Dear Somebody: The car ride home.
Five things from this week that I'd like to remember
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
My new commute to pick both girls up from school closes in on an hour and forty minutes. I was sour the first week, grumbling about my shortened workday, grumbling about the traffic, grumbling about the other drivers. I worried about N sitting for such long car rides, I worried about her falling asleep, I worried about both of us surviving F’s relentless car screams.
A couple of weeks in, N and I have settled into our new rhythm. She slowly climbs into her car seat and asks if I brought her a snack, knowing I did. I drive, she eats. Sometimes she tells me about her day and asks about mine; sometimes we call my sister and N chats with her cousins; sometimes we listen to whatever book I’m listening to until N asks me to turn it off. Nearly everyday, we call T and ask how long until he’ll be home.
Today, N is quiet. I dodge drivers who shouldn’t be on the road, and N dodges the sunlight searching for her eyes. She asks for penny on the train tracks and we both sing to ourselves. I watch her eyes close in the rearview mirror, her head drooping like an overgrown flower. She falls asleep with a sigh of relief, soft and inviting, a strawberry still in her mouth.
I drive along the strip malls and sun-bleached strips of grass. I’m driving through the suburbs of St. Louis, my four-year-old daughter in tow, but all of a sudden I’m the four-year-old, nodding along to sounds of a rolled-down window while my dad drives, falling asleep the instant the key hits the ignition. I am filled with nostalgia for the feeling of absolute safety one feels as a child being driven around by someone who loves her most.
On these drives, I feel solidly like a parent, able to give my daughter a feeling of security and trust. My past becomes my present, and my daughter’s future—and I find myself comforted by the continuous cycle of life, by the mundanity of parenting and all of its tedious chores—which gives me one long drive, every day, with someone I love most.
TUESDAY
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WEDNESDAY
“HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.
HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.
HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.
HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.” —from Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar
THURSDAY
I originally bought Elizabeth Haidle’s Drawing is… as a fun book for me and N to work through together. After reading it on and off for the past few weeks, however, it’s found its way out of N’s room and into my studio, where it sits next to my drawing desk as a symbol of encouragement.
I write about my experience as a working artist often: the process, the sound of my creativity, the small joys, the breakthroughs. The feeling of being forgotten. I’m not sure what I expected Drawing is…to be, but I’m surprised by what it actually is: a thoughtful meditation on discovering the creative, imaginative artist hiding inside you. It has plenty of technical information to help N (and me!) experiment and use different materials, which I expected, and plenty of prompts and exercises for thinking more deeply about your art-making, which I’m excited to try.
What I was most surprised, however, is how Haidle corralled all of this information under the umbrella of a very healthy artist philosophy: that every step you take as an artist—however messy or seemingly insignificant, will lead you somewhere new—somewhere, certainly, worth going.
You can purchase Drawing is… and learn more about Beth’s work.
FRIDAY
I am pulling myself together.
Don’t want to go on a trip.
I have painted the living room white
and taken out most of my things.
The room has never been so empty.
Just now a banging thunder
and suddenly falling rain.
I leave the typewriter and run
outside in my nightgown and take
the cotton blanket off the line.
It is summer and I am in the middle
of my life. Alone and happy.
—Grinding the Lens by Linda Gregg
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See you next week!
xx,
M