Playing House by Lauren Slater Read Free Book Online Page A

unkind, assuming, as it does, that genes are both omnipotent and simplistic. My genes are difficult genes, different genes, but I’m not sure they’re
bad
. After all, the same genetic structure that drives me to check and tap also spurs me to put words on a white page, to garden until the yard is a riot of reds, yellows, and delphinium blues each summer. My genes, like everyone else’s I think, are both flower and thorn, little twisted things on their cones of chromosomes, such surprising, complex shapes.
    These shapes, however, can be difficult to hold. Illness, without doubt, is a challenge. There has been a lot of talk about the contemporary female dilemma of juggling two balls, motherhood plus career. But there is a third ball here, and it has been overlooked: mental illness. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one out of eight women will suffer a serious depression in her lifetime. Mothers with toddlers are the most psychiatrically symptomatic group in the United States, and a woman is a much more likely to experience psychosis after the birth of a child than she would be otherwise. The challenge of having children for many women, then, lies in keeping three bright balls in the air, and one of those balls is burning: there is the child, the job, and the mind, which, I imagine, is shaped like a sphere, shadowy, full of fire, holes, and roots.
    My baby was born one month early, in a bad way. My water broke, full of green gunk. There was an infection, an emergency. I was sliced open and torn up. The little girl was gorgeous.
    The first few months of motherhood were so easy, it was a dream! The baby slept all the time. She was well-mannered and pinkish. I thought, “Why did I ever worry about this?” The baby had a soporific effect on me; as soon as she was in my arms, I just wanted to doze. I occasionally worried that she was autistic, because she seemed to be so much in her own world, but mostly, for me, early motherhood was more powerful than any pill in its calming, centering effects.
    Soon enough, though, things changed. The baby got an attitude. She started to stand up and refuse food. Winter came. The sun set earlier and earlier, sinking down like the lopped-off head of a golden eel, and then gone. My symptoms returned. Whereas in the past, however, my obsessions had usually focused on light switches and numbers, now they focused on the child. I began to count her calories. I spent hours calculating kilos. Worried that she was losing weight, I bought a scale. Then I worried that the scale was inaccurate, so I bought a second scale. I got the idea in my mind that the baby would eat better in darkness. I don’t know why I got this idea, but I started insisting on feeding her with the lights out. My husband came home one day and found us in her nursery, scarves over all the windows, a tiny silver spoon, just shining.

    In the eighth month of motherhood, my doctor increased my medications. I went back to work and that helped. However, every day, driving to work, I had to pass the hospital where I spent so many years. The hospital took on a new meaning for me. It wasn’t just about illness anymore. It was about separation. I pictured myself in the hospital and my daughter alone at home. One day, I parked the car in the lot and stood at the entrance for a while. Truth be told, it is quite likely that at some points during my daughter’s childhood I will have to be admitted. My medicines don’t always work. My illness augurs abandonments big and small. But then again, is not abandonment intrinsic to mothering? From the very moment we expel our children from the womb, we abandon them. No one is perfect. It occurred to me, standing at the entrance to the hospital, half in, half out, that my very desire for perfection, for complete control, for counting every calorie and shining every spoon, put my mothering at risk far more than any hospitalization such symptoms may cause. I decided to dance.
    I went