Check in, check out, check up

It’s been a year since I’ve written in this space. I had good intentions (like we all do) of writing more often, of making something out of The Waterfall Project. I had one more post to go last year, one more adventure to write about.

But I didn’t write it.

I wanted to talk about water and baptism and Julia Kristeva’s essay “Stabat Mater.” I have notes. I have drafts. It didn’t go anywhere.

But it is still scratching at me. Ideas about giving birth, abandoning my Catholic upbringing, feminism, and the way art and nature and motherhood connect and disconnect. I want to explore the connections between art and the eternal, the similarities in creating art and creating humans. I want to unpack the lyricism of Kristeva’s essay- why it made me cry, makes me cry. And how much the physical space between her analysis of the Cult of the Virgin Mary and her own experiences of birth and motherhood feel like a cavern and also like a comfort. A visual break of the two halves of a mother/artist.

What is it about the water that makes me want to write about birth? What is it about seeking these waterfalls that makes me think about language?

Why does this epistolary project pull at me so strongly?

I am putting words back in this space for the same reasons I started. For motivation. For archive. For exploration. I hope these posts, the ones that get finished, will someday be a place for S to understand…what? Love.

*****

Dear S,

Today you started fifth grade and so yesterday we said goodbye to summer by doing all of our favorite summer things in a row. A hike with the dog, a swim in the pool, a sunset stroll on the beach. (There it is again. Water.)

It was lovely. A perfect day of us.

And then I broke. You didn’t see it, I don’t think. But my ribcage cracked wide open on a sandbar in the middle of Long Island Sound.

We walked far out together, you chatting about Warrior Cats and me listening. You carried the water bottle and your flip flops. I held the towel, my keys, my phone. And then you dropped what was in your hands and stopped talking about the books and asked me if I would watch your stuff because you wanted “to venture out to that other island” by yourself.

Fifth grade marks the end of elementary school. You used the word “venture.” The sunset poked through the thick clouds in a way that made part of the sand look pink, even though most of the sky was grey. You are growing up and sometimes the world is beautiful and it is all too much.

Water. Birth. Change.

The Waterfall Project

The idea to write about these adventures was probably rolling around in my head when I first mentioned the idea of hiking waterfall trails to S earlier this spring. However, writing about our adventures in this space didn’t occur to me until last week, after we picked up his first set of photographs from the camera shop down the street.

S and I are on a mission to find and hike as many waterfall trails as we can this summer. He is nine. Nine, I am learning, is magical. Last weekend we talked about books for an hour while he got ready for bed. He tells us jokes that are for-real funny. He has grown wonderfully independent. And yet, he still grabs my hand instinctively when we cross the street, and he still looks to me when he needs reassurance or a hug. He also still thinks I’m cool. I want to hold on to nine for as long as I can.

I will have to backtrack my posts, because we’ve done two hikes already. The first one was at a park near where I grew up, a place I’ve hiked countless times and is filled with memories. M had taken the day off, so all three of us went, and the weather was incredible. Before we left we bought S one of those disposable film cameras. He took a whole roll of pictures and we dropped them off the next day. A week later we walked downtown and picked up the developed photos and took them with us to the café across the street so we could flip through them.

Twenty-five out of twenty-seven are blurry, most likely because he moved before the camera’s shutter was done closing its cheap, disposable eye. He was bummed- disheartened that his photos weren’t accurate representations of his memories, disappointed that his art didn’t align with his vision. We talked about ways he might hone his new craft, and we bought another camera so he can try again. I promised to find a photo album so he can catalog his photos and see how his skills improve.

Art. Nature. Motherhood.

I have decided to write about these trips so I can capture and consider all of the ways these three vital parts of my life intersect. I intend to write after each hike, so that perhaps my art can represent my vision.

I have decided to write about these trips in this space so that I will hold myself accountable for archiving our adventures, and so that S can have a written record of this summer, too.

And I have realized that by writing about these trips, I have found the way for me to hold on to nine for as long as I can.

“Let a body finally venture out of its shelter, expose itself in meaning beneath a veil of words. WORD FLESH. From one to the other, eternally, fragmented visions, metaphors of the invisible.” Julia Kristeva