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It’s slightly fitting that my last blog post here on ERE was about National Poetry Writer’s Month, and the April NaPoWriMo challenge. (In case you don’t want to scroll down and read all about it: It’s a month of daily poetry writing, from poets near and far. And they don’t call it a challenge for nothing.)

Speaking of challenges …

It has been a bit of maternity leave here at ERE.com. The business itself is up and thriving, and has the editor-at-large here wishing she had more hours in the day and could take on every single project that comes her way. But we have a few more years before Kindergarden arrives for her youngest, and that means a part-time gig.

She, I mean, ME … I mean, I … have been busy writing about said disruptive motherhood, which you can read about here.

But life and motherhood can take it out of you, and particularly my motherhood with a child with challenges, living far away from family and friends, and trying to juggle … well, you get the drift.

So NaPoWriMo seems like a good enough time as any to get up and at ’em. It is spring, after all. Time of hope and renewal and all that. Stay tuned, dear readers, stay tuned.

I sat at my page, betwixt thought and ambition: To pen a blog in honor of the bard. Methinks however, in spiteth of my training, and the glorious day of William’s birth (or so tis told in the forests of Athena), t’would be better memory to honor William with a bit of folly.

Not many people that work from home name their offices. I did … and not just because the walls are a creamy, blush color, but because it became the impetus of many things in my written life. It is where I began to create some of my favorite stories; where I wrote and rewrote and rewrote poetry about my marriage, my baby; where the idea and concept of this company was born and carried out.

I surrounded myself with things from my single life; photographs, books, candles, shelves from my apartment. There is something uniquely comforting about being in here … like stress from the world cannot get in here. It’s me and my music and fingers flying.

And now it is time to leave it. We are moving in a few days, out of state, and my new office will be a carved-out corner of my finished basement, where I can have eyes on a manuscript and my son. I am mourning the womb room now, more than I thought I would.

About a year and a half ago, when I found out I was pregnant, the womb room took on a new life. My office began to accumulate non-office things. A migration from the guest room turned nursery. When I returned to work my laptop became relegated to the dining room, so I could be with my son during the day. The womb room continued to accumulate stuff: mail, pictures, knick knacks axed from the living room once the baby could reach the table tops, a television for the new house, empty boxes for the move.

So really, I gave up my space awhile ago, but since moving necessitates cleaning and cleaning out, my office has been given a new spring. And I can finally sit at a desk again. Glance out the window at what was never much of a view, but enough to let me know when it was raining. And as I sit here, burning a few nubs of candles, I wish I could transport this space, this perfect space in my head, the one I always wished I could have. The space my husband helped create for me, to make me feel at home in his home. The space that helped me stay connected to me.

But if the womb room has taught me anything, it’s that creation is possible. And with that power, taken anywhere, life continues.

The Womb

It’s easier to write when it’s raining.

When the linoleum looks clean and gray against the filtered light.  When it’s comforting to find the walls exist.

Sweeter, easier to imagine how the rain feels to the trees in my front yard.  Or if the potted plants out the door could pretend they weren’t kidnapped.

Like glancing at the wall — parents smiling next to the Torino.  Thinking, “There’s only one left.”

Inside the womb and the womb ….

Through the screened window a blade of grass takes a hit.  The green is buoyant.

In here, words know.  The circle sends the thought in,

Sends it out.  Like rain and earth and roots and rain.

Here, salmon-walled,

here is where we write it down.

Copyright 2009 Lisa A Schleipfer