Dear Somebody: You are spring.
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
When the first snow of the season slowly falls, I wake up before the world and climb down the stairs. I press my nose against the cold windows of the front door and watch the drifts settle on the dark streets. A lone car whistles down the street, its headlines waving like a ribbon through the snowfall. After that, it is quiet, and I feel lucky to be alone.
Before the snow begins, T salts a hundred houses where his family doesn’t live because someone else’s does. I read the news gingerly, like a child checking to see if the burners are still warm. Dead children, wildfires, disease, manhunts. Hopelessness is not helpful, but actual food and water is, so I donate everywhere I can and feed my own girls. It feels like so many direct their own pain onto others, but I feel lucky that so many do not.
Before T salts a hundred houses, we spend a few days in Nashville. We celebrate friends, visit their children, see how we’ve all fallen and mended. We sit around the table in a friendship that feels more comfortable each year, and I eat a meal that someone else lovingly cooks for me. I see each person’s heart growing wider, more open, pumping blood, struggling as it reaches—but always reaching anyway. I know how much mine has struggled to stay open this year—but it has, it does, and I feel lucky to know each open heart at this table, especially my own.
TUESDAY
Jo Nakashima’s beautiful and strange origami; the right of return (100% of proceeds directly aid the people of Gaza); Einstein time; this gorgeous edition of The Complete Tales by Beatrix Potter, which I was thoughtfully given to borrow by a friend.
WEDNESDAY
I am reading many interesting picture books while I rewrite a manuscript I began a few weeks ago. The manuscript itself is simple, which gives me the ability to push the envelope further with my drawings. The question I keep asking myself is: How can I tell multiple stories at once?
A few books that do this well are:
The Midnight Fair by Gideon Sterer and illustrated by Mariachiara Di Giorgio, a very enchanting, completely wordless book about forest creatures visiting a fairground.
Crushing by Sophie Burrows, which really illuminates just how deeply emotions can be communicated in only two colors. Another twoc-olobook that does this beautifully is My Best Friend, written by Julie Fogliano and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki.
Small in the City by Sydney Smith, which utilizes panels to draw the reader closer (or push them farther away) from the main character’s world.
THURSDAY
A few days late to share this, but still remembering my favorite November poem and the painting I made for it a few years ago.
FRIDAY
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
—To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks
Guns are still the #1 killers of American children and teenagers. Please demand action; please donate to Everytown to support common sense gun laws.
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If you'd like to support me, you can order my latest journal, Go Your Own Way: A Journal for Building Self-Confidence, or my book of illustrated essays, How it Feels to Find Yourself—for yourself, a loved one, or both!
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See you next week!
xx,
M