A beautiful Midwestern ripped sky, in September (2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
When I pick N up from school lately, the conversation is minimal. She’s tired; I’m tired; we drive along in silence, each of us held quiet by our own thoughts. Every so often, I check on her in the rearview mirror. She catches me looking and gives me a small smile. Sometimes the smile is genuine, pleased at being noticed. Other times, I get the feeling that the smile is for me—obligatory, a response to my unasked questions. It reminds me that, day by day, she’s growing up: growing accustomed to social rules and performances, growing aware of another person’s gaze on her, growing an invisible shield between her mind and mine. Slipping through my fingers.
Today is different. From the moment I buckle her into the carseat, N’s mind and eyes are locked into one thing only: the clouds. Mom, she says. Did you notice the clouds today? I squint around the sunlight striking my windshield and look at the sky. The clouds are in tatters, sprinkling the blue sky in bits and patches, like an animal tearing its way through a fresh carpet. Others streak across the wide sky in ribbons, long lines that travel as far as we can see.
Streamer clouds (2025)
Speckle clouds (2025)
What kind of clouds are those? N asks me, curious. Prompted to remember what little I know about clouds, I recall three of the four main classifications and I consider them aloud. They don’t look like cumulus clouds, I reason. Those are…popcorn-like? I remember that cirrus clouds are wispy, which none of these are, and stratus? No idea there.
While I’m busy talking to myself, N classifies the clouds herself. The long ones are streamers, she says, like the kind you bring to a party. And the rest are ripped out of the sky, like speckles. Speckles and streamers.
There’s little else that excites me more than hearing N describe the world. Her use of language is extremely visual; it isn’t difficult for me to imagine what she sees. Her choice of words feels intimate, considered. Though her vocabulary is smaller than mine, she chooses words carefully, with affection.
For the next thirty minutes, we drive on in excitement. N points out each unusual cloud she sees and takes photos of them with my phone. There’s a few cloud-shaped ones,she says, spotting a cumulus. There’s a spaceship one. And that one is a sea streamer, because it waves up at the end. Like a whale.
As we grow closer to the intersection where I make a left for F’s school, she laments: the cloud she loves most will disappear from her view. Mom, make sure you look at this cloud before you turn, she says, her cheeks pressed to the window. Isn’t the sky really just so beautiful today? I turn around and look at her, my sweet stormy cloud. Often full of rain and a bolt or two. In a few weeks, she’ll be five.
Yeah, I say, staring at her staring out the window. The most beautiful thing I can see.
TUESDAY
On the value of shame, which I hadn’t considered before:
“Very few of us are moral saints—certainly not me. Unlike everlasting, lofty, abstract principles, we who try feebly to live up to them down in the muck of reality face mucky obstacles: we get tired, impatient, envious, and angry. Our values and principles ask more than most of us are able to give—if they don’t, they are probably too weak to be worth holding. But we don’t have to celebrate our failures or, worse still, confuse them with our successes. This is one valuable function of shame: it reminds us of who we want to be when we fall short, a goalpost that is necessarily anchored to the lofty height that our conduct fell beneath. We also encourage and defend these general social standards when we hold others to them, and not just ourselves.”
—from How Can We Live Together? by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
WEDNESDAY
My first Diwali card with Biely & Shoaf! (2025)
I’m very excited to share my first Diwali card with you, made in collaboration with Biely & Shoaf! When I began my career a decade ago, no publisher would consider creating a Diwali card with me—really—and so, many years later, this feels like a small win. A win: for me, for the culture, for the field of illustration, for all of us.
You can purchase this card on the Biely & Shoaf website.
THURSDAY
To celebrate the upcoming publication of my journal, Learn to Let Go, I invited a few people I admire to share what they’re letting go of, and what they’re learning in the process.
Today, I’m featuring art, illustrator, and writer Carolyn Yoo. She writes the newsletter SEE YOU, which focuses on the intersection of creativity and self-discovery. I particularly enjoy the way Carolyn views creativity: holistically, as an integral component of good health. Her writing often provides me with something useful to consider or implement into my own creative routine.
A Portrait of Carolyn Yoo (2025)
What are you letting go of?
CY: A clear artistic identity.
What is this process teaching you?
CY: I’m allowing myself to inhabit the mystery of my interior mind, paying attention to what I’m drawn to and letting all of it percolate into my work with self-trust, without worrying if I make sense to others.
Many thanks to Carolyn for offering a glimpse into her current practice of letting go—a practice that many of us creatives may find useful. You can see Carolyn’s work hereand sign up for her newsletter here.
In case you missed it, I spoke about acceptance, letting go, and making books with Radim Malinic on the Daring Creativity podcast.
We’re only two weeks away from the publication of Learn to Let Go, and I’m happy to share that for a limited time, Bookshop.org is offering a 15% on all orders with the code LTLG15. A good time to grab a copy or two or five!
Thank you, always, for supporting my work.
FRIDAY
it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet
I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses
in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves
as if after a battle
or a sudden journey
I went to sleep in the summer
I dreamed of rain
in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn
—September by Linda Pastan
Two years ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.