Monday, June 24
9:08 a.m.
I’m at the beach with my book. Most mornings when the family departs from the home, I come here to regroup. The waking at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m., day after day after day—to make their little bowls of cereal, their yogurt, cut their fruit—is a motion that can feel impossibly relentless. But the older one still looks up at me without thinking and says “I love you” or “you’re my best friend” and the pain of being ripped from my bed is gone.
“I’m learning to tend to when I think I will be most vulnerable,” I told someone last week. So, while I want to call my parents as I drive to the lake, to ignore the feeling of being immediately and completely alone, I know better than to allow other people into a time when I need to feel peace.
I sit at the beach in the summer feeling (soft wind through trees swelling with leaves; hot squares of sun; soundless, present air) and think, very deliberately, it’s summer now, and I try to remember which flowers I will see over the course of the next few months and wonder What in nature can survive this heat? What does such a thing look like?
I also think of a quote I heard recently: “Nothing in nature lives for itself.” This settles my worry. Nature looks after the needs of its own.
12:13 p.m.
I have just successfully darted between several tasks, feeling halfway through everything that must get done today. I sometimes let myself think that halfway is enough but *there is still a full list for tomorrow.* I wonder if my halfway is passable and if I can throw in the towel for the day. I also wonder if my full-way is even good enough, so I decide to keep working, just in case it is not.
Things I got done this morning:
Washed my floors and cushions
Submitted two short stories to two of my Big Five Literary Journals In Which I Would Like to Be Published (working title)
Edited one of those stories from 4,200 words to 3,500 words because of rules
Wrote my to-do list (counts)
Ate breakfast (also counts)
2:46 p.m.
It’s post-lunch break and I have stuck to my to-do list, the rest of which included continuing a short story I started in my notes app last week. I get 1000ish words down and it looks like things will be done full-way today.
Lately I’m not sure how descriptive I need to be about what exactly I’m writing (all this sharing of “I’m working on a story today” feels flat). This one is about a mysterious online woman, and I wish I could say more, but where I’m at right now as a person is to be protective of my ideas because I might feel too vulnerable later if I give away any meaningful details.
I read what I’ve written out loud and it feels right. It feels true.
4:56 p.m.
I should be leaving to pick up the baby but I’m still on my laptop, writing this, because isn’t it funny that I would detail my day as a writer without mentioning one of the things I am actively, presently writing? The composition of this newsletter comes in spurts, like everything I do—by design or by the force of my life’s nature.
8:26 p.m.
Someone I’ve admired for years has followed me back on Instagram. I add this to my pile of small, incremental wins.
The hockey game is on but I go outside to read in my pyjamas. I need silence. I can’t help but feel followed by this quiet irritation, like I can only stand so much disruption in my life. Is this ageing, or am I just more willing to give voice to my needs?
These days I feel as if I’m in a perpetual state of transformation, like it’s taking years to grow into who I am becoming. Sometimes I attribute this to parenthood—like, of course it’s taking time to evolve to carry this load. Other times, I just don’t know. I know I am firm in my resolve for change. That I need to be seen, heard, and respected. But I am so tender. This evolution has made me so tender.
10:46 p.m.
The older one has just interrupted my frenzied evening typing with cries from her bedroom. “I’m scared, Mommy, it’s scary.” I put my laptop away and let her into bed with me. It’s comforting, too, because the game is still on and I don’t realize I would like the company until she is lying next to me.
I saw a video online the other day of a child explaining the deep connection she felt with her mother. When I heard that quote about nature, how fluidly it is bound, the person who said it also spoke of how humans are the only ones on earth with the ability to live for themselves. But then, it’s silly to think we can be so independent of one another.
Yes—I change and transform and I do this in myself, for myself. But I also do it for them. Tenderly, for them, and because of them, I am tender.
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