MamaStories

Driftwood

Every year, once a year, I need to return to that long poem by Mary Oliver, The Leaf and the Cloud (published in 2000). It is a poem like life, with everything in it, only magnified and condensed. I can’t say much about it, only that it reverberates deeply with me, and comforts me, and puts me in touch with myself, makes me more honest. And then it also creates that distance, the kind of poetic distance that allows me to take a good look, at everything. It’s a good poem that way. An excerpt:

Flare

12.

Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance .

In the glare of your mind, be modest.

And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.

This is the dark bread of the poem.

This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem.

Look! This is how it starts:

Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

An idea is brewing, for a new novel. I’ve sent my first thirteen chapters off to ten readers, and though I still need to write down the last chapter - yes, I deprived them of the ending! - and then edit, and sell it to an agent and a publisher, and all that… I feel I have let it go. And now it’s time for a new story.

Some more pages from my 2004 zine The Puffin!

Pages 9 and 10 make me laugh. I like the second last drawing (page 11) best of all. I still remember that meal in detail: how the food tasted, what we talked about, the atmosphere in the kitchen, even at the end of what kind of day it came. I’m sure that if I hadn’t drawn that scene on the spot, that whole event would have been lost to my memory.

Years ago, in 2004, I put together a (literally) small “zine” called The Puffin.

It was a zine for family and friends, inspired by Dan Price’s awesome Moonlight Chronicles and Danny Gregory’s Everyday Matters blog (before he became so insanely popular).

I just happened upon the original .jpg version of The Puffin - I no longer have a complete copy for myself, all 50 went out the door - and laughed myself silly!

As a way of illustrating what my life was like before I became a mom (very academic - okay: nerdy!), I thought I might share some of the pages with you.

Here are the first couple of pages that make the draw-for-your-life pitch and the first page of the rest of the journal, which puts the drawing philosophy in practice. Enjoy (click on thumbnails to see original size)!

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

More will follow.

Ah, no… I don’t draw in my journal anymore. I still do draw, in Amie’s Map Book, our communal Drawing Book and on the occasion of all our crafting, of course. But no longer in my own journal. Why? Sigh. I can only speculate. The best excuse I’ve come up with is that, once drawing “vivified” (jump-started) my journal again, I quickly fell back into my old journaling habits, which are back to being prolific and energetic, but drawing-less. I do miss it though, not so much when I’m writing, but when I’m rereading my journals.

The second project I started right after Amie was born fared better than her now defunct Baby Journal, in that it is still up and running. It is a Map Book, or Place Book.

I love maps: topographical ones, city, architectural, personal, subjective, objective, three-dimensional, temporal… you name it.

From the beginning of Amie’s life I collected and drew maps of where we live and where ever we travelled. Depending on how busy I was, I would simply paste in a tourist map I had picked up, draw one myself, and/or add commentary. There are also spreads about the wildlife and the people, and anecdotes about how she reacted to the place.

This is the page about our visit to Billings Farm in Woodstock, Vermont, over a year ago:

This page chronicles our trip to Europe (Belgium and Italy) in June of last year, and locates everyone in our families on the globe:

Here’s the spread about a magical visit to the Hall’s Pond Sanctuary in Brookline:

It’s not as much work as the Journal: I put in as much time as I want or can afford. I skip visits that we make regularly, like to the Pond or the Farm, except when something special happened that needs visual representation in the form of a map.

One day soon Amie will understand the concept of a map, and she’ll make her own maps. It’s one of those many moments that I look forward to.

From the moment Amie was born, I started a daily baby journal. I have been keeping a journal since I was 14: sometimes it’s a habit, sometimes a refuge. So it made sense that I would make a separate journal for my daughter, addressed to her and relating the events of her young life before she could pen them (or even understand them) herself.

It soon proved impractical, though.

For one, I had to write it out slooooowly so that Amie would later have some chance of deciphering my handwriting - I usually write FAST and in a kind of shorthand of my own making. Then there was the lack of time - oh time where didst thou goest?

But the biggest problem was the separation of Amie’s story from my own - her journal from my own. It was impossible. I tried writing down everything in my journal, warts and bad spelling and scribbling and all, then sifting out a cute story for her, which I penned out (semi-) legibly (judge for yourself), with a little picture of the day and even some illustrations of important objects in her life.

Here are some examples (click on thumbnails for larger view):

Well, who has time for that once the baby starts rolling over and getting into all kinds of mischief? Not me. I abandoned Amie’s Journal soon after her nine-month birthday. It looks extra bad because I was only 100 or so pages into a new moleskine!

I took up another project, however, when Amie was born, one that is still on-going. But about that, some other time…