This has been a hell of a year so far. Not always in a bad way? But definitely in a rough way for illness in my particular family. We missed our trip home at Christmas due to a cascading series of colds/pukes/ear infections, and now, when we’re due to go on a make-up trip this Friday, the baby has ear infections in both ears. (This should be fine because we got medicine, but it is a hauntingly exact replica of the beginning of our last doomed adventure.)
I haven’t even been able to talk about this upcoming trip without saying: “If God wills it,” because it has never been clearer to me how little fate is in my hands. There are things we can all do! And we do them. But there are also times and places best suited to throwing one’s hands in the air and saying I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING NEXT. And this is totally, massively, one of those times.
On many levels, right?
My garden has been a bit of a sad metaphor for me as well this winter. Usually I plant in the fall and things begin to sprout hopefully in the early winter and some things come and some things go with the rain and the frost and the sun and what have you. But this year, we had less than an inch of rain from November till March (the last time we had nearly as little rain was something like 1979, and even then, there was an additional inch) and things just…haven’t grown the way they usually do. Even the weeds, which is a bit horrifying, if instructive.
But what will happen to the garden ultimately? I DON’T KNOW. Some ranunculuses with orange petals and charming green centers are starting to bloom, and there are peas and chard, even if neither is as abundant as before. Why does everything feel linked together in a network of effort expended and effort undermined and effort unexpectedly rewarded? I DON’T KNOW. You are asking a woman who read hundreds of pages of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, set in a mountaintop tuberculosis sanatorium, while I was being flattened by 3 weeks of coughing. If I can do one thing lately, it’s read too much into stuff.
Nice things this year so far: Harvey continues to grow and thrive and be a general peach and a genius, utterly verbal, totally beguiling, lots of fun. Sleeps occasionally. I went with my agent Emma Patterson to the University of Cincinnati, where I read from End of the World House and we did a panel about the author/agent relationship and I got to talk to some great people and also eat Skyline Chili the way it was meant to be eaten.
The ebook version of End of the World House is, incidentally, on sale right now at all ebook retailers (you know what I mean) including Bookshop.org’s new ebook platform. Only $1.99! Considering how long it takes to write a book that’s totally demeaning, but I also think you should get it if you want to, because the economics of publishing are not a reader’s problem! Any reader who takes the time to read my books is a reader I adore.
Anyway it feels nice to be back here. Hopefully I will get it together to draw comics a bit more regularly soon. Balance is hard with a child in the picture: I can certainly strong-arm time into giving me certain concessions, but only so many. A lot has to give. Not forever, I don’t think, but right now he is small enough to curl up on my lap and read books with me—books which he is already starting to memorize and read along with me, which I remember doing as a little kid too—and kiss my face and sing goofy songs with me and be entertained by my rhymes and the simple magic of my attention, and who am I not to give it to him, in whatever portion? I am happy to do it. Balance is hard but I’m working on it and I feel good about where we’re at.
Hope it’s getting warm or staying cool for you, as befits your preferences. Hope I get to see some cherry blossoms in Seattle next week, if God wills it.