Q&A with Lindsey Kay discussion

Have you started reading or finished becoming.? What is your favorite or least favorite passage? Is there anything that spoke to your heart or stumped you?

All of the story "Becoming" really spoke to me. Being a mother is my most favorite and sometimes hated role. There are a lot of passages I've highlighted in your book, but one of my favorites from that story is "The love that a mother and father feel for each other isn't an unstoppable magical force, either. It's built off of a million decisions made over time, in which the old identity is bricked over like a foundation and they are re-created, as a person whose innermost being is inseparable from the new role that they've taken." And then the whole next passage about pushing a baby out doesn't make you a mother is beautiful too. But this last quote I've stated really touched me. Marriage and parenting isn't this magical thing that is instinctual and instantaneous...you've described it well. And in your description, as we become this new entity...it isn't necessarily who you want to be. I believe you lose some of your individuality and uniqueness in this melding and that was very difficult for me too. Mike and I have been married ten years this coming year.

midnightfaerie wrote: "And in your description, as we become this new entity...it isn't necessarily who you want to be. I believe you lose some of your individuality and uniqueness in this melding and that was very difficult for me too. Mike and I have been married ten years this coming year"

Oh, I hear you. Ken and I are fast approaching eleven years, and as much as I love some of what I've become through our marriage and children other losses are really difficult. I wish some of the darker parts of me still showed, honestly. And there are other losses in myself that are far harder to write about. It's something that I really would love to approach more someday, but just haven't found the words for yet. There's this stereotype of becoming "boring" once you get married and have kids that both is and isn't true. It is true that some wilder parts of a person necessarily become tame- there's something very honorable about that; but as (I'm paraphrasing here) CS Lewis says there's nothing more interesting than an honorable man. Ugh. I'm afraid I'm not explaining myself very well. I guess what I'm saying is that it may be hard to see some parts of yourself bricked over and changed, especially wildness and extravagance, but don't allow yourself to be fooled. All of those parts of yourself still are there, beneath the surface, and in being held in they become something very beautiful, something rare and precious when people catch a glimpse of them and see them transmuted in your daily life. Like coal into diamonds.

Anyway, thanks for the comment! What an awesome Christmas present for me. :)