Happy New Year

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

We started this brave new year in Oscar's first visit to New Zealand, exactly ten years after our first visit on a belated honeymoon after a surprise marriage and difficult first year overseas. On that quiet road trip around the South Island, we walked windy hillsides and sat on rocky beaches and paddled blue waters and slowly talked about the lives ahead: Where we'd move, what we'd do, how we'd never have kids. We had a lot of being time. Just us time. Silent time to ponder what would be our normal. And then ten years later we had a trip of contrasts with a rowdy five year old sidekick we couldn't imagine living without helping guide us around the North Island visiting housefuls friends we'd made on three different continents in the last strange decade. Loud children bounced on trampolines and ran down trails and filled tables at dinnertime. Ice cream was eaten by the bucketful. It felt good. It felt normal. 

Our normal has been the subject of great discussion at home lately. Our dear son doesn't want to ride a bike or wear shoes, but he does want to learn to surf and rock climb and build a fortress in Minecraft. Is this okay? Our retirement system is not a solid 401K but is a hodgepodge of plans and savings and unorthodox choices. Is this okay? As we both face 40 in the coming months we are finding our social lives whittled to a handful of lifers that we feel just as close to whether they live on our street or 10,000 miles away. Is this okay? 

"God with one to another, we ask that you interrupt our isolation." Nadia Bolz Weber prayed this in one of her sermons recently, and it struck me. My isolation was interrupted loudly by a surprise move to Asia 11 and a half years ago. And then a year later, a surprise marriage. And then five years later a surprise boy-child. And now, my isolation is filled with a tentative business and friends I didn't know I'd make and jobs I didn't think I'd have and a looming but also wonder-filling unknown of what comes next. Normal has never been what I thought it would be, and it has turned out okay. It has been ridiculously challenging at times, and I have been unfairly unkind to it, but it has been okay.

So new year, we sit in our questions and our community and we marvel. We marvel at what is to come and what answers we will live---even if we don't know that's what is unfolding and even if we fight against it (rather angrily) sometimes. Here's to good art, and good writing, and good travels, and good company, and good intentions. And to letting our isolation be interrupted and our normal be okay.

And I'll interrupt this a-bit-too-dreamy-self-centered-sort-of-like-some-of-the-follow-your-bliss-blogs-I-make-fun-of-blog post to mention the lack of art I did in the last two weeks but the art I deeply admired. On our New Zealand travels I fell in love with Jane Galloway:

And all the interpretations of the pohutukawa tree:

(loved Tofu Tree's art)

(and Daniella Hulme)

Now it's time to return to one's grounded senses and do something really normal like wash some dishes and then step on a Lego. It's all part of the journey to what comes next. Which will probably be a cup of tea and a flippant podcast and worrying over whether or not the loud five-year-old ate his school lunch. Happy New Year.

Gratitude Season

Oh, how I love seasons (exception being the recent haze apocalypse). I'm being redundant, but I am someone that needs change and rhythms to find her center. And right now, on the edge of the monsoons, I'm feeling that tiny turning of weather with enormous delight.

Knowing that a big rain might carry my afternoon away, I'm running again in the morning. Longer runs. Some of them have taken me back to parts of Singapore that I haven't visited for years, and a recent one took me past a mighty Kapok Tree.

As my new venture suggests, I love these dinosaurs---long brontosaurus limbs stretching their way through jungles and up into wide skies.

They represent the stretching is happening all over the place. Today, brave Kaye took me to the shop that is now carrying our products. I feel like I'm in Form School, learning to say good afternoon and smile politely at kind strangers and not reveal embarrassing details or hide behind a book or pretend I have to go to the bathroom to escape actual human contact. Kaye is long ago a graduate of all-things-socially-acceptable, and her delightful conversations are leading to such good things:

If only I'd had a PR partner my whole life.

With Thanksgiving on the horizon, t's a good season to be grateful for Kaye's ability to interact with humans, dark clouds slowing down our day, and trees growing. 

Every day

We haven't seen the sun around here for a long time. And it's not because of the monsoon. So this weekend when the haze lifted and blue skies beamed, it was riotous springtime. We lived on the patio and by the pool. Neighbors hosted impromptu happy hours and Oscar Gus ran shirtless with Minecraft sword in hand between our house, the park, the patch of grass behind our flat, and anywhere else he could get a sunny ray on his back. Good times.

Later, Oscar asked (as he daily does) when his birthday was, and I broke the (daily) news that it was still five months away. He sad-faced and wistfully dreamed out loud "what if every day could be my birthday?" I referred to the thick haze we've all been choking in and how special these last days of sunshine have felt. Things that come only once in awhile make even the most ordinary events like dinner outside and evening games of tag feel like a party. He stared at me, as he does, and he said what needed to be said. "That's ridiculous. Are you really saying clean air is like a birthday?"

Oops. Bad analogy, mom.  This pollution is not a birthday indeed, and it's made us all so stir crazy that I've apparently lost my sense of normal. So, today, to hold onto the hope of breathing deep on my morning walks, I doodled sunny circles. It's November and time for pumpkins and winter coats in many parts of the world, but here, one degree north of the Equator, we are hoping for the haze "season" to lift and the endless tropical normal of 30C sun and rain and sun and rain to return. Just as Oscar Gus wills a daily birthday.

Books

There are good books in this house.

Coloring books from Praha:

New-to-me children's books:

And lest you worry about my IQ (some books that actually have words in them):

It's all inspiration and fodder for The Kapok Tree that's growing. There were stacks of our alphabet book delivered this week:

And coloring cards:

Hm. So maybe we should worry about IQ. 

Teamwork

Oh good golly.
We've been up to this:

And this:

And that is why I need community. On my own, I'm a lady at a messy desk eating pretzels and googling whether or not penguins' feet freeze. With the luminous Kaye Bach by my side, I'm getting my first ISBN on the back of an illustrated book, meeting with printers and publishers and working into the wee hours of night on beyond-my-fathoming illustration projects. The boys are patient as I mutter only half sentences of reply while they shout about the wonders of Minecraft in my ear. They seem to understand the temporary neglect that reaches far beyond this blog. But stay tuned---The Kapok Tree launches the first week of November. Thanks only--and with all my heart--to my patient tribe and to the ridiculously awesome team that is the brains behind this operation. You're a dream, Kaye!

Back in the Chair

I have a quote on my desk by Junot Diaz that reminds me to keep good habits: "In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."  William Stafford would write in the wee hours of every morning. Chuck Close said "Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work." Stephen King has said something similar. The practice of just getting one's bum in the chair on a daily basis is what usually leads to the good stuff.

Well, my bum has been out of the chair.

And I'm not one to argue with the likes of Diaz or Close or Stafford, but I am one to enjoy a very good and very long and very delightful break. And break we did. The whole family took two delicious months and, well, stayed out of chairs.

But I'm back. Daily. And I've got an addendum to those artistic greats' wisdom. Yes, do what you do every day. Every day. But don't underestimate the sabbatical. Sometimes a planned absence can do a creative process good. In my case, it grew a tree.

I came back to a Singapore that is now the home of a dear friend, and she is savvy enough to map out the way to a business venture, and I am clueless enough to go along with it. So, she does the heavy lifting meeting with printers and potters and fabric makers, and I get to sit right here and enjoy this chair.

Making space

This morning's walk was bright with the scent of mango season and plumeria blossoms, but I'm making space in my heart for sagebrush and fresh cut grass. We're heading stateside. Watch Instagram for image updates, and in August I'll return to both Singapore and blogging with a fresh supply of good coffee beans, flip flops, and Micron pens. Happy summer from One Green Bee!