The In-Between: Mother and Artist
West Japan (More or Less) Travel Notes — Part Ⅹ
After the Tour
This series began as a travel diary.
It became something else.
A record of touring with a two-year-old.
A record of trying — and often failing — to balance motherhood and artistic work.
And perhaps, in the end, a record of letting go of the person I thought I needed to be.
The In-Between: Mother and Artist
West Japan (More or Less) Travel Notes — Part Ⅹ
Previous:
Part Ⅸ — The Holocaust Memorial Museum
https://ekotumi.medium.com/the-in-between-mother-and-artist-west-japan-more-or-less-travel-notes-part-%E2%85%B8-the-holocaust-e3ccb66c491d
This is, more or less, the story of my West Japan tour with two-year-old Mini-Tumi.
Perhaps among the people I met — and among those I never had the chance to speak with — there were some who did not approve of my working alongside a two-year-old who is still unable to fully control herself.
To be fair, there were moments when she genuinely disrupted presentations. For that, I would like to sincerely apologize.
Perhaps some people thought:
What kind of mother lets her child wander around during a presentation?
(As I have written throughout this series, there were moments during interpretation when I simply could not stop her, even if I wanted to.)
The truth is that before becoming a mother, I might very well have thought the same thing myself.
Had I been sitting in the audience, feeling that my ability to listen was being interrupted, I might have wondered:
“Why did she bring her child?”
“Isn’t this supposed to be work? Maybe she’s treating it like a family outing.”
(Though I have already explained my reasons in Part II, “Why I Tour With My Two-Year-Old.”)
And I cannot deny that I might also have thought:
“She can’t even keep her child quiet. She’s a bad mother.”
And before becoming a mother, I would have cared deeply if someone had thought that of me.
Before I became a mother, I could not bear the thought of becoming uncool, awkward, or somehow diminished because I had given birth.
Or perhaps more precisely, I was afraid that others would see me that way.
I wanted to balance work and motherhood effortlessly, as though it were nothing at all.
That was my unconscious — and very sincere — wish.
I suffered repeated miscarriages before Mini-Tumi was born. I spent years praying simply for the chance to carry a child safely into the world.
And yet, even so, giving birth frightened me.
What if it unsettled my identity as an artist?
Whether I was ever quite as effortlessly stylish as I imagined is another question.
But at the very least, I had an image of myself.
Asymmetrical hair.
The lower half shaved.
A slightly avant-garde sense of fashion.
Heeled boots striking sharply against the pavement.
A person who worked from morning until night.
A person moving steadily forward through creative work.
Whether that image was as remarkable as I believed it to be is beside the point.
The point is that it had taken me years to grow into that image of myself.
I had fought for it.
I had struggled for it.
At times, I had crawled toward it.
And after all those years, I had finally arrived there.
The thought that motherhood could dismantle it all in an instant felt unbearable.
But what actually happened?
In the end, those concerns became surprisingly unimportant.
What people thought of me.
How I appeared from the outside.
After becoming a mother, the only question that truly remained was whether I had given everything I could.
As a mother.
As an artist.
Because perfection does not exist in either world.
A work can be completed.
But there is no perfect work.
A child can finish weaning.
But there is no perfect way to raise a child.
Neither world contains perfection.
All we can do is move forward, doing our best to make things a little better than they were before.
Before becoming a mother, I imagined the challenge much more simply.
I thought that if I could just become more efficient, everything would somehow work.
As though running one hundred meters ten seconds faster would allow me to balance both parenting and work.
But shortening every task in daily life solves very little.
In reality, it was as though a one-hundred-meter sprint in a stadium had suddenly become an obstacle course deep in a forest.
The rules were different.
The finish line was invisible.
Every day, I found myself desperately running toward a temporary destination I had chosen for myself.
And even if, by some miracle, I managed to run gracefully, no audience would ever see it.
Because this was not a stadium.
It was a forest.
Life became easier once Mini-Tumi turned two.
That much is true.
And yet balancing work and parenthood remains difficult.
The Bulgaria tour was difficult in the way that travelling with a ten-month-old could only be.
The Italy tour was difficult in the way that travelling with a one-year-and-four-month-old could only be.
And this West Japan tour was difficult in the way that travelling with a two-year-old could only be.
It was extraordinarily difficult.
There was nothing effortless about it.
Nothing that looked easy.
Nothing remotely graceful.
But the outside no longer mattered very much.
What mattered was something more essential.
Whether I could continue giving myself fully to what mattered.
Whether I could continue moving forward with sincerity.
“See?” I find myself saying to the woman I used to be.
I gently pat the shoulder of that frightened version of myself.
“Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, none of this is going to happen the way you planned.”
I whisper it in her ear.
And then I laugh.
Wholeheartedly.
Why?
Because I am happy.
Not because I became a mother.
That is not the reason.
I am happy because I am meeting my own life with everything I have.
More than I did when I wanted to appear graceful.
More than I did when I was afraid.
More than I did when I was trying to protect the image of who I thought I was supposed to be.
—
This essay is part of the series
“The In-Between: Mother and Artist.”
Previous:
Part Ⅸ — The Holocaust Memorial Museum
https://ekotumi.medium.com/the-in-between-mother-and-artist-west-japan-more-or-less-travel-notes-part-%E2%85%B8-the-holocaust-e3ccb66c491d
