Untamed Heart

Fellow mom blogger Kyran Pittman penned a post recently that resonated with me. Her fabulous Notes to Self blog is my new favorite, and in it she offered a sneak-peak excerpt from her upcoming memoir. To read the full excerpt I encourage you to go to her blog, but the jist of it was that inside every honest woman there resides “a creature that can’t be domesticated.” I love that line and have pondered its meaning in recent weeks.

After 18 years of mostly happy marriage, a successful writing career, two kids, one dog, two consecutive suburban homes, a sensible sedan and several SUVs, sometimes I still wake up in the night panicked, wondering if my life has purpose. The security I spent years chasing down seems suffocating at 3 a.m., and that’s usually when I feel it stir, the seed of something I dare not feed or water. It’s a violent urge, this desire to shatter the wife and mommy mold I’ve strapped myself into so that the woman I lost along the way can claw her way back out.

As Kyran so eloquently says, this creature in each of us is restless and untamed. Like all wild things, it has an inclination to roam, a feral desire for danger, and a limited ability to form attachments – it will not be tied down. This creature, whoever she is, would not play nice at PTA meetings or bake brownies for Bible study. Nor would she even consider spending precious down time trolling recipe websites for 20-minute weeknight meals. She is Thelma and Louise. She is Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She’s the maneater Darryl Hall warned young men about, the one who only comes out at night.

Discontent is an elusive emotion. It’s rarely biting enough to spur change, yet it nags like a hungry child, whining incessantly but never satisfied with the very thing it demands.

My husband is not immune to these restless musings. We joke about quitting our day jobs, running off to Mexico and opening a taco stand. Pulling the kids out of school and traipsing around Europe for a year. Or moving to the mission field and living on faith and donations. But then he laughs, sets the alarm, and sleeps like a baby, while I stare at the ceiling and wonder how I will do this – live this life I’ve chosen – for the next 25 or so years.

But come morning, the creature slinks back to its cage. Routine relegate discontent to a dim corner of my consciousness I will not have time revisit any time soon. As I rush the kids out the door in a flurry of backpacks and briefcases, my “to do” list already dictating my day, I pause, suddenly aware of a low but steady purring, seemingly announcing the approach of a very large cat. I look around, expectant.

“Mom – you got new messages on your Blackberry!” my son shouts behind me, and I turn to see him scrolling the screen, fascinated with technology as only an 11-year old can be. I take the droning device from him and turn it off. Then I slide into my leased SUV, whisk out the driveway of my expansive corner lot, and chauffeur my kids to their pricey private school. Next it’s off to work, where I will spend the next eight hours earning nearly enough money to pay for the various trappings of my middle class life.

I do what I do to keep what I have. Like it or not.