Drop the mic

And hold the bunny

At first, I insisted on keeping the desk in the house. If not in the living room, on the screen porch. With all my recording equipment in the top drawer. Accessible enough that I could write or record at any time, even after the baby came. I was adamant that I would not become a hollow shell of a woman, so consumed with the duties of mothering that the other vibrant parts of myself— the writer, the singer, the creator— withered and died. That would be a recipe for disaster, for resentment and shame and internal collapse.

But we live in a small house, and with all the baby stuff coming in, there simply wasn’t room for the desk inside.

It’s been out on the porch all year. Collecting dust and mostly taking up space that I’ve begun to eye as more valuable real estate for Valor to roam and tumble. He’s sixteen months now, insatiably curious, in constant movement.

And more movement is on the way. Another baby is coming. We found out in April that I’m pregnant again. The full rainbow of emotions unfurled in our bathroom early on Easter morning as we watched two little pink lines appear on the pregnancy test: positive. I shook and sobbed, holding Valor on my lap. Andrew crylaughed and laughcried and hooted with unfettered joy. Shock and grief and wonder and awe and excitement and terror and gratitude and more, gut churning and heart rending. I’m now thirteen weeks along and have mostly adjusted to the new reality that I’m about to have another baby, a bit sooner than I thought I would, at the end of this year.

And so our house is feeling even smaller. I’m looking at ways to get creative with space and to expand the playzone even more.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been itching to take the desk out. We finally moved it this past weekend. I couldn’t wait. First, I cleaned out the drawers. Lovingly wrapped up the sound cables, boxed up the microphone and all its accoutrements and moved them to the garage.

I was astonished by how little charge I felt around it all. How little fear or shame or hesitation there was. Because the truth is, in the sixteen months since Valor was born, I haven’t recorded any music, other than voice notes of me singing with him burbling in the background. And I haven’t written anything on my desk. I use Andrew’s or the kitchen table. The writing gets done. And the singing is still happening, even if it’s not during a dedicated recording session with wires and cables to indicate its legitimacy.

The desk, when it initially came into my life, was a symbol of my claiming my identity as Writer. So too with the microphone. A professional-grade one that would affirm that I am a Musician. And they both served me well in those last years of my maidenhood, as I finished graduate school, began a consistently dedicated writing practice, and recorded an album. The objects helped me solidify parts of myself that had been dormant and under-tended for years, and I clung to them in the early months of motherhood in an attempt to not lose those parts.

But something else is happening. The lack of fear and self-doubt around moving everything out to the garage feels like a big deal. Like something in me is maturing. I realized as I packed it all away, that maybe I don’t need the objects to prove to myself that I’m a writer and a musician. I don’t even need to be actively writing songs or recording or sharing them to prove that to myself, not in the way I did in years past.

Because the truth is that my life is changing so much, my identity and the ways I spend my energy have transformed so radically since I gave birth, and letting go is no longer a disorienting prospect. I do feel fully immersed in motherhood. And I’m about to have two babies under two years old and begin an initiation into a completely different realm. I don’t and won’t have unlimited free time to create anymore, the way I used to. But I don’t feel hollow or resentful or collapsed.

My midwife and friend Hannah recently shared with me that the Mayan goddess Ixchel is depicted in three different ways as she moves through the stages of maiden, mother and crone. As a maiden she is seen with her wand, fully engaged in her craft and magic. As a mother, the wand is gone. She is instead holding a giant bunny who takes up her whole lap and fills her entire embrace. She is so fully in her mothering that her wand is gone. But then it returns when she becomes a crone, and with it, a serpent of wisdom around her crown.

And so it is. I do not fear that my wand will never return. In fact, I feel more powerful and creative than ever in this chapter, in ways I can’t even fully explain. And I don’t need a desk or a microphone to make it so. What I need is a few more square feet of space and a few less delicate objects to fret over, so this bunny can bounce.