She steps close to me, and almost whispers, “Can you have children and still have a career in music?”
Attractive and young, she is a successful composer, already teaching at a prestigious university, and married to an older, well-known composer. They are talking about having children, but she is not sure. I smile.
I can only speak for myself. Having my daughter opened me up in a way that I never could have imagined. Through her I found the courage to face my dark self which has allowed me to speak true in my music. She awoke in me the possibility of love given and love reciprocated, and connected me to lingering soft animal embraces and the wonder of discovering the world anew. It was a second chance of unknown dimension.
And yet, time was now not my own. As a mostly single parent, I crafted careful structures for childcare, combinations of daycare and babysitters, which, at any moment could fall through – an illness, an early dismissal, a snow day – all was in shatters and I was frantic. I’d sneak into my studio when she was playing or napping, feeling the weight of my continual distraction. She learned, implicitly, that even when I was with her, I was not always present. My gaze far off, I would put her voice on mute as I tended my evolving work, moving energy around in my thoughts.
“There is a passionate case to be made on either side, having your children or doing without, and both sides are for humanity,” says Alix Kates Shulman, in her book, Burning Questions. “Have your babies or tie your tubes – whatever you decide, you’ll find out soon enough that you’ve lost something precious.”
Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer © Tina Davidson, 2022.
Listen to Core of the Earth, and Lullaby, from Tina Davidson’s opera, Billy and Zelda
