Family Family — Dear Somebody

*From my illustrated essay,* The Biggest Dream, *for* *Chickpea Magazine*

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

MONDAY

*An image of my essay,* “The Biggest Dream,” for Issue 38 of Chickpea Magazine

For Issue 38: Ease of Chickpea Magazine, I wrote about meal preparation as an act of love and care, especially among immigrant and first-generation families—and in my own, as I’ve known it.

I think about food like I think about most things: pragmatically. I always liked to eat and cook, but that’s evaporated since becoming a mother. Now, meals feel overwhelming: a neverending physically-and-mentally taxing chore necessary for nourishing my young family. I’ve resented this task for who I believe it asks me to be: a devoted mother who easily slaps together healthy, delicious meals without stress or sweat—not because I don’t want to be this person, but because repeatedly, I’ve failed at actually becoming her.

I first spoke to Cara, the editor of Chickpea Magazine about this piece because I was interested in exploring the perception of care. A single act of love can communicate a wildly different message to the recipient than the message the giver intended to relay; our culture, environment, and personal histories all factor into how we give, perceive, and receive care. For many first generation children, care is not easy to receive. It takes a good deal of work to crack ourselves open enough to even see that it’s there.

In this essay, I look back on my last pregnancy, which I carried while finishing my final year of graduate school at Washington University. I explore the inevitable clash of multiple generations and cultures living under one roof; parental love shown through the monotony of meal planning, grocery shopping, meal preparation; and how food saves us in the places where, often, language fails.

This was also the first time I drew my father, pictured here making granola with N, while me and F (in my belly!) talk to my mom, who is, of course, of course…making chai.

I grimace, almost daily, about my kitchen: it is small, dim, and feels crowded if there are more than two people in it. The magic of drawing is it allows me to see what my eyes cannot: the walls that opened up to let my family grow; the hundred-year-old bricks that still stand strong; the love and care blooming in this tiny kitchen that is, for now, just the right size.

You can read “The Biggest Dream” in its entirety in Issue 38: Ease of Chickpea Magazine. Many thanks to Cara for the opportunity.

TUESDAY

I finished Laurie Frankel’s Family Family, which I loved, and can’t wait to read the rest of her work. I wrote about This is How it Always Is in a previous letter (“Tiny miracles everywhere,” see below) and will read The Atlas of Love next.

I finished Happiness Falls by Angie Kim and am amazed at how well her brain works.

I’m also reading Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, which I am frightened by and want to put down—but I read on because of Knoll’s sharp, intelligent writing, and the truth it exposes about living as a woman, especially in America.

WEDNESDAY

To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. —Friedrich Nietzsche

THURSDAY

I’m still thinking about these gorgeous sketches by Winsor Kinkade and the art of American illustrator Alan E. Cober, which I only discovered because he did the cover art for this thrifted copy of The Sword in The Stone that I’ve had on my dresser for over a decade. Illustrator Fatmia Ordinola’s work is lush and makes me feel the way it looks: vibrant, buzzing.

FRIDAY

Imagine:
I stop running when I’m tired. Imagine:
There’s still the month of June. Tell me,
what op-ed will grant the dead their dying?
What editor? What red-line? What pocket?
What earth. What shake. What silence.

—from Hala Alyan’s Naturalized

See you next week,
M

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*My latest illustration for Issue 62 of* Uppercase Magazine

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

MONDAY

I wake to the sounds of a duckling quacking. I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s midnight; there are no bodies of water nearby. After a minute, I realize it’s F; the sounds are coming from my child. On the monitor, I see her balled body rolling around the crib, quacking. The quacking continues, then becomes laughter—until finally, it’s tears. I change her diaper, I sing her a lullaby, I crawl back into bed and wait for her to sleep. When she finally does, it’s 4:30 in the morning.

The quacking has gone on for weeks now. I stand at the kitchen island, too tired to think. Instead, I give myself over to the mechanics of morning routine, grateful for a chance to turn my mind off. When I decided to become a parent, I never thought I’d find myself caring for a duckling—but here I am. This is what commitment is: caring for the one you have, regardless of whether they are who you imagined them to be.

I’m smearing sunbutter on toast when N runs into the kitchen. She’s having breakfast on the porch with T, watching rain fall from the open sky in sheets. Mom, she says, do you want to join us? I do.

On the other side of the front door, the earth takes a long bath. The air is pleasant, cool. Lightning flashes; I close my eyes and see its brightness through my lids. N counts the seconds until thunder follows. Mom, she says, I love sitting on the porch. I love watching the rain. I’m sitting in the middle so I can be next to you and dad…at the same time! Isn’t this air is so fresh? It’s my favorite thing. It’s my favorite thing, too— being a witness to the earth. Seeing her recycle whatever resources are left, beginning again.

In a past life, I’m still in the kitchen. Still making lunches. Still stewing in my own tiredness. Still longing for silence. In a past life, I opt out of this moment entirely. How lucky, then, to be in this life instead: one where there is a porch and it’s covered. One where the rain perseveres—is relentless, even—and I, with my two very good friends, get to watch the world as it is reborn.

One floor above us, while the rain drapes her in its song, a little duckling quacks in her sleep.

TUESDAY

*Dear Library* deal announcement. Note: this artwork isn’t from the book!

I feel so lucky to share that my debut as a picture book illustrator will be DEAR LIBRARY, a love letter to libraries--and a celebration of the possibility that lives inside books. As a child, I went to the library multiple times a week with my family. My sister and I would lay on the floor of the children's section, reading, for hours. Every now and then, my mom would come collect us and we'd send her away. We were never ready to leave.

I still go to the library a couple times a week, now with my own little gremlins in tow. We come home with a big stack of books and read wherever we can: at the kitchen island, at the dining table, on the living room floor, in bed. We read in the car. We read while walking. I tell N that possibility lives inside books: a book can change your whole world. It can free you from much of what restricts you—especially your own mind.

Emily and I at The Bookshop in Nashville, a place where we’ve sang many songs, welcomed many books into the world, and made many memories (2024)

Emily and I first tried to make a picture book 6 years ago, but it didn't work out. Sometimes that's the way things go. I didn't want to admit it, but I wasn't ready. I had a lot to learn, mostly about myself. I needed to be real about what I was willing to change—and what I was willing to lose—in order to create the work I wanted to make. I've spent the last few years focusing on myself and my craft. I have a long way to go; I think every artist feels this way—but now, I've got my head on right. I listen to myself.

When this project came along, I knew it was a sign—life’s way of confirming that if I stop ignoring what’s inside my heart, I’ll be all right. And what a dream project it is: A book about books!—About libraries!—Written by my dear friend! I'm so grateful to Emily for keeping our dream alive, and I couldn't be more thrilled to work with the wonderful, gracious team at Candlewick. We're making a beautiful book together…and this time I'm ready.

WEDNESDAY

I’m almost done with Laurie Frankel’s Family Family, a beautiful novel that asks the reader to reimagine what a family is and how a family comes to be.

I’m listening to a lot of compositions by Joe Hisaishi while working on concepts for Dear Library and while writing. Hisaishi is best known for scoring almost all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, and his music elicits feelings of mystery, contemplation, and peace.

I’m studying the composition and light value in Kaatje Vermeire’s gorgeous work, especially in De Vrouw En Het Jongetje (I have the French edition). I find her work astounding. It encapsules all of the dualities I admire in life—beauty with darkness, deep emotion and deep voids, danger and light.

THURSDAY

On the value of creative suffering:

“I used to really believe in the creative value of agony and I don’t really know if I can subscribe to that anymore. That old idea that if it wasn’t painful then it wasn’t meaningful.

It’s a stereotype that we’ve been sold, even in the history books. The anguished genius. We’ve been conditioned to believe that there’s some kind of relationship between the creative life and dysfunctional mental health, that somehow there’s kind a correlation between the two. I don’t subscribe to that anymore because it’s just too exhausting. I’ve become really good about delegating and organizing my time. When you’re just an artist floating out there in the ether you’re made to believe that you have to create great art through pain and suffering. It isn’t true.”

—from a The Creative Independent interview with Sufjan Stevens

FRIDAY

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

—Meditations in an Emergency by Cameron Awkward-Rich

xx,

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