What’s in this name?  When I told my sister Faye (a seasoned blogger and mother) the name of the soon to be born blog, she called the name an oxymoron.  Because mothering is done by instinct alone?  I beg to differ as I ruminate over all things.

For the purpose of this venture, I am identifying myself first as a mother, not to differentiate myself from others, but to distinguish this stage of life from the previous.  Professionally, I  have been called waitress, bartender, maid, shoe-shiner, artist, photographer, filmmaker, designer.  But the most lyrical, complex, troubling, difficult, pride-filled role I play, and the one I am not permitted to mention if I want full respect as a working woman, is that of mother.

In this position, which I have held for 11 odd years, wrought by biology and with no termination options besides death, I have come to learn about the world wholly anew.  Prenatally,  I saw life as a series of discrete steps towards success or failure. Post-natally, I view life as a ball of string being flung through space, unraveling, tangling, bouncing, continuing through time.  Every day the children ask me dozens of questions.  Sometimes I answer astutely, sometimes rotely, but lately more often with an articulated groan – “no more questions.”

But it’s not the specifics of the wonderment that makes me think.  It’s witnessing the unstoppable churning of their brains.  The developing mind is an exquisitely thrilling process and I engage with four of these amazing beasts every day.  My plan is to return to school and study this nerveless bundle of electric meat inside our skulls.  I am especially curious about the effects our rapidly unfolding technologies have on the young mind.   This plan may take a good chunk of  the rest of my life to unfold, but in the meantime, I will read a pile of books and encounter all manner of challenging experiences.  These I will share.

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