Writing my piece about Friday night chaos at our house the other day, didn’t feel right once I hit the “publish” button. I have been on this discipline-building mission of posting something every Thursday, or by Thursday every week, and God knows how hard it has been for me to keep any kind of focus and work consistency since my fourth child was born. So, I complied and dutifully followed my schedule. But as I have been spending the better half of my days keeping up with the situation in Israel and Palestine, writing about my family life and the hyper-privileged version of motherhood I enjoy, has become increasingly uncomfortable.
When I published my post about the pumpkin soup a couple of weeks ago, I realize I was still in a form of denial. And that the details of the Hamas attack hadn’t fully emerged yet, so that I was still thinking of it as a rocket-type, traditional assault if it makes any sense to even use that word. Let’s just say that I first thought of it as the type of Gaza-Israel conflict that we have sadly grown accustomed to over the past twenty years. In retrospect it is obvious that I was wrong, and that I didn’t pay close enough attention. As I began to read more, and listen more, about the terror that unfolded on October 7, and as the situation for civilian families in Gaza grew worse by the day, it felt absurd, and obscene, to be whining about a Friday night gone awry in a comfortable Parisian kitchen. Somehow, I kept going because I didn’t know what else to do. But today I feel the need to address this and clarify, mostly for myself, why it is important to actually keep going.
When you read about gunmen barging into people’s homes in the early morning and killing parents in front of their children, and children in front of their parents, it is hard to keep writing about your travails as a mother in a prosperous, war-free country. Especially when your travails of the day involve being slightly late to pick up your kid after their swim lesson, and not being able to come home on the bus as you normally would. I mean, how much more ridiculous can it sound? When I think about it this way, I just want to curl up under my desk and crawl into a dark hole. The whole purpose of this blog suddenly appears very silly, and I have felt a strong urge to take down my two previous posts, in light of what is going on in the world – let’s not forget about Ukraine, by the way, and what those families, and those mothers, have endured for the past eighteen months. A dark cloud seems to have descended upon us, and aside from giving money to NGOs on the ground, there is nothing I am doing, or feel like I can do.
Writing, in fact, and being on this site today, seems like the only thing I can do. Even though I haven’t shared my blog with anybody I know yet, and I keep postponing the moment when I will do something about making the Madeleine Diaries findable on Google. More silliness on top of my silliness, and even more reasons to curl up into a ball under my desk. But also, when the times seem to invite us all to curl up into a ball and wake up when it is all over, stopping whatever activity gives purpose and meaning to our lives, feels like precisely what we should not do. If mothers who are fortunate not to have to worry about their children’s physical safety, stop enjoying their families and nurturing their children in the best way they know how, terror will have won, and war will have invaded every corner of our lives.
This is not a political blog, and it never will be. I have tried to be passionate about politics in my youth, but it just isn’t me, and everything I said always sounded a bit forced and artificial, leaving me feeling drained at the end of contentious dinner parties. I have core values that I don’t usually deviate from, and I always know who I want to vote for. And who is a definite no-no. Anyone holding parochial and discrimination-friendly views, to make it simple, and anyone whose ambitions seem to serve only themselves at the detriment of the country they represent. Which is why this blog opened with at post about the end of the Donald Trump era – or what I hoped would be the end of the Trump era at the time. But I do not plan on mentioning politics again, and in essence this blog, for better or worse, will remain about the meaning I can find in domestic life, because I don’t feel intelligent enough, or knowledgeable enough, or ambitious enough, to write about anything else. This, right now, is literally all that I can do. But I want to believe that by writing about the joys and trials of motherhood in the most fortunate circumstances, I can do my part as just a mother, and connect, even if I’m the only one feeling the connection right now, with those who experience motherhood in pain, deprivation, and loss. I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense, and it is definitely not meant to be a justification. Just a way for myself to see more clearly into my own feelings, and to remind myself why I have decided to keep coming back to this site, no matter how silly, or pointless, or artificial it may feel on any given day. Because if I’m being perfectly honest, this is what it feels like on most days. But it would be inconceivable by now to choose not being here over showing up and risking getting it wrong. There, that is it for today. No recipe associated with this, I’m afraid! Unless you know one for when the world seems to fall apart around you.
Comments