Blue Jay's Dance #4

                                   You're Still a Woman!

       You're still a woman! "You can be married to the most wonderful man on earth. You're still a woman. You can be married to the Blessed Virgin. You can be married to the Pope. You can be ass-deep in money, charged with success like a brand-new car battery. You can have fifteen-minute labors and perfect breasts and you're still a woman. Your still a woman no matter what excuse you've given men. Can't get around it. Change you hair, kill your yeast off, and shut your eyes. You're still a woman." (P.188).

       Louis Erdrich is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books. In her novel, The Blue Jay's Dance, Erdrich shared her experience with motherhood, as a woman, and as a Native American of the Ojibwa tribe. In her shared thoughts through motherhood, Erdrich mentions thoughts of suicide, and feelings of depression. I have to wonder, is she happy in her role as a woman to a child? Is she happy being a mother in her experience?

     With Louise's incite on her personal experience as a mother, I get a sense that she is unhappy with her role. I think Louise uses her writing as an escape, from her frustration, from boredom. Reading her novel, it is a point that she spends a lot of time with nature, and observing wild life. Erdrich seems to be in search of peace throughout the entire story. Just a place to clear her thoughts, to focus on something, anything, other than being the mother of the household.

      We have all wanted some kind of space away from others at some point. Our own bubble. But being a parent is a sure thing that you will always come second to yourself. There is another human being that must always come first, your child. In my experience as a mother, I have lost, and gained many things in parenting. I have had to make sacrifices, change goals, and priorities. Sometimes I have to question if my daughter's dad would be able to handle my role in the household. Taking care of our daughter, Na'Kielah, her appointments, attending school, working, cleaning the house. There are things I acknowledge in the differences of our roles, that suggest he wouldn't be able to play my part. I think Erdrich struggles with her role to some degree, as do I. I do want my privacy, my space once in awhile, from my daughter, and her constant needs. Not even the toilet, or shower provides an escape for me. I think Erdrich feels the same need for an escape.

      "The truth is, I like doing these small things, up to a point, but when the sludge of incremental necessities becomes suffocating, I rebel and let the details slide. How glad I am to know that I am not the only one. From outside, the mothers in brilliant parkas look affable and competent, but as i sit talking among them I come to know that we are all struggling, with more or less grace, to hold on to the tiger tail of children's, husband's, parents', and siblings' lives while at the same time saving a little core of self in our own, just enough to live by." (P. 161).

      The role of a mother in life can cause a woman to lose a sense of self. Children's necessities consume woman. Having to carry, give birth to, and nurse a baby is a connection between mother and child that no man can understand. Our role as a woman, and parent, can never be compared to a father and child's relationship, because we have the ability to create a life. I think Erdrich feels overwhelmed in her role as a mother, and searches for peace in her writing, nature and wild life. We don't get much information of the father's presence in the house, his duty is to work, while she maintains the house and children. I think the incite and information from The Blue Jay's Dance, gives us the understanding that a woman, and man's role in parenting is much different. "Can't get around it. Change you hair, kill your yeast off, and shut your eyes. You're still a woman." (P.188).