Ear­li­er this week, Lara Vap­n­yar wrote about how she finds loca­tion inspi­ra­tion for her fic­tion­al char­ac­ters. Her new nov­el, The Scent of Pine (Simon & Schus­ter), is now avail­able. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

There were two mod­els for moth­er­hood in my sprawl­ing fam­i­ly: my great-great-aunt Riva and my great-grand­moth­er Clara. 

My great-great-aunt Riva was praised for being a true Jew­ish moth­er. There were many sto­ries about her, but here is the most famous one. Once, at a din­ner par­ty, she brought in her infant son Abrasha to show him off to the guests. Lit­tle Abrasha prompt­ly peed in her soup. She ate the soup. 

Riva ate that soup! That’s how much she loved her son!” my grand­moth­er commented. 

Need­less to say, Abrasha grew up a mama’s boy. Nev­er mar­ried. Nev­er moved out from home.

My great-grand­moth­er Clara on the oth­er hand had many flaws. The biggest flaw was her self­ish­ness. She would sneak out of the house, go to a farmer’s mar­ket, buy a quar­ter pound of cot­tage cheese and a few straw­ber­ries (an expen­sive del­i­ca­cy in Rus­sia) and indulge in them alone while sit­ting on a park bench.

She ate them alone!” my grand­moth­er lamented.

Ever since I was a small child I won­dered which kind of moth­er I would become. I aspired to be a self-sac­ri­fic­ing Riva, but I wor­ried that I’d end up like Clara. (I just loved good food too much.) 

I think I became a mix of two. I’m very involved with my chil­dren (some­times to the point of smoth­er­ing), but I also have a life of my own, and I do indulge in sneaky plea­sures. I still haven’t fig­ured out the right amount of Rivaness or Claraness that would make an excep­tion­al­ly good moth­er, but I tend to exper­i­ment with that in my fiction.

I cre­ate char­ac­ters who fol­low either Riva’s or Clara’s mod­el, push them to the brink of bad moth­er­hood and see what hap­pens. Let them fig­ure it out. Nobody will suf­fer, except for their fic­tion­al children.

How much plea­sure was allowed? Wasn’t too much sac­ri­fice suf­fo­cat­ing to the child? I cer­tain­ly wasn’t a true Jew­ish moth­er by my fam­i­ly stan­dards. And even though I denounced them in my head, I still felt a lot of guilt in my heart. I was uncom­fort­able and confused.

Then I came up with a solu­tion. In my nov­el The Scent of Pine, the main char­ac­ter is an unhap­pi­ly mar­ried moth­er of two. She loves her chil­dren, but she is long­ing to find love. 

Let her fig­ure it out.

Lara Vap­n­yar moved from Moscow to Brook­lyn in 1994. Know­ing very lit­tle Eng­lish, she quick­ly picked up the lan­guage and soon began writ­ing in it. She is the author of two sto­ry col­lec­tions, There are Jews in My House and Broc­coli and Oth­er Tales of Food and Love, and two nov­els, Mem­oirs of a Muse and The Scent of Pine. She lives in New York City with her family.

Relat­ed Content:

Lara Vap­n­yar | Jew­ish Book Coun­cil Vis­it­ing Scribe

Lara Vap­n­yar moved from Moscow to Brook­lyn in 1994. Know­ing very lit­tle Eng­lish, she quick­ly picked up the lan­guage and soon began writ­ing in it. She is the author of two sto­ry col­lec­tions, There are Jews in My House and Broc­coli and Oth­er Tales of Food and Love, and two nov­els, Mem­oirs of a Muse and The Scent of Pine. She lives in New York City with her family.

Home Away

Jew­ish Moth­er vs Bad Mother