September 17, 1990

Madeleine just left. She's going to come twice a week to help me
out with the children. I don't knoe how it's going to work out.
I had a feeling she was a person who went through depressions and
I was right. She seems very determined to work things out
however. It might do her good, the children good and Gilles and
I good. I will have to get organized though, so we don't waste
the time she comes. I want it to make life easier on us. I want
to be better rested, more relaxed. Then possibly, I will have
time to be a little more creative and get a couple of manuscripts
ready and sent off.

I finished reading Georgia O'Keefe's biography last night. It
made me slightly sad, not to have finished the book, but to feel
how her life ended. I have ambivalent feelings about the woman,
just as I did about Gabrielle Roy, especially when I finished her
biography "a detresse et l'enchantement". I haven't figured out
if it's jealousy on my part or if it's really that I think they
could be less egocentric and still be successful artists. Deep
down, I knoe the answer to that. You have to be egocentric to
create. Look what I'm doing. Have I created something
worthwhile? Yes I have. I've created four children. Four
beautiful, stubborn, colorful children. So what's bugging me?
Is it that I can't take credit for those beautiful children? Is
it that I can't control the outcome of my creations like I could
a painting, or a literary work? Is it because we live in a
society where raising children just doesn't rate? I know I would
not be any happier being only an artist, a writer, whatever. I
am a mother. I am a lot of things, but part of what I am is a
mother. I remember my first months as a mother. Looking at
every woman I crossed, trying to determine signs of motherhood.
Trying to determine signs if motherhood in myself. I was
convinced it had to show. I felt so different, every day, ever
minute. I would look over my body with amazement, wondering how
that baby could ever have fit into such a small opening. I
wondered how I could ever fit him back in... I would look at the
child and stare in wonder, unbelieving! I had made that child!

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