Questioning my Intelligence

Or, How does an over-educated stay-at-home mom reconcile her pre-kid and mommy selves?

I used to be smart. Not smart in a brilliant, easy, Mensa sort of way, mind you, but in a self-motivated, hardworking, determined sort of way. I graduated with honors from an elite private school and then from Duke University. In graduate school, I maintained a 4.0 GPA, and my thesis won the Best Thesis Award. I read papers at conferences, taught over 600 first-year college students how to write essays and read Dante’s Inferno, and worked in corporate America as a writer/editor.

My intellectual interests ranged from astronomy to zoology; from culture and history to language, art, and literature. I read constantly and voraciously. I could connect disparate ideas, identify patterns and repetitions, and make meaning and sense of them. My mind moved easily from specific detail to general concept and back again. I wrote lucidly and eschewed jargon for clear communication. I was organized and productive, managing my time wisely and multitasking with ease.

And then I had a baby.

Mother Nature has a very sick sense of humor.

My brain and my breasts lost their perkiness at the same time. Sleep deprivation no doubt contributed to the mental softness, but so did my new little obsession. This baby boy magnetically attracted my every thought in the most bizarre ways and completely derailed my feelings of competence and confidence.

I decided, for example, that reading aloud to my newborn while breastfeeding would help stimulate his brain development. I squelched an impulse to read my little darling Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Middle English or the varied prose of Joyce’s Ulysses, but my rationalizations were probably defensive. The best parts of my brain exited my body with the placenta, and I could no longer handle Great Literature. I turned instead to Michael Crichton’s Timeline, a fun bit of fluff, but I edited the swear words, as if my precocious newborn’s first word might be “shit” if I wasn’t careful.

Stacks of literature and writing manuals around the house were replaced by diapers and laundry. God, there was so much laundry. I struggled just to get a shower every day, much less read any of the parenting books or magazines I had collected during that first pregnancy. I felt that someone had dumped me in the middle of the ocean and left me alone, frantically treading water and barely keeping my nose above the waves of responsibility and tedium that threatened to push me under.

In the eight years since that first dirty diaper, I have found a few bits of driftwood on which to float as the current carried me … somewhere. I reread the complete works of Jane Austin with little difficulty, but a first reading of A.S. Byatt’s brilliant novel Possession took me eight months of rough sea to finish. I made it through a few hefty tomes on Anglo-Saxon history and even a book on medieval Latin paleography. But nothing could calm the heavy seas of the terrible threes, another baby, and 14 more months of having my essence sucked out through very tiny holes in my nipples.

My sons are now eight and five, and I’ve made it to the shore of early childhood mothering, waterlogged and exhausted. The view from where I stand now leaves me more than a bit bewildered.

Where am I?

Who am I?

Where did all this grey hair come from?

Why do I not have a single stylish outfit in my closet?

Can I possibly participate in an intelligent conversation on a subject other than toilet training, the mysteries of getting a child to eat vegetables, or how much is too much for extracurricular activities?

Is Susan Raihala still inside this person named Mommy?

Well, of course she is still here, and she’s also still a bit of a drama queen to ask a question like that. But she has changed, and I’m not quite sure who she has become.

Having an MA in English predisposes a person to appreciate pithy aphorisms, so my quest to find myself will begin with guidance from Lord Acton, who wrote this little gem:

"Learn as much by writing as by reading."

I’ve read plenty, so now it’s time to write my way out of this existential crisis, to bridge the gap between the competent, educated woman formerly known as Susan Raihala and this Mommy person who wipes bottoms that aren’t her own and says things like “Because I said so!” and “Hands out of pants!” daily.

Welcome to my blog.