Launched in 2021, MotherTongue magazine is a biannual print magazine which, according to its founders, aims to explore the nuances of mothers’ lives — in particular, the ways that motherhood intersects with art, sex, pop culture, politics, and, as the founders put it, “a few things in between.”
It’s that last category that writer Rachel Yoder chose to focus on for her recent Mother Tongue essay, “A Matter of Time.” The piece was inspired by a series of conversations with her young son about keeping track of every minute of every day. Yoder writes that his fixation on how much time he has left prompted her to reflect on the “particular gift of motherhood: the ability to hold both life and death in a single body. The ability to see reality while also finding space to hope.”
Yoder joined The Show to discuss her essay, starting with that when she and her husband first discussed starting a family, he was skeptical. Why, he wondered, would they bring a child into a world he viewed as doomed by an inevitable climate crisis? Yoder says that didn’t make any sense to her.
Full conversation
RACHEL YODER: It just sort of struck me as so alien and so outside the purview of how I had been thinking about having a child, because to me it just seemed so physically and obviously good and hopeful. And I do think that that’s one of the gifts of motherhood, this sense of utter capability.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah. Yeah. And yet it stands in such contrast to the other feeling that you write about in this piece, which is the magnification of your awareness of the clock running out and the sense that you can’t outrun the clock running and running out. And in fact, you even talk about attempting to, as you put it, “Avoid the constant shoulder tap of death.”
What was your relationship to that feeling prior to the birth of your son? Was it something you fixated on, or was having him an experience of intensifying that awareness?
YODER: I mean, I think I went through an episode of really thinking a lot about death, as many people do during adolescence. And after that sort of did the thing also that many of us do, which is where I just tried to forget it. And I got on with life. There are a lot of other things to think about.
And now, as someone in middle age, it strikes me that that’s the fundamental uncertainty of life, right? Is where and when and how, and and we never know when we’re going to reach that moment of death. And so how do we then parent in that shadow of uncertainty? How do we live joyfully in that shadow of uncertainty? I mean, that seems to be the big question.
DINGMAN: Yeah. But one remarkable approach it seems like you’re taking is — there’s this beautiful scene where you’re watching a movie on the couch with your son. Can you tell us the question you felt moved to ask him?
YODER: Sure. I wish I could remember what movie it was we were watching. But something in the movie sparked this impulse in me to turn to him and say, “Hey, when we’re both dead, if there is any way that we can reach each other, that we can connect, that we can communicate, let’s try our absolute hardest to do that. Because you’re who I would want to connect with more than anyone.”
And he sort of had this flash of panic, as one might expect, wash over his face. But then he got it, and we did it pinky swear, and we said we’ll find each other. And there was something actually really comforting and lovely about that. And I think it also kind of speaks to this sense of utter capability when it comes to motherhood, that maybe we will be able to connect.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, speaking of the unknown elements of all this, the way that you open the essay is by talking about this preoccupation with time that your son started to develop. And he always wanted to know exactly what time it was. And he always wanted to know how many minutes were left before you leave the house, how many minutes until you get home.
Did you have a sense from the way that he was fixated on measuring time, that he might have some kind of preternatural awareness about all this? Or was it more that the way that he was measuring time sort of rhymed with the concerns that you were having as a mother of magnifying this focus on death?
YODER: I knew that he was always a little worried about everything. And I think time provided a kind of certainty or boundedness. And it did — I identified it as like, “Oh, your brain is doing something right now, and it is needing to make sense of what we cannot see.”
I do think also of spirituality as a kind of intelligence — in the same way that there’s sort of like physical intelligence or intellectual intelligence — and that maybe some people are more sensitive to sort of the forces that move between and among us.
DINGMAN: You know, you’re talking about spirituality as a form of intelligence and so much of spirituality is founded on storytelling traditions and the accumulation of stories that people have come up with about what this will look like. How has thinking about these issues, both prior to the birth of your son and since, influenced your writing or how you think about the function of your writing?
YODER: Well, it’s definitely influenced how I think about the act of writing itself. I view those of us who have really taken up writing as a lifelong vocation, a lifelong commitment, sort of as secular clergy. We’re really interested in the ways in which we can put stories together that reveal something that wasn’t obvious before. And we’re really sitting down every day thinking about death and meaning and beauty and morality.
I was raised in a Mennonite community, and stories were sort of the most important thing. I grew up having my dad tell me, “You’re in a different story than other people. And if you decide not to be part of this story, then that’s where it ends.” The story of the Mennonites — which is sort of a heavy load — but I understood sort of the gravity of storytelling.
DINGMAN: I have to say, thank you for sharing that. I’m so struck by the contrast between your dad saying that to you and what you said to your son. I mean, both fairly revelatory moments for a young person, I would think.
YODER: Yeah.
DINGMAN: Yes. And I don’t mean to denigrate what he was going for there, because one way of looking at that is that what he’s saying to you is, “Rachel, this story matters.”
YODER: Absolutely. And what story do you want to write for yourself? I think that has absolutely been another question that I always carry with me. What story am I writing for myself?
DINGMAN: That makes me think of the way that you end the essay, which gave me chills when I read it. You talk about how you have this awareness that we will die. We are powerless over that fate. But one of the phrases that you write at the end — again quoting from the essay — is you say, “We move into the future together. That’s the beauty of it. The solace.”
And I apologize. It’s actually difficult for me to read that line out loud to you. It’s just so moving. And I wonder, what is the solace of that story for you?
YODER: I think togetherness is something that’s so special and is not a given. During times in our lives we will be lonely. We will feel alone. And what a gift it is to have this time together.
DINGMAN: Well, Rachel Yoder is the author of the essay we’ve been discussing, which is called “A Matter of Time.” She’s also the author of the novel, “Nightbitch.” Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your perspective.
YODER: Thank you so much, Sam. Such a pleasure.
