Why Motherhood is the Greatest Profession in the World

One of my pet peeves with our society is the celebrity gossip magazines that line the aisles as you want to pay for your groceries.  Why do people honor and idolize fame-- especially when that fame is so often ignoble rather than noble?  Drives me crazy.  Gossip, gossip.  Can't we raise ourselves above this and focus on the many other important, intriguing, hilarious, and beautiful things in the world?

Also, why don't we praise mothers more than we do?  I love this quote from David O. McKay:

"…Motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece, or who can write a book that will influence millions, deserve the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will exert influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have decayed or been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God."   — David O. McKay

Imagine that instead of having billions of good moms and only a handful of famous celebrities, politicians, writers, artists, sports-stars, etc., we had the opposite.  There were billions of Shakespeares, Jimmer Fredettes, Rembrandts, J.K. Rowlings, and only a handful --maybe only fifteen living women who were capable of being mothers, who were physically able to give birth to human beings and to raise them.  How we would long to be one of the chosen fifteen!  How we would envy that glorious experience!  Think of it!  Motherhood is so very miraculous.  Never, never forget or undervalue this life mission so many of us are living!

Can anyone be a great writer and also be a great mother?

Flannery O'Connor never married.  Neither did Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, or Willa Cather.  J.K. Rowling was a parent, but single, when she wrote "Harry Potter".  Katherine Anne Porter married, divorced, remarried another, but never had children.  Zora Neale Hurston was only married for a few months, and never had children.

I am sure there's someone out there who has made a great research project out of my question.  But I haven't stumbled into the book that answers this question, (and I don't like Virginia Woolf) so I'll still ask it:

Is it impossible to be a great mother and a great writer?  Does great passion for one of the two sap and subsume the other, rendering it weak and dysfunctional?

I say this because my personal favorite great writers are either 1) men, or  2) single women.  The successful, married-mother writers I know of aren't any good (in my admittedly snobbish opinion.  For what I consider a poor example, mother and wife Stephanie Meyer, the "Twilight" lady, has great story ideas but such hard-to-stand, cliched, lifeless writing.)

With three children of my own plus two step-children, I almost never write.  I have the rare commodity of a kind, faithful, handsome, doting and adored husband.  And while nursing a 9-month-old, listening to a the non-stop narrating, track-meet-and-scouting 3rd grader; keeping up with a swim-team-and-cross-country running ninth grader, and enjoying the two stepkids who spend summers here, there isn't much time to read or write.  But I do jealously carve out a little time.

And I would not, not, for millions and billions of dollars or for masterpieces with my byline, ever trade my wonderful life as a mother, and all these smiles and noises and laughs and hugs and joys, not for any glorious writing life. 

But I would love to be able to do both!

If only I could cut out sleeping.  Or sweeping under the kitchen table.

Sometimes I wistfully think about my acceptance, two years ago, to the University of Utah's Ph.D program, where I would have continued my Master's Degree's work on ethnographic literary journalism. (When I found out I was pregnant, I declined that Ph.D opportunity.)  I would have liked to have done both, but it would never have worked, not in my heart nor in my schedule.  I sometimes take out my thesis and read some of it. 

So.  Here's my question for the day:  Is there hope?  If we writer-mothers keep reading and studying and writing in small tidbits, as well as we can, on our own, still putting our family first, yet rarely actually writing at all, will we still one day have the richness, knowledge and articulation to write great books? 

I hope so.  I hope mothers can begin with great motherhood and then, when we smaller mountains of laundry to fold and fewer meals to cook and carpools to taxi, then we'll also find great writerhood.

If not, it will surely happen in heaven.

Heaven is now

Better than a byline

Me and my smallest masterpiece