Housewifely Arts” by Megan Mayhew Bergman

The first time I read “Housewifely Arts” by Megan Mayhew Bergman, I was struck by her uncanny and

honest portrait of motherhood. When we meet the narrator, she’s traveling down I-95 with her seven-

year-old in tow, seeking out an African Gray parrot once owned by her mother. The eight-hour journey

stems from a haphazard, desperate desire to hear her deceased mother’s voice once more. As the story

unfolds we learn their relationship had been full of the little fault lines that develop between mother

and daughter over a lifetime.

Precisely because of their size, those little fault lines are what grabbed my attention. There’s no

physical abuse, no drunken betrayals – nothing that screams, “pay attention, for now we’re in the

realm of dramatic truth”. It’s a deceptively simple story about people trying their best, and

sometimes falling short.

I suppose it’s no surprise that I was drawn to Megan’s story. If you could see them, the bags under

my eyes are obvious, and a direct result of raising a two-year-old. In thinking about how to introduce

Megan’s story to our readers, I went through an embarrassing number of drafts, waxing poetic about the

ways motherhood changed me, and in particular my relationship with my own mother. I tried talking about

the cult of perfect parenting (see here for a great article on that subject), or the weird trend of

mother/daughter best friends (which completely creeps me out), and on and on. But none of it seemed to

do justice to the quiet elegance and humor of Megan’s prose. Everything I thought of was just too

overwrought.