in a departure from my previous mothers’ day posts - which were about the feminist origins behind a day steeped in sentimentality and thinking about which mothers are celebrated on Mothers’ day and which aren’t - I’ve decided to model my thoughts about motherhood after the the Pillow Book by Japanese courtier Sei Shonagon. In a pleasing symmetry, Mothers’ Day also falls a week after the Japanese holiday Kodomo no Hi (Children’s Day) that takes place on May 5.
The Pillow Book seemed to be everywhere in the 1990s. Well, okay in two places: the elegantly beautiful but really quite pointless Peter Greenaway movie The Pillow Book (1996) and as a framing device in Booker-nominee Ruth L Ozeki’s My Year of Meats (1998). Oh and I lived in Japan for a year towards the end of the decade.
Being hopelessly behind the times, I’ve only just managed to finish the actual Pillow Book - a collection of random and often whimsical thoughts by a court lady who lived over a thousand years ago (around 965) during the Heian period. While some of the book feels like a totally alien world - her worship of her mistress the Empress, for example - a lot of it feels very modern - for example, the sexual shenanigans of the courtiers. What was most startlingly modern, however, was its form: the constant use of poetry to communicate, particularly to amuse or seduce, compares with the quirky tweet or facebook status update, and the episodic and random nature of ‘the’ Pillow Book reads like a blog. Sei Shonagon’s writing style was so prescient she pre-empted the internet by more than a millenium!
Shonagon was married at 16, and possibly at the time of her service to the Empress, divorced. She had a son, Norinaga, from her first marriage and is believed to have married a second time after her service ended. She had another child, a daughter: Koma no Myobu. Shonagon did not write much about her son or motherhood particularly in the Pillow Book, but she did make some observations about babies and children:
Small children and babies ought to be plump. So ought provincial governors and others who have gone ahead in the world (p 78)
Adorable things: the face of a child drawn on a melon ... One picks up a pretty baby and holds him for a while in one's arm; ... he clings to one's neck and falls asleep (pp 168-69)
Hateful things: one is just about to be told an interesting piece of news and a baby starts crying (p 45)
She is perhaps best known for her meditations on ‘things’, the headings of some of which I am now going to shamelessly borrow to talk about motherhood-type things:
- Things that cannot be compared
Baby number one and baby number two, so similar in some ways but as different as night and day in others. Good days and bad days: if you try to figure out what worked in the former and not in the latter it will drive you crazy.
Your pre-maternal and post-maternal life.
And body.
- Unsuitable things
A baby and a plastic bag. My big girl’s choice of kindy clothes during a biting southerly wind.
- Things that make one’s heart beat faster
Wondering if your baby will stay asleep once you shift her from you to the cot. Watching your big girl climb further and higher saying ‘watch me’: it’s important she learns but you can’t shake the image of her falling off the table out of your head. The anaesthetic drugs for my caesarean with baby number two.
- Things that arouse a fond memory of the past
Taking out the clothes you packed away from baby number one for baby number two. Watching video footage of herself as a baby and toddler on my camera with my big girl.Having lunch in town where people wear clothes that don’t have food stains on them and have brushed their hair.
- Hateful things
1950s-style financial dependence. People suddenly seeming much less interested in what you have to say now you are no longer in paid employment. Powerlessness. Sentimentalising motherhood, especially on Mothers’ Day. Books about parenting. Being compared to a car. Being compared to a cow. Internet memes that aim to guilt-trip mothers even more (that means you ‘Iphone Mom’). Anything that aims to guilt-trip mothers.
- Depressing things
A baby who won’t sleep. A baby screaming inconsolably. Feeling like you will never sleep again. Feeling like you just don’t know what to do and have run out of ideas about how to stop your baby screaming inconsolably. Isolation. Being stuck in the house all day. The monochrome nature of things for little girls.
- Splendid things
An unexpected but much-longed-for night of semi-decent sleep. Making deeper connections with your community. First birthday parties. Having the odd hour to myself to blog or read or eat or use the computer or stare blankly into space drooling wondering where all my energy has gone. Mining the rich vein of feminist writing about motherhood.
- Annoying things
People who take down a parent's choice of baby carrier. Or choice of anything for that matter. Advertisements that don’t have a ‘skip ad’ option before the Peppa Pig cartoons on YouTube. When your baby prefers the packet food to the food you have taken the trouble to lovingly prepare yourself. When people tell you your baby’s hungry or tired like you don’t already know yourself and are trying your best to deal with her. Plunket.
- Things without merit
Media constructions of mothers that depict the perfect mother as a dead one.
- Shameful things
The time I gave my baby a small shake because I was nearly out of my head with frustration and then, realising what I had done, thinking that she would end up in CYFS care and I was the worst mother in the world. On really bad days, feeling like ‘I hate my life’ when I have many many things for which to be thankful.
- Surprising and distressing things
A sudden feeling of invisibility once you are a stay-at-home-mother with no income of your own. Watching your baby have her first set of vaccinations and knowing that you consciously chose to inflict pain on her. Dropping your big girl off at kindy and knowing that she will have to ‘sink or swim’ by herself much more than she ever has before.
- Awkward things
Trying to breastfeed in the back of a shearing shed. Trying to breastfeed in public anywhere your baby won’t co-operate. Okay, pretty much breastfeeding in public full-stop.
- Things that give a hot feeling
Over-heated rooms. Engorged breasts.
- Pleasing things
Finding two socks that match. Taking maternity clothes to an op shop. The baby actually liking the food that I have lovingly made for her. The big girl actually doing what you ask her the first time you ask.
- Things that fall from the sky
Donuts, hamburgers and broccoli in Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs. My big girl liked the book so much we let her watch the film as her first movie. The fast-paced story and editing didn’t really seem to capture her and she kept asking ‘where’s the flying food?’
Rain, rain and more rain nearly every day at the moment.
- Adorable things
My big girl discovering the word ‘odd’ and continually using it to describe things by emphasising the ‘d’ sound at the end. The baby laughing at her big sister standing on the table and loudly singing ‘commotion in the ocean, ooh ahh’ while she is having her lunch. My big girl making jokes and laughing at her own hilariousness. My on-the-move baby looking so pleased with herself that she can now roll and shuffle to get to the toys, plastic bags and dropped bits of food on the floor that she wants. And about a bazillion other things too.
- Outstandingly splendid things
A baby who regularly sleeps through the night. Having two mostly happy, healthy girls and surviving to tell the tale thanks to the benefits and privileges of a ‘first world’ life and healthcare system. Dads who are very involved in raising their young children (where that’s wanted or possible, of course): getting the baby in the middle of the night, staying home from work when the children are sick, alternating parental leave arrangements, or being the primary care-giver for their children. When your baby starts to talk and, in time, says ‘I love you mummy’.
Happy Mothers’ Day!
