Writing – and Parenting – In the Dark

I didn’t start writing seriously until 2013. Not because I was trying to develop my craft, or because I wanted to collect more life experiences, but because that was the year my youngest turned four, and up until then I hadn’t strung together three consecutive hours of sleep since 2005. As a single mother of two boys, now ages eleven and eight, everything falls to me.

The bad dreams in the middle of the night, doctor’s appointments, and what must be over one thousand loads of pee-soaked laundry. Even after nearly twelve years, dinner still sneaks up on me. Dinner? I just made them dinner yesterday. I am the Tooth Fairy and Santa and the Easter Bunny, every single year. When the Tooth Fairy sleeps through her shift, that’s on me.

When my boys were very little, I spent my days ping-ponging between them, drying one’s eyes while unwrapping string cheese for the other; discovering that one had locked himself in the bathroom while the other was in the backyard sucking on a snail. Holiday weekends nearly broke me. Three full days of managing, corralling, entertaining and soothing two small beings whose minds and moods never seemed to align.

There is no break. No second parent to relieve me so I can take up yoga or painting – or even get the flu. No one to consult at midnight when one of them spikes a high fever. No one to take over when the questions veer into the impossible-to-answer. How many places in the world could you build houses that don’t already have houses? That one’s from yesterday.

Children require you to be exhaustingly present, so my writing time has always been between 4:00 and 6:00 in the morning, Monday through Friday. Afterward, I get the boys up and we head out for a full day of school and work. I follow this routine religiously. Even during summer vacations. Even on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I used to dream of a day when I could drop them off at school and have six hours in which write, where I wouldn’t have to wake up before bakery and newspaper delivery workers, just so I could squeeze in some writing time.

In August 2015, when I was in the middle of revising THE ONES WE CHOOSE, I was diagnosed with cancer. Instead of back-to-school shopping, I was juggling doctor’s appointments with play dates, trying to keep my children occupied and my face blank. In those early weeks, I had to reconcile with the possibility that my boys might lose their mother. And yet, I still had to make dinner every night. I still had to argue about teeth brushing.

Within a two-week period, I had taken a leave of absence from my job and undergone surgery. Within four weeks, I had my first chemotherapy treatment. All of a sudden, I found myself with hours every day in which to write.

My writing friends tried to reassure me. Don’t worry about the book. Just focus on yourself. But what I discovered was that my pre-dawn writing was an anchor – for myself and for my boys. In their eyes, as long as I was up every morning to write, I was going to be okay. And so, my life became an elaborate production of normal. I needed to be awake before them, ready to make lunches and check homework folders. In the evenings, I’d cook dinner and wash the dishes. I’d put them to bed, the same as I always had.

When you’re the only adult in the house, you don’t have the luxury of delegation. And you’ll do anything to protect your children from the fear that bubbles up at 3:00 in the morning, haunted by what might have happened if you hadn’t gone for that routine mammogram, worrying about how your illness might play out in your children’s lives long after your hair has grown back and the cancer itself is a distant memory.

My novel, THE ONES WE CHOOSE, weaves together the science of genetics with the story of a single mother desperate to help her son find his place in the world. And while I drew upon my own experiences as a single mother, THE ONES WE CHOOSE isn’t about being a single mother any more than my life is about being one. It’s about a parent who doesn’t always have the answers, who doesn’t know how her choices today will shape her child years from now. It’s the story of a life squeezed between errands and work, fear and desire. Somewhere in between piano lessons and dinner – or chemotherapy and homework folders – we find time to chase our own dreams. And perhaps the payoff isn’t a book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, but that my boys learned from watching me that they can do the hard stuff. They can navigate the scary and still be okay.

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When she’s not working or picking stray Legos off the carpet, Julie Clark is busy reading and calling it “research”. Her writing has won Honorable Mention accolades from Glimmer Train, and has been selected as a finalist in the Pitch Wars contest. She lives in Santa Monica, California, where she teaches and writes full time.

Follow her on Twitter @jclarkab

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips