The Labors of the Contest

A few months ago  I bought a print of this Mary Cassatt painting for my (almost two-year-old) daughter. She first saw the painting in a board book we got from the library and she was immediately convinced that it was a painting of the two of us. The book became impossible to read to her because she would want to flip to the same page over and over again to look at this one painting and say, “Mama! Me! Mama! Me!” 

Woman in a Red Bodice and Her Child

Now the print hangs in my daughter’s room. I was looking at it yesterday while putting her down for a nap and realizing how well it fits in our home. My husband and I both have a devotion to Mary, and nearly every room in our house has at least one icon or painting or sculpture of the Virgin and Child. Our home is filled with art of mothers and babies. I hope that it helps to create an environment that is nurturing and nourishing for my children, but I think this art is more for me. It reminds me that what I’m doing with my life — how I spend nearly all my hours these days — is worthy of spiritual and artistic elevation. It means something. 

Every once in a while I check in on my Substack stats and see that people are still subscribing to this Substack, despite my rarely putting out any writing these days. As an update, here are some things I’ve been up to in the last ten months:

• Reading a lot, some of it high brow (Dietrich von Hildebrand!) and some of it less high brow (Elin Hilderbrand!)

• Teaching my older two boys, who just started their second year at a hybrid classical school, at home a few days a week (I never thought I’d be even a part-time homeschooling mom, but helping them memorize poems and reading beautiful books with them and getting to spend more time with them has been an immense joy in my life) 

• Watching my toddler fall in love with the world and take her first little steps of independence – she is filled to the brim with charm and she reminds me every day that joy is a fruit of the Spirit

• Soaking up all the warm, milky snuggles of our fourth baby, another girl, who was born earlier this summer

• Writing privately when I have time, nearly always about my children, almost never anything I’m willing to share publicly

I’m enjoying this life. I don’t have any public presence right now except this sorely neglected Substack. My Instagram is private and collecting dust. I let my website domain expire. I like writing publicly, but for me, it also feels very easy and ego-driven and self-indulgent. There’s nothing wrong with a little indulgence, but I don’t have time for very much indulgence in my life right now. This is not the season for that, and that’s okay! 

Life is a lot of work right now, with two boys in an intellectually demanding school and two girls under two years old. I’m not getting much sleep. My husband and I both feel stretched pretty thin. We’re also happy, though, and I’ve found that I’ve had trouble explaining to family and friends why that is. From the outside, it looks like all work and no play, especially in this demanding season. Why would I do this to myself? And it’s true that there’s no balance right now. It’s all in. Mothering is my vocation; this is what I do. At present it’s very time-consuming, but I also don’t want anything else to be consuming my time right now. I feel freed from the cognitive dissonance of pretending to care about other things as much as I care about my family. 

There’s a quote from Saint Ambrose that I think about all the time. It’s from his work titled On the Duties of the Clergy. 

“Perhaps you sayest: Why are the wicked joyous? Why do they live in luxury? Why do they not toil with me? It is because they who have not put down their names to strive for the crown are not bound to undergo the labors of the contest. They who have not gone down into the race-course do not anoint themselves with oil nor get covered with dust. For those whom glory awaits trouble is at hand. The perfumed spectators are wont to look on, not to join in the struggle, nor to endure the sun, the heat, the dust, and the showers. Let the athletes say to them: Come, strive with us. The spectators will but answer: We sit here now to decide about you, but you, if you conquer, will gain the glory of the crown and we shall not.” 

This is what motherhood feels like to me right now. Like I’ve put my name down to strive for the crown and am therefore bound to undergo the labors of the contest. On hard days, I remind myself that, spiritually speaking, I have put myself down into the racecourse. And I’ve done it on purpose! Because for me, there is rich potential for virtue in motherhood. There is a spiritual athleticism involved in raising children that I do not feel in other pursuits and I like it. There is so much nobility in waking up at 1 and 3 and 4 and 5 am to nurse an infant. There’s so much virtue in patiently potty-training my toddler. There’s so much valor in teaching my sons, by example, what it means to live one’s life for others. 

I also have had, for a long time, a suspicion that I think about dying more than most people do. Every day, I fall into bed and I think “On my deathbed, will I be proud of this day?” The answer isn’t always yes, but for me, the answer has to be yes a lot of the time. I feel neither peace nor contentment unless most of my day is spent in pursuit of what will feel worthwhile to me at the end of my life, and right now my days feel so exhausting and also so rich with meaning that I can hardly bear it, can hardly process it.

So, yes. Do I feel underwater so much of the time right now? Absolutely. But I also feel like I am doing the most meaningful thing I could possibly be doing in every moment of every day and every night. No hour is wasted. Every action I take is a labor of the contest for virtue. It’s all a work of art.