My son is on day five of a bad cold and we are sitting on the couch watching a nature documentary he has seen a dozen times. I am behind on so many things: I need to finish sending decision emails for submissions to the latest issue of the children’s literature magazine I operate; my massage therapy license is due for renewal in a month and I still have not taken any of the required continuing education courses; next spring’s tax season is going to be horrible because I am horrifically behind in bookkeeping for my business; I owe everyone in existence an email, or a follow-up text, or a check-in because it has been so long and I am terrible at staying connected to the people I love. Oh and also, I’ve pretty much completely stopped writing. The well is dry. I should probably get on that.
But when your sick child asks you to keep him company while he rests on the couch and watches a nature documentary, you drop what you are doing and join him, which is why I am yet again watching a pair of bald eagles fight over a scrap of carrion instead of making any headway on my ever-growing to-do list. I have not seen this particular documentary as many times as my son, but I have watched it with him often enough to know all the animals it features. There are Siberian tigers and African elephants. There’s some strange cat-like thing called a fossa that my son calls a fusser. There’s a great section with hornbills that always reminds me how much I like hornbills. They are so funky looking. It’s wonderful. There is a part of the documentary that is about forest fires, and another about how wildlife is slowly returning to Chernobyl. It really is a fascinating hour of television, especially the first time you see it before forced repeated viewings have turned its more educational elements into tedious lessons.
I can feel my son watching me watch it. “Here comes the tiger,” he says, glancing over to be sure I am paying attention. He signals when it is time for the elephants. “Remember this about the forest fire?” On and on, his eyes darting back to me throughout the show, hoping to confirm that I am not missing a single second of its many delights. It’s endearing really: no matter how young we are, we all relish sharing the things we love and desperately want other people to love them too.
I find it hard to talk to non-writers about writing because the conversation inevitably turns to whether or not I’m working on something new. If I haven’t been writing, it is hard to explain that no, I haven’t been working on anything, but I’ve been thinking a lot about things I could or should be working on. There are always ideas floating around in my mind, but they are not anything I can describe in a coherent or interesting way. They are not fully formed or cohesive enough that I could offer them up as some form of action, some evidence that though I am not actually writing, I remain writing-adjacent. If I have been writing, it isn’t any easier to describe my work-in-progress without feeling like it comes off as silly and slight, as if I have no better handle on its plot and themes than I do when trying to describe a book I read years ago and only vaguely remember. This is of course, entirely a me problem. Friends who ask me about my writing because they know that’s how I spend much of my time and they want to demonstrate an interest in my life and passions are lovely people and I appreciate them tremendously.
Perhaps surprisingly, I do not find it any easier to talk to other writers about writing. I always end up comparing myself to them in ways where I fall short. Take for instance this recent interaction with the dad of one of my son’s Kindergarten classmates when we found out we both write:
Him: What do you write?
Me: Oh, you know. Stuff hardly anybody reads and that doesn’t make any money. How about you?
Him *proceeds to tell me about the book he has coming out soon and how he needs to get working on his next proposal for his publisher.*
His publisher. Oh, right. He’s a real writer.
I know, I know. We are all real writers. But let’s be honest, some of us feel a lot more real than others.
I like to talk to my son about writing, though. He is in full-time school for the first time and though it is glorious in so many ways, it is a big adjustment for both of us. Suddenly we are not together most (if not all) of the day like we have been for the last five years. It feels odd to spend so much time outside each other’s orbits, unaware of what the other is doing all day. We’ll catch up on the time we spent apart and I’ll tell him I worked on a new story (without needing to elaborate on what exactly that means on any particular day) and he’ll say, “Cool!” with the same genuine enthusiasm he has for sharing a new fun fact he learned about caterpillars. We are both sharing a little bit about something we love and hoping the other will recognize its inherent greatness.
I am trying to find my way back to writing simply for the pleasure of it, divorced from any specific metric of success or realness. To seek publication as way of sharing what I love with others, rather than a form of validation, a reward for my efforts. That is in part why I am going to try to get back to blogging regularly—a thing I used to do simply for the enjoyment of it, back in the early days of LiveJournal and Blogger. Writing that is just about sharing ideas, memories, the thoughts kicking around in my mind.
And I’m going to try to share more of my work that I love, things I have published in the past and maybe even bits and pieces of stuff I am currently working on, or work that has been languising half-finished for months or even years. You can feel free to read it or ignore it—I won’t be sitting there watching you take it in, quietly whispering, “here comes the tiger.”
Speaking of nature documentaries, this piece, “In Spring When We Couldn’t Leave the House,” published in my chapbook Mother Nature, begins with another much-beloved nature documentary in our house, and shares some of my favorite interactions with my son from the long, tiring days at the start of the pandemic.
In Spring When We Couldn’t Leave the House
I cried in the bathroom. Sat down on the Sesame Street step stool, dropped my head onto my knees and sobbed for a full five minutes. It felt amazing. My son was watching a nature documentary at the time. The same episode he’d watched every day for two weeks, because he was in that stage where he wanted to consume everything over and over again until it imprinted on his being like a sense memory. Years from now he won’t remember anything he learned about orangutans, but perhaps he’ll feel a momentary calm whenever he sees an image of one swinging through the trees. I like thinking about that. About how this moment will fade into the past and jumble together with the rest of a life he was too young to remember. It’s a small comfort, but I accept comforts of all sizes these days.
Like these, for example:
The gummy bears my mother purchases from the mill shop at the bottom of her mountain road come in twelve different flavors. A nonsense rainbow of sugary excess. Teals, and pinks, yellows both wheat and buttery, three different shades of blue. He likes to cup his chin between his thumb and forefinger, give careful thought to his dessert time decisions. “So many good options,” he says to me. Yes, I agree. Life is full of difficult choices.
He has named his crane truck Mary. She works so hard. All day lifting brightly colored wooden blocks and beams. Mary has built three dozen cities, watched them razed to the ground, and calmly started over again. I have so much sympathy for her, constantly observing her world’s heartbreaking cycle of progress and destruction. Mid-build I tell him I’m going to make some tea. Would he like some too? “Tea sounds delicious!” he replies, and it is—his cup of warm water with a heaping spoonful of honey. We sip our tea quietly, and then I set down my mug and help Mary pick up another beam. “What are you doing?” he asks. I am helping Mary work. Is that not okay? “No,” he tells me. “The construction workers are taking a break for tea.”
“When I was a little kid,” he says, and what follows is a rundown of the aching, tender moments of his sweet, short life.
Why couldn’t I sleep when we were in Maine?
Why was I sad at Aunt Leah’s wedding?
How did I hurt myself that one time when I got that scrape?
(and the time after that, and the one after those, and so on)
Why did I yell when you told me I couldn’t have those things?
Why did you tell me I couldn’t have them?
Why was I sad when I yelled when you told me that?
Why was I nervous at school?
Why didn’t I like being in a strange place?
Why was I scared of Curious George?
Why was I scared when that fan made that zzzt zzzt zzzt noise?
Why don’t I like scary noises?
Why did I cry that time when you cried?
Because you feel sad when other people are hurting?
“Yeah, that’s why.”
We hold dance parties almost daily. He runs upstairs to put on his tutu and then tells me to play “love keeps lifting me.” We spin. A swirl of blue tulle and pink-cheeked joy. “Have you ever seen anyone dance like this?” he asks, as he twirls on one foot, throws himself to the floor and kicks both legs up behind him. I have to admit I have not. The Degas poster from my childhood bedroom hangs on his wall. I watch it as I spin in a circle, the colors blending together even more than the artist intended. Around and around, feeling higher and higher.
On a Monday he pours a bucket of water over a pile of dirt and digs half a dozen holes in the mud. What are you doing? “Burying my animals,” he says, and I decide not to read anything into it about his understanding of death. On Friday I suggest we pretend to be paleontologists. We carry a handful of paint brushes out to the dirt pit and gently free the animals from the earth. I find a gorilla. He finds a rhinoceros. Halfway through uncovering an elephant he pauses and laughs. What’s so funny?
“I almost forgot to remember all the things I’ve been hiding.”
The walls are covered with drawings of cars and trucks. An ATV with purple and green tires, a blue stripe, and a bunch of red lines that are meant to be flames. There’s a truck with fourteen wheels. I heard him counting them out. He says thirteen in a way that sounds like fourteen. Ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen, fourteen. He is learning to write his name. The B, two circles stacked one on top of the other. He creates a mixed media piece of a building on fire. Stamped fire engines and emergency vehicles. Thick lines of black crayon for the fire ladder. Wild strokes of orange marker for the flames. “Here is the smoke,” he says, furiously scribbling a gray colored pencil across the top of the page. It looks just like a fire, wild and chaotic, background images slowly emerging through the blaze. He is learning so much, I tell him. “I wake up every day and I learn something new,” he says. “I can hardly believe it.” I know. It’s amazing.