It shows up

I've been back at writing regularly post-baby for a few weeks and feeling frustrated that it's taking so long to get in the flow. I feel like I've been writing and writing, but not getting anything done. Now this is not the first work I've done since I had Tilly a little over a year ago, but it's the first time we've had a babysitter. So I've had concentrated amounts of time to focus, which is totally different. I've been so anxious to get to this point, it feels like there is a big bubbling pot of ideas that will explode if I don't give it a way out.

But then there is the terror of that big blank screen. And as I said above, miles and miles of writing that seem to go nowhere. So I was chatting with Libby and she said, "don't worry, if you keep showing up, the work will show up." I've repeated that to myself several times in the past week and decided to just show up. It's all I can do to get back on track and it's what I have to do. So I have. And then, last Thursday, it showed up. I got so lost in writing that I barely noticed the baby coos and shrieks of excitement coming from downstairs. The hours flew by. And now I remember how it feels, and why I needed to get back here.

Even if my career goes in a very different direction now that I'm a mom, I'm committed to showing up and seeing what happens.

(Graphic from Ben Silbermann, the founder of Pinterest, photo by A Practical Wedding)

A birthday

Clearly we've all got a lot going ton right now, as is evident by the lack of posting, it's such a busy time of year with the holidays looming and lots to wrap up by the end of the year. Today, at my house, we take a step back to do some celebrating; it is little Tilda's first birthday! Over the weekend we had a few friends over for cake and singing. Today we'll go to lunch and open presents. What a wonderful year it's been.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

A house in the woods

It's been a busy month with sadly not much writing or drawing going on. We are packing up for a move once again, this time to a little house in the country:

It's been a long time since I've lived in the woods, twenty years I guess? Since leaving home as a teenager I've lived in Richmond, Virginia, Providence, Boston, San Francisco, and most recently Northampton, Massachusetts. Lately though I've been feeling the strong urge to live in a remote, beautiful, quiet place. Maybe the work of taking care of a baby has become enough stimulation and I need more of a calm, relaxing environment. Or maybe I've just come full circle and want to raise Tilda in a place similar to where I grew up. Either way, I'm excited to see where the change of environment takes me personally and creatively.

More soon once we settle in!

Operating Instructions

For the past couple months when I have a few minutes I've been reading Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott. The book is a journal of her first year with her son, Sam, and how it changed her life. It is dark and funny and brutally honest. When I've had two hours sleep and am covered in spit-up and pacing the apartment trying to get baby to sleep its helps to hear about motherhood from a writer's perspective- she spares no detail good or bad. This is part of an entry when her son was 7 months old:

"I wish I felt more like writing. I don't particularly feel like I have anything to say these days. I feel like the propulsion is missing. All that emptiness and desire and craving and feeling and need to achieve used to keep me at the typewriter. Now there's me and Sam, and it feels like there's not any steam in my pressure cooker. Whenever I teach, I tell my students about that line of Doctorow's, that when you're writing a novel, its like driving in a tulle fog: you can only see about as far as the headlights, but that's enough; it's as far as you have to see. And I tell them that this probably applies to real life, too. But right now I feel like I'm just sitting in the car with Sam, not really going anywhere, just getting to know each other, both of us looking out through the window at what passes by, and then at each other again."

This is how I feel today. Writing and painting feel very far away.

Sweet things

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day yesterday! We made a visit, at last, to the incredible Tartine Bakery down the street from where we're staying in San Francisco. I've been hearing about this place for some time, but every time we've tried to go there was a line down the block to get in. So yesterday we headed out early and thankfully made it through the door. It every bit deserves its reputation for having the best sweets in the city. We had chocolate croissants still warm from the oven, apple brioche bread pudding, and these delicious chocolate hazelnut tarts.

After arriving home I got some sweet news. Disappearing Desmond has been included in the Cooperative Children's Book Center's best-of-the-year list. Hurray! I am truly honored to have Desmond on the list. Grace is on there too with Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

The complete list will be here on March 5th. Congrats to everyone!













Lastly baby made some sweet progress this weekend. For the very first time she lifted her head up during "tummy time"! These days you have to give babies time on their belly, since its not considered safe to let them sleep that way, so they can learn to lift their head to prepare for crawling. Normally Wren cries the whole time, but this weekend she not only smiled through it but got some lift! I am a very proud mama.

Ten weeks

A big thank you to Rebecca for blogging in my absence over the past couple months!

Its been ten weeks since I had a baby and I think its fair to say life as I knew it has been turned on its head. There are of course the obvious changes: the day is now structured around the needs of a tiny, hungry, brand new person who doesn't care much for my to do list. I'm lucky if I can get one errand done in a day.

Time has slowed to a snail's pace when it comes to cooking and laundry, but its also flying by. Baby grows and changes at light speed. She's gone from 6 pounds 11 oz to almost 13 pounds in her short life, from seeing only a foot in front of her to being able to track me from across the room, and most remarkably gone from a distant, sleepy gaze to broad faced grins like these:

The grins are the best. They make my heart explode with happiness. I would do anything for them.

But the biggest change that first hit like a mac truck and has since been winding its way through my thoughts has to do with the way I think of myself. Like most artists and writers, I've always leaned pretty heavily on my work to define who I am. Its what makes me feel different and special and unique, the thing that I have to offer the world. Strangely that is shifting. Having a kid is perhaps the most commonplace thing a person can do. It doesn't make me different at all, if anything it makes me more like everyone else. But it feels so profoundly beautiful in all its commonness.

There is a quote from one of my new mom books that I love:

"A few weeks ago, my baby gave me a flower. Never mind that ... it was missing a few petals, or that he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to let it go. It was-and is-the most gorgeous flower ever given or received. Silver and gold wouldn't buy it from me ... These aren't just my hands anymore; they belong to a lineage of mothers a planet wide and millenia old. I was a woman on an April evening in a kitchen in my corner of the world, catching time between the pages of a baby book, and at the same time, I was my mother, her mother, a mother somewhere on another continent carefully tucking a flower into the pocket of her shirt, a flower you couldn't buy from her with silver or gold. We don't know each other, but all over the world and all through time, we're gathering up wilted flowers and misspelled love notes, and every single one of us knows the singular ache that's love and pride and sadness all mixed into one."

-The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding

Part of me feels sad that the life I had is gone- no more staying up all night to finish a painting or feverishly devoting every waking thought to a story idea. Now my time is scheduled and my job is to make the most of the time I have in front of the computer, when I have it. But I also feel deeply excited about this new life. Mother love is fierce and unending. As I find my way back into making books I do so with a wilted flower in my pocket.