Dear Somebody: Good is in the gray.

F and I by the sea (March 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,

M

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Dear Somebody: A lesson in unconditional love.

A paint palette 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 our 5-month-old 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 ”A Lesson in Unconditional Love” in How it Feels to Find Yourself

TUESDAY

This interview with Blexbolex about The Magicians; this letter by Ruth Franklin of Ghost Stories about the purpose of art in dark times; this conversation on moving past your own self-doubt between Lizzy Stewart and Andy J. Pizza.

WEDNESDAY

Teared up reading today’s note from Courtney Martin, a letter about her daughter turning 10. I myself can hardly fathom a world in which my daughters are 10, or 11, or anything except so small. In it, she writes:

When we were driving home so slowly that day, I never could have predicted any of this—that, ironically, my firstborn would gift me with nourishing, companionable quiet, and return me to my love of solitude and art, and speak an emotional language so foreign to me it would humble me in all the right ways.

I think about this constantly—how N and F are their own mysterious beings, equipped with their own arsenal of language, philosophy, and thought. How they are not extensions of me. How I am humbled continually by how easily they find and hold onto anything good. How they do not dwell. How deeply they feel about their perceived injustices. How it’s not my job to tell them what they should think or feel, but help them find the words to articulate what they do think and feel. How it’s my job to guide them, yes, but how mostly it’s my job to stay out of their way—so they can show me, and the rest of the world, who they are. 

THURSDAY

In the very little time I have to make things, I have been trying, very hard, to make things. Sometimes this is during F’s nap. Often it is while we go on walks. I walk and write poems in my head, on my Notes app. I text lines of poems or this newsletter to myself. I try to capture what I feel in words, hoping that eventually, I’ll be able to translate it into a picture. I draw on the couch after the girls are in bed. I draw when I should be sleeping. Sometimes I draw instead of showering. 

I fret a lot—not about the time I’m losing, but about whether I’ll still want to make the things I want to make when I do have the time. Whether I’ll still feel the spark. Whether the making part of me will keep waiting for the rest of me to catch up.

Two pieces I made this year that I finally framed, ready to hang in our home.

I took the time to frame these two illustrations this week. We’re going to hang them up in our house. Each one took too long to make by any reasonable person’s standards. If I divide the amount of time it took to draw each one by the rate I was paid, it comes out to exactly nothing. If I add up the additional costs—time with my family, regular hygiene, a semblance of a social life, an earlier bedtime—things start to sound a little ridiculous. I start to feel ridiculous. I have written about this period of motherhood before.

But when I look at these two illustrations together, I see that the making part of myself is alive and well. That it is being tended to. That despite being obviously neglected, my creativity is climbing back into my life. Into where it belongs. That it is creating its own space in the places I have abandoned. That it refuses to be forgotten. That I have not left this very integral—perhaps the most integral part of myself, behind. That what’s good is slow in its making, but that the making part is very good, too. That, however slowly, my art is growing and changing, and I am, too—and that both are well worth the costs.

FRIDAY

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

—Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

xx,

M

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