I've always been wary of writing material that has my own children as a subject. Occasionally I've broken my own rule, but always in a way that ensures that no one can be identified. Still if, as someone said, poetry (all creative writing?) should try to express the universal, then there's something almost universal about the experience of bringing up children – and, of course, completely universal about actually being a child.
As for writing with children in the house well, my two, now in their teenage years, regard just about everything I ever do as being quite beyond their capacity to understand. To say that my occupations and interests are 'not cool' hardly begins to describe their reaction to my activities.
I work from home; a good deal of what I do involves writing in one form or another. I have a desk, on which there is, apart from piles of clutter, a keyboard, a screen, and numerous books, pamphlets, magazines. This is not so unusual these days, at least not in the circles in which I move. But my son's friends just think it's bizarre. In their world this can't possibly have anything to do with a proper job, which surely must involve some level of physical activity, going out of the house to a place of work, getting dirty hands and coming home tired after a hard day. That anyone could spend most of a day sitting at a desk writing, well, that makes no sense at all. If they ever discovered what else it entails: reading, thinking, long periods apparently doing very little (we won't even mention the displacement activities readily to hand via the internet), I suspect they would launch some kind of action in order to rescue my son, their friend, from the clutches of such a wayward parent. As it is they poke fairly gentle fun at him from time to time, and he does his best to ensure that they don't encounter my study-bound self any more often than is strictly necessary.
I suppose I could try explaining that 'poem', 'poetry', 'poet', are words that have their root in a Greek word for doing something, but I fear that would just make things worse.
My daughter moves in different circles. She and her friends don't seem to find it quite so strange, but as I've already said my world touches theirs at virtually no point of understanding or relevance, beyond that of my being available for life's little essentials, such as money and transport.
Are they a distraction? Not really, if I'm honest. They leave me, largely, alone – though I've worked hard not to treat my study as a refuge from the stresses and interruptions of family life so that I've avoided the guilt feelings that, I'm sure, lodge themselves in the heart of many a writer when the muse calls at just the point when the dog needs walking or the washing up needs doing. Family life, with all its joys and frustrations, has its own - high – priority for me. Probably I could have been a better writer or at least a more dedicated one if I'd put writing before everything else. I haven't. Does that make me a better husband, father? I wouldn't claim as much. I think the truth is that when it comes to perfection of the life or of the work I could never make up my mind – and so haven't come close, even, to competence, never mind perfection, in either.
Write about what you know, they say. Well, all I would claim to know is something about ordinary life – mine, no one else's. Children are a central part of that. They've had a profound effect on the kind of person I am. They've exposed aspects of my character I'd rather have kept hidden. They've shown me levels of acceptance I had no right to expect off anyone. They've filled me with frustration, happiness and more bliss than I could ever describe in several lifetimes of writing. Perhaps, most of all, they've taught me about trust. That, I reckon, is a much-maligned – and neglected – value in today's world. In fact if I had to say what was the essence of being child-like, I would say it had something to do with being ready to trust. It is an essential value for the writer who, I believe, must always be concerned about what is true – and nothing is true that cannot be trusted.
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