08/31/2020
All I can say is watch out world because today is the first day of school for this amazing force of a little human. Masks went on right after we took this, and these are strange times to start school, but she walked down those steps into a classroom that I won’t ever see the inside of and she didn’t look back.
I have been gone a good bit for work during covid, and my rock stars of a mom, MIL and husband made that work possible. I often felt guilty leaving her for a week or more; both for letting the responsibility of keeping her fall on others, and for worrying that she will feel abandoned. But whenever I get home from traveling she always says “thanks for coming back!” and I say “I will always come back.” Today she reminded me as we walked to school: “mommy, you always come back,” reassuring herself and me that we would be reunited later today, and I think this precedent, set from traveling, was a big part of her not being scared...so, maybe there is an upside to the time away?!
Now that we have some help with childcare here in DC I am back to work with commercial endeavors and finalizing my most important personal project done to date, a comprehensive collaboration with the artists who designed the Black Lives Matter mural in Charlotte, NC this summer. My daughter was a major inspiration for this large scale personal project, and I have shown her all the artists I was lucky to work with and talked to her about why their work is so important. I am excited to finish the edits this weeks and share them more widely! My time with these artists and the skip in my daughter’s step make me feel like the future is bright no matter how weird things are right now.
