Dear Somebody: When the ceiling becomes the sky.

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

The bound dummy book for my MFA Thesis project, When the Ceiling Becomes the Sky.

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

MONDAY

Two days ago, I successfully defended my Master’s Thesis in a room full of faculty, all of whom are working illustrators, writers, and historians. I presented my critical essay, Mothering as Feminism, which proposes a new theory of feminism centered on the liberation of all people through the fundamental viewing of a mother as, first and foremost, an autonomous person worthy of value and care. I also presented my picture book dummy, When the Ceiling Becomes the Sky, which follows a child as she navigates the uncertainty that accompanies the birth of her baby sister and her mother’s postpartum depression.*

I felt strange. Although the notion of discussing the work I’ve agonized and toiled over for the past year is exciting and opportune, I don’t like being the center of attention. On top of that, I was barely three weeks postpartum, didn’t fit into any of my clothes, and hadn’t slept more than three hours at a time since F was born. In the ten months leading up to this moment, I’d fretted about defense day. I’ll mess up, I told myself. I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to talk about my work in my postpartum haze—hormones surging through me, brain addled, body rearranged. I knew I’d probably cry.

As most postpartum people will tell you, birthing a child doesn’t automatically revert you back to your old self; instead, it catapults you into becoming someone new—someone you haven’t met yet, someone you’re not certain you’ll even like. This new person feels oddly present—and even more oddly—at peace. This new person feels confident, certain of her capabilities and her power to create change.

The birth of my child also birthed a new me: one who can not only start over, but who does, and always has—again and again.

* P.S. I am interested in publishing both my picture book and my critical essay. If you know a publisher who may be a good fit for either project, please let me know.

TUESDAY

Now that my picture book pitch is nearly finished, I’ve moved onto feeling both intimidated and excited at the prospect of pitching to children’s book agents and editors—along with a fair amount of post-adrenaline despair. The following interviews with artists I admire has brought some levity to this next stage of work:

• Michaela Goade on cultural respect, representation, and advocating for Mother Earth in her work. I also appreciated how open and honest she is about her path into the picture book world.

  I recommend: Berry Song by Michaela Goade
  

• Jericho Brown on small truths and other surprises, and a wonderful look at how he constructs a poem (first: cut them apart).

  I recommend: Bullet Points by Jericho Brown
  

• Cátia Chien on the not-balance between motherhood and work, and again on how beautiful art blooms from creative struggle.

  I recommend: Things to Do by Elaine Magliaro and Cátia Chien

WEDNESDAY

What I’ve been reading lately:

A look into Beatrix Potter’s journals, where her fascination with nature—particularly mushrooms and rabbits—influenced her illustrations and ultimately, the development of characters for her Peter Rabbit books.

Inside Out & Back Again, a novel in verse by Thanhhà Lại, about a young girl fleeing Saigon for the United States during the Vietnam War.

Lisa Olivera on the ongoing practice of being present.

THURSDAY

When I stepped outside after my defense, T was waiting for me.

We’d agreed to quickly celebrate by grabbing margaritas at our local taco place for a few minutes before picking N up from school. Sitting on picnic benches in the warm sunshine, I filled him in on how it’d gone—the advice my professors had given me; the praise that had fallen out of their mouths and seeped into me, warming my bones; how I felt about next steps; what I wanted from my work and career moving forward. How it was all finally over.

It’d been 2 years since I first started graduate school; it was difficult to believe it had all come to an end. I’d sat through full days of class after waking up at 4 am with N; I’d written a book during each year of school, working nights and early mornings to fit it all in; I’d endured another difficult pregnancy while developing my thesis work, and I’d given birth to my second child a few weeks before my Thesis exhibition and defense. It was a lot, and often, I didn’t have faith I’d actually get through it.

Me and T are both lucky enough to work for ourselves. While this means we have immense flexibility, it also means we work constantly—out of necessity, yes, but also out of a deep love for what we do. During the first year of graduate school, we argued out of sleeplessness, fatigue, both feeling our work had been deprioritized. During the second year of graduate school, we’d settled into a healthier rhythm: both prioritizing each other’s work and each other’s health, with the understanding that each stage of compromise was temporary and for our family’s greater good. The hard year gave way to the healthier year: we learned and grew from our own fallacies.

T moved us from Nashville to St. Louis, driving a 36-foot U-Haul. He renovated a condo for my parents to live in so they could help care for us; for 2 years, he did every single diaper, nap time, school pick-up and drop-off; he took N to the playground or zoo while I wrote my books, he made lunches while I did homework, he cleaned the house while I studied and wrote papers. He listened to me gripe about pregnancy, gestational diabetes, the body leaks, the brain fatigue. He thought through story plots with me, studied my character development, my concepts, my sketches. He told me to rest; he told me to stop working; he told me when he believed I could—and should—do better; he told me to try again.

In the sunshine, we sit across the table from each other for 23 minutes. Since having children, time is allotted to us in minutes—a few here and there—usually less than 60, in which to shower or write or make a meal. T tells me how proud he is of me; I thank him for helping us all get through the past few years. My eyes well up and when his do, too, I finally understand it—what he has told me over and over again, what has been so difficult but necessary for me to believe—that my win is not my win alone. It is also his, and ours, and our family’s. No one at this table is alone.

FRIDAY

May they never be lonely at parties
Or wait for mail from people they haven’t written
Or still in middle age ask God for favors
Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.

May hatred be like a habit they never developed
And can’t see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.
If they forget themselves, may it be in music
Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.

May they enter the coming century
Like swans under a bridge into enchantment
And take with them enough of this century
To assure their grandchildren it really happened.

May they find a place to love, without nostalgia
For some place else that they can never go back to.
And may they find themselves, as we have found them,
Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.

May they be themselves, long after we’ve stopped watching.
May they return from every kind of suffering
(Except the last, which doesn’t bear repeating)
And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.

—Prayer For Our Daughters by Mark Jarman

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See you next week!

xx,

M

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