A Room Of One's Own* (Some Restrictions Apply)

[dr_pretentious]

I gave up my study when Gareth was born, and I moved all my books and filing cabinets and writing apparatus into a much smaller room. Which was fine, which had been the plan ever since Dan and I bought the house. And the bigger room had filled up with clutter so completely that the amount of functional work space was not that great.

Four years later, I'm finally getting settled in the smaller room. Why? Because Conrad's crib is now in it. As long as nobody was contesting my claim on that territory, I could live with it being so packed full of books and papers I didn't have time to cull that it was impossible actually to work there. I could live with having to flee the house for a cafe to do whatever writing got done.

But now that the room is in danger of becoming the baby's room, I'm putting it in order. Once he consistently sleeps through the night, we'll be moving him in with Gareth, and that study will be mine again. Mine! Bwhahaha!

My best idea so far in this project has been to get rid of the desk altogether. I work in my lap, and have for years. I've been culling books, papers, objects, all ruthlessly.

Conrad is tall enough now to reach over the headboard of his crib to pull books off my bookshelves. And why not? He watches his mommy pulling books off those shelves every day. When he wakes crying in the night, I come in and find that he's surrounded himself with yet another range of books I didn't know he could get at--Gower's Confessio Amantis seems to be a recurring favorite, who knows why. The other night he was really inconsolable. What did I find in his crib but a biography of Sylvia Plath. "Well, no wonder," I said. "If I were reading that at three in the morning, I'd be inconsolable, too."

He'll be waking soon, needing something or other. Here I am in the living room, working in my lap, waiting for someone else to need me in a room that is sort of my own.

Comments

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Oh dear! No Sylvia Plath for Conrad!

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

Very true. If you're not careful, you might find him with him with his head in the EZ-Bake Oven

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

That was both creepy and clever. Wow...

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

Pretty dang adorable!

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

"...In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish."

Stuff of nightmares, that. >:-)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's one I either had forgotten or didn't know. Whatever else you think about Plath, you've got to admit she had the chops.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

I think that was the first one I ever read. On the off chance you haven't already tracked down the whole thing (yeah, right, but for other people :-) : Mirror.

Should be required reading for mirror magic, IMO. :-)

[spindlewand.livejournal.com]

It's a good thing you haven't got the alchohol within reach, or you might have found him reading Plath and drowning his sorrows at 3 am. I know I'd be likely to drink if I were reading Plath at that time of the night...

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

That would reach new levels of age-inappropriateness, wouldn't it?

[spindlewand.livejournal.com]

Yes, but only because you are not the sort of mother who puts booze in the child's bottle to make him go to sleep.

Sadly, for some people it would just be a time saver...

[amushink.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorting. I remember the days of yore when you sorted only biannually, and then only to recycle the aluminum cans from the six-inch deep stratified layer of paper and debris that was the floor of your room.

Hope that having the space nourishes you and your talent. And that Gareth doesn't accidentally whack himself overreaching on the complete unabridged works of Shakespeare.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on, I sorted at October Break and Spring Break, too. Quadrennially should be often enough for any undergrad, right? You underestimate how fast my writing output could produce a six-inch stratum of paper.

And that Gareth doesn't accidentally whack himself overreaching on the complete unabridged works of Shakespeare.
When I set up in there, I actually arranged the adjustable-height bookshelves so all the heavy stuff would be near floor level, imagining exactly that risk.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

T and I both nearly choked when it got to the part about Conrad and Sylvia!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Restraining myself when I found it in the crib was very hard. I could easily have woken Dan and Gareth with the laughter I had to swallow.