It's not me. The muse of ordinary life. In truth I am not "much of a muse". In truth I take that name because I need it so much.
A few Saturday's ago I went out with my husband to a celebration and agonized over what to wear. Not because I am vain, but because clothes are rare for me. Very rare. I finally decided on a blue sweater with beautiful buttons and a favorite scarf wrapped around my hair, that after mostly falling out during all my pregnancies has been growing back in, springing with curls (my previous hair was straight). I wasn't happy with the clothes. I wear them all the time, I wanted to feel special not old, bland, wifely, and motherly. Some single women in the group were lamenting their singleness and I tried to sympathize. They jokingly said they couldn't wait to be married so that they could stop having to "look" so nice when they go out. Then, pointing to me said: "I wish so much that I could just throw on a sweater and a scarf and not care how I look" I know they didn't mean it to, but it hurt.
I often think of the other mothers out there and the struggles that they go through. Wanting to say I spend so much of my day wiping bottoms. Wanting time for more than chores and whiny kids. Wondering how it is that some women LOVE being home, but I don't. Wondering how I can obtain that. Or what is wrong with me, when I can't. Sometimes it has been so long since I have done anything other than mother, that I have no imagination for what I would do, if given the chance. I do love my children. Being a mother is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I feel like I need a muse now more than ever. That I need to feel like I "look" nice. I dislike being stereotyped just as much as the next person.
So then, a book of poems. The poem that I read sobbing over and over. Because it hit such a cord. Struck straight to the tender spot in my heart. Yet, on the next page a poem about loving her children so completely, and she had seen my soul, walked in my shoes, with its pains and joys to almost bursting. No other piece of written anything has ever meant so much to me. Ever.
I write this not to lament and not in a tone of self-pity, but in one of honesty that yes, some days are definitely like this. And if for me, for who else out there as well. So, for whomever you are, this is for you. This poem and my honesty.
Prayer to the Muse of Ordinary Life
by Kate Daniels
I seek it in the steamy odor
of the iron pressing cotton shirts
in the heat of a summer afternoon,
in my daughter's ear, the warm pink
cone, curling inward. I seek it
in the dusty circles of the ceiling fan,
the kitchen counter with its painted shells
from Hilton Head, the creaking boards
in the bedroom floor, the coconut
cookies in the blue glass jar.
The hard brown knob of nutmeg nestled
in the silver grater and the lemon
yogurt that awaits. I seek it not
in books but in my life inscribed
in two brief words--mother, wife
--the life I live as mistress of an unkempt
manse, volunteer at firstborn's
school, alternate Wednesday's
aide at youngest's nursery, billpayer,
laundress, cook, shrewd purchaser of mid-
priced minivan. I seek it
in the strophes of a life
like this, wondering what
it could be like, its narratives
drawn from the nursery and playpen,
its images besmirched with vomitus
and shit. The Prayer I pray is this:
If you are here,
where are you?
If you exist,
what are you?
I beg you
to reveal yourself.
I will not judge,
I am not fancy.
My days are filled
with wiping noses
and bathing bottoms,
with boiling pots
of cheese-filled pasta
for toothless mouths
while reading Rilke,
weeping.
My life is broken
into broken pieces.
The fabric is rent.
Daily, I roll
the stone away
but all is dark
inside, unchanged.
The miracle has not
happened yet.
If you are anywhere
nearby, show me
anything at all
to prove you do exist:
a poem in a small, soiled
nightie, a lyric
in the sandbox voices
raised in woe.
Release a stanza
from the sink's hot suds
where dirty dishes glow.
Seal a message inside:
encourage me
to hold on.
Inform me
in detail
exactly how to do it.
I'm sure that I have found my Muse of Ordinary Life, but most days I don't feel it. That is when I need this, when I cry out.
