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Terry Tempest Williams on her mother’s mystifying bequest

Source: whyy.org

Twenty-five years ago, TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS’ mother died of ovarian cancer, and she left Terry 54 journals, one for each year of her life. Later, when Terry went to read them, longing to hear her mother’s voice again, she found that each one was blank. In her book, “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice,” Williams meditates on why her mother might have left the journals unfilled. What did that signify to her mother? What was her mother telling her?

Listen to the podcast here.

When I found out I was pregnant with my new daughter, Linda, I was in shock. I wasn’t planning on becoming pregnant so soon and I spent the first trimester in a depression that allowed me to only play video games.

Labor was hard and it’s difficult to bond with a newborn: they don’t smile; they don’t do much of anything. You can’t tell if they actually like you, even a little bit. When I was 3 weeks postpartum, my husband took our two oldest to Disneyland for a weekend so that I could get a break from having three kids underfoot. However, having a single colicky baby without a partner to pass her off to when you’re tired is difficult, too. It was in those three days of solitude with my daughter that I tried very hard to “bond.” I felt bad for not wanting to be pregnant 9 months earlier. I didn’t want her to feel unwanted.

When my husband came home from the Disneyland trip I told him, “I want to hold her for her baby blessing. I want to make up for not being happy about the pregnancy. It’d be like a public apology to her, a reconciliation.”

The culture around baby blessings is such that if you have the blessing at home, the family has a lot more freedom in how it is done, however, if you do it in a church, there are more restrictions. I was split: I wanted to have the freedom of a home blessing, but wanted to share it with our whole ward.

Guest Post by Jess

Jess is an unconventional leaf on a family tree that includes an unbelievably strong mother and two fantastic brothers. She is a PhD student in psychology. When she’s not doing school-ish things she likes to hike, knit, and bake…and then eat what she bakes. 

I normally love my calling teaching Gospel Doctrine in my singles ward. It is a great opportunity to really dig in and study, and to learn from my fellow ward members. But this year has been a struggle. Church history brings up a lot of feelings for me, and most of them are not positive. Things came to a head as I was preparing my latest lesson: The Restoration of the Priesthood. The more I read, the more upset I became.

First of all, the relationship between women and the priesthood is something I have been struggling with lately, and I still have not figured out where I stand. Teaching about something that one is unsure about and uncomfortable with is really hard. Second, the only time women were mentioned was in a section titled “Blessings of the priesthood for all people,” where the question was asked, “how can women and children benefit from the priesthood?”  (Infantilize women much?) There was not a single feminine pronoun in the whole lesson. The restoration of the priesthood was a big deal for everyone, not just men. Lucky for me, when I asked The Exponent’s own Spunky for help, she sent a ton of great resources, articles, and ideas of ways to balance things out. I went in to class on Sunday feeling well prepared and ready to teach.

Happily, my bishop does not insist that we stick to the lesson in the manual. In fact, he encourages us to follow the spirit in our lessons. So, I decided to focus on the importance of priesthood authority in terms of ordinances like baptism and the temple endowment.  Those are things that are important to all God’s children right?

This is a question I’ve been wanting to pose for a while now, and this seems like a good forum for it.

I believe in the past I’ve mentioned that I am childless by choice. There are a variety of reasons that I don’t want kids, and I believe that it would be unfair to all involved if I were to have kids before I want them.

My feelings about kids seems to have put me very much in the minority. Most people I encounter can’t seem to fathom not wanting children. I’m often asked, “But why don’t you want kids?” It appears that wanting kids is considered normal and not wanting them is considered abnormal. But just as many people can’t understand why I don’t want kids, I can’t understand why people do want kids. I respect that people do, but I don’t know why they do.

So the question I have is, why did/do you want kids? Have your feelings about wanting kids changed? And is reasonable to ask someone why they want kids, or is that like asking why someone likes chocolate or doesn’t like the color orange? Can you explain it, or is it something inherent that can’t really be explained?