legrandangle-lgm

In the fall of 2023, two seemingly unrelated events happened to me: I went through a rough patch with my then four-year-old and I picked up the novel “Nightbitch” by Rachel Yoder. Mostly I resisted what I considered “mommy lit” (obviously a mistake on my part related to deep-seated internalized misogyny), but the raw piece of steak on the novel’s cover spoke to me. At the time, I was struggling externally with my son’s behavior and internally with my identity as a parent.

“Mother” was not the label I was so eager to claim.

When my firstborn arrived, I was struck by the obvious: overwhelming love, fear, and a renewed sense of responsibility. Within hours of my son’s birth, an even more bizarre feeling emerged: the urge to hide from my new title of mother. This was likely due to the deep-seated knowledge that the label “mother” was the quickest way to detach a woman from herself, even more distant than “woman.” All women, whether or not they are married or have children, are raised to surpass their natural selves. We are taught to adjust our emotions, appearance and desires so that they fit within social frameworks. This urge to conform is even greater for mothers.

Personal history and pop culture had taught me that mothers were not fully formed people, but rather caricatures with hardened truths. Mothers were expected to be instinctive, self-gratifying, kind, asexual and completely devoted at all times. I didn’t want to be seen as a reduction of a person, so I steered clear of mom-related tropes and hoped that my friends without kids wouldn’t see me as “one of those” moms.

Other women I knew also battled the overshadowing title of “mom.” A friend confided to me that she wouldn’t let her cycling instructor become Instagram friends with her because she didn’t want him to know she was a mother. She graced this 50-minute space where once a week someone thought she was a mysterious, possibly sexy, loose woman in the world. Instinctively she knew that his knowledge of her full identity would solve this.

And then came ‘Night Bitch’.

I read along as the mother narrator struggled with her own wild son. In the book, it took her hours to put him to bed, which caused her to have a nighttime rage that was sometimes so different and intense that it scared her son and husband. I was intimately familiar with it that specific anger and had never seen it discussed anywhere or with anyone of mine mom friends. I passed this matching feeling on to my wife, who cheerfully called me Night Bitch during my own bouts of evening rage. In the novel I read how the unnamed mother struggled with the feeling of being disconnected from her old creative self, and with the pressure and pull of wanting to be with her child while at the same time being far away from home life. While it wasn’t a life-changing read at first, I was happy to see the reflection of the mundane and tiresome.

In my own home, nothing made my child happy. Seemingly everything became ‘stupid’ or ‘boring’ from one day to the next, and even worse, he had resistance to daily routines. At night he would throw his toothbrush across the bathroom and scream in protest, and in the morning he would greet my singing wake-ups with animal howls (and hurling hugs). I tried making reward charts, talking to him man-to-man and yelling (and then apologizing for being a millennial) gentle parentsT). Eventually I gave up hoping it was a phase.

But I kept reading. As we sat next to each other on the couch one evening, while he watched “Peppa Pig” and I consumed “Nightbitch,” the following passage struck me: “She likes the idea of ​​being a dog.” She can run freely if she wants. It can be a body, an instinct and an urge. She can be hunger and anger, thirst and fear, nothing more.”

I put the book down and thought about what it would feel like to crawl around on my hands and knees. To bark. To not communicate through words. Not to resist hunger, or to tamper with my anger. What would it be like, like a dog, to just let all the parts of myself be, without twisting them into a more presentable whole? After all, this was the problem with motherhood (and womanhood, really): we’re expected to hide our messes. It could feel great to be an animal – all id, no ego, I thought. But how stupid would that be? I put my child to bed as the lingering thoughts of trotting around my apartment on my hands and knees played in the background of my mind.

The next morning, with nothing to lose, I decided to go all out for Nightbitch. When I went into my son’s room, I didn’t sing or say the typical good morning greeting. I turned on the light, fell to the floor and crawled inside, making high-pitched barking noises. His sleepy eyes opened. He stared at me confused, but not angry.

“Kemm, kemphan,” I barked as I climbed into his bed, licked his face and woke him up. Of course he was delighted. Then I carried him through his clothes piece by piece with my mouth, continuing to make barking noises as encouragement as he got dressed.

Without wondering what happened to his mother, my son likes to pet me. “Sparkles,” he concluded quickly, making up my dog’s name.

The more I read “Nightbitch,” it became clear that the more the narrator’s mother focused on her nature, hunger, and desires, the more she felt like herself, even with her newfound maternal identity. Leaning forward made her feel better. She mothered better. In a favorite scene, Nightbitch and her son sloppily eat chunks of raw meat on the playground in front of astonished parents. After all, they are a team – a pack. I realized that while I can’t always throw societal norms out the window, the idea of ​​connecting with myself and my child naturally was a good start.