In the classic girls’ book Betsy-Tacy Go Downtown by Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy’s mother understands the creative process. She gives her daughter an old trunk to use as a writing desk, a special place where Betsy can sit and be alone and pen stories to her heart’s content.
“Betsy’s mother was a great believer in people having private places,” says the narrator.
Betsy’s mother gets it.
I, too, have a private desk of my own. It’s a brown desk in the bedroom, pushed up against the corner where two windows meet. Ever since my second child was born, it has been the place where I go to pray, to read, to write.
It’s a place that is mine and mine alone: the only place in the house where this is so.
Motherhood is all about sharing: sharing one’s time, one’s energy, one’s body, one’s last Kleenex. I would not have it any other way, because all that sharing has stretched me in ways that nothing else could have done. My two young boys are worth every bit of it, and more.
But, like many of us, I still need a small piece of physical space to call my own.
On the writing desk, I’ve put all kinds of special items and trinkets. There are family photos, a small statue of Mary that I bought in Lourdes, a Valentine card sent to us by a dear friend the year that she died. There is a quotation from Hemingway that always jumpstarts my writing process. There are candles to light and books for inspiration. In the desk drawer is a rosary – two, actually – for times when I need the soothing repetition of prayers I know by heart.
The desk is like a little shrine of all the things that sustain me: family, friends, faith, reading, writing.
It’s my own space, and it is capable of working wonders. A few candlelit minutes there in the evening are enough to slow my breathing and help me pick off the burrs of stress that routinely attach themselves to my day.
Whether I pray, or read, or write, or just stare off into space, that desk reminds me that I have an inner life worth cultivating and tending. It’s a reminder that although I am a wife and a mother and a teacher and a writer, underneath it all, I’m always me.
And I’m a more peaceful me when I let myself be nourished in – and nourished by – this special private place.
. . .
Ginny Kubitz Moyer is a writer, teacher, and mother. She is the author of the new book Random MOMents of Grace: Experiencing God in the Adventures of Motherhood. She blogs at RandomActsofMomness.com.
Oh, this is beautiful. I love this: “Whether I pray, or read, or write, or just stare off into space, that desk reminds me that I have an inner life worth cultivating and tending.” A spiritual director once pointed out that while motherhood was my vocation, I am a child of God first. How liberating it was to realize this; that though motherhood is important, my worth isn’t wholly defined by it, and that God has something to accomplish in me that is separate from my mothering. And I feel that for me, a big part of that comes in my writing. Thanks for your nice thoughts and I love your writing space, by the way. It looks lovely.
Such an important perspective to remember, Roxane! The simply belovedness of being created and called and claimed by God – that goes deeper and farther than any other vocation we have. Beautifully stated.
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Thank you so much, Roxane. I do love having this little space to decorate and use however I like. And I am a much better mother when I pay attention to that interior part of me and recognize, as you said, that I’m a child of God … and that THAt parent/child relationship needs some nurturing, too. God bless your own writing and mothering!