ladies--nothing more than ladies

i was just reading marni's intro to her book about motherhood. it's very beautiful; check it out here.

the last time i read that essay i was probably some form of teenager. i was still looking at everything marni did and said and wrote and wore as a set of instructions or even an augur--both, it took me years to learn, are bad ways of thinking about an older sister (children make mistakes). so the last time i had read it, my thoughts were laid out something like this: some time very soon i will be part of this club; i will know what it feels like to have the spirit of another human being slip into my body; i will write my own chapter of this book; i will be a lady.

there was no question in my mind that this would happen, or that it would happen very, very soon. an mri of my brain at the time would have shown that the whole thing was dominated by the assumption, totally unquestioned, totally unquestioned, that i would very, very soon start having babies. whole regions would have been lit up thinking about all the variables: who the husband would be, what fabulous grad school we'd struggle through our first years of marriage at, hair color, names.

almost 20 years later, it's been hard to pare away all those neural pathways, and the triumphs are silent and private. no scrapbooks of any of it, but i'm happy. and then reading marni's essay again... it's embarrassing now to remember that blithe and passive way of thinking, jarring to be confronted with your younger, stupider self. ghost pains. adults for the most part live in worlds that would have seemed alien to their adolescent selves.

i guess what i'm wondering is if i'd like to read or write a book about what being a lady has been like for me the same way marni wanted to make a book about what being a lady has meant for her and for most adult women. can there be a book about this kind of lady that isn't bridget jones's diary or sex and the city?

my experience of ladyhood has been essentially a negative one, not in an emotional sense but in that it's characterized by a lack of something, a failure to accomplish something. ladies have babies, but not this lady. and it's a hole that keeps growing: just as motherhood accumulates and expands, my lack of babies keeps stretching out in front of me and behind me and i get farther and farther away from motherhood as children around me get older and older, as the mothers i'm close to sink deeper into their relationships with adolescent and adult children. i mean, what kind of depressing book would this be? what would be the point? i wouldn't want to read it, and nobody else would either. putting stilettos and "you go, gurl"s on it would only make it worse. that lady doth protest too much. there's always a glowing kernel in any story about motherhood, a redemptive balm that we all know a mother is the best thing you can be. no such kernel in the spinster story.

we love mother stories because they go somewhere, and because everybody has a mother. their narratives are traditional and digestible: adam and eve, and baby makes three. and, dare i say it, mothers, in the best of circumstances, feel instinctively that there are people in the world who care what they have to say; so mother stories get written and read. the spinster story is scary and there's nobody to write or read it. jane austen wisely slaps marriages onto the ends of her spinster stories. it's almost like it's a curse instead of a story, like if you start telling the story some chasm yawns out and you have to cover it up, or you have to spit and turn in a circle three times. the danger is some kind of narrative equivalent to a time travel paradox where the human race stops existing because there's no mother character reassuring us that reproduction is still moving along. if we're not thinking about reproducing, and we're not thinking about shoes...there's nothing left to think about. chaos. a big hole. a head covered with snakes.

(i know, kristeva or cixous already wrote all of this.) (also, does the opposite of "life" have to be "death"? does the opposite of "gaia" have to be medusa?)

but ladies are ladies. ladies with babies are ladies; ladies without babies are ladies. but lady stories that don't involve babies...can they not be pathetic and depressing or about clothes and promiscuous sex? my hunch is that "lady" implies "baby" in a rigorous way. there's always a baby lurking somewhere in every lady story; it's there or it's gone or it's coming.

there are lots of reasons jesus often talked about women who are alone. here's a scritcher:


isaiah 54
1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.
2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;
3 for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
4 ¶ Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.
5 For thy Maker is thine husband; The LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
6 For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.
7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.