All My Children... Are Imaginary
A novelist loves her kids, even if they are fake.
by Lisa Gabriele
September 25, 2008
I have two boys, Jake, six, and Sam, nine. My favorite child is definitely Jake. I think I treat him better than Sam, too. But I'm fairly certain he's going to be an asshole when he grows up. I can already tell. He preens around my sister, his aunt, upon whom he has an interesting crush. But sometimes he's sneaky and mean. Sam, my oldest, has epilepsy. I've held back from truly loving him in case he dies suddenly. That's probably why I'm brusque with him and sometimes fantasize about sleeping with someone other than his dad. At core, I don't feel I deserve any of this, any of them. So I neglect them. Just a little.
Oh, also, I have slapped them, smoked and swore in front of them. I've been drunk. I've left them in the car while I shopped, and once, on a spontaneous solo trip to New York for the weekend, almost forgot to call them altogether. You should have seen Sam before I left. He nearly lost his mind, but he was too proud to beg me to stay. To let his younger brother see him cry like a girl about my leaving would have been unthinkable. That surprised me. I actually liked that about him.
I'm not sure why I became a mother. Partly it was to rub it into my childless sister's face, to say, Look, I'm brave enough to do something that someone as selfish as you could never do. And partly it's because I couldn't get my head around a career; I became a mom because I couldn't really think of anything else to do. To make matters worse, I accidentally on purpose got knocked up to avoid having to make a mature decision about my future. Is that bad? I can't tell.
I accidentally on purpose got knocked up. Is that bad?
Who do you talk to about these messy motives? Other mothers? Yeah, right. Try that in your local playground. Stand there and say, "So. Any serious regrets? Miss your old life? If you could do it again all over, would you have kids? Jealous of your single, childless friends and their trips to Sardinia, their Restylane injections, their four-hundred-dollar hair streaks? Can I see some hands?"
So, since there's no one I can talk to about my fears, my ambivalence, my crappy, crappy mothering skills, I'm telling you, the anonymous reader, because the big reason I became a mother is that I may never be one myself.
Here's the part where I rip off my mask and say, I'm not an abusive parent, it's me, Lisa Gabriele, writing in the voice of my character Peachy Archer Laliberte. She's also not an abusive parent, but when you're writing a novel from the point of view of a happily married mother of two, and you are not those things, your character is going to absorb some of your emotional interior. And, mine's shot through with ambivalence.
©2008 Lisa Gabriele and Babble.com
About the Author
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