Dear Somebody: The Classroom.

*A snippet of an illustration from my sketchbook series,* *The Classroom*

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

MONDAY

A few months ago, my professor asked us to keep a sketchbook of life drawings. Our instructions were simple: draw quickly, draw truthfully. No self-editing, no time for over-thinking, and no digital materials.

I decided to focus on N's classroom, capturing a little of her day during morning drop-offs and afternoon pick-ups. I drew the loving community she'd formed in the few months since she'd begun attending school, the way she chanted her friends' names over and over on the drive home. I drew her teachers, who cared for her mind and her body, though none of their blood ran through her. I drew her imagination, the way it chugged steadily along and then blossomed, encouraged by all she's exposed to within her four classroom walls. I drew the ache of leaving her behind, and the relief of it, too.

This collection of sketchbook pages, titled The Classroom, is now on my website. In light of the news from Uvalde this week, this project feels different to me now: still joyful, but calloused. I know I shouldn't. No one should feel guilty for being spared. But I also know this: nothing separates me, or N, from the parents and children in Texas––nothing but sheer luck.

TUESDAY

N's home sick from school today, so I take the day off work, too. We're in my studio drawing when the first Times headline appears in my inbox. I scan it quickly, my body tensing. Oh no, I say quietly, under my breath. N, who listens too carefully for an 18-month-old, looks up and echoes my reaction, her smile splitting her face in half. Mama? Oh no? Oh no! Not understanding, she begins to laugh.

Not understanding, I close my email and focus on our drawing. We are drawing scribbles today, which is different from every other day only in that it is a different day. I inhale and exhale. I will myself to relax, monitoring my body language and tone constantly, all in an effort for N to feel free and joyful for as long as she possibly can. If I can hold it in, she won't have to hold it at all.

I'll read the news after she goes to bed, I tell myself. The headline said the children were only injured. My own reaction is ludicrous––poisoned, even: only. Only injured. The rest of the day progresses routinely, save for the punctuating news updates and anxious texts from other parents. I read each one and then press a smile back onto my face. After she goes to bed. We push the wagons, we throw strawberries on the ground, we begrudgingly take a bath.

Around 6:45, N snuggles up to T and coaxes him to read the second of one thousand bedtime stories. One dozen times is how many times I tell N that I love her, and even after that, I continue telling her within the confines of my own mind as I head downstairs to make dinner. I take all the ingredients out: the soup, the bread, the spoons, the bowls. I place the dutch oven on top of the burners and start the flame. After that, I simply lean over the stove and sob, my body shaking for all of the beautiful children we insist––so stupidly, on leaving behind.

WEDNESDAY

"There’s a thousand ways it could happen, I know. Images flash in my mind, glimpses of what could be when danger looms near. A car gets too close to the curb when we’re walking on the sidewalk. Another rolls through a stop sign just as we cross the intersection. I imagine scooters flipping and bikes ramming into walls. Trucks driving in the wrong lane. I see baseball bats swung too close to heads and escalator rides gone awry. Every fever brings on the reality that illness can hit anyone at anytime, that many don’t recover. That that could be one of mine. I tell myself to breathe deeply and heavily when they go onto the roof with their dad to string the Christmas lights. But I don’t actually breathe until their feet are back on the ground. I grip their hands tight on the Ferris wheel, remind them to sit and not lean over too far. Remind them not to dive into the shallow end. To not walk too far out into the ocean.

Some of this is my anxiety, I know. But the rest is my motherhood. The part of my brain that changes when babies are born, the part that is conditioned to sense danger in every corner.

It’s the part that screams in silence when nightmares are near.

And here, in America, nightmares are always near."

––on living in the space between grief and rage by Ojus Patel

THURSDAY

This week, I look at what other artists have chosen to remember:

American People Series #15: Hide Little Children, 1966 by Faith Ringgold

“Mera sohna gagaloo magaloo puth” by Baljinder Kaur

Boy Among Withered Leaves by Chihiro Iwasaki

Three Ages of Women by Gustav Klimt

FRIDAY

The world

is full of doors.
And you, whom I cannot save,