Hello, again

I went dormant. With the most earnest of intentions and fervor to write, I began this blog as I was beginning grad school, where I intended to use my talents in writing and photography to carve out a little niche for myself among the naturalist-minded artists of the world. I felt a responsibility to understand the mechanisms of environmental degradation so that I could effectively translate it, so that those translations would create a stir in somebody else’s heart. I am still compelled to this because it’s something I can offer, but the enthusiasm for creation retreated inward when the pandemic hit. Priorities shifted. We were living in Crown Heights where the orthodox community flouted safety guidelines. I was panicking daily at the idea of Danny’s asthmatic lungs succumbing to the mysterious deadly virus and Trump was threatening to red zone New York, so we left. Moving to Danny’s hometown in Maryland was never the plan, but weeks in an airbnb became “why don’t we see what’s for rent here?” and well, we just stayed. I graduated over zoom. We started trying to get pregnant. Art took a backseat.

Fast forward 3 years. I’m writing this from the garden sanctuary I built in the backyard of a townhouse in a big but small enough town. We rented this house because I was led here by a rabbit. No lie. I was out jogging one day and stopped in front of a house that had a For Rent sign. Suddenly, a rabbit appeared. It hopped over to my shoe, sniffed it, and kept hopping down the sidewalk before it cut into a yard. I followed it and the house it turned at also had a For Rent sign. That’s the house we live in.

We bought an old fishing cabin with a one-acre pond in the Catskills in 2021. Turns out, mortgage rates were at an all-time low, which is feeling pretty good from my seat here in 2023. The property is a stunning place with tall white pines reflected on the glassy surface of the pond like a painting. We’re building a home there, but it’s not ready to move into yet.

The biggest, wildest, most beautiful thing that’s happened was that we had a child. His name is Felix. His name means lucky, which suits him, and not just because he was born on the thirteenth minute of St. Patrick’s Day. He is big-eyed with a broad smile and a sweetness that would tank the most cynical of hearts. He’s approaching 18 months old and it is only now that I feel like I can sit and write about the complex miracle of motherhood. It has walloped me. It’s an ever-changing bigness that has shifted my identity in that I am either fully consumed and comfortable as mother and/or finding other parts of me brushing up against mother that the delineations between Hope and mother are so blurry that even the Hope that is separate from Felix is just that - Hope separate from child, not just Hope. That probably makes no sense. It’s just that the lines are not clear and there is no such thing as compartmentalizing “runner” “gardener” “friend” anymore because now I am a gardener who is a mother, a friend who is a mother, etc. Anyway, he is wonderful. He is everything I hoped for and I really hoped for this child. We conceived him via IVF, which was a fog of stress and emotion that took a long time but now looking back feels like a blip compared to the onslaught of vigilance, patience, resolve and exhaustion it requires to raise a baby. I am his primary caregiver and fell quickly into an attachment style of parenting. For the first year of his life I barely left his side. Breastfeeding is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done but was so richly rewarding, also. Now that he’s weaned and walks and has opinions I am feeling my love for him exploding through the seams of my heart. There is a difference between a reliant, immobile baby (as delicious as that is) and a toddler who chooses you, a small boy who runs to hug your legs while screaming “Mama!”, who asks you to pick him up so that he can burrow into your arms, who volunteers kisses with his rich, sweet umami breath simply because he loves you. It is heaven to me, being his mom.

So that’s life in the smallest of nutshells. This is me trying to return to writing. A blog post a week. I can do this, right?

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