"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
— Joan Didion
This is an experiment. Here, I'm in a lab. A place where I can write about becoming a mom and try to figure out what is happening while it's happening and maybe, like, a little bit after some of it has happened.
The experience of becoming is painful. And, it's punctuated by joyful mysteries. Whether you're a seed becoming a cream-colored peony, blooming to be only briefly beautiful, or a human becoming forever inhabited by another human, long after they've exited your body or if they never did. Our children live in us for forever. The ones we raise to old age, and the ones we lose. They transform us and burrow deep into our identities.
And so, I find myself at a moment where I need to dig. And test. And find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
Maybe a series of stories about being a ma on the Southside of Chicago isn't universally connective for you. But maybe becoming is. And maybe sharing what I am figuring my way through will help you figure your way through something, too.
Most of all, this experiment will be an archive, a collection of love letters to my son: Sweet William, also known as Wild Bill. For him, I can do any hard thing. For him, the world is a relentless, irrepressible series of peonies, always blooming, always in June.
Billy, you are the purest delight.
Love,
Ma