I.
My grandmother used to be the leader of a gang called “the hillers.” When she was a girl, No. 5 hill loomed on the lip of her neighborhood–a steep incline, an erect spine. She ruled the turf.
My grandmother birthed five children before turning 29, taught herself how to paint, stirred tomato sauce in a pot as large as a beach ball. Her gang grew up, too, and prepared dinner for their own families.
My grandmother’s art hung in rich acrylics–glistening landscapes of her gray hometown. I wonder when she had any morsel of time to make anything but steaming plates for hungry little hands. Now a mother, I bike to No. 5 hill, but only to the bottom. Before it curves upwards. I don’t consider peddling beyond the stretch of concrete, too hard for any muscle. It would transform beneath my feet, swollen and cracked. The labor would be too much.
II.
I log artists who have more than one child, stored like index cards in a mental back drawer: Lily King. Zadie Smith. Lauren Groff. Kate Atkinson. The writers who straddled caregiving and creating, mothering and more creating. If they’ve forged a link between the two intense states of being, then I could, too. If Leo Tolstoy could have ten kids and famously forget some of their names, then I could get pregnant and keep creating everyday, not losing that part of myself that ticks and hums, wordsmithing into the folds of every aging season–in spite of the constant needs of children, the relentless spurts of growth and care and taking of care inherent in raising another human with a soul. Not light work, but sometimes light hearted, shot through with soaring, ineffable joy. A lift of the self, of our sputtering lives, into something deeply rich and timeless. Can’t we do parenthood and art-making together? Can’t one spoon feed the other, guiding them to balance?
I hold both. I’m hungry for two spirals to helix. The opposite of selfless–I want more of my body, more muscle to climb. The hill inhales and exhales beneath tired bones. I want to absorb the energy of my grandmother when she was the leader of a gang that owned the turf of No. 5 hill. In that world, there’s care and there’s creation, there’s wiping globs of mundane spit up and crafting brushed landscapes with a cradled head. There’s power. There’s walking up a hill that bends the knee to you. Why can’t there be both? The money, of course, the support system–the infamous gang of care. Somewhere up a steep hill, stable as a spine.
Megan Mizanty is a writer and editor at thINKing Dance in Philadelphia. Her writing has been published in Danse Macabre Literary Magazine, Ghost City Press, Dark Onus Press, Zoetic Press/Nonbinary Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, iō Literary Journal, Mignolo Arts/Pinky Thinker Press, Alternative Milk Magazine, Argyle Literary Magazine, and more. She received her MFA from Temple University, and previously served as an Associate Professor of Dance. @mizanty.art.