Parts We Didn‟t Know We Had By ©2011 Maria Ann Polonchek Maria Ann Polonchek Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. ________________________________ Chairperson Doug Atkins ________________________________ Giselle Anatol ________________________________ Laura Moriarty Date Defended: April 15, 2011 The Thesis Committee for Maria Ann Polonchek certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Parts We Didn‟t Know We Had ________________________________ Chairperson Doug Atkins Date approved: April 15, 2011 ii Abstract Since the success of Betty Friedan‟s The Feminine Mystique in 1963, feminist authors and activists alike have proven that “the personal is political,” and non-fiction writers have found a powerful tool in life narratives by contradicting or interrupting cultural scripts of identity. However, despite the plethora of cultural scripts that have been re-written for women, the reality of one in particular, motherhood, is “kept carefully shrouded in silence, disinformation, and outright lies,” to quote Susan Maushart in The Mask of Motherhood. After I became a mother, in the spring of 2005, I experienced a year of endless frustration, despair, anger, isolation, sadness, guilt, and resentment, culminating in the lowest depth of depression I have faced. It was not until I began writing about my experiences and researching those of others that I began to heal. Luckily, I was not alone. Since the turn of the century, in the middle of my own personal crisis, an outpouring of autobiographical books on motherhood have been published, with more coming out each year than the one previous. In the spirit of the essay, this collection provides a point of intersection for many different things; it reflects the style of writers such as Adrienne Rich, who remembers her 1976 book Of Woman Born, “was both praised and attacked for what was sometimes seen as its odd-fangled approach: personal testimony mingled with research, and theory which derived from both.” This in- between-ness with regard to research and creative writing, literature and theory, process and product is the prose thesis for my M.F.A. in English. iii parts we didn‟t know we had a mother‟s search under the surface maria polonchek i To Luke and Taj, who helped me build a stronger foundation on which to stand, and To Sola, our reinforcement. Acknowledgements Many people have helped me in the process of writing this collection. I‟d especially like to thank my mother, Nedra Rogers, for the life, love, and childcare she‟s offered me. I‟m also grateful to my dear friend, colleague, and healthy rival, Katie Savage. Thanks to the rest of my family and friends who have been catalysts, readers, and cheerleaders; there are entirely too many of you to list here, but you know who you are. I‟m indebted to the English Department faculty members at KU who have taught me so much about the language. Thank you Giselle Anatol, Laura Moriarty, Maryemma Graham, Mike Johnson, and Doug Atkins. And, finally, thank you Chris, especially for the time, support, and patience. Train‟s lead singer says it better than I can: I‟m always gonna want to blow your mind. ii contents Introduction, In Eleven Parts 1 i. hippocampus Whose Life Is It, Anyway? 26 Winging It 38 New State of Being 50 The Price of Things 62 ii. coccyx Sitting, Still 74 Short: On Peeking Through Fences 86 The Summer Of Why 89 Short: On Differences I Never Wanted To Believe In 99 iii. epidermis In Touch 102 Being the Girl, Bearing the Girl 110 A Boob‟s Job 119 Deconstructing the MILF 127 iv. placenta My Skin From the Inside 139 Short: On Re-rooting Hostas in the Middle of August 151 Short: On Celestial Bodies Orbiting My Home 155 In Good Faith 158 iii Take a small notion and find the universe in it. --Susan Orlean Be truthful, one would say, and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting. --Virginia Woolf Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down. --Erica Jong iv Introduction, In Eleven Parts i. One icy February morning over a decade ago, I was backing my old Toyota from the drive as a dull pink sunrise crept up an overcast sky. I was a student, attending a small community college in the suburbs, living with family to cut expenses, and working part- time at a coffee shop. I had the early shift and was responsible for opening by 6:00. I‟ve never considered myself a morning person, but I took the work seriously; it seemed critical to prepare those tired, stressed, important people for their workdays by serving caffeine and laughter and I felt I was just the person for the job. It was the day after Valentine‟s Day, a holiday I‟ve never cared to celebrate, and not just because of obvious reasons one has when she is single. Even now that I‟m partnered-up, Valentine‟s Day seems to be a tradition that makes an already-complicated life even more complicated. It‟s set-up for disappointment, as far as I‟m concerned (how many couples end the day with arguments and hurt feelings?) and encourages insincerity. Why not shower people with love and attention when you really feel like it? When they really need it? Why turn it into an expectation? But I digress. It was a Thursday—trash day—and trashcans lined the street. At the end of each drive sat two plastic bins, side-by-side, in varying shades of beige and grey. I glanced down the street at the long row of houses, also in varying shades of beige and grey, and took note: nope, no one forgot trash day. They never did in Deer Creek, a place where the only deer you‟ll see are the ones lying dead by the side of the road. 1 As I cranked the wheel to the left and looked behind my shoulder, something red and vibrant caught my eye. In the driveway of the house across the street, on this looming morning in February, in the neighborhood of beige and grey, atop the trash sat a dozen fresh red roses, bow still attached. My first thought was that they were beautiful, though I‟m more of a wildflower- kind-of-girl. Red has always been my favorite color. Then I wondered what the story was. I didn‟t know who my neighbors were—didn‟t even know their names and never found out. But they had a story, and part of it involved fresh red roses on top a trash bin the day after Valentine‟s Day. I felt voyeuristic, indulging in what was supposed to be a private detail of their story. No one was supposed to know about this scene, except the giver of the roses, the receiver, and maybe the garbage man. And, my God, the power of the moment. I‟ll never forget how silent the dawn, how sharp the air, how pink the horizon and red the roses against an otherwise monotonous backdrop. How simultaneously devastating and beautiful the scene was and how I felt isolated from, yet connected to, these strangers who were also my neighbors. ii. It seems I‟m not the only one interested in the lives of others, as demonstrated by the recent influx of documentaries, memoirs, and “reality” shows. While I enjoy all these mediums from time to time, I watch them warily, knowing whoever needs to cash in on our voyeuristic tendencies insures that these “true-life” stories are full of overt tension, drama, and excitement. It‟s too bad, I think; the quiet draw of everyday people around me is just as interesting: their carts in the grocery store, their conversations on the sidewalk, their trashcans at the edge of the drive. 2 Perhaps what I‟m searching for is something by which I can measure my own experience, with the people around me serving as the most appropriate gauge. My fascination with in the lives of others seems to be equally about identification (with those who are similar) and understanding (for those who aren‟t). I‟m especially interested in the inner life. Recalling her motivation for writing The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedman said, “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform.” I find her claim applicable to most realities of “private” life, regardless of one‟s gender. Many of the experiences we believe are private—marriage, motherhood, mental illness—are shaped by hackneyed representations, stifling institutions, and worn-out public policies. Often, I sense a disconnect in people, an unwillingness to admit public influences on private experiences, and I fear this disconnect is detrimental to living an authentic life. If I had a different imagination, I‟d take what I found in my undercover work and make up my own stories—fiction—giving friends and family peace of mind that I‟m not jotting down what they do and say in hope of publishing it for the world to read. After all, as Northrop Frye says in The Educated Imagination, “Our impressions of human life are picked up one by one, and remain for most of us loose and disorganized. But we constantly find things in literature that suddenly coordinate and bring into focus a great many such impressions.” But invention is not my strong suit: when my children ask for stories from their grandmother, they go on adventures with their pretend ponies, Sugar and Apple.