Good Mothers Publish their Children

Merriam-Webster offers this two-bit definition of the word "mother": a female parent. But if you have a mother, or are a mother, or have ever had the privilege of knowing one, you'll note the number of details this definition omits. Apart from the million tasks that go into caring for families, mothers are awfully creative people. Some have also been exceptional writers in their "spare" time.

Toni Morrison, for example, earned a master's degree, gave birth to two sons, and got divorced before she ever wrote her first book. She accomplished this while holding down a full time job and raising her kids, who have never written tell-alls to gripe about her parenting skills. In fact, one of her sons (Slade) has even collaborated with her on several children's books.

Somehow in the process of raising children, teaching, and writing books, Toni Morrison managed to win the following awards:

1977 National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon
1977 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award
1987-88 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
1988 American Book Award for Beloved
1988 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for Beloved
1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved
1989 MLA Commonwealth Award in Literature
1993 Nobel Prize for Literature
1993 Commander of the Arts and Letters, Paris
1994 Condorcet Medal, Paris
1994 Pearl Buck Award
1994 Rhegium Julii Prize for Literature
1996 Jefferson Lecture
1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
2000 National Humanities Medal

Just pondering all that may lead to exhaustion. But her example also shows us that it is possible to be a good mother and a successful writer. Sometimes I think of my neglected manuscripts as abandoned children. I know in my heart that they deserve a better fate, yet I put off taking care of them. Today is a good day to revise the to-do list and become a better mother to works I still love.