A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
Last week welcomed our seventh snow day this year, so what was once novel and exciting quickly became an all-too-familiar slog of parenting-and-working or parenting-and-working-at-night, where both the quality of parenting and the quality of work suffers. I find myself dreaming of the hobbies I’ll one day adopt when my career fits more neatly into our lives, tucked into the corners of a regular school day. I wonder, regularly, how other parents manage it all; I imagine they get by with a little help from their friends.
F is sick and has been, on and off, for a few weeks now. My relentlessly joyful kid has turned into a bundle of crank, screaming when I pick her up and screaming when I put her down. I find myself overwhelmed by everyone’s needs, not because their needs exist, but because I am responsible for them; the overwhelm persists despite the fact that this is a responsibility I both respect and take seriously. I find myself longing for the intimacy community brings, the ease of togetherness that transforms a simple snow day from a state of isolation into a festive celebration, full of joyful shrieks and snowy dogpiles.
Each day, the city grows colder. The temperature dips from 16 degrees to 10, then six—but feels like six below. The days are full, and for that I am grateful, but there is a fierce restlessness that accumulates after spending so many days indoors. On day five, we pull on our cozy boots, our hats, our gloves. N zips her coat up to the throat and we stuff a screaming F into her snowsuit, transforming her into an incredibly puffy, even cuter version of herself. We traipse outside.
The frigid winter air smacks my face and immediately, I feel exhilarated—thrilled by the snow white sky hovering above me, removed of all color or feeling. Such is the wonder of mother earth. We lay down on the sidewalk, backs against snow drifts. My palms face the clouds, empty, open.
A neighborhood girl wanders up to us, clad in a bright pink outfit. She doesn’t introduce herself, just shimmies right in, and lays down on the ground next to us. N stiffens, not ready for somebody new. The girl tends to F instead, helping her up when she falls over, holding her hand to help her jump.
I am impressed by this child’s demeanor, her refusal to be ignored. She is sweet and hopeful; she is looking for a friend. We chit chat, wondering if N’s heart will open. Slowly, it does.
Over the course of 20 minutes, I watch parallel play turn into cooperative play. My role as facilitator shifts into unnecessary interference, and I remove myself to watch from the porch. N and her new friend imagine, run, stomp. They take their little sisters and spin them around. They shriek and find snowballs. There is joy.
When I tuck N into bed that night, her voice shines with pride. Mama, she says, her eyes bright: Did you see? I made a new friend today.
I think about the magic of friendship—how unlike so many other experiences, it never loses its particular thrill. A new friend at age 4 brings the same combination of unexpected love, surprise, and excitement that a new friend at age 34 does, and I suspect a new friend at age 40 will feel the same.
This is the beauty of friendship. It doesn’t always last, and it doesn’t always fit well, but when it does, it calms your spirit like a colorless sky, and brings you somewhere new.
TUESDAY
I recently listened to The Partition Project and am in the middle of listening to Solito.
Upon Ruth Franklin’s recommendation, I re-read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, not having remembered it from my high school days. Shocked, once again, at how clear of a mirror literature is, how it reflects the degree of our humanity back to us.
I love that fellow illustrator/author Sandra Dieckmann is chronicling her daughter, Ronja’s, drawings — they are just so gorgeous, truly suspended somewhere between reality and imagination. I’m frequently inspired by N’s artwork, and Sandra’s endeavor has me considering how to best catalog her artwork, too.
I found my friend Cyndie Spiegel here, and welcome her weekly missives on life, work, and finding microjoys.
T and I watched Hack Your Health and I loved two things most: learning about my gut microbiome and being re-introduced to Andrea Love’s animation. She’s worked on a few films I’ve loved, like Tulip (a collaboration with Phoebe Wahl) and Pinocchio, but I really lost myself in these cooking with wool animations.
WEDNESDAY
After five rounds of concept sketches for Dear Library, I started over. There were several reasons behind this, and I’ll share more when I can, but for now, it means that I need a new color story for this book.
I’ve never had a color swatching practice — it seemed an indulgent use of time, and it still does. The process of swatching colors is incredibly meditative. Restorative. Like most healthy pursuits, there’s not much to immediately show or share of the work taking place—but internally, incredible shifts take root.
I make conscious efforts in rewiring the parts of my brain that tell me fun should be replaced with productive and so I’ve been color swatching diligently, ignoring the voice inside my head. It’s been great.
For me, this process has been most useful in:
Pushing myself to create color harmony with unlikely color palettes; exploring palettes beyond my comfort and regular rotation.
More accurately seeing the temperature of any particular color and how that temperature changes when placed against another hue.
Being able to pinpoint which combination of colors evokes the emotional atmosphere I’m trying to create.
Quite literally seeing that there is usually, and almost always—more than one solution.
THURSDAY
I enjoyed looking through these illustrated love letters from the Archives of American Art.
FRIDAY
The night sounds like a murder
of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs
because we can’t change the world, but we can
change our hardware. America breaks my heart
some days, and some days it breaks itself in two.
I watched a woman have a breakdown in the mall
today and when the security guard tried to help her
what I could see was all of us
peeking from her purse as she threw it
across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,
the walls felt like another way to hold us in
and when she finally stopped crying
I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting, Some days
the sky is too bright. And like that we were her
flock in our black coats and white sweaters,
some of us reaching our wings to her
and some of us flying away.
—Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror by Kelli Russell Agodon
See you next week!
xx,
M
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