Postmodern becomes Postmommy

So this is the piece of art that I made called "Postpartum." It is, yes, a glass jar filled with broken doll pieces. My intention when I made it was to commemorate the feeling I had after I gave birth to Ryan. I made it when he was about 16 months old and I was expecting Charlotte. I sketched the idea when Ryan was less than a year old, though. It truly depicts my feelings as a new mother. I felt I didn't know what I was doing. My body certainly wasn't mine anymore. My ideas, my thoughts, my goals, heck, even my e-mails were jumbled. It was, I wrote in my journal, "as if my self had been handed to me in a box. All the pieces were there, but disassembled."

Now, all these years later, as I am beginning to relax, more or less, into my role as mother--yes it has taken some time. I guess I am a slow learner--this sculpture sits in my closet, just beneath my jeans and sweaters. It had its tour in various feminist venues. A few great weeks at the LSU Women's Center and an appearance at two performances of The Vagina Monologues. For me, making it was important. But as soon as I did, David, who supports me in all of my various creative pursuits and even helped to break the dolls with his incredibly strong hands, said, "Are we going to have to display this at home?" I never intended this image to be something I visited daily. I wanted to make this piece of art to help me move past the feelings I had. And now I have. I suppose I ought to donate the piece. But there it sits in my closet.

I can certainly hear God snickering, then, on a day-to-day basis as Charlotte, who is obsessed with babies and all things baby-like routinely fishes into the jar to pull out a broken doll that, it seems, she is determined to love back to wholeness. She walks around the house, their sad torsos and blond curls tucked beneath her chin like a violin. She rubs their headless backs lovingly with her sensitive fingers. She has the faith of a healer and I love her for it. We laugh, incorporating the broken dolls into her play. One, a Cher Barbie with no legs, David and I named "Iraqi Veteran Doll." Today, I heard David referring to "Vietnam Veteran Girl," another doll who was the victim of a landmine, as he tells it.

Yes, God is most certainly snickering, for it's true that Charlotte-plus-Ryan is what helped me move past the thoughts that I didn't know how to be a good mother, who made the snow phobic in me move to Antarctica and figure it all out once and for all. Charlotte, my baby with such a caring heart, who came with a vow to love all the parts of me that have been blasted apart by life. So I guess I'll be truly open to the artistic process and watch this work of art I have both loved and hated become transformed through the alchemy of family.