patti_smith ovenbird In Patti Smith’s memoir, Bread of Angels, she talks about moving into her first house—a fixer-upper in Detroit—with her husband Fred. There she sets up a “room of her own” to write in. She says, “I prepared fresh mint tea, drank from my Persian cup, sat with my inkwell and fountain pen to write…In this room I felt entirely myself. There I could sit and write in the morning light, or at night by candlelight. Sometimes I would not lift my pen, but my mind would conjure long stories that seemed to come from another source, fluid and continuous when I’d leave to prepare a meal or fold our clothes. The room was my vagabondia. Fred would sometimes stop and look inside but he never entered it. Not once did he disturb the atmosphere, or tread upon the black felt with his dusty cowboy boots.” It struck me as so beautiful that Patti insisted upon a sanctuary and her husband protected and made space for her solitude. She had a place that was completely her own, where no one dared intrude upon her creative agency. Fred respected her need for quiet, introspective, uninterrupted time, and she unapologetically took this time for herself. Forty years after Patti Smith sat in her very own room, so many of us are still dreaming of such a reality. So I was dismayed when, just a few pages later, it was revealed that the room was dismantled when she was pregnant with her first son. She writes that there are no pictures of the room, “but in memory I can see it in close-up, down to the small fibrous hairs of black felt, catching the dust that filled the shafts of light from the window. It inspired many mental adventures, and eventually it was transformed into a cheery though humble playroom.” Later she watched her son “sit on the floor, just as I had, creating worlds of his own in perfect silence.” I nearly wept reading about the loss of her room. The room in which she felt most entirely herself. Because of course this is the story. Of COURSE this is how it goes. The mother gives up her freedom, her solitude, her creative sanctuary for the sake of her child, who is now of primary importance. Her job is to sacrifice, and the image of her son playing in the room nearly broke me because it was a perfect example of the way mothers are supplanted and expected to fade into the background. Patti did keep writing, but she had to do so early in the morning while her house was still asleep, scraping time from her own necessary rest. She persevered, obviously. She went on to write many books of memoir and poetry. She held onto her creative spirit through mothering. But many are not so lucky. They let their artist souls die and their children drive toy cars and trains over their solitude. 261014 what's it to you? who go blather from