Dear Somebody: An open heart

Five things from this week that I'd like to remember

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

MONDAY

After 11 weeks of life, Fred finally catches her first cold. Her breathing is raspy and catches on her congestion. She sleeps fitfully through the night, waking every 3 hours to eat feeble amounts, unable to nurse properly with a stuffy nose. Her cries are loud, uncomfortable. She runs a fever; her skin is flushed. I see stop signs behind my eyes, but this is my second child, so I don’t call the pediatrician. Instead, I run the shower.

I turn the handle toward blistering, I turn the handle until it can’t turn anymore. Our small bathroom warms quickly and begins to steam. I pick Fred up and muffle her cries against my chest, one hand around her waist, the other holding a glass of water, a bottle of aspirin, and my phone.

I open the shower curtain halfway and a little light filters in through the wedge of patterned glass window. Fred is quiet now, watching the steam rise like clouds against the ceiling. The steam dances and swirls; the shower spray flickers in the light. I play Queen on my phone and lean against the sink, rocking gently to the breath of my own sweet Freddie. Her tiny body rises and falls. I hold little Freddie, and she holds my shoulder. I think about how many writers, artists, and musicians have changed the course of my life—who, in the most troubling of times, have helped me help myself. I think about how many of them have helped me want to help myself. I think about how many of them are mothers. I think about all the art the world is missing, all of the necessary art that isn’t made—that can’t be made—because the artists are busy mothering.

Together, Freddie and I listen to her namesake and mourn the artists who left before us and those who will arrive too long after. After a few minutes, she falls asleep. The steam soothes her ragged nose and tired lungs. I stand there, still listening, for a long time after.

TUESDAY

These embroidered book covers by Jillian Tamaki that I keep coming back to as I set out to begin my first embroidery project for my girls. This illustration by Karlotta Freier as I consider perspective and composition.

WEDNESDAY

An excerpt from How It Feels To Find Yourself was published in Issue 57: BLUE of Taproot Magazine. Taproot is one of my favorite independent publications, and I was lucky enough to illustrate all 6 covers published in their 10th year. Many thanks to editor Amanda Blake Soule for the kind feature.

THURSDAY

“It seems to me that, in a way, the most fundamental and important capacity we have as human beings is the capacity for love. And I think the feeling of love couldn’t exist without a range of other feelings that surround it, the primary one being the fear of loss. If the loss of someone you love didn’t make you sad, then what substance would the love have? And I think that, therefore, the emotional range that includes great sadness and great pain is essential to the kind of love and attachment that we form.”

—Andrew Solomon, in conversation with Krista Tippett

FRIDAY

A thousand doors ago,
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling over me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother's window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father's window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

—Young by Anne Sexton

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See you next week!

xx,

M

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