The Third Child
Taking on what I wrote last time, I notice that the way I am (attempting) to continue my practice at the moment, almost 6 months into my second childs life, is very similar to the way I have experienced motherhood this time round – incubated, shockingly unpredictable, solitary, grasping at moments to breathe while waiting for the next-feed Time Bomb to explode, punctuated with flashes of light, mercurial inspiration, love and reflection…a feeling of chasing my own tail as concepts and plans for action get made, then sabotaged by other demands, then remade, like the domestic chaos of our house as we slowly rework it after 8 weeks of building work.
I feel that the way I am able to work this time round is very different to last time when I had Delia (now 3 ). Because of the traumatic nature of what happened just after she was born (my mother disappearing in the Asian Tsunami never to return), and the level of attention and support I received for a very long period of time, I was able to create The Loom installation and Mother to Mother with what seems like relative ease from a logistical point of view.
There always seemed to be a loving pair of hands available to help whenever needed. This time round, as I attempt to nurture the seedlings of what was achieved in those two projects ( and with the money to do it from the Arts Council GFA ) and am now past the Baby Moon period, I am literally facing a very stark choice. I either give up developing my work in any depth and throw myself into full time motherhood, or find appropriate, regular childcare and domestic help to enable me to fulfil on my commitment to my Third child which is my arts practice.
Actually even before I wrote that I knew that giving her up is not an option. This Third Child is very important to me and keeps me sane and able to function as a mother to the other two – it is something I am not willing to give up, but the balance to be struck between being present to my children and being present to this third child who is never guaranteed to be in when I need her energy and who I have to train to express herself on tap, is a fine one. This Child is nevertheless a very faithful one ; she has always been with me and she waits, sometimes for years with her bag of ideas, holding it out as I take each one and make it real. Those left in the bag awaiting immediate attention have labels on them like ‘The Gift’ ‘Cloth’ “Exile’, ‘Ritual’ . Right now my job is make sense of how these relate to what I am going to do, while making sense of who I now am as a mother and artist.
