It’s been a while since I’ve written! Hello! I’ve been busy as the subject of all those articles you’ve seen about the “tripledemic” of RSV/flu/covid, and “year 3 of childcare/parenting catastrophes,” and “oh no here’s another round of illnesses where it’s probably the mom caring for the kids and who could guess what’s going to happen this time huh, surely not another round of parental mental health crises and collapsing careers for mostly women who are also parents, let’s write another article that points to the problem with no structural solution!” Haha. Ha.
This is my family’s first week since early October where no one in the house has a medical concern that needs to be addressed. It’s good to be back, and now it’s somehow the end of the year! What a year it’s been!
I love end of year lists and “best of” recaps, so I thought I’d share my own.
BEST REGULAR AT THE POOL
I can’t see more than two inches beyond my nose without glasses, so it’s hard to be friendly with the other regulars at the pool. Most people are pretty efficient about their pool time anyway—you have to reserve your lane for a set time, and I think most people who swim laps are, like me, there for the intentional solitude of the activity as much as the physical challenge. The winner of 2022 Best Regular at the Pool is the older lady in the red swimsuit who spends 15-20 minutes sitting poolside, delicately arranging her things, before doing a few slow but efficient laps of breast stroke that barely cause the water to ripple.
RUNNER UP: The guy who swims in a full face goggle and snorkel! I see you, bud! Keep on swimming!
BEST FEELING OF FURY AFTER READING A BOOK
Ok, I know everyone LOVED Nightbitch, and I usually don’t enjoy spending time talking about art I don’t connect with because life is too short, but it made me SO ANGRY. (Spoilers!) To be fair: I thought I was the ideal reader but I think I was exactly the wrong reader. It’s the story of a new mother who has to put aside her artistic career because of the demands of caring for a baby, and at night she worries she’s becoming a feral animal, and she is angry and tired and lonely all the time. This felt deliciously, dangerously, close to home. Then the story turns: all she had to do was ask for help from her husband and suddenly changes cascade and she is empowered by motherhood and wildness and she becomes a conduit for art that is successful and celebrated and loved by critics and friends alike! It felt so unearned, and victim-of-structural-realities-and-patriarchy-blaming, and cruel for *me specifically* to read, this year of all years when I keep trying to make art and asking for help and failing and howling in exhausted defeat in the car like a wild animal. IDK. This dog wanted the dogs to win. Eat the baby. Run to the woods. I wanted a werewolf story where little red transforms into the angry, hungry big bad wolf; this book’s end saw little red on a stage performing wildness for an audience. An alleged synthesis that felt more like a mockery of true transformation. Loved the first part though.
RUNNERS UP: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Trite and particularly offensive to anyone who has had their life touched by suicidal ideation or the grief of losing someone to suicide. Also special note of disappointment for Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson, which was punishing and punishing and punishing.
MOST ENJOYED BOOK
“Enjoyed” is maybe a tricky framing of the feeling, but most affected by? Most haunted by? Most resonant? The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka is ostensibly about the end of life of a woman, Alice, with frontotemporal dementia, but the way Otsuka collectivizes experience jammed up my brain for a few weeks in a way that still shakes me up. The first half of the book is about the swimmers at the pool where Alice swims laps, written in first person plural. “We swim because…,” “Above ground we are…,” “In the water we are…” so when the story shifts to Alice, my brain was primed for “we,” it felt like “we” were experiencing language loss, our move to the hospice ward, our navigation of hope and hopelessness and acceptance. Devastating in the best possible way.
RUNNERS UP: This was a good year for enjoying books—only 38 so far, but I’ll meet my goal of 40 by NYE! I read a bunch of mysteries to help me think through some story problems in the book I’m writing (highlights: Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, The Hundred Years House by Rebecca Makkai, and And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie); some short novels chosen for their brevity to get me out of reading slumps that were tight and fun and delightful in their own genres (highlights: Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson, My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Treasure Island!!! By Sara Levine); some comedy (highlights: Hello, Molly! By Molly Shannon, I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood by Jessi Klein); in the spring I went through a George Saunders kick after adoring A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, rereading some collections and reading Lincoln in the Bardo for the first time; I also loved Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, Pure Color by Sheila Heti, and I know the critical reception was lukewarm but I really did love To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara. (“How do you have time to read?” 100% audiobooks. Any time I’m doing chores or drawing or running errands by myself, it’s book time, bay-beeeee.)
BEST SNACKS AT DOCTOR APPOINTMENTS
Lots of routine and lots of scary doctor appointments this year! I hope you don’t know this, but the scarier the medical department, the better the snacks. I reckon the medical staff figure that if you’re there you probably aren’t having a good time and could use a cheer up. Pediatric oncology *by far* has the best snacks. Not only do they have a variety, they don’t make the patient choose—you can have a popsicle, a glass of juice, goldfish AND honey grahams. A+ snacking! (Everyone is, so far & thankfully, fine.)
RUNNER UP: This is fudging the category a little, but the patient’s MRI location is right next to a Do-Rite Donut, Chicago’s best donut shop; since MRI machines are shaped like donuts, we always get one after scan day!
BEST COFFEE CUP:
In a dramatic upset, a new Emma Bridgewater frog mug has broken the streak of Big Blue Mug from Target as the best coffee cup. Look at those frogs! And it says FROG on the inside! FROG.
RUNNER UP: I still love you, Big Blue Mug. #2 is nothing to be ashamed of.
BEST CATHARSIS
Screaming alone in the car! A classic for a reason!
RUNNER UP: Crying under the stars at the HAIM concert with a beloved friend, first concert I attended since the pandemic started. So good!
BEST CHICKEN OUTSIDE THE PRE-K CLASSROOM
I don’t know anything about chickens but this spotted hen is really cute.
RUNNER UP: The loud broody grey one is also great!
BEST BREAKFAST SANDWICH
I got a haircut in early fall that was *perfectly fine* and also exactly what I asked for, but when I saw myself in the mirror afterward I didn’t recognize myself in a bad way and my stomach dropped out from under me. It felt like a cowardly compromise, not the cut I secretly actually wanted which was much more dramatic, but am I even a person who can have a dramatic haircut anymore, and then it became an identity crisis! OH NO! So I took myself down the street to Loaf Lounge and ate a breakfast sandwich that is maybe the platonic ideal perfect breakfast sandwich and made me feel so much better. I might have an insecure bob, but I’m also a person who can enjoy the shit out of an egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin. I am sure it would be just as delicious today, but as a self-soothing treat? Absolute perfection.
BEST TV SHOW WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER DOESN’T INITIALLY WANT TO BEFRIEND THE AGGRESSIVELY-CHEERFUL-TO-COPE-WITH-SADNESS SECOND MAIN CHARACTER BUT THEY END UP BECOMING AMAZING FRIENDS AND ALSO THE SHOW IS GREAT AND NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE I KNOW WATCHED IT
It’s a tie between Somebody Somewhere and Killing It! Loved those shows, and as the aggressively-cheerful-to-cope-with-sadness bestie to a couple of wonderful grouches, I also love this type of friendship!
BEST TV CHARACTERS WITH VOICES THAT NARRATE MY INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS
John Early as Dr Carpet from Search Party Season 5
RUNNER UP: Paula Pell as Gloria in Girls5Eva. BITCHARD NIXON!
BEST TIME WITH MY 2 YEAR OLD:
The two months in spring where he would stand on the coffee table doing a stomping dance and we would all clap and sing “what do you do with a drunken sailor” but with the lyrics “what do you do with a grumbly baby” / “give him cuddles and lots of kisses EARL-AY IN THE MORNIN’” while he cackled and stomped and ate up being center of attention.
RUNNER UP: Every time he goes to bed, he runs to my room first as a delaying tactic, tucks himself in, and hits the other pillow inviting me to lay with him. It’s the best.
BEST TIME WITH MY 4 YEAR OLD:
A long weekend over the summer to celebrate a dear friend’s birthday—just me & Ada & 4 generous, lovely women artists spending time together in Michigan, swimming in the lake and hiking and foraging mushrooms and eating ice cream, cuddling with my girl in a hammock and listening to the summertime buzz of insects on the patio. She still sometime says “hey mom, we should go pick up those girls again and run away together.” Amen.
RUNNER UP: Every time she tip toes down to my studio to read my “little red book,” the small moleskine where I draw my diary comics.
BEST TIME WITH MY 6 YEAR OLD:
Driving to Texas over the summer, just the two of us. Hotel pools, roadside diner chains, Sonic drinks with pebble ice, 20 questions. It wasn’t all perfect—I over-scheduled our pit stops, we were sore from sitting, etc—but gosh, if you have a 6 year old in your life who likes the same show tunes you do, go hit the road together. It’s amazing.
RUNNER UP: Reading the first four Harry Potter books with them over spring and summer bedtimes!
BEST OF 2022:
I hoped this would be a year where the highlight would be me re-investing in my work, which I really tried to do, but the needs of my family again took the heart of my year. Thankfully, they are just the best people you’ll ever meet. We are closer than we’ve ever been, individually and as a team, and for what it’s worth I take a lot of pride in that. What a gift to life a life with so much love as its core and guiding light.
BEST WISHES FOR 2023:
Fewer illnesses. Fewer appointments at specialists. Better news at those appointments. More drawing and writing, here and elsewhere. More laps in the pool.
More peace.
Wishing you more of all the things you want and NEED for 2023.