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Motherhood storiesdo have a season: thanks to Mothers Day, they tend to cluster around May.
But this motherhood season, many of the stories shared an unusual frankness.
The current raft of stories is not interested in exalted, sanitized, Instagram-filtered perfection.
Theyre stories about exertion and shortcomings.
This moment in motherhood stories is interested in authenticity.
And if you are, then how exactly can you tell a story about motherhood?
How can you escape the narrative pitfalls of a protagonist whose life is defined by boring repetition?
How can you depict something that feels simultaneously mundane and otherworldly?
There are endless, unsatisfying answers to the question of what motherhood feels like.
The child who says an unfathomably cruel thing and then walks away without flinching.
The mothers stunned face.
The painful, joyful transitions between the child you know at home and the child out in the world.
The worry that you are not enough.
To which I say,no kidding.)
His existence was a foregone conclusion.
The story pieces spin away, always almost out of her control, and yet Sams always there.
None of the story works, none of the narrative would exist, without her.
She is the glue, which means shes also stuck.
Yet, it didnt matter that it was effective; the impact was still my blinding exhaustion.
But watching these shows does not feel revelatory.
And theyve all looked wildly different from one another.
Thats all itwouldbe, if her maternity were not also part of the story.
Im going to spoil the end ofTullynow.
But more importantly,Tullyis a fairy tale.
This is the gift, Tully tells Marlo.
It is a gorgeous double-edged knife.
And then theres the simultaneous knowledge that itisa fairy tale.
That Tully is not real; in fact, shes a symptom of something gone terribly wrong.
That the only person who can save Marlo is herself.
That there isnt really saving, in any true sense of the word.
Theres just doing, and then doing again.
I already have mirrors in my home.
What I need from these stories is for them to be more than perfectly reflective.
Its so hard to hold both of those things at once, the monumental and the ordinary.
They are stories about themostordinary, and the most monumental.
