m writing this right now with one child on my lap who’s trying to push keys while another is swinging a pillow beside my head and talking incessantly about dragons or something. So I get it!)
Exercise
I want to preface this by saying that I did not work out from the moment my first child was born until my second child turned 3. That’s a total of five years. And the only reason I felt I was able to start exercising was because lockdown had initiated and 1.) With no commuting to work and dropping off and picking up of kids, I suddenly had a few extra hours in the day, and 2.) I, like so many of us, was going to lose my freaking mind if I didn’t get out of that house and away from my family. So I ran. (At least until I tore the meniscus in my knee. Sigh.)
I say all this because I would NEVER want to make a woman feel guilty for not exercising. When I see women with young children who look fit, I’m baffled. How is it possible? When do they find the time? How do they have the energy?
But if you are at a stage in your life when you want to be working out and you have a little time but not a lot, this Pilates video is pretty great.
I know there are a million videos out there (so please let us know if you have a favorite)…
…but this one has become my go-to. Why? Mostly because it feels like I get a full-body workout and it takes 2O MINUTES. You don’t need any equipment or props, and it really strengthens the abs and butt, which we women need as we grow older (think posture, stability, and lower back, knee, and hip health). Now, this video will kick your ass, so if you’re just starting out, be patient with and kind to yourself. Like with any exercise, expect it to take a month of regular sessions before it stops sucking.
I’ve done this video as a way to start the day, I’ve done it late at night when I needed a stress reliever, I’ve done it with my kids (with them mocking how I can’t do some of the moves), and I’ve done it drunk. It’s so versatile! Give it a try!