Sleeping - parenting challenge number one

This is from my 1992 journal.

– "just so I can remember this time in my life in later years. G and A have charts on the fridge that they have been filling up. G with star stickers, A with heart stickers. One sticker for each night they spend in their own beds. They finished their charts this week and were then allowed to choose a new toy as a reward.

G chose Totally Hair Barbie.
A chose The Little Mermaid in her Shell."

Reading Linda Nochlin

"Why have there been no great women artists?" Linda Nochlin asked in 1971 and then went on to answer her own question in an essay of the same title. She raised many important issues, one of the most controversial being that women really haven't been able to be great artists (like Rembrant, Van Gogh, or Michelangelo) because the society that they lived in made it impossible.
She compares women artists to the many kings and queens who have loved and patronized the arts. (like Haydn's patron, Prince Esterhazy). Aristocrats (like women) have too many social responsiblities and although they may have had leisure time and were encouraged to 'dabble' in many art forms they were just not taken seriously.
She raises some other good points in the essay. One is that we can raise our boys AND girls to be creative. Genius is not innate, it is learned, she asserts.

Let’s ask the right question, she says.
What are the conditions necessary to produce great art?

May all your dreams come true

"It's a commonplace of parenting and modern genetics that parents have little or no influence on the characters of their children. You never know who you are going to get. Oppotunities, health, prospects, accent, table maners - these might lie within your power to shape. But what really determines the sort of person who comes to live with you is which sperm finds which egg, how the cards in two packs are chosen, then how they are shuffled, halved, and spliced at the moment of recombination. Cheerful or neurotic, kind or greedy, curious or dull, expansive or shy and anywhere in between; it can be quite an afront to parental self-regard, just how much of the work has already been done. On the other hand, it can let you off the hook.
The point is made for you as soon as you have more than one child." Ian McEwan, Saturday

nostalgia

I've spent a good part of today sorting through photos of our children in order to gather some together of our oldest daughter who is getting married in ten days. Looking back made me reflect on how she was such a cute and happy baby and that now she is a courageous and independent young woman. Also, I am reminded that being a mother remains the strongest and strangest influence in my own life and art. Motherhood has made me aware of our vulnerability and responsibility.