Opening discussion: “Childcare”
Well, I was the one who chose this story, but it’s been kind of a tough one for me to unpack. It may be because as the mother of two young children, my life IS childcare, so it’s very hard for me to distance myself from it enough to analyze it, even from a literary perspective. One of the things that is daunting about the concept of childcare is that it is so contradictory: it can be simutaneously minute and all-encompassing, prosaic and awe-inspiring. Since I became a mother, every activity I’ve embarked on – down to showering — has had to involve some degree of childcare, either by myself or rarely, by others. I mean, I’m only able to write this post because I have said help! But as this is a literary club and not a support group, I’ll try to leave my personal baggage behind and focus on the story.
What do you think about Lorrie Moore? I think she’s a little overrated. Let me clarify: I think when she’s good, she’s brilliant (“Birds in America”), and when she’s bad, she’s irritating. She’s a little too pun-heavy for my taste, for one thing. Fortunately, there’s not much of that going on here. Keep in mind that “Childcare” is actually the first chapter in her new novel, “A Gate at the Stairs,” so we can’t really judge it as we would a short story. It’s not a stand-alone piece.
Moore gets a lot of credit for touching on human truths, but I don’t think people talk as much about the sheer beauty of her writing. I mean, read the first line of this piece a few times (“The cold came late that fall and the songbirds were caught off guard …”) So lyrical. Later, when Tassie and Sarah meet, Tassie marvels at the way Sarah studies her face: “I had always felt as hidden as the hull in a berry, as secret and fetal as the curled fortune in a cookie, and such hiddenness was not without its advantages, its egotisms, its grief-fed grandiosities.” Damn. Read that one a few times in order to fully appreciate it.
Well, I went on earlier about how this story affected me as a mother, but I definitely don’t think you have to be a mother to appreciate it. A big question the story seems to ask is, why does Sarah want to be a mother in the first place? Why do any of us? It’s clear she has a full life, married with an interesting and time-consuming career. When can she possibly squeeze in childcare? She clearly hasn’t thought it through. In a moment of hit-you-over-the-head symbolism, Tassie notices dead plants and unopened phone books on her front porch when she first visits her. The obvious message is: this is a woman who can’t nurture a plant and hasn’t the time to take a telephone book inside. Why the hell would she make a good mother? Of course, it’s easy to place all the blame on the mothers when, as Tassie notes during her interviews, the fathers are conspicuously absent. Their qualifications as parents aren’t held under the same type of microscope. Do you feel that Moore’s depictions of gender dynamics here is fair?
I heard Moore being interviewed on NPR about “A Gate at the Stairs,” and she said a major theme of the book is how people deal with their own limitatations. Sarah, especially, seems to have more than her share. Her mothering abilities are especially called into question during her interaction with Amber. As a former high school teacher, I cringed when she scolded this girl she had just met. Not only does that kind of talk not fly with teenagers, it reveals what I think is a misconception all would-be parents have: that you are going to be a successful parent because you have so much wisdom to impart. Then you have a child and realize, to put it bluntly, that you don’t know shit. And that kids can teach you a lot more than you can teach them.
On the flip side, Sarah handles Amber’s smart-ass “gift” at the restaurant exactly right, so maybe I’m being too hard on her. She is such a multi-faceted character and seems to operate on a very instictual level. It’s not clear why she jumps to hire Tassie, with her less-than-stellar resume and awkward interviewing skills. Does she sense a deep connection with Tassie or has she simply not taken the time to interview many candidates? She certainly doesn’t have much time on her hands, as Amber points out.
Sometimes Moore hits on truths with such precision, I can only stand back and marvel at her work rather than dissect it. I’m thinking of Tassie’s descriptions of going from the farm to college, her heartbreaking observations of the pregnant women who interview her, and her wonderful ambivalence about childcare itself: ”I was not especially skilled at minding children for long spells; I grew bored, perhaps like my own mother. After I’d spent too much time playing their games, my mind grew peckish and longed to lose itself in some book I had in my backpack. I was ever hopeful of early bedtimes and long naps.”
I’ll leave the rest up to you. I hope you all enjoyed this story as much as I did.
