A tiny glimpse of my current project.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
The clouds are in fine form today, puffs of thick white acrylic smears. Occasionally, the sun pierces through. I don’t see the birds as I shuffle along with my head down, but I listen to their music. Morning walks are like this: the sky bobbing over me while I retreat further into myself. We moved to St. Louis in June. It’s October now and I haven’t made a single friend.
I turn the stroller onto Des Peres and navigate the cracked sidewalk towards the playground. Up ahead is a young woman with her baby. I slow down, hoping she’ll leave before I get closer. No such luck.
Hello! Do you live nearby? She asks me. My heart turns clockwise, tightening.
Yes, I say politely, just down the street. I unstrap N and watch her toddle over to the slide. I feel resistant. I’ve met many people in this city, but none that I connected with. I’m tired of trying.
My heart spins, quietly reminding me that it is there. There are many people to love, it says, but you have stopped looking for them.
The children play together. I ask the woman questions and listen intently to her voice. I engage my curiosity, studying her face: her long eyelashes and curly hair, the way her eyes crinkle when she smiles, her soft laugh. She looks at N with the love only a mother can feel for a stranger’s child. Opening your heart is like learning a foreign language—it feels self-conscious and clumsy until it doesn’t.
Stepping outside of yourself, that’s what an open heart is. A story that invites you to first look and then listen. A morning at the playground, an unexpected conversation, smears of cloud, a tiny hand in mine.
—from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my book of illustrated essays
TUESDAY
I love it when it’s just you and me, mom, N says once, and then again. She doesn’t smile, just looks at me with her serious, thoughtful face, and I know she means it.
We’re having a picnic at the little playground near our home. She eats a peanut butter and honey sandwich, I have peanut butter and jelly. It’s the perfect weather—not a lick above 74 degrees, breezy, our picnic blanket dappled with sunlight under an old playground tree.
A few days later, she’s reading with T in her room before bed. Dad, I love it when it’s just you and me, she says and though I can’t see her thoughtful face, I know she means it.
WEDNESDAY
Several weeks ago, T and I celebrated our 5-year anniversary at Bulrush, a truly incredible reparative restaurant that explores Ozark cuisine through the values and vision of Chef Rob Connoley. With their menu, 80% of which is radically foraged locally, Chef Connoley explores the late 18th and early 19th century—”the moment in time when the indigenous people first encountered the settlers, who often brought enslaved individuals. These three cultures came together at one particular time to create what has evolved into the food that we eat today.”
I find myself still thinking about this night. It encourages me to see a person with strong core values actively living in accordance with them—and building his business and community deeply around them. In a world where fitting in and being well-liked is valued more than critical thought, it’s comforting to see someone deliberately go their own way.
THURSDAY
I am: discovering free zines for a free Palestine, donating to the perinatal project, learning more about Rod Serling, wondering if I have enough self-compassion?, and listening to poems as teachers.
FRIDAY
In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I
—from In Those Years by Adrienne Rich
xx,
M
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