A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

When the first snow of the new year falls, I wake up to the syrupy hours of early morning and slope down the stairs. My cold nose presses against the iced windows while drifts stream down, soft ribbons sparkling against the dark night. A lone car whistles. An enormous moon watches.

Last year felt like a loss, a piling up of all I didn’t get to. The days moved slowly: a never-ending trail of meal-making and playing catch up, of falling farther and farther behind, of willing my mind to be present and my temper further restrained, of tempering my expectations while motioning for my spirit to remain untethered, unfettered, dancing before me.

Last year felt like a loss, a blur of all I was too overwhelmed to see. The days turned quickly: a whirl of cake-making and playing dress up, of celebrations and wishes, of willing myself to be a better mother than the ones I’ve been before, of one step forward and several steps back, of choosing—again and again—to tear it all down and rebuild, rather than simply walking away.

Last year felt like a loss, a constant pinging of everything beyond my control. A year of reaching: where the person I am followed the person I want to be, of days that marked death and deaths that marked each day, of choosing to remind and remember, of chilling loneliness and bitter stagnation, of seeding and searching for new growth, and still—the gratitude for each new morning, evening, star.

Now the days are gathered up behind me, three hundred-and-some in all. Looking back, I see a few neatly washed, some fed and watered, some treasured—but all worn through well, all loved and wanted.

Last year felt like a loss, but it also brought me back to myself. I sit here and write, the most honest form of loving I know, and feel the presence of someone I haven’t been before. Someone who tries, in the ways she knows how, to leave a change in the people and places she comes across.

I love making resolutions. I love big, lofty lists of vows and ambitious goals, but in this new year, I have only one: to love myself the way I love life—in acceptance of all it is, in awe of all it can be. And I wish the same for you.

TUESDAY

I’ve been under Chihiro Iwasaki’s spell for years now, long before I visited the Chihiro Art Museum in Nerima, Tokyo in 2019 and took in the full breadth of her work.

Chihiro Iwasaki, Tyltyl and Mytyl Running after the Blue Bird from Aoi Tori (The Blue Bird), Kodansha, 1969 | Courtesy of the Chihiro Art Museum Tokyo

*The Little Mermaid Thinking of the Prince*

It’s been five years since I visited that museum, which was previously the home she shared with her husband and son, but her work continues to influence the paintings I make and the shape I’d like my life to take.

Rarely do I spent a day in my studio without considering the war-struck life she lived, the ethereal nature of her paintings, the sensibility in her line work, or the philosophy steadily strung throughout her paintings: to live a simple and modest life, to listen for laughing voices, and to protect our children at all costs.

WEDNESDAY

*An image of Richard Brautigan’s* Karma Repair Kit

THURSDAY

I kept my more/less list extremely minimal and to-the-point this year, with the understanding that improvement on this one core item will greatly impact the rest of my world and everything inside it:

“The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb. I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word "love," and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Explaining further, he continues, "Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love." Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.” —from bell hooks’ All About Love

For archival purposes, here’s last year’s more/less list.

FRIDAY

The day feels put together hastily
like a gift for grateful beggars
being better than no time at all
but the bells are ringing
in cities I have never visited
and my name is printed over doorways
I have never seen
While extracting a bone
or whatever is tender or fruitful
from the core of indifferent days
I have forgotten
the touch of sun
cutting through uncommitted mornings
The night is full of messages
I cannot read
I am too busy forgetting
air like fur on my tongue
and these tears
which do not come from sadness
but from grit in a sometimes wind

Rain falls like tar on my skin
my son picks up a chicken heart at dinner
asking
does this thing love?
Deft unmalicious fingers of ghosts
pluck over my dreaming
hiding whatever it is of sorrow
that would profit me

I am deliberate
and afraid
of nothing.

—New Year’s Day by Audre Lorde

See you next week!

xx,
M

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*A snippet of an illustration from my sketchbook series,* *The Classroom*

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

A few months ago, my professor asked us to keep a sketchbook of life drawings. Our instructions were simple: draw quickly, draw truthfully. No self-editing, no time for over-thinking, and no digital materials.

I decided to focus on N's classroom, capturing a little of her day during morning drop-offs and afternoon pick-ups. I drew the loving community she'd formed in the few months since she'd begun attending school, the way she chanted her friends' names over and over on the drive home. I drew her teachers, who cared for her mind and her body, though none of their blood ran through her. I drew her imagination, the way it chugged steadily along and then blossomed, encouraged by all she's exposed to within her four classroom walls. I drew the ache of leaving her behind, and the relief of it, too.

This collection of sketchbook pages, titled The Classroom, is now on my website. In light of the news from Uvalde this week, this project feels different to me now: still joyful, but calloused. I know I shouldn't. No one should feel guilty for being spared. But I also know this: nothing separates me, or N, from the parents and children in Texas––nothing but sheer luck.

TUESDAY

N's home sick from school today, so I take the day off work, too. We're in my studio drawing when the first Times headline appears in my inbox. I scan it quickly, my body tensing. Oh no, I say quietly, under my breath. N, who listens too carefully for an 18-month-old, looks up and echoes my reaction, her smile splitting her face in half. Mama? Oh no? Oh no! Not understanding, she begins to laugh.

Not understanding, I close my email and focus on our drawing. We are drawing scribbles today, which is different from every other day only in that it is a different day. I inhale and exhale. I will myself to relax, monitoring my body language and tone constantly, all in an effort for N to feel free and joyful for as long as she possibly can. If I can hold it in, she won't have to hold it at all.

I'll read the news after she goes to bed, I tell myself. The headline said the children were only injured. My own reaction is ludicrous––poisoned, even: only. Only injured. The rest of the day progresses routinely, save for the punctuating news updates and anxious texts from other parents. I read each one and then press a smile back onto my face. After she goes to bed. We push the wagons, we throw strawberries on the ground, we begrudgingly take a bath.

Around 6:45, N snuggles up to T and coaxes him to read the second of one thousand bedtime stories. One dozen times is how many times I tell N that I love her, and even after that, I continue telling her within the confines of my own mind as I head downstairs to make dinner. I take all the ingredients out: the soup, the bread, the spoons, the bowls. I place the dutch oven on top of the burners and start the flame. After that, I simply lean over the stove and sob, my body shaking for all of the beautiful children we insist––so stupidly, on leaving behind.

WEDNESDAY

"There’s a thousand ways it could happen, I know. Images flash in my mind, glimpses of what could be when danger looms near. A car gets too close to the curb when we’re walking on the sidewalk. Another rolls through a stop sign just as we cross the intersection. I imagine scooters flipping and bikes ramming into walls. Trucks driving in the wrong lane. I see baseball bats swung too close to heads and escalator rides gone awry. Every fever brings on the reality that illness can hit anyone at anytime, that many don’t recover. That that could be one of mine. I tell myself to breathe deeply and heavily when they go onto the roof with their dad to string the Christmas lights. But I don’t actually breathe until their feet are back on the ground. I grip their hands tight on the Ferris wheel, remind them to sit and not lean over too far. Remind them not to dive into the shallow end. To not walk too far out into the ocean.

Some of this is my anxiety, I know. But the rest is my motherhood. The part of my brain that changes when babies are born, the part that is conditioned to sense danger in every corner.

It’s the part that screams in silence when nightmares are near.

And here, in America, nightmares are always near."

––on living in the space between grief and rage by Ojus Patel

THURSDAY

This week, I look at what other artists have chosen to remember:

American People Series #15: Hide Little Children, 1966 by Faith Ringgold

“Mera sohna gagaloo magaloo puth” by Baljinder Kaur

Boy Among Withered Leaves by Chihiro Iwasaki

Three Ages of Women by Gustav Klimt

FRIDAY

The world

is full of doors.
And you, whom I cannot save,