In the past year or so, as I have struggled to find the time to draw these comics, let alone write this newsletter, I often find myself full to the brim with confidences I want to share. I’ve never been a particularly diaristic person, so I rarely write them down: when I try, they seem to flee beneath my fingers. That’s just not my writerly mode. But it has made me try harder to use the free time I have to get here, to this space, where I can say something.

But of course the conundrum is, not having recorded the confidences, they flee anyway. So when I get here, what do I have? The memory of emotions, ideas, with just a bit of residue, clinging to my fingers like grains of colored sand.

I’ve always kept secrets from this newsletter. When I was pregnant, I described honestly the way I was feeling, but not the big reason why. When I’m writing, I don’t talk about it, because to divulge the content of a book while trying to talk directly to that book—to bring it into being—feels like a betrayal. (To clarify: I do of course share my work in progress with trusted readers, with whom I discuss my goals and ideas, but even that happens later in the progress, a draft or two or three in.) Some people seem very comfortable talking about their work publicly, but I don’t even like to offer a plot point. I wonder if this is a factor of success: if you’re a best-selling author, you have a certain expectation that people will treat your ideas with care. If you’re not, you want to protect them more. Not against people misunderstanding, but from people not caring. You need to insulate this reality you’re holding in your hands against the possibility of disinterest. When you grow plants from seeds, they need sun. Children need love. Ideas need the fire of interest. As an artist with an idea, you’re the one best positioned to offer that interest. The full heat of your mind, your heart, tilted towards this vulnerable thing.

Spring weather: warm sun, warm rain, a bit of wind to stiffen the spine. That’s where we are.

Lately I’ve been trying to bring my son to the playground where his school friends go at five p.m.: most (all?) of them stay all day, so they go to this playground right after pickup, essentially continuing their day with no interruption. I’ve always found it difficult to get there, not because it’s especially far away, but because it’s at a time when I’d rather be getting home so we can all be together when Dave gets off work, and maybe I can take an hour to cook dinner and stare out the window, and think whatever the thoughts are that come into my head while I slice a carrot down the middle, then cut the half-moons off, off, off.

But he really enjoys playing with those kids! And lately, five to six p.m. intersects pretty neatly with golden hour, and there are worse things than watching small children sprint through the grass in perfect light. Everything is a balance, and I guess we were going to eat mac & cheese for dinner half the time anyway.

Time has been funny, as we ease out of toddlerhood and towards childhood. Things take longer, but sometimes that’s glorious. We drive to a beach and sit there all afternoon on a blanket, burying tiny legs in the sand and running at the tideline. We trade off the keenness of our attention so that one of us is holding small fingers and the other gets a few moments to bask and read and eat an orange. Many of my friends with small children have expressed loneliness and isolation and hardship, which I also sometimes feel, and then there are days when all of us burst through the eggshell and tell each other, actually, life is for living! Actually, I am waiting for nothing! The peanut butter sandwich I ate while watching the waves was the finest food I’ve ever eaten! And then my son sits down on my lap and says, I like snuggling with you, will you ever go away and forget me? And I am able to very honestly say No.

What was my point? I feel like I started this with a point, about the way that withholding and sharing can be two sides of the same coin. The world does it to me, I do it to you, you do it to yourself. We hold things back, so we can give something more important. We do not leave our children, but someday they will leave us, and we will be here, still, remembering. If some of my own thoughts are cheap and slip away, my thoughts of him will cling to me when I am no longer myself, when my consciousness dissolves back into the universe and becomes the seed of a star. Giving light, taking light, remembering the way the light touched his face as he ran across the lawn.