Dear Somebody: Losing a penguin

N and Penguin — love goes on and on and on (pencil on paper, 2024)

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

MONDAY 

Over the weekend, we drove to a farm in Illinois to find our way through an 8-acre corn maze. We did, and then we piled back into the car and drove home to have lunch. After F’s nap, we walked to the library and chose new books, stopping at the playground to practice the monkey bars. We hurried home to make dinner and it was halfway through, while shoveling chicken and rice into her mouth, that N told us that she couldn’t find Penguin anywhere. 

Penguin, or Pen-Pen, is N’s lovey, who has slept in her arms each night since she was born. He eats meals with her regularly, both at our home and in public. He gets his own seat and sometimes, he gets his own meal. He’s taken baths with her, made wishes with her, traveled across state lines and open seas with her, and it is he that she calls for when most upset or unconsolable. N’s love for Pen is so great that it inspired F’s love for Tunafish, an absolutely identical penguin that N gifted her only so F would stop thieving Pen from her room. 

T goes to check the car and the garage, and when no Penguin is found, he gets on his bike and rides through the neighborhood. He retraces the path we took to the library and the playground, searches the alleyways, checks the slides. I email the library, already closed, and ask them to please look for Penguin. I call the farm, which is still open, and the manager tells me she’ll check the lost and found. If I leave my name and number, she’ll call me when he turns up. Her voice is sweet and understanding. All of us at the farm—we’re all mothers, she tells me. We know what this is like. We’ll find him.

For the first time in her almost-four years of life, N goes to bed without her penguin. I miss Pen, she says. What if we never find him? Breaking my own rule, I lie with her until she falls asleep. I wonder where Pen-Pen is. It’s a big world for such a small, sweet penguin. 

Afterwards, I search the house and play the tape back in my mind. I rewind it over and over, stopping at all the same moments, pressing play. Did F bring him to the farm thinking he was Tuna? Did I put him in my bag when we got there? Did he fall under the picnic table? Did he fall out when I opened the car door? I saw him in the car—didn’t I? Didn’t I? 

In the morning, N makes the shape of a penguin with her arms. Mom, last night when I didn’t have penguin, I closed my eyes and it felt like I was holding him. I am grateful for her brilliant imagination, for its ability to comfort her. I am disappointed that memory—as shoddy and unreliable as it is, with all its faulty limitations—is still the next best thing to the actual presence of something we love. 

T tells us he’s going to work and then drives back to the farm. He runs the entire 8-acre corn maze again, retracing our steps through the playground and the farm field stores. He searches the grassy field, now beginning to fill with the morning rush of cars and giggling children. Not here, he texts me. The heart breaks. 

I think of somebody—anybody, who wouldn’t know how much our family has cared for this little penguin—and how they’d find and toss him, casually, into the trash. The heart breaks.

Things become family because we care for them, because we choose to divest our finite energy away from one avenue and pour it into another. N loved Penguin into our family, caring for him as we care for her. She considered his feelings, as I do for her. I loved him because she did.

N finds the first drawing I did of her and Penguin. It’s the invitation from her first birthday party. She tucks it into a tote bag and says she’ll show everyone in the neighborhood his picture, so they can call us when they find him. So they can return him to his family. She retraces the steps T already retraced, carrying the invitation like a missing-child milk carton in her hands. When we don’t see him, she asks me again: Mom, what if we never find him?

I tell her I don’t know if we’ll find him or not, but that it’s up to us to keep looking, to keep believing that we will. Missing somebody is hard. It’s a difficult thing to feel, the love a too-big-something squashed inside our hearts, but what it tells us is good: that we care. 

More than the missing, it’s the not knowing that causes ache. Penguin’s absence is unexpected—after hundreds of near-losses, I took for granted that he’d always eventually turn up again. We’ve saved him from airplanes and cousin’s houses, bathtubs and alleyways. I didn’t think he’d ever actually disappear. 

I know that Penguin is a stuffed animal. I know there isn’t any substantial value to him other than the love that he symbolized for a child and her family. I know his story is every child’s story, or every child’s worst fear. I know N will be fine. But it’s a big world for such a small, sweet child—and the heart still breaks in ways I didn’t know it could.

TUESDAY

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 

—from Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit

WEDNESDAY

It’s been an unexpectedly good week for mail: 

I received a beautiful copy of Mai and the Missing Melon by Sonoko Sakai, illustrated by my old friend Keiko Brodeur. This sweet story explores the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother, the Japanse folktale of The Stone Buddhas, and Japanese food, culture, and history. In the package, Keiko also included a generous selection of gorgeous new cards from her sweet stationery company, Small Adventure.

I received my copy of FAIL-A-BRATION by my friends Brad and Kristi Montague, which celebrates failure. I’m not sure a better (or more necessary) celebration can be had. 

Brad Montague

 also runs a really heartfelt and encouraging newsletter called The Enthusiast which I always look forward to reading. 

After gifting my professor a copy of Tolkien’s The Father Christmas Letters, I ordered one for myself and it arrived today. I am taken by this collection of letters, written and illustrated by Tolkien (as Father Christmas) to his children over the span of 23 years. The letters eventually inspired parts of The Lord of the Rings, which is really exciting. It reminds me to play—to remember that the art we create for fun can lead us to our most challenging and fulfilling projects. Reading through the letters, what strikes me most is how vast a person’s imagination can be—and how untapped most of ours are. 

THURSDAY

Color study of N and Penguin (2024)

A small color study of N and Penguin. I’m trying hard to capture the feeling of such a classic childhood relationship—a child and her stuffy—with colors and washes that withstand the test of time. 

I keep asking myself what makes a good picture, or a good sentence—it’s ability to speak to anyone, regardless of age or experience? I don’t know; I’ll keep asking.

FRIDAY

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
   one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
   of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
   somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
   at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”

—Your Catfish Friend by Richard Brautigan

xx,

M

Dear Somebody: It is good.

Part of this past week’s progress

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

MONDAY 

I wake up at 5:30 to have some quiet before the rest of the house stirs. In the living room, I stretch. The sun comes up behind the maple trees on our street; pink and yellow push against the sky. Our street is lined with strange plants, all beautiful and mysterious in their own ways. I know I’ll live in the world for my entire life without really becoming one with the earth. It’ll still be a win if I learn how to become one with myself. Like a kaleidoscope, the sky keeps turning. It is good.

After breakfast, I lose my temper with N. The agitation courses through my body. We are both frustrated, but I am the adult. There isn’t good reason for my loss of control. I want to be different and I work hard at it, but I know when it happens, I’ll just want to be someone else. It is not good. 

I mix peanut butter with banana and yogurt for F. I add chia seeds. N quells her frustration and I do, too. We look into each other’s eyes and I lose myself in the vastness of hers. I see straight into her plum-sized heart, and there is only goodness in there. I’m not perfect, but I’m beginning to understand that I don’t want to be. I want to be a parent who apologizes to their child. I do, and it is good. 

After N leaves for school, F and I finish breakfast. We listen to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack and she watches with interest as I sing along. When I don’t remember the words, I make them up. I laugh at myself and F laughs at me, too. I slip on the yogurt-covered floor but I don’t fall. This is an achievement. F chokes on her own laughter but keeps laughing anyway. I start to worry but then I laugh instead. It is good.

During F’s nap, I draw. I work on a new illustration for my Uppercase column and it challenges me in all the right places. I’m using colors that feel fresh but still like me. I’m excited by my work; I’m working on projects I care about. I’ve tried to listen to myself for years now, and it’s finally paying off. I hear my voice again. I’m saying nomore often. I don’t feel like any particular opportunity will be the one that determines my future. This lesson took me a long time to learn; it’s freeing to finally learn it. It is good.

When F wakes, we sit outside. It’s 56 degrees and the bare branches scrape the stars. I can’t see them but I know they’re there. F scoots around on her stomach and eats dead grass. I pull some of it out of her mouth and then stop bothering. I think about how distracted I feel all of the time—how the more I work on staying still, the less successful I am. 

Years ago, a friend sent me an email about a word they thought I’d like: apricity, which means the warmth of the sun in winter. I feel it now, the sharp knife of sun cutting through winter. Cutting it in half. Sunlight glints off of the dead grass, off of the dead branches, off of my small child’s small nose. It warms the shaking part of me. It is good. 

TUESDAY

“It’s incredibly comfortable and nice when you can look at your own work and say to yourself, “I did a good job.” And then you let it go, because anything else is going to make you crazy, and anything else, you’re going to be trying to impress people who don’t even like you. That’s the truth! You have to be very careful of letting people who not only don’t know you, but don’t understand you, don’t like you… you can’t let those people determine who you are.

When I did the conversation with Jimmy, there were people standing in line for that—it was more Jimmy than me. I’m very fortunate to have a publisher; I’ve been with HarperCollins now for 40 years. I haven’t jumped around. Poets don’t make money. If you’re not looking for, “Oh, I want to write a book, and there’ll be a movie, and I’ll become rich and famous,” you’ll be happy. There can be a kind of freedom, when the reward is itself the work.”

—Nikki Giovanni in The Creative Independent

WEDNESDAY

I’m thinking about The Dumpster Fire and the Garden by Brad Montague, To Destroy is to Create by Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Breaking My Own Silence by Min Jin Lee.

THURSDAY

“Once upon a time there lived a woman who wanted to exchange her present for her daughter’s future. Little did she know that, if she did so, the two of them would merge into one ungainly creature, at once divided and reconstituted, and time would flow through both of them like water in a single stream. The child became the mother’s future, and the mother became the child’s present, taking up residence in her brain, blood, and bones. The woman vowed that she had no need for God, but her child always wondered, Was the bargain her mother had made a kind of prayer?”

—from A Mother’s Exchange For Her Daughter’s Future by Jiayang Fan 

FRIDAY

Still not believing in age I wake
to find myself older than I can understand
with most of my life in a fragment
that only I remember
some of the old colors are still there
but not the voices or what they are saying
how can it be old when it is now
with the sky taking itself for granted
there was no beginning I was there

—No Believer by W.S. Merwin

xx,

M

---

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: A simple photograph

On my desk this week: a few in-progress illustrations for my thesis project.

Hi, friends.

Thanks so much for all of the support towards my accordion book, elegy/a crow/Baand for the warm reception to the Craft series! Most of you enjoyed a look into the process behind my work, so I’ll plan on continuing that series. I’m excited to. 

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

MONDAY

This simple photograph that T took of me and N a few weeks ago, newly clad in my third-generation hand-me-down from B, and before her, J. Prior to this photograph I was living my slovenly existence in too-big sweats and T’s old tees, since nothing fits and I have no time (or desire) to shop. 

Nothing makes me feel quite as cozy or cared for as a hand-me-down. I think of all each garment has seen: the laughter and tears housed inside the body it hugged, the hands that carefully held and washed it, the wear-and-tear that adorns only the most well-loved. Like a heart, a hand-me-down shows the signs and strengths of all it’s been through—and all it’s willing to take on.

There haven’t been many photos taken of me since N was born over 2 years ago. I’m still uncertain of my own appearance, and now with baby #2, I know it’ll still be some time yet before I feel comfortable in my body again. But this photo, taken randomly by afternoon sunlight in my parents’ temporary apartment, captures much of what I’d like to remember: the walls that sheltered the people who cared for me and my family during this pregnancy, the littlest heart who is so excited to become a big sister, and the hands that insisted on capturing this moment—because he believed it was important to. 

TUESDAY

“My daughters have pulled back the curtain to see that I am the false wizard, that I can offer no promises to them other than to point out the courage and wisdom and heart they already possess. All parents face this moment at some point, but I would have hoped to wait.

My worries hover in the back of my mind, keeping me awake in the dark hours poetically called madrugada in Spanish — the time before the dawn, when the world is quiet. I try not to share those worries with my daughters. That is not the honesty they need. Instead, they bubble up when I break a glass or burn dinner or stumble in any one of a million ways; then I am the kettle screaming to be removed from the heat.”

—My Child Is in an Impossible Place, and I am There With Her by Sarah Wildman, a beautifully-written and heartbreaking read about life, impossibility, and parenting

WEDNESDAY

“If you take a moment to really look at any of the ‘State of Children’ studies, it can be overwhelming. You could easily be thrown into spirals of hopelessness or “overwhelming I’m just not-enoughness”. Heck, just look at your local school and it’s easy to feel the weight of the work there is to be done right in your own backyard.

There’s so much work to be done. There’s so many kids. There’s just one you. There’s just one me. This is a great place to start.

Our best hope forward is not in using our imaginations to escape reality, but using our imaginations to create a better reality. There’s the world that is and there’s the world that could be. There’s also a you. There’s also a me.”

—State of the Children Address from Brad Montague’s newsletter, The Enthusiast

THURSDAY

“Part of it is observing oneself more impersonally… When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, “You’re too this, or I’m too this.” That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”

—How to Be Less Harsh with Yourself (and Others) by Ram Dass, via The Marginalian

FRIDAY

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons.
The equivalent weight of how much railway
it would take to get a third of the way to the sun.
It’s the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.

—Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The National Network of Abortion Funds helps ensure the bodily autonomy and reproductive rights for all people. Please consider donating if you can.

If you'd like to support me, you can pre-order my upcoming book of illustrated essays, How it Feels to Find Yourself, for yourself, a loved one, or both! My art prints, stationery, and books are available through BuyOlympia. Limited edition prints and original paintings are available in my shop. 

xx,

M

---

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.