The Blue Jay's Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood Book

This is my first year reading Erdrich but even so this motherhood memoir is deep backlist, when her girls were all under 4 and her husband was still alive. It feels more like Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek + infant than most new mom memoirs. There are tidbits about her larger family, seasonal noticings of nature, self-reflection, etc.

I found it interesting that she had adopted three older children before having her babies, as it made me think her experience only seems serene because she knows the contrast.

"I'm usually a bit late and relieved if others are a little late too...waiting doesn't bother me...Life comes on you all unawares while you are stuck in an interim situation. Life sneaks up. You have a tea, another tea, watch the water...There is the sweet self-indulgence of reading in public, a newspaper! Sometimes I simply feel myself vitally alive int eh moment, the interstice."

"[after a baby is born] Most days, I can't get enough distance on myself to define what I am feeling."

"Any sublime effort has its dark moments… Here is a job in which it is not unusual to be, at the same instant, wildly joyous and profoundly stressed."

"Women without children are also the best of mothers, often, with the patience, interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain…Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply Ito the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortunate who feels witnessed as a person…."