Dear Somebody: In the name of sisterhood.

November 11, 2024

Color testing for a risograph edition of *Stay Golden* (2024)

For local folks: next week I’ll be in conversation with Sacha Mardou to celebrate the launch of her graphic memoir Past Tense. I’m incredibly impressed with the amount of emotional and physical work this graphic novel has taken, and how smoothly Sacha takes us not only through her tumultuous upbringing, but through the complicated passageways of her mind. Come see us if you can.

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

MONDAY

Since the Penguin saga (Part 1 and Part 2), it’s been a tough couple of weeks for mothers and daughters. N is not even four but somehow she’s already fourteen, defiance coming off her like hot steam. I feel myself skulking back into my own teenaged self each time N strikes a match and hurls the flame directly at me; it’s my least favorite version of myself to be.

No is her new favorite word. It sprints out of her mouth like an outraged boxer, like someone who’s been outfought many times and will not allow themselves to come second any longer. No is followed by loyal companions it’s not and I’m not and I won’t. The words are followed by the tears—my god, so many tears—as if the salt water seeping out of her eyes is determined to make our house it’s new home. After the tears, it’s the screams, then the kicking and shrieking, and then finally, the entire bag of three-year-old bones crumples in the very spot where it was previously standing and goes silent.

Tantrums are tough on the body. I feel my frustration radiating with nowhere to go. I too want to win; I, too, refuse to come last—but my idea of winning means only that my oldest child doesn’t feel too misunderstood, too often, and that one day when she does, she’ll have the language to tell me, to my face, why. It’s not the first time parenthood has brought me to tears and nor will it be the last, so I dry my eyes and get back in the ring.

12 hours later, when it’s finally time to tuck into bed, thoroughly exhausted and all cried out, N tells me she’s afraid of falling asleep. Her dreams scare her. The shadows have teeth. I tell her our brains will believe anything we tell them, so we have to give them lots of joy. Lots of reasons to smile. What’s something that always makes you smile? I ask her.

“F,” she says and closes her eyes. In this moment, despite the hundreds of ways I am failing as her mother, I feel, in the name of sisterhood—that maybe I’m also doing something right.

TUESDAY

My 2025 Start Where You Are calendar

*Working pastel into the painting* (2 of 3)

My 2025 Life Blooms One Day at a Time weekly planner

A favorite spread from my 2025 weekly planner

My 2025 calendars and planners with Amber Lotus Publishing/Andrews McMeel are available!

I am so pleased to say that both of these items are filled with illustrations painted and written by me, and no one else. Valuing the practices and thoughts that have helped me along my way as much as I value someone else’s words has been a long time coming—but now it’s here, and I am glad.

These make wonderful gifts for yourself or a loved one—if you’re inclined, please support me by purchasing one (or a few) through Andrews McMeel, BuyOlympia, or Amazon.

WEDNESDAY

I started a new practice of listening to poetry while I draw. This week I’ve listened to Jericho Brown and Margaret Atwood. Ideally, I’d like to choose a prolific poet and listen to their entire body of work over the next several months as I work on illustrating Dear Library. If you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments—especially if the audiobook is narrated by the poet.

I started two books: I am reading the My Father’s Dragon trilogy by Ruth Stiles Gannett and I am listening to Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange.

I want to memorize poetry—my memory is pretty shoddy so maybe this will be both interesting and exciting; I confirmed I am registered to vote; I started waking up before the sun again.

THURSDAY

I received this beautiful copy of Ornithography by friend and illustrator Jessica Roux and the inside artwork is every bit as stunning as the cover. I’ve placed it near our front door so we can reference it while bird-watching from our windows, door, and porch. Jessica is also a gifted gardener and publishes The Garden People with artists Ginnie Hsu and Libby VanderPloeg.

FRIDAY

me and you be sisters.
we be the same.
me and you
coming from the same place.
me and you
be greasing our legs
touching up our edges.
me and you
be scared of rats
be stepping on roaches.
me and you
come running high down purdy street one time
and mama laugh and shake her head at
me and you.
me and you
got babies
got thirty-five
got black
let our hair go back
be loving ourselves
be loving ourselves
be sisters.
only where you sing
i poet.

—Sisters by Lucille Clifton

xx,

Dear Somebody: There is every reason to believe.

September 27, 2024

Meeting Penguin in a Dream (mixed media on paper, 2024) — *Meeting Penguin in a Dream* (mixed media on paper, 2024)

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

MONDAY

On Saturday, a week to the day that we lost Penguin, we drag ourselves to the library. It’s a hot, humid day—one of summer’s final waves, a last-minute delay to autumn’s much-wanted arrival.

Both girls are tired. F doesn’t want to sit in the stroller; N doesn’t want to put shoes on, or leave the house. I feel cooped up. Even though the girls have been back at school for 3 weeks now, I find myself struggling to adapt to our new school year routine. I missed my work all summer, but now September is here and I feel daunted by my dreams for it. As they tend to do, my dreams turn into expectations, and my expectations are high—too high, somewhere in the clouds. There is so much I want to make, so many ideas I want to see through, so much more I would do if only there was more time. Each day, I wake with the same expectations; each day, I fail to meet them and my disappointment comes calling, comes climbing, knocks another dream off its cloud.

These are the thoughts in my head as I strap F, wailing, into her stroller. These are the thoughts in my head as I strap a helmet onto N’s sulking head. We trudge down the alley towards our library, and when we arrive, I hold the door open for a little girl and her mother, letting the door close behind them.

I tell my group to collect itself before we enter the house of books. This is a special place, I stress. We’re not going in like this! We are only a group of four, but two of us are wailing and the remaining two want to.

We enter the library, and that’s when I see that the little girl who walked in before us is holding a penguin. A small black and white penguin. A penguin with a squashed nose that looks like its been loved each day of its flightless life.

I ask the girl’s mother if the penguin belongs to her, and she tells me that her daughter found it in the corner with all of the other stuffies. I ask if I can look at the penguin’s tag, and when I do, I see that it’s Penguin. Pen-Pen. Our guy.

Incredulity floods my body. I stammer out an explanation to the girl’s mother, who hands Penguin to N. I look at T in disbelief. All of this time? Under our very noses? In our own neighborhood? Even when it hurt to hope? Holding Penguin in her arms, N bursts into tears.

I’ve never been someone who fully believes—not beyond reasonable doubt, not past what I can see, never in something outside of myself. I don’t let my hope overshadow my demand for proof or pragmatic solutions. As I walk home, I tell myself that all of that stops right now—the self-doubting and the disappointment. I won’t allow anyone, especially not myself, to keep knocking down my dreams.

A couple of leaves fall from the maple tree near our house. They are crinkly, already auburn. The forecast for tomorrow reads cool, maybe even pleasant.

My kid, the absolute portrait of innocence, gets to keep loving the friend she loves—and have the same friend love her back. What else is there? The world gave us back a friendship. There is every reason to believe.

TUESDAY

A quick look into the process for the painting of N and Pen is below.

I started taking photos halfway through, so unfortunately I don’t have the beginning of the process to show, but: I sketched onto watercolor paper using colored pencil, then began light washes of gouache.

*Adding light washes of gouache (1 of 3)*

This is the part of the process that frightens me: I’m satisfied with the sketch, but as soon as I add color, it begins to go awry. For me, this is due to both a lack of confidence and experience. Pushing through this part is a practice.

Above: I’m trying to figure out light and shadow. I usually add light arbitrarily, content if any comes through at all, but I paid attention to the large shape of Pen to see where both shadows would fall in the snow. I also wanted to create and capture a glow between the two friends.

*Adding colored pencil and more pastel* (3 of 3)

I continued adding layers of pastel and colored pencil, careful to work each into the paper so it doesn’t simply sit on top. I added the snow using white pastel. After I removed the tape (which always tears my paper, does anyone have a solution?), I added a border using colored pencil.

This drawing is OK. Naturally, I’m dissatisfied with the end result, but I’m also becoming comfortable with that. I learned a little—namely, that I prefer warmer palettes over cooler ones—and I painted a painting I’ve wanted to for years (I first drew this idea two years ago).

When I remember to, I’m starting to note and share more of my process because it helps me understand that each day, when I sit at my desk producing what feels like copious amounts of garbage, I’m doing what I’m supposed to: Practicing. Trying. Thinking. Believing.

WEDNESDAY

I’m listening to the Sunny soundtrack. I’m interested in this new color class by Sha’an D’Anthes. I’m waiting to receive Mythmakers by John Hendrix. We read the Knufflebunny series by Mo Willems over the past week, and I’m late—but really excited—to discover the work of Lisk Feng; I enjoyed this profile on her.

THURSDAY

When we first moved to Saint Louis, I liked most that it’s a city that feels like a small town. As I settle more into parenthood, I see the appeal of the small town more and more: a strong, intimate community; a sense of familiarity and safety; the ability to take more risk because it can be easier to build a solid foundation, both financially and creatively.

My friend Erin Austen Abbott released her latest book,Small Town Living, this week. It highlights the many creative people, places, and communities that thrive inside American small towns, and I received a copy of it, along with artwork fromAvery Williamson Studio(Ypsi, Michigan), stationery fromWorthwhile Paper(also Ypsi, Michigan!), and a beautiful patch keychain fromThree Potato Four(Media, PA), which now sits on my keyring.

We are always thinking about where to live next. I’m naturally drawn to large cities, but this book makes me curious if the large, expansive life that I want for myself and my family…exists somewhere much smaller.

FRIDAY

the silhouettes of their bond visible still at the last glow of the sun

they experience each other and the life of the night as it begins to stir

standing there in silence holding hands

no rush to go back inside

there is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being…

—amidst sounds of buzzing

chirps

crickets

the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind

fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon

how strange it is to become aware of another’s heartbeat but forget one’s own—

finally love.

—At Last…Another’s heartbeat by Marcellus Williams

xx,

Dear Somebody: Losing a penguin

September 20, 2024

*N and Penguin — love goes on and on and on* (pencil on paper, 2024)

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

MONDAY

Over the weekend, we drove to a farm in Illinois to find our way through an 8-acre corn maze. We did, and then we piled back into the car and drove home to have lunch. After F’s nap, we walked to the library and chose new books, stopping at the playground to practice the monkey bars. We hurried home to make dinner and it was halfway through, while shoveling chicken and rice into her mouth, that N told us that she couldn’t find Penguin anywhere.

Penguin, or Pen-Pen, is N’s lovey, who has slept in her arms each night since she was born. He eats meals with her regularly, both at our home and in public. He gets his own seat and sometimes, he gets his own meal. He’s taken baths with her, made wishes with her, traveled across state lines and open seas with her, and it is he that she calls for when most upset or unconsolable. N’s love for Pen is so great that it inspired F’s love for Tunafish, an absolutely identical penguin that N gifted her only so F would stop thieving Pen from her room.

T goes to check the car and the garage, and when no Penguin is found, he gets on his bike and rides through the neighborhood. He retraces the path we took to the library and the playground, searches the alleyways, checks the slides. I email the library, already closed, and ask them to please look for Penguin. I call the farm, which is still open, and the manager tells me she’ll check the lost and found. If I leave my name and number, she’ll call me when he turns up. Her voice is sweet and understanding. All of us at the farm—we’re all mothers, she tells me. We know what this is like. We’ll find him.

For the first time in her almost-four years of life, N goes to bed without her penguin. I miss Pen, she says. What if we never find him? Breaking my own rule, I lie with her until she falls asleep. I wonder where Pen-Pen is. It’s a big world for such a small, sweet penguin.

Afterwards, I search the house and play the tape back in my mind. I rewind it over and over, stopping at all the same moments, pressing play. Did F bring him to the farm thinking he was Tuna? Did I put him in my bag when we got there? Did he fall under the picnic table? Did he fall out when I opened the car door? I saw him in the car—didn’t I? Didn’t I?

In the morning, N makes the shape of a penguin with her arms. Mom, last night when I didn’t have penguin, I closed my eyes and it felt like I was holding him. I am grateful for her brilliant imagination, for its ability to comfort her. I am disappointed that memory—as shoddy and unreliable as it is, with all its faulty limitations—is still the next best thing to the actual presence of something we love.

T tells us he’s going to work and then drives back to the farm. He runs the entire 8-acre corn maze again, retracing our steps through the playground and the farm field stores. He searches the grassy field, now beginning to fill with the morning rush of cars and giggling children. Not here, he texts me. The heart breaks.

I think of somebody—anybody, who wouldn’t know how much our family has cared for this little penguin—and how they’d find and toss him, casually, into the trash. The heart breaks.

Things become family because we care for them, because we choose to divest our finite energy away from one avenue and pour it into another. N loved Penguin into our family, caring for him as we care for her. She considered his feelings, as I do for her. I loved him because she did.

N finds the first drawing I did of her and Penguin. It’s the invitation from her first birthday party. She tucks it into a tote bag and says she’ll show everyone in the neighborhood his picture, so they can call us when they find him. So they can return him to his family. She retraces the steps T already retraced, carrying the invitation like a missing-child milk carton in her hands. When we don’t see him, she asks me again: Mom, what if we never find him?

I tell her I don’t know if we’ll find him or not, but that it’s up to us to keep looking, to keep believing that we will. Missing somebody is hard. It’s a difficult thing to feel, the love a too-big-something squashed inside our hearts, but what it tells us is good: that we care.

More than the missing, it’s the not knowing that causes ache. Penguin’s absence is unexpected—after hundreds of near-losses, I took for granted that he’d always eventually turn up again. We’ve saved him from airplanes and cousin’s houses, bathtubs and alleyways. I didn’t think he’d ever actually disappear.

I know that Penguin is a stuffed animal. I know there isn’t any substantial value to him other than the love that he symbolized for a child and her family. I know his story is every child’s story, or every child’s worst fear. I know N will be fine. But it’s a big world for such a small, sweet child—and the heart still breaks in ways I didn’t know it could.

TUESDAY

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

—from Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit

WEDNESDAY

It’s been an unexpectedly good week for mail:

I received a beautiful copy of Mai and the Missing Melon by Sonoko Sakai, illustrated by my old friend Keiko Brodeur. This sweet story explores the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother, the Japanse folktale of The Stone Buddhas, and Japanese food, culture, and history. In the package, Keiko also included a generous selection of gorgeous new cards from her sweet stationery company, Small Adventure.

I received my copy of FAIL-A-BRATION by my friends Brad and Kristi Montague, which celebrates failure. I’m not sure a better (or more necessary) celebration can be had.

Brad Montague

also runs a really heartfelt and encouraging newsletter called The Enthusiast which I always look forward to reading.

After gifting my professor a copy of Tolkien’s The Father Christmas Letters, I ordered one for myself and it arrived today. I am taken by this collection of letters, written and illustrated by Tolkien (as Father Christmas) to his children over the span of 23 years. The letters eventually inspired parts of The Lord of the Rings, which is really exciting. It reminds me to play—to remember that the art we create for fun can lead us to our most challenging and fulfilling projects. Reading through the letters, what strikes me most is how vast a person’s imagination can be—and how untapped most of ours are.

THURSDAY

A small color study of N and Penguin. I’m trying hard to capture the feeling of such a classic childhood relationship—a child and her stuffy—with colors and washes that withstand the test of time.

I keep asking myself what makes a good picture, or a good sentence—it’s ability to speak to anyone, regardless of age or experience? I don’t know; I’ll keep asking.

FRIDAY

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”

—Your Catfish Friend by Richard Brautigan

xx,

Dear Somebody: I am not a machine.

September 6, 2024

*A page from my sketchbook (September 5, 2024)*

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

MONDAY

N and F both started school this week. For N, it was after 18 weeks at home; for F, it was for the very first time, after nearly 18 months at home with me. I’ve missed my work, time, and space immensely, but a sense of overwhelm still lingers. I’m working on a few projects that I’m really excited about—illustrating a beautiful picture book manuscript, developing a few other proposals, and beginning a new accordion book—but nothing much has gotten done this week.

I sink into my ennui, hoping it will lead somewhere. Almost entirely present, I shop for groceries, enjoying the quiet of the empty early morning aisles. I go on a walk around my neighborhood and adopt a leisurely pace. I catch up with an old friend and marvel at how wonderful conversations are without a toddler shouting in my unattached ear. Sometimes I miss the girls, and sometimes I don’t. At 10:30 in the morning, I sit on the couch and read my book because I want to. I say nothing aloud for hours. I answer to no one.

I think about what I want, and how it isn’t to be an artist on demand. It’s to be an interesting person, one who reads books and poetry, who speaks when it’s necessary and not only to fill the absence of something, even if the absence is a place inside myself. I think about what I need, and how it isn’t to be lauded for what I do or do not make. It’s to breathe air and have space. To move my body. To let that be enough.

Instead of starting on my next round of picture book sketches, I make a very messy painting in my sketchbook. I write my needs down so the pages can remind me when my mind cannot. The painting is garish, even to me, but something about it—perhaps the honesty—feels sweet, and I like it.

Everything I make doesn’t come out beautifully—mostly, I make mistakes. When something works out, it’s usually because I worked hard at it. I am tough, but I am not a machine.

TUESDAY

Thanks to the internet, I am painfully aware of what others are accomplishing, and it’s often a constant reminder of what I’m not. When I feel guilty for not working—for relaxing, pursuing hobbies, or simply feeling content (!), I ask myself the following questions.

What is the source of my self-worth? My insecurity is at its highest when my self-worth is linked to something outside of myself: career success or achievements. I feel guilty if I haven't worked a certain number of hours because I believe my worth is intrinsically linked to my productivity. I believe I must earn my value as a human being.
What if that source disappears? There is always the possibility of losing your job, being unable to pursue your goals for, say, health reasons, or simply being unable to meet your own expectations. Ensuring that your self-worth is internally rooted is necessary for enjoying yourself and your life, guilt-free.
What do you value about yourself? For me, it is my discipline, my thoughtfulness, and my ability to empathize with other, helping them feel seen. Valuing myself for existing as a unique being in the world allows me to seek validation and self-worth from myself, rather than from others.

Society is designed to feed off our output; feeling content despite my fluctuating productivity is a continuous work in progress. I regularly remind myself of my inherent value, finding that when I do, I no longer need to frantically goal-seek to feel worthy.

—Excerpted from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my book of illustrated essays

WEDNESDAY

We spend a few days in Kansas City doing the same thing we do wherever we go—finding the best playgrounds and taco shops.

Among my personal highlights was visiting The Rabbit hOle, an immersive museum celebrating children’s literature. I’ve been wanting to go for a few years now, since I learned of the initial idea for it, and it was just lovely to experience so many beloved books brought to life.

Every exhibit we saw was beautiful, but I was especially taken by the Strega Nonaexhibit, one of the stories I read most repeatedly as a little girl.

*Outside Strega Nona’s house at* The Rabbit hOle *museum*

*Inside Strega Nona’s house, saying hello to Tomie dePaola*

These photos are just less than, but inside Strega Nona’s house were several dioramas built into the wall, each one—complete with working mechanics—playing out a scene from the story, from the time Strega Nona hires Big Anthony to work for her to the very end, where the never ending pasta overthrows the entire town. N was mesmerized, watching each scene on repeat until I pulled her away to explore other exhibits. I am married to books, but I'd love to create sets for plays and exhibits one day, too.

Related: Phoebe wrote about the depiction of Strega Nona in her Fat in Picture Books section of her newsletter last week.

Related: one of my favorite Tomie dePaola books for artists (and their self-doubt), is The Art Lesson, gifted to me by T a few years ago.

THURSDAY

*F & N, entirely too comfortable in someone else’s studio (2024)*

I also had the chance to finally visit fellow artist Sarah Walsh at her lovely studio! Sarah was gracious enough to accomodate my two tiny monsters and gifted N some gorgeous puzzles from her line with Eeboo. I haven’t been able to meet very many artists over the last few years, and it was a breath of fresh air to talk to another working mama about the mechanics of building a creative life and staying honest with ourselves, in our work and in our lives.

If you aren’t familiar with Sarah’s work, I recommend checking out her latest zine, Horse Girl, and her latest book, Rainbow Science.

FRIDAY

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers.
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world.

—The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

xx,

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Dear Somebody: A neverending field.

August 30, 2024

Fred in a neverending field (mixed media on paper, 2024)

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

MONDAY

Sitting in the hospital bed, F looks smaller than usual—a tiny sailor lost at sea. Her face is washed with fluorescent light, and she rustles when the heart monitor beeps every few seconds. I look around us: there are wires and monitors and shuffling feet all around us, but mostly, I see luck—great gobs of it, golden and glittering against the walls. We are in a good hospital. Our medical team is gracious, caring, intelligent. I trust them to care for my child.

Still, though, I am stuck—frozen—for the entire duration that F is asleep, anesthetized by a medical professional who assures me he will administer only the amount appropriate for her weight and blood pressure, only the amount her heart can take. I recite my favorite poem by Gerald Stern to myself. My child is in safe hands, and I know the only reason why is luck. If life is a gamble and our family is playing the ponies, we’ve already won.

A few moments before she’s taken into surgery, I change F into her hospital gown. Sensing a moment of transition, she begins to cry. F’s young, but I believe she knows this is the moment before and that none of us, not even her mother, knows when afterwill arrive. She sits still, a stoic little Alice—but her eyes wander curiously, full of wonder even as she prepares to fall down the rabbit hole. F’s gown gathers in folds, impatiens bunched together in a neverending field. This is winning, I remind myself.

If I close my eyes, I can erase this entire hospital from my mind. If I close my eyes, I can picture F in the neverending field, her entire face beaming at a summer breeze. In this field, bees hum around us, hunting for a sweet smell. There is bird song and chatter; the occasional plane flies overhead. In this field, we are together—and no mother ever wonders if her child will wake up.

TUESDAY

*An illustration of my family for Issue 38 of* Chickpea Magazine

“Each day after school, my husband and I picked up our daughter from daycare and walked over to my parent’s apartment, where they’d have tea and snacks waiting for us. My daughter took her bowl of pistachios or kaju katli, an Indian sweet made of cashews—and settled herself in the small nook between the oven, sink, and refrigerator. There she’d sit cross-legged on the floor, chatting about her school day with my mom. My dad cut fruit—apples, mangos, or guava, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and cumin—and we’d sit on the living room floor, chatting about my school assignments and progress. On some days, dinner would be ready and waiting for us on the kitchen table; on others, I’d join my parents in the kitchen and help finish the preparations. Each evening, without fail, we’d migrate to the small wooden table and eat dinner together—all three generations of us, each with our own set of disappointments and dreams.”

—From my latest illustrated essay, “The Biggest Dream”, for Issue 38: Ease of Chickpea Magazine.

WEDNESDAY

On asking yourself what kind of artist you want to be by Fariha Róisín and Generation Gap by Sarah Moss; paintings by Ewelina Bisaga; showing the dissonance between what one says and what one does in visual work by Jillian Tamaki.

THURSDAY

You shouldn’t get disillusioned when you get knocked back. All you’ve discovered is that the search is difficult, and you still have a duty to keep on searching. —Kazuo Ishiguro

FRIDAY

HEY

C’MON
COME OUT

WHEREVER YOU ARE

WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
AT THIS TREE

AIN’ EVEN BEEN
PLANTED
YET

—Calling on All Silent Minorities by June Jordan

xx,

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Dear Somebody: The Biggest Dream

August 23, 2024

*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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Dear Somebody: Living with a duckling.

July 26, 2024

*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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Dear Somebody: A Love Letter to My Creativity

July 5, 2024

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

MONDAY

For Issue #62 of Uppercase Magazine, I wrote a love letter to my creativity. I’ve wanted to write this for years, inspired by an old friend who wrote a letter to her own, but I never did. I didn’t make time for this beautiful exercise, and I know why now: I couldn’t write a love letter to my creativity because I didn’t have love for it. Where there should’ve been a commitment to nurturing and protecting my creativity, there was resentment—for the artist I wasn’t, and the art I didn’t allow myself to make.

The past few years have been clarifying. Instead of burying my creativity six feet under, I used them to hibernate—to practice listening instead of talking, observing instead of performing, and exploring instead of sharing—to practice practicing, for myself, for my craft. For my creativity.

The reward is a diamond. It isn’t flashy. It doesn’t look like a glamorous, shiny gemstone I can flash around or make reels about. I have less to show, there is less garnering of attention, and not much of me is left at the end of each day—but the diamond itself is real. It took years to unearth, and now that I have it, I know I’ll protect it. The diamond is greater confidence. The diamond is a belief in myself, in a knowing that I can create my dreams out of whatever I have around me. The diamond is a genuine love for my creativity—one that makes the process of writing and drawing fun, challenging, and, quite plainly, delightful.

TUESDAY

“When I first became a mother in 2020, I was enveloped by the notion that I shouldn’t lose myself to domesticity: to motherhood, to my family, to my home. I didn’t want my creativity to evaporate; I loved my work and career. I wanted a clear work-life separation, I wanted a studio where I could deposit my thoughts, I wanted a room of my own. I felt a stark separation within myself—one where the artist in me perpetually fought to step out from under the shadow of the mother in me. As a tide slowly retreats from shore, my creativity, too, waned—but with no promise of return.

When I decided to have another child, I knew I’d have to approach myself differently. I couldn’t carry the resentment of not being enough—or the self-imposed pressure of keeping my career life cleanly separate from my life as a mother. I needed to redefine what my work meant to me, and I needed to redefine where creativity lived. Instead of seeing my work as a vessel for my creativity, I spent the year shaping my creativity into the vessel itself: I wanted it to live everywhere.”

—An excerpt from My Year At Home: A Love Letter to My Creativity, published in Issue #62 of Uppercase Magazine. The 12 lessons I reflected on are available in the full essay, available online and in newsstands everywhere.

WEDNESDAY

We’re in Michigan for the week, and it’s exactly what I was hoping it’d be.

Blackbirds chase falcons in the clouds; the water chases the sky, F chases N across the sand and state lines. Every so often, N turns me to me and says, Mom, I’m so happy we’re here.

We eat waffles on the beach, we climb rainbow stairs, we move through each mess more quickly and cleanly than before. We’re learning; we’re living; we’re all together—and not just in the physical sense of the word.

THURSDAY

Michigan is on repeat all week, of course—as it should be—and it led me to discover the artwork of Brooklyn artist Laura Normandin, who is responsible for the album’s artwork, and who, quite frankly, I should have known about much sooner. I like her painted bottles, this woven enclosure, and the fact that it appears she’s managed to escape the internet.

FRIDAY

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.

—Midsummer, Tobago by Derek Walcott

xx,

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Dear Somebody: Absorbing the magic.

June 21, 2024

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

MONDAY

Since I last wrote, all and nothing has happened—and at a pace that shows little chance of change. The days linger the way absence does; each full of popsicles, bike rides, and small conversations about death.

Laying down in her new big kid bed, N surprises me with her thoughts. When I’m all grown, I’ll have the magic, she says. Kid, you’ve already got the magic, I tell her, but she shakes her head and brushes me away. You have magic and dad has magic, and it’s okay because you’re big. But magic comes from the ground and goes up into your feet and if you get it when you’re little, you’ll be dead.

She pauses and then adds, like Jack, as she does often these days, his name smushed against dead on her tongue.

N, you are the magic, I want to say, mesmerized by her brain, but instead, I try to understand what she means and in trying, I almost do. I am disappointed by the deep chasm between young and old, by the misunderstanding that ripens when an adult spends too much time in worry and not enough in imagination. My thoughts aren’t as flexible as hers—they don’t stretch in directions beyond what I can see.

When you are old, you will be dead, N informs me, in words so plain and true there’s nothing for me to do but nod. It is dusk and I am startled, not by my own impending death, but by the inevitable separation of me and my child. She is only three, but already, it feels close. One day, she will live without me—and if I am lucky, it will be only because my body is no longer here.

N doesn’t appear concerned, but I reassure her because I think I’m supposed to. That won’t be for a long time, I say, and she agrees. Yeah, like five days, she says, and I’m stricken by her understanding of time, which feels truer than mine. With the recognition of my own mortality, time is finite. For her, time is mind-independent: a river that streams on and on, regardless of whether anyone sees or hears it.

Again, I am met with the unsettling realization that there is a gap keeping me from my child—that I will always fall short of giving her what she needs. The gap feels large, already, and it’s potential for growth is even greater. There is a magic in N that keeps her mind moving in unexpected ways. She holds room for surprise. I want to absorb her magic—just enough to keep us connected, to make her feel understood—but I’m not sure I can.

When you’re dead, what will I do without you? N asks, her sweet voice void of fear or sadness. She’s only curious, wanting to know.

In the dark, I reach for her. We are on opposite sides of a river; I try to build a bridge. I want to be where she is, but a gap is a gap, and sometimes it doesn’t close for any amount of dedication, or effort—or even, love.

TUESDAY

I’m smitten with the work of John and Faith Hubley, and in particular, Windy Day, which I’ve watched several times over the past few weeks.

I’m in the middle of early concept sketches for a book I’m working on, and the loose lightness of this animated film captures the feeling of childhood’s core, like learning to whistle, simmering in summer languish, and staring at endless skies dotted with clouds that run your imagination.

WEDNESDAY

“As it happened, my relationship with my kids has been as philosophically, spiritually, or intellectually vital as anything else I’ve done, leading to the kind of realizations we’ve long wanted to seek elsewhere, away from the home, away from the family. Through them, I’ve cultivated a healthy relationship with uncertainty, with attention, with feeling closer to the source of life, whatever it is, with all its wonder and fragility—all moments of revelation that came by way of a mix of stress, rupture, wholeness, and ease. If I had let motherhood stay small, confined to the sidelines, then those stressful moments would have felt like forces holding me back on my way to an interesting and meaningful life. But by letting motherhood become big, those challenges…became part of a larger narrative arc.”

—from Elissa Strauss’ essay, It’s Weird Times to Be a Happy Mother. I don’t agree with everything in her essay, but this passage resonated sweetly.

THURSDAY

I am reading: Cass McCombs on songwriting, The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams, the 1984 archive, and A Million Kites.

FRIDAY

At night, Freud says, we hide things from ourselves:
dreams wear disguises. All right. But also there's
an intimacy and acceptance there: we take
it all as it comes. We don't explain away
or correct the irrational, we believe the real
terror, the horror, the sweet tenderness.

—Night and Day by William Bronk

xx,

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Dear Somebody: I wouldn’t have without you.

May 31, 2024

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

MONDAY

I turn the kitchen light on around 5:45 am. Most days, Jack stirs and watches me while I brush my teeth in the half-bath, careful not to wake our sleeping family. Then he waits by the door and we go out. The past few weeks, he doesn’t move—his sleeping body just rises and falls while I brush my teeth, while I count out vitamins, while I go downstairs for a Peloton ride. I return 30 minutes later, sweaty. His eyes slowly open but he doesn’t move. Let’s go outside, Jackie, I say, and he steps away from me. He retreats, watching me quietly. I feel like a stranger, almost an intruder. Somebody he used to know.

After some time, I coax him outside. The sky is far more than what I can ordinarily imagine. Over our wooden fence and the neighbors trees and beyond the curves of our busy street, the sun rises eagerly, the fruit of it red and new. Dang, it’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it, Jack-o?, I ask, but when I look for him, he’s already at the door wanting to go back in.

The girls and I go to the library, but when we come home through the back door, T is waiting for us. He sits on the floor with Jack sweetly, the way close friends do—casually, with little inclination towards boundaries or good posture. What he tells me I don’t want to hear, so instead my mind wanders to friendship and how golden it is. Through good friendship, you can transcend your own reality—you have the chance to grow into a person you can one day even admire. I’ve known T for 7 years and his friendship with Jack for just as long. All the cliches about man’s best friend are true: they’re better friends than most, and they try harder, too.

We sit on the porch Saturday morning, me, T, and Jack. It’s a gorgeous Spring day, the morning not warm yet, the trees billowing with post-rain breeze. It’s early enough for quiet. We listen to the robins and grackles, I hear the occasional woodpecker. It’s supposed to be peak cicada season, but I’ve yet to hear or see one. Jack stand with us uncertainly. I think of him snapping at bees, romping around the yard and playing chase. He’s an old man but he still acts like a puppy, we always joked, but now I can’t remember the last time we did.

I take a photo of Jack and T, his sleek wolf’s shape finally slackened against T’s body, his head in T’s lap. They are handsome together, a softness in each of them that only appears when the other is around. There’s an ease in the way they lean on each other—the way good friends always do.

T holds Jack’s head and I hold his hand. I don’t see either T or Jack, not quite—I only see them, unable to see one without the other. When it happens, it happens quick—but softly, too, like when the sun sinks down at the end of the day. The sky is a blur of rainbow while it goes, and then it’s gone. The sky is a blur, still, and then it is only still, and then there is only you and the sky and no sun.

T looks at Jack and Jack looks at him and I am only a witness to their friendship. How did we get here?, their eyes seem to ask, and in my heart, I know one will always say the same as the other: I wouldn’t have without you.

TUESDAY

How it Feels to Find Yourself was featured in theSkimm’s Best Products to Support Your Mental Health; I am pleased and proud.

WEDNESDAY

“Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

—from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

THURSDAY

I just finished listening to Lara Love Hardin’s The Many Lives of Mama Love and so greatly admired the way Hardin confronted her own demons.

I started listening to Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake; I’m reading Under the Tamarind Tree by Nigar Alam; I’m asking myself what kind of artist I want to be.

FRIDAY

Woke up early this morning and from my bed
looked far across the Strait to see
a small boat moving through the choppy water,
a single running light on. Remembered
my friend who used to shout
his dead wife’s name from the hilltops
around Perugia. Who set a plate
for her at his simple table long after
she was gone. And opened the windows
so she could have fresh air. Such display
I found embarrassing. So did his other
friends. I couldn’t see it.
Not until this morning.

—Grief by Raymond Carver

xx,

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Dear Somebody: A tiny hand in mine.

May 17, 2024

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

MONDAY

The clouds are in fine form today, puffs of thick white acrylic smears. Occasionally, the sun pierces through. I don’t see the birds as I shuffle along with my head down, but I listen to their music. Morning walks are like this: the sky bobbing over me while I retreat further into myself. We moved to St. Louis in June. It’s October now and I haven’t made a single friend.

I turn the stroller onto Des Peres and navigate the cracked sidewalk towards the playground. Up ahead is a young woman with her baby. I slow down, hoping she’ll leave before I get closer. No such luck.

Hello! Do you live nearby? She asks me. My heart turns clockwise, tightening.

Yes, I say politely, just down the street. I unstrap N and watch her toddle over to the slide. I feel resistant. I’ve met many people in this city, but none that I connected with. I’m tired of trying.

My heart spins, quietly reminding me that it is there. There are many people to love, it says, but you have stopped looking for them.

The children play together. I ask the woman questions and listen intently to her voice. I engage my curiosity, studying her face: her long eyelashes and curly hair, the way her eyes crinkle when she smiles, her soft laugh. She looks at N with the love only a mother can feel for a stranger’s child. Opening your heart is like learning a foreign language—it feels self-conscious and clumsy until it doesn’t.

Stepping outside of yourself, that’s what an open heart is. A story that invites you to first look and then listen. A morning at the playground, an unexpected conversation, smears of cloud, a tiny hand in mine.

—from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my book of illustrated essays

TUESDAY

I love it when it’s just you and me, mom, N says once, and then again. She doesn’t smile, just looks at me with her serious, thoughtful face, and I know she means it.

We’re having a picnic at the little playground near our home. She eats a peanut butter and honey sandwich, I have peanut butter and jelly. It’s the perfect weather—not a lick above 74 degrees, breezy, our picnic blanket dappled with sunlight under an old playground tree.

A few days later, she’s reading with T in her room before bed. Dad, I love it when it’s just you and me, she says and though I can’t see her thoughtful face, I know she means it.

WEDNESDAY

Several weeks ago, T and I celebrated our 5-year anniversary at Bulrush, a truly incredible reparative restaurant that explores Ozark cuisine through the values and vision of Chef Rob Connoley. With their menu, 80% of which is radically foraged locally, Chef Connoley explores the late 18th and early 19th century—”the moment in time when the indigenous people first encountered the settlers, who often brought enslaved individuals. These three cultures came together at one particular time to create what has evolved into the food that we eat today.”

I find myself still thinking about this night. It encourages me to see a person with strong core values actively living in accordance with them—and building his business and community deeply around them. In a world where fitting in and being well-liked is valued more than critical thought, it’s comforting to see someone deliberately go their own way.

THURSDAY

I am: discovering free zines for a free Palestine, donating to the perinatal project, learning more about Rod Serling, wondering if I have enough self-compassion?, and listening to poems as teachers.

FRIDAY

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

—from In Those Years by Adrienne Rich

xx,

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Dear Somebody: Only half alone.

May 3, 2024

*N eating homemade granola: a glimpse from my forthcoming illustrated essay about food + family, for* Issue 38 (EASE) of Chickpea Magazine

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

MONDAY

After spending a year with her at home, I drop F off for her first day of daycare. I told myself she’d be screaming and crying, but she leaps from my arms into her teacher’s without even a wayward glance. I disappear quietly, as we’re instructed to do. I shut the wooden fence behind me and walk home.

There were many times over this past year when I wished for nothing more than to be alone. To feel the pulse and thought inside me, to see if there’s any brilliancy left. Any original thought. Today’s sky is my favorite sky: overcast, a rumbling heat-stricken white, a beautiful nothing. Open and waiting. I still don’t know this city, not really, but I know my neighborhood, and I feel lucky to have a 6-block radius that feels like home. Beyond familiarity, which comes with time, there’s a sense of belonging. Self-declared.

I watch wieldy dandelions sway from street traffic, their seeds blown off one by one and wished upon. N is learning about thunder and lightning, how it forms when frozen raindrops bump up against each other. I feel like that now—bumpy, knotted, pushed and pulled. Electric. The scent of space follows me.

I once read that love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. For so long I’ve been convinced that I’d lost this half to many places: childhood, adulthood and its suffocating responsibilities, marriage and its many compromises, my young children and the intensity of care required.

As I walk, it occurs to me that I’ve been thinking about it all wrong. Half of me isn’t lost, buried somewhere out there waiting to be found. It’s been slivered and sprinkled, each piece tucked away in the dearest of places—for when someone might need it most. A sliver of myself to care for my childhood self, a sliver to help my present self carry on, a sliver for my marriage and its growth, a sliver left with each of my girls. Many still have have disappeared or lost themselves, forever, in people and places that didn’t pass the test of time—but they exist somewhere still, as ghosts and memories, within pages and paintings for someone else to find.

If I could take find and take them all back, these tiny splinters and slivers would make a half and that half would—could—make me whole once again. But aren’t I lucky to have half of myself carried around in so many others? Part of me is with F, covering her small shoulders should a slight breeze come along. That small part will stay with her all day, and the rest of me will follow when collection time comes.

I walk the rest of the way home. The tiny fingers of her absence prod me along, catching me behind the knees, hugging me close. I am only half alone.

TUESDAY

One of the tiny books I made for graduation school was about leaving N at daycare so I could work, attend class, and do homework. It’s been two years since I made this little book, but it’s been circling my mind repeatedly this week.

My favorite thing about art + literature is that it’s a vehicle for transportation. Books can take you anywhere you want to go—and places you’d be afraid to go otherwise, including further into yourself.

You can read the rest of this tiny book in my journal.

WEDNESDAY

“So many of us are thinking about love specifically because we are thinking about sorrow. How to hold it. How to survive the deathgrip of capitalism’s man-made chaos. How to bear broadcasted genocide(s), white supremacism, police brutality, our government’s incessant, deliberate dehumanization. How to stay human in the face, the grinning lustfulness, of empire. Several times a day I think, witnessing ordinary people do extraordinarily loving things, isn’t it incredible? All of these people for whom sorrow is leading them to love?” —from Shira Erlichman’s Freer Form

THURSDAY

Why creative labour isn’t always seen as “real work” and how to write the unbearable story (via Nicole Donut).

FRIDAY

When I left, I left my childhood in the drawer
and on the kitchen table. I left my toy horse
in its plastic bag.
I left without looking at the clock.
I forget whether it was noon or evening.

Our horse spent the night alone,
no water, no grains for dinner.
It must have thought we’d left to cook a meal
for late guests or to make a cake
for my sister’s tenth birthday.

I walked with my sister, down our road with no end.
We sang a birthday song.
The warplanes echoed across the heavens.
My tired parents walked behind,
my father clutching to his chest
the keys to our house and to the stable.

We arrived at a rescue station.
News of the airstrikes roared on the radio.
I hated death, but I hated life, too,
when we had to walk to our drawn-out death,
reciting our never-ending ode.

—Leaving Childhood Behind by Mosab Abu Toha

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: A birthday wish.

April 26, 2024

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

MONDAY

On my birthday, I set out to make F’s birthday cake. She was born the day after I was and I choose to believe that this consecutive sequence of celebrations will bind us for the rest of our lives. It makes me happy.

F is turning one, and I wish for her cake to be beautiful and healthy. Making a birthday cake for my children each year is important to me. For my sixth birthday, my mother made a cake for me that I remember with great affection: a magic school bus cake with a jellybean-filled top layer and Oreos for wheels. I think about this cake often; maybe this is why. I love cake; maybe this is why. I cook and bake for my family multiple times a day, an act of care—and therefore, an act of love; maybe this is why. Baking is an art and I want my ability to extend past the written and painted page; maybe this is why. All of these reasons are the reason why and because I’ve taken on the task, it’s something I want to do well. What I really wish for is to surprise myself.

I make a frosting with no sugar, which tastes good but has low viscosity. I worry it won’t support the five layers of this cake, but I’m pressed for time. N and her cousins want to help. They take turns frosting each layer and one by one, I stack them high. The cake leans to the right and refuses to stop. I straighten it repeatedly but instead of a cake, it resembles a sloppy pile of pancakes. My brother-in-law, sitting across from me at the kitchen island, raises his eyebrows at the mess. He makes eye contact but says nothing.

What is that? my dad asks as he walks in and settles himself at the island. It’s F’s birthday cake, I say, obviously frustrated. My dad’s eyes widen and he tries not to laugh. Don’t ask her what that is, he loudly warns each person who walks into the kitchen. It’s supposed to be a cake.

I roll my eyes, but all of the insecurities I’ve grappled with over the past year flood my eyes. I don’t have good instincts; ordinary tasks are difficult for me; I’m not a real artist—it’s just something I work hard at; I don’t know how to be a good mother; I will never measure up. These thoughts are gauzy, shadow-like. Threatening. But I also have another thought: that tomorrow, F will be an entire year old—and everything I didn’t know how to do for her, I eventually figured out.

I start over. I take each layer off, scraping the icing off and back into a bowl. Masi, what happened? my oldest nephew asks, seeing the cake he had just frosted now fully disassembled. I know, I tell him. But I’m gonna figure it out. I add corn starch to the icing and stick it in the fridge. After 20 minutes, I take it out and begin again. I decide the cake needs additional support, and my dad, who has finally stopped laughing at me, neatly saws a chopstick in half.

When the layers are all iced and assembled, it looks like a cake. An adorable, small-and-tall cake, perfect for a one-year-old. My younger nephew sets out all the sprinkles and we call N and Z over. Go wild, we tell them and they do. Z pours all the sprinkles within reach on top and N eats the rest. My nephew and I watch them. We look at each other and smile.

It’s not the rainbow cake I’d wanted for F; it’s something better. My sister baked the layers so I didn’t have to; maybe this is why. My nephews helped me start over; maybe this is why. My dad heckled me and then offered support; maybe this is why. My daughter and my niece listened to themselves, which is the most honest form of creativity—while decorating F’s cake; maybe this is why. I want to be a good mother and I will always try, very hard, to be one; maybe this is why.

All of these reasons are the reason why and because I want to do the work, it’s something I will do well. On my birthday, on the eve of F’s birthday, what I really wished for, I got: I surprised myself.

TUESDAY

“The lens is a black eye, and a camera has an aperture. That’s easy enough; but it’s not easy, because the metaphor has blossomed the camera into the brown poet, into we brown poets (the recipients of the instructions): black-eyed aperture. To be black-eyed, yes, perhaps, to have the eyes of a black person, and we can have a lot of conversations about what that means, but at the very least, it means to see black people. Since her earliest poems, Finney’s model for us has been to see black people. To lay her eyes (and pencil) on her beloveds.

But to be black-eyed also means to have bruised eyes, hurt eyes: eyes that have been hurt by what they’ve seen, and eyes that have been hurt maybe for what they’ve seen. And an aperture, in addition to being a part of a camera, is a hole or an opening through which the light comes. Be a black-eyed opening for the light to come through. Be this. It’s my first final instruction. It’s the best I can say first and last. Let’s start here.”

—Ross Gay on the poetry of Nikky Finney for The Sewanee Review

WEDNESDAY

We finished the black comedy Beef a few weeks ago and I still find myself thinking about it. To me, this short series manages to capture a particular flavor of darkness: the self-loathing and self-destructiveness that blooms inside a first-or-second generation child who realizes they’ll never achieve a level of achievement or happiness that can neutralize the many sacrifices their parents made. Beef digs into this internal grappling, in all its complexity and absurdity, with poignancy and humor.

THURSDAY

I’m reading The Magic Words by Joseph Fasano and helping N write her first poems; I’m listening to Ghibli Sleep, my current writing playlist which doubles as car/calming music for F.

FRIDAY

Never ran this hard through the valley never ate so many stars I was carrying a dead deer tied on to my neck and shoulders deer legs hanging in front of me heavy on my chest People are not wanting to let me in Door in the mountain let me in

—Door in the Mountain by Jean Valentine

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: Being here.

April 12, 2024

An illustration for my column, *Being*, in Issue #61 of *Uppercase Magazine*

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

MONDAY

When T pulls handfuls of weeds away from our hydrangea bushes, we discover a mourning dove sitting quietly, her back against the brick of our house. T stops pulling weeds; N stops eating; I stop talking. Is she nesting? Is she hurt? How can we help? We didn’t mean to expose her, but we have. We go inside. From the window I watch her two small eyes blinking in the sun.

When F contracts an illness, I know the week ahead will be gutted, and it is. The sitter is canceled, my work is placed on hold indefinitely. The deadlines pile up, as does the laundry, the dust. My inbox groans; my daily poem practice falls further behind.

I don’t optimize. It doesn’t make sense anymore. In the past, I have worried, having convinced myself that worrying is doing something and therefore, at least, still productive. Of course, I was wrong; each day, I continue to be. If there’s a purpose to life, maybe this is it—to constantly unlearn until, at the end, I am stripped of all belief, leaving the way I came in: honest, unharmed, full of possibility.

I don’t optimize. I have worked too hard at letting go. There are no to-do lists in my head. I don’t write poems while F takes her bottle, I don’t clean the house while she eats oatmeal. I spend time leisurely, as if I have boatloads of it, as if someone out there is making more of it for me. We sit outside and listen to the world. I ask F if she remembers the eclipse and the way the sky moved like a movie. She wails in response. She cries a lot. She coughs a lot. I sit with her and together, we do nothing. I am here.

More than once, she crawls into my lap, buries her face in my shirt, and falls asleep. I wish I had my phone, I think to myself, so I could do something. Old habits die hard, but I recognize the impulse, however warily. I don’t retrieve my phone. Instead, I do what I am doing: I sit on the second-floor landing and rub F’s back with my hands, staring at our hallway walls. I am here.

I rock F to sleep, something I haven’t done for the past 8 months, and in this act, she feels like a baby in my arms once more. I admit, I am nostalgic. Maybe it’s because she’s turning one next week, maybe it’s because I am turning decades older than that. Maybe it’s because there is no match for a moment sweeter than this one, where a child sleeps safely in my arms. Maybe it’s because there’s safety in these moments for me, too. I am here. From above I watch her two small eyes blinking with sleep.

TUESDAY

I read Go to Sleep (I Miss You) and Kid Gloves by Lucy Knisley; I read Tokyo These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto (that cover!); I started Sunny by Jason Reynolds. I am re-reading James Marshall’s eulogy for Arnold Lobel, one of my favorite children’s writers and illustrators, and a fellow devotee of friendship.

WEDNESDAY

For my latest Being column in Issue #61 of Uppercase Magazine, I wrote about how the themes in our creative work change shape and expand, evolving as we do, but ultimately remain the same—they are fragments of our foundational selves that we will always explore.

I touch on the importance of revisiting past work, even if it’s difficult to do so:

“Revisiting old work is clarifying. It brings you closer to the person you were at that time—the person who felt pulled to capture a feeling, thought, or question through their art. It’s also a chance to notice how much you and your work have changed—a chance to acknowledge the creative obstacles you’ve puzzled through and the personal ones your artmaking pulled you through.”

—from The First Work I Make is the Last Work I Make for Uppercase Magazine #61, available now.

THURSDAY

Today, it was pointed out to me that my emotional vocabulary is pretty limited(!). I was both bowled over and energized by this comment. I’ve spent the past decade helping others identify and process their own emotions, only to quietly realize that my knowledge has plateaued. I am humbled and, quite honestly, enthused by how far there is to go.

I am reading How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett in an immediate effort to remedy my own cause. I welcome further reading! If you have a book recommendation, please do share.

FRIDAY

Years do odd things to identity.
What does it mean to say
I am that child in the photograph
at Kishamish in 1935?
Might as well say I am the shadow
of a leaf of the acacia tree
felled seventy years ago
moving on the page the child reads.
Might as well say I am the words she read
or the words I wrote in other years,
flicker of shade and sunlight
as the wind moves through the leaves.

—from Leaves by Ursula K. Le Guin

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: Good is in the gray.

March 29, 2024

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

MONDAY

While F naps off her fever, N and I go to the beach. She builds sand castles and makes seagull soup; I comb the shoreline for shells. The water is cold but I jump in anyway. Under nearly 5 feet of water, I see my toes. The sea is turquoise, a mermaid’s glittering tail. I’ve never been to the Gulf before.

We walk along the beach and stumble upon some two plastic toy crabs, one yellow, one blue. They’re buried under the deserted white blanket of the beach, with just a claw or two peeking out. I ask N if she wants to add them to her collection but she shakes her head no. “Well, we can play with them for a little while,” I say, and make several crab shapes.

I want N to love the water. I’m beginning to feel a specific pressure of parenthood I thought I was immune to: wanting my children to experience the beauty of my childhood without the aches; wanting them to feel affection for many of the same things I do; wanting them to share some of the same philosophies. I want N to understand that among its many mysteries, the sea can wash most any despondency away.

N plays for a few minutes and then pushes the toys away. “Mom, I don’t want these. They belong to another child and that child will miss them.” Standing in the stark black and white of N’s morality, I feel shame. I’m envious, too. I want more of life to clarify in front of me, I want more of it to appear so obviously right or wrong. My conviction, at one point solid, made of stone, is porous now and has been for years. It’s wrung through with the realization that most days, I learn I am wrong about something I once believed.

I ask N if she’d like to bring the toys to the beach lost and found; she does. We watch as both crabs are placed inside an enormous beach shed, then closed and locked, where they succumb to a much darker life among their fellow comrades—each of whom has been misplaced, forgotten, or abandoned. Lost.

N asks me to close my eyes and walk backwards. I do. We take good care not to look once, not at the sand or the sky or the shells. Not at each other. We use our other senses. We take good care to sense the sun’s warmth on our backs, to hear the gull shrieks in our ears, to feel the powder of Gulf sand between our toes. We stumble along, and as we do, I mildly wonder what people think of us.

“Mom, are your eyes closed? You cannot surprise yourself if your eyes are always open.” N’s voice is small and perfect; I can hear the ocean inside it. You can’t surprise yourself if your mind is always made up, either, I remind myself. The whole world is endless behind my eyes. Maybe gray is OK—maybe even, gray is good.

My eyes are still closed. I turn my mind off, too. Together, N and I walk backwards into the sea.

TUESDAY

I’m reading To the End of the Land by David Grossman as part of Ruth Franklin Israeli/Palestinian reading group, I’m donating to the KidLit4Ceasefire fundraiser, I’m attending Palestine Charity Draw #3 hosted by Sarah Dyer; I’m remembering this poem by Gottfried Benn and this essay on divorce by Emily Gould; I’m looking at these illustrations by Nikki McClure which accompany Rachel Carson’s Something About the Sky.

WEDNESDAY

In-between client work and book projects, whenever I get a moment or two, I’m beginning to rework the illustrations for my picture book proposal.

I’m reading about the making The Bird Within Me Flies by Sara Lundberg as I prepare to do this. Lundberg is one of my favorite book artists working today, and reading her thoughts, always imbued with such genuine honesty and humility, has been a comfort:

“It was important for me to allow myself to be inconsequent. The characters didn’t have to look the same on each spread, I didn’t have to stick to a specific style or technique. So I just did each scene intuitively, and with the intention of bringing out the most interesting – the essence in each.

I felt confident that everything would tie up in the end anyway, so I might as well have fun on the way there, and avoid trying to do something perfect.” —Sara Lundberg

I’m also deeply interested in the pen-and-ink work of Patrick Benson, who illustrated one of our family’s favorite books: Owl Babies.

“The most important thing that an illustrator has to do is provide lots of visual clues, bits of information - rather like snapshots - that will act as a sort of springboard for the imagination.” —Patrick Benson

I’m keeping his advice close to me as I rework my illustrations, remembering that my job as an illustrator (and a writer) is never to provide the entire story, but to sprinkle just enough light so the reader can find their own path through it.

THURSDAY

Nicola came to visit last week with her little one in tow, and between the gardens and meals and messes, we managed to take some new studio shots. There’s no one in the world I’d rather be photographed by than this particularly talented friend. Working together is easy: comfortable, classic, no frills—just like our friendship.

My website requires a long-overdue update, and these new photographs will lead the way. So much has changed since the last time she photographed me in my workspace: a move to a new city, an MFA, a baby who is almost an entire year old. My own tiny studio with a door; a room of my own.

My work has changed tremendously. I have, too. It feels good to capture some of this new.

A tulips update: positively blooming. These little guys are bringing so much joy to us and all who walk by our home.

FRIDAY

Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?

Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky the waves are cold enough to wash out the meanness.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life.

—from Lucky Life by Gerald Stern

xx,

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Dear Somebody: The sound of my creativity.

March 15, 2024

*Combing through the paintings from my picture book and starting all over again*

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

MONDAY

It’s harder to wake up this week but I do it anyhow—to exercise, to sit, to write. I take on an essay assignment I could’ve (should’ve?) passed on—and now the question of it lingers, imploring when I’m going to write it, how I’m going to illustrate it, if it’ll be good enough, as if anything we make ever feels good enough.

It’s harder to keep my eyes open this week, the tug towards bed so great after the girls are tucked in and quiet, but I do it anyhow—curled up on the couch, typing away, striking out my thoughts, rewriting clumsy sentences multiple times. Far past the hour of sleep, I paint the faces of my family. Our skins are too orangey-red or peachy and our shadows reach all the wrong places for I need light to gauge color correctly, and the sun has long said goodnight.

T keeps me company. He looks over every now and then, silently measuring progress, wondering why I took on an assignment that doesn’t pay my rate and that I don’t have time for. I could be sleeping. I could be reading. If I choose to work, I should be working on my upcoming book deadline, and if I wanted to do something for me, there are plenty of poems waiting to be written—for myself and for Margaux Kent. I could’ve; I should’ve; I did not.

One at a time, the poems are written. How? Slowly, that’s how. The essay, long fleshed out in my mind, is finally typed out for unknown eyes to read. How? One sentence at a time. This newsletter, which I’d almost abandoned for next week—because surely, something has to go—is, too, written, and with care. How? In the early hours of the morning, when F just begins to stir and the mourning doves mourn so loudly that I stop every few minutes to listen.

It’s harder to find time this week, but I find it because there is a picture in my heart that wants to be drawn. At first it is nothing—a blank page that frightens me. But line by line, I begin to build and slowly, it takes shape. I correct skin color, I draw in each crumbling brick, I draw and redraw faces until they come alive, until they come into their own. I take more than one hour I don’t have to figure out how to draw my mother’s hand. This used to be a slog, but now it’s just fun.

I didn’t have to take this assignment, it’s true, but I heard the sound of my creativity and chose to follow. I’ve lost her before, almost completely to the pressure of achievement, the demands of paid work, the tangle of self-worth. I’d lost her so deeply that it took me years to quiet the sound of everything around me so I could hear her once again.

The sound of a picture in my heart is the sound of an essay in my head. The sound of my creativity is the sound of my own voice. When she speaks, I listen.

TUESDAY

I’m currently listening to Dave Eggers’ The Eyes and the Impossible audiobook while drawing or doing my chores. The book is read by Ethan Hawke, who reads it like a very good actor in a very good performance. At first I was put off by the listening—it almost seemed like too much, a sensory overload, but after I read Taylor Sterling’s thoughts on picture books as performances, I started listening again, and now each time I listen, I am alone in an auditorium watching Ethan Hawke perform in a play as Johannes, a free dog. It is bewildering, encompassing, joyful.

“I don’t know if the love of a friend is more powerful than that of a family member, but it’s definitely less talked about. That’s why, in art, depictions of committed friendships hit us so hard. Johannes and his friends show up, and don’t ever question whether any of their group will show up. It’s a given that they will be there. A lot of friendship is just a matter of presence over time. Being there year after year, showing up at good times, at banal times, and times of great struggle. The animals in the book are all adults, alone but for each other, and best of all, they’re united by a common purpose. Nothing is better than that—having something urgent to do, and doing it with the people you love.”

—Dave Eggers on The Eyes and The Impossible

WEDNESDAY

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

—from the preface of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, filed many years ago under List of Quotes I’d Like to One Day Paint and Preserve

THURSDAY

Last November, N and T planted tulips in the cold, hard ground and hoped for the best; this is a photo of the second bloom that pushed her way through the earth.

Each day, N comes home from school and counts how many new faces are showing. Like her, it is always a surprise.

FRIDAY

I have spent a year mostly alone.
Walking a lot.
With a poetic attachment
to street drawings.
Staring at concrete.
My shoes.
And going over my life.
Situations.
Walking
and sitting in my room.
Or movies.
Or reading.
Working. Practicing the
new patience.
The year has been good.
With long thoughts.
Care to myself.

—from Six Poems by Aram Saroyan

xx,

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Dear Somebody: The things I'll miss.

March 8, 2024

From my illustrated version of William Bronk’s *The Tell*

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

MONDAY

I wake up before dawn and listen to the smooth, velvet call of darkness. I wake up before the rest of my family and it feels like waking up before the rest of the world—there is only me and in the morning I see, quite clearly, myself as someone to love. I wake up to write, I wake up to ponder, I wake up from all the people I’m not. I wake up.

My lower back cracks first, then my knees, then my neck. I see the bridge between ankle to leg, I see each weathered toe—evidence of a body that continues to show up, that does what’s asked of it and does not ask for much in return. These are the sounds of loyalty; these are the sounds of my oldest friendship. The mourning doves chatter outside my window and our tired 100-year old house invites their conversation in. I listen and I am lucky to listen and I feel the luck well deep inside me like a river. I wonder who these birds were before they were birds, I wonder who I was before I knew I was someone worth knowing. The radiators come to life, abruptly. They clang and hiss. The dog bristles in his sleep and occasionally, a car drives by.

Cutting the fruit, buttering the toast, making the lunches—even these chores are sweeter in the morning stillness. The creak of the stairs as T comes down, earlier these past few days, with all of his teeth and a smile. I put Tea for the Tillerman on and Stevens’ familiar voice washes through the kitchen and hovers above the island with mine.

N turns away when I wake her, her body longing for more silence, more rest, more; the light streams into her bedroom in strings, beguiling. F’s generous smile—immediate upon waking, the way she finds me as soon as I leave the room, her small hands clinging to my knees. N singing along to the Frozen soundtrack, hoping she didn’t miss any let it go’s. I clean the floor, the walls, the cabinets after F eats, my hands and knees satisfied from use.

The first deep breath outside, the cold air rushing into my lungs; the crack of twig or tree branch, everything growing, everything going. The first sip of coffee, well-earned and deeply wanted, the changing light on my child’s tiny face, the agony of push and pull between too-much and never-enough: these are the things I’ll miss when they are gone.

TUESDAY

“What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, it's very nice and rational and respectable to say that a woman has every right to her life, to her ambitions, to her needs, and so on—it's what I've always demanded myself—but as a child, no, the truth is it's a war of attrition, rationality doesn't come into it, not one bit, all you want from your mother is that she once and for all admit that she is your mother and only your mother, and that her battle with the rest of life is over. She has to lay down arms and come to you. And if she doesn't do it, then it's really a war, and it was a war between my mother and me. Only as an adult did I come to truly admire her—especially in the last, painful years of her life—for all that she had done to claw some space in this world for herself.”

—from Swing Time by Zadie Smith

WEDNESDAY

I spent the last couple of weeks working on a new welcome illustration for Dear Somebody. I was inspired to do this by Adam Rex’s header, which I’ve loved ever since I saw it. This newsletter has been through several evolutions over the past few years, and I haven’t felt like it visually reflects where I am in my work, and who I am as a person, for awhile now.

Mine’s not perfect but it does feel a lot more like me (perhaps for that very reason!). Also: I was able to experiment using mixed media (my dream is to work more like N—”a little bit of everything”), I learned a few things, and I showed myself, again, that doing something for no reason (other than I want to) is usually worth the effort—which is just plain ol’ nice.

THURSDAY

As a longtime fan of Cal Newport’s work, I was pleased to provide a few words for his latest book, Slow Productivity. Here’s what I had to say about it:

The belief that the process of creating art should, and can, be completed quickly is the artist’s greatest source of discontent. It is the reason many artists develop imposter syndrome and become disillusioned with their work and their own abilities. Often, it is why artists stop creating work at all. In Slow Productivity, Cal Newport effectively charts the birth and growth of productivity culture, and explains how it led to the removal of personal values, deep focus, and deliberate care in our work and communities. His book is an opportunity to understand why we so often feel frustrated with the demands of the world we live in—and what we can do if we choose to turn inward, once again.

Slow Productivity was published this week and is available everywhere books are sold.

FRIDAY

Poetry is not made of words.
I can say it’s January when
it’s August. I can say, “The scent
of wisteria on the second floor
of my grandmother’s house
with the door open onto the porch
in Petaluma,” while I’m living
an hour’s drive from the Mexican
border town of Ojinaga.
It is possible to be with someone
who is gone. Like the silence which
continues here in the desert while
the night train passes through Marfa
louder and louder, like the dogs whining
and barking after the train is gone.

—The Presence in Absence by Linda Gregg

xx,

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Dear Somebody: On dreaming.

March 1, 2024

*UNTITLED #1: A collaboration between me (age 6) and my child (age 3*)

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

MONDAY

N and I sit at the dining room table and color a gigantic set of fabric butterfly wings for her to wear. She’s been working on them since the beginning of January. She hasn’t worn them once; I’m not sure she ever will. She’s more interested in the making, and so we color: her, a medium heart, mostly outside the lines, and me, a small circle, mostly inside the lines. Hers is better.

We chat a little here and there, but mostly we are each lost to our thoughts.

As an author who wants to write for children, and as a person who has children, I find myself returning to my childhood often—perhaps too often. I mine my past for particular memories and recall the feeling of experiencing them. For a handful of scenes, I am transported viscerally: even after 30 years, my body holds onto the feeling. It’s chosen to, though I don’t always understand why. For the rest of my childhood, I am simply a member of the audience, watching a tape that has been rewound and replayed so many times that the quality is beginning to wear.

When I feel nostalgia for childhood, it’s mostly for a period of life where I had an abundance of time: time to practice whistling; time to wake up and read, half falling out of bed, letting the blood rush to my head; time to run until the breath caught in my chest, astonished at how my own body worked; time to think about nothing and no one or everything and everyone; time to take multiple hours to eat a lollipop, and then still wrap it back up for later; time to mush and mix—sand, flour, water, spices, broken glass, tin foil, paint, grass, mud—just to see how it feels. Time to be bored. Time to dream.

For many, childhood is a harrowing time, full of unknowns and a loss of control. It is impossible to become—a big kid, a grown-up, an author, a mother, no matter how badly you want to—until one day, you are. There is no guarantee; there never is. Children understand that, but children also know how to dream, and dreaming provides immunity.

For the last 15 years, I’ve cast off dreaming in favor of pragmatism—and in all truth, this method has served me well. I am practical and (mostly) disciplined. I set achievable goals. But when N came home from school and told me she’d used a very tall ladder to climb into the sky and take a nap in the clouds, I found myself in awe of her imagination and disappointed in my own, unsure of when I’d lost my ability to dream.

I color another circle. I think about how dreams are barriers that stands between the crags of life and hopelessness. I think about how believing in a different world is essential to creating any change: to changing the way we think, feel, and behave. I think about how expansive dreaming is, how it becomes easier to remain open—and accepting, if you can consider alternate possibilities, even those unknown.

I think about how N was my dream and now she is her own, and how much good I’ll have done if I can teach her to remember that. I think about how open and forgiving she is. Her unprejudiced spirit gives her more clarity than I could ever hope to have.

“I like this color blue,” I tell her. “It’s soft but also bright.”

“I like that one, too,” N tells me. “I love all of the colors that I know.”

TUESDAY

*UNTITLED #1. Cut paper collage and acrylic paint on paper. Begun in 1993, completed in 2023.*

I made this paper dinosaur when I was six, and N painted this acrylic landscape toward the end of 2023. A few days ago, I collaged them together. Our first collaborative painting.

It is the first, I hope, of many collaborations—paintings, books, choreographed dances, and of course, building our relationship. The biggest collaboration; the best dream.

WEDNESDAY

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” —James Baldwin

THURSDAY

Today I sat on a panel discussion with a few peers to discuss book publishing and how books have helped build our brand. The conversation was interesting for me, and I enjoyed learning more about my peers, each of us with our own distinct paths and challenges. A career in book publishing is not simple or easy for most of us, but it is possible—and if you love books, that’s what matters most.

My own experience with my brand and how I view creativity has changed so much, especially in the last two years. The conversation moved quickly, and I didn’t get a chance to speak about what I really wanted to, which was: treating your brand as a living, breathing thing.

If enough of you are interested, I’ll write about this topic for the next edition of my Craft series.

If you missed yesterday’s panel talk (with Katie Daisy, Rebecca Green, Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw, Jane Mount, and Meenal Patel), you can watch the replay here.

FRIDAY

To be a good
ex/current friend for R. To be one last

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship
advice for L. To be advice

for my mother. To be a more comfortable
hospital bed for my mother. To be

no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time,
America for my uncle, who wants to be China

for me. To be a country of trafficless roads
& a sports car for my aunt, who likes to go

fast. To be a cyclone
of laughter when my parents say

their new coworker is like that, they can tell
because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so you can’t,

can’t be one of them. To be the one
my parents raised me to be—

a season from the planet
of planet-sized storms.

To be a backpack of PB&J & every
thing I know, for my brothers, who are becoming

their own storms. To be, for me, nobody,
homebody, body in bed watching TV. To go 2D

& be a painting, an amateur’s hilltop & stars,
simple decoration for the new apartment

with you. To be close, J.,
to everything that is close to you—

blue blanket, red cup, green shoes
with pink laces.

To be the blue & the red.
The green, the hot pink.

—When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen

xx,

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Dear Somebody: A lesson in unconditional love.

February 23, 2024

*A Lesson in Unconditional Love* from *How it Feels to Find Yourself*

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

MONDAY

I wake up tired.

It’s 4:35 am and the baby is crying. I sit up, swing my legs over to the edge of the bed, and stumble towards the door. Jack has been up for some time now, waiting for us to wake. He dances around my feet, tip-tapping excitedly, wanting me to sit down and play with him. “I need a minute, Jackie,” I mumble, stepping over him and into the bathroom. He watches as I brush my teeth and splash cold water on my face. I feel irritated for no reason. After a few minutes, I close the door.

By 6:00 am, the baby has been changed and fed and cried a few more times. We’re sitting on the floor playing peek-a-boo, waiting for the sun to show her face. Jack sits by the bedroom door, waiting. Every so often, he looks over to see how we’re doing.

Around 6:45, I get dressed. Jack bounces around my heels as I pull on pants and a hoodie. “Jack. Jackie. I need some space,” I say, more gently than I have before. When we reach the back door, he’s there, waiting. I let him out and he races around the yard, joyfully feeling the cool air on his face. The trees are dropping their leaves now, and the crinkle of each one fills my ears. The scent of morning dew after a long fall from the sky passes over us in waves. I breathe in deeply and will myself into feeling new. I want to be better—patient, kind, more appreciative of all the good I have.

Jack walks over and sits down next to me, so closely that his body is on my feet. His head rests under my hands. He waits.

—from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my latest book of illustrated essays

TUESDAY

I loved this comic by Gavin Aung Than that illustrates an excerpt from Stephen King’s On Writing—namely, the difficult work/life balance of most artists, and the larger, more balanced perspective that’s only available to us in retrospect.

Of course, that led me to Bill Watterson’s advice on inventing your own life’s meaningand Stanley Kubrick’s on life’s purposelessness—both encourage me to continue taking the road less traveled.

WEDNESDAY

I’ve always been reluctant to celebrate holidays, especially ones that make it easy to gloss over honest sentiment for sparkles and gifts. This changed when I became a mother. I want my children to experience the joy of thoughtfulness—to understand what a gift it is to know someone well, and to make them feel known. I also realize how much challenge life will give us—and what a strength it is to find reason, still, to celebrate.

N made these seed packets for Valentine’s Day. She painted and glued each one. She filled them with Zinnia seeds. For over a week, she sat at the dining table and asked to decorate seed packets until she had one for each person in her world. In the end she made nearly 25. She’s three.

She turned an ordinary Wednesday into something less ordinary—something special, perhaps—for so many. It had nothing to do with Valentine’s Day and everything to do with her heart—which, as I’ve suspected for awhile now, is far too big for her tiny body.

THURSDAY

I’m enjoying these paintings by Ulla Thynell, this book by Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Ruchi Mhasane, and these rules for a creative practice by Carolyn Yoo.

FRIDAY

Cook a large fish — choose one with many bones, a skeleton
you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying
silver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling
the others into oblivion. If you don’t live
near a lake, you’ll have to travel.
Walking is best and shows you mean it,
but you could take a train and let yourself
be soothed by the rocking
on the rails. It’s permitted
to receive solace for whatever you did
or didn’t do, pitiful, beautiful
human. When my mother was in the hospital,
my daughter and I had to clear out the home
she wouldn’t return to. Then she recovered
and asked, incredulous,
How could you have thrown out all my shoes?
So you’ll need a boat. You could rent or buy,
but, for the sake of repairing the world,
build your own. Thin strips
of Western red cedar are perfect,
but don’t cut a tree. There’ll be
a demolished barn or downed trunk
if you venture further.
And someone will have a mill.
And someone will loan you tools.
The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours. Each night
we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night
we could dream back everything lost.
So grill the pale flesh.
Unharness yourself from your weary stories.
Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.
There is much to fear as a creature
caught in time, but this
is safe. You need no defense. This
is just another way to know
you are alive.

—How to Apologize by Ellen Bass

xx,

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Dear Somebody: Stay golden.

February 16, 2024

The artwork for a recent collaboration with *Golden Hour Candle Co*.

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

MONDAY

I wake up wanting to find the golden thread.

I do my morning chores. The dog waits to go out. It’s still dark but the robins woke well before me. They sing; we listen. I wonder if they ever tire of doing the bird thing, if even the miracle of flying feels like a slog once in awhile. The golden thread is everywhere: in the leaves fluttering in the wind; in the birds, filling the air with their song; in the light streaming over my head. I can still see a few stars pressed faintly against the sky. They will soon leave; they will return.

The first person I see is F. I let her wail for 15 minutes and then I go to retrieve her. She lays face down in her crib in resignation, but when I turn her over, she’s smiling. The golden thread is here: in her mess of long hair, much too long for her body; in her golden, gummy smile that stretches over her entire face and into whatever space she occupies; in her tiny little hands that find tiny specks of dust to examine and eat; in her laugh, which begins deep inside her belly and bubbles over, finally, when it’s too much for her body to hold. The golden thread is in her absence of desire. She is herself and that is enough.

Next is T, who is still sleepy for at least an hour post-wake. He stumbles down the stairs and F rushes over to look up at him, in full cobra pose. She adores her dad and I adore their relationship, so easy and full of endearment. The golden thread is everywhere: in his morning smile, genuine and full of teeth; in his goofy humor, always looking to score a laugh; his mild temperament. The golden thread is his earnest demeanor, so willing, always, to build towards a greater love.

By the time N makes it to breakfast, I’ve found enough thread for a few spools. She is cross and hungry, her typical early-hours disposition. She reminds me a lot of me, except for when I can’t relate to her at all. Still, I don’t have to look very hard for the thread: it’s in her delicate grasp, the way she buries her face in the couch, consumed by her oversized feelings. It’s in her small, matter-of-fact voice when she replies “not now, but after school with my afternoon one” when I ask if I can give her a morning kiss. It’s in the way she immediately brightens and blooms after her first few bites of breakfast. “I think I was really hungry,” she says. “And tired. But I feel better now.” Golden threads radiate from her like sun rays.

After N leaves from school, I clean the kitchen and do the dishes. I wash the oatmeal pot and find myself in its metal reflection. My hair is crumpled, my skin is tired, but my eyes are alive. Not bad, I think. A person who looks for the golden thread: not always without fail and not always with ease, but someone who tries, anyhow. A golden thread.

TUESDAY

I’m so excited to share this collaboration with my dear friend Nirali, the owner of Golden Hour Candle Co..

I was given complete freedom to create whatever I wanted, which is obviously my favorite kind of project. The artwork for this collaboration was inspired by my own ever-changing definition of feminism—one where the efforts of caregiving is shared by all beings because it is valued as necessary, respected work.

It is grounded in the promise of the three young girls in my life: my two young daughters and my niece, who came into the world carrying the greatest love there is—the love they have for themselves. The ultimate golden thread.

The crewnecks are available for purchase here on the Golden Hour website.

WEDNESDAY

This particular section from Austin Kleon';s newsletter, We Love Because We Care:

In her book, The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik advocates for abandoning the word “parenting” as a verb. She encourages readers to think of being a parent as a relationship that runs on love, instead of a job that runs on work.
“Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks of blueprints,” she writes, “but it does have a purpose.” The purpose of loving children is to care for them as a gardener would tend to plants, creating the conditions under which they will thrive.
This caring, she says, changes us, and deepens our love. “We don’t care for children because we love them,” she writes, “we love them because we care for them.”

THURSDAY

“Perhaps the most important truth I’ve learned across the whole of my life is that it’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.”

—from William Kent Krueger’s This Tender Land, my current read

FRIDAY

The value of an individual life a credo they taught us
to instill fear, and inaction, 'you only live once'
a fog on our eyes, we are
endless as the sea, not separate, we die
a million times a day, we are born
a million times, each breath life and death:
get up. put on your shoes, get
started, someone will finish

—from Revolutionary Letter #2 by Diane di Prima

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Meera Lee Patel is an artist, writer, and book maker. Her books have sold over one million copies, and been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide.

Her newsletter, Dear Somebody, is a short weekly note chronicling five things worth remembering, including a look into her process, reflections on motherhood, and creative inspiration.

Join thousands of other readers by subscribing.

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