The actual physical practice of creating, for me, feels like a threshold between motherhood and art. In this liminal space I’m not trying to make people like my art or even feel something towards me. Rather, it’s where I unlock the trapdoor inside myself behind which I keep all the hidden things I know to be true. The goal of creation is, for me, to be pulled into that liminal space and to dwell within the flow of it. It’s 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 where I discover who I am and what I think. 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦 where I grapple with questions and sit in the bewilderment of unknowing. 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦 where the thoughts too tender for this world can live.

If you look at the etymology of the word threshold, the first part of the word, 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘩, comes from the old English: therscan, 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘩, meaning 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥, 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦 like the sifting of grain by stomping or beating. The second part of the compound, 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥, originally meant 𝘢 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘨𝘦 or 𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯.

I vacillate between feeling contented in my role as a mother and stifled by not being able to tend to my creativity as the need arises. I straddle the divide between mother and creative, standing with one foot on either side of the threshold—never fully embodying either role.

In our culture we’re told to consummate instead of contemplate, produce instead of ponder. Unless we’re being paid, penning words to paper or spreading paint on canvas isn’t valued as a constructive use of time. Our identities are reduced to 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘰 rather than 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦. But 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 is, like creativity, fluid. I’m leaning in to the ideas that it’s possible to live 𝘪𝘯 the flow of creativity, to create without having to qualify, and to be non-productive to the mechanisms of North American society. There aren’t many things in our culture that we hold sacred, but I think the process of art—not the commodification of it—is something worth sanctifying.

The pull towards my children is visceral, but so is my desire to tend to my creativity. Sometimes, I worry that my role as 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 gets trampled as I step over to the haven of the empty page; however, I know the opposite is also true. Most often, once I’ve threshed out the minutiae of motherhood on the page I return to my children with a renewed sense of peace, and, in turn, tending to their needs also becomes a place of refuge. I know it’s possible to find the same haven in my life as a mother that I embody in my practice as an artist.

Here’s the thing, I love my children with a ferocity beyond anything I have ever known, but I also love the deepest parts of myself which remain unknown to them. And I think, maybe, this is ok. Writing is, after all, one of the few practices which welcomes paradox, which holds the unsayable and irreducible. At its best, the blank page is a place of bewilderment, and I think this is also true of motherhood. In both places we are called to surrender what we think we know; in both places we must learn the subtle art of letting go.

My friend Joy calls creativity “𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴.” This rings true to me. When we choose to tend to our creativity with the same gentleness we offer to our children, the beauty we stand to witness is the balm we absorb into our bodies, a balm essential for surviving this world.

Maybe then, creativity isn’t so much a threshold as it is the fulcrum on which we balance both identities: mother 𝘢𝘯𝘥 artist—binaries we cannot move beyond unless we first move through—flowing between identities until they are blurred and indistinguishable from one another. 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳-𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵. This feels more fluid to me.

So 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 is where I’m choosing to live: on both sides 𝘢𝘯𝘥 in-between, one hand on the heart of motherhood, the other on the pulse of creativity, holding space to sense the new shape of me as it shifts and changes and emerges new again and again and again.

This morning, my six year old son sits shirtless on the kitchen counter. I tug a brush through his tangled blonde hair, pausing to comb conditioner through the particularly stubborn knots.𝘞𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬, 𝘔𝘢𝘮𝘢, he asks as I finish with his hair, placing the brush on the scarred wooden table.

With my index finger, I trace his name across the smooth skin between the small kites of his shoulder-blades: 𝘊-𝘩-𝘢-𝘳-𝘭-𝘪-𝘦. It means 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯. It’s a name with room for a boy to grow into.

Later, I will read about mothers in Ukraine penning their children’s names across their backs in indelible ink. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴, one mother laments, 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘦𝘳.

But now, I stand with my son in the kitchen, the smell of freshly ground coffee mingling with the damp coconut scent of his hair. My fingers splay across his spine and I feel the heat of his small, hot body penetrate my palm. Outside the window, red buds burgeon on the spindly maple despite the snow still clinging to its branches.

I do not tell my son about the war. 𝘏𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦, I reason, 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵. He knows only safety, not the chaos of tanks and bombs nor the atrocity of nameless bodies buried in mass graves. He knows only 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 world. Not the 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 world where children are separated from their mothers, where bullets can penetrate even the slightest chests, shatter the smallest skulls.

I help my son dress in his favourite button up shirt. My thumbs fumble clumsily with tiny buttonholes and even tinier buttons. I smooth his collar, zip his jacket, pull a backpack across his narrow shoulders.

I close the door behind him as he makes his way to the end of the laneway. Through the kitchen window, I watch him board the school bus, this boy who I will (touch wood) watch grow into a man—𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬.

When the news of the world is heavy, and the burden of belonging to this place feels like too much to bear, when this phone is a stone in my pocket, and grief is the shaky ground undergirding everything, I come to the woods and stand among the White cedars. Here, instead of weighing me down like a pall of wet wool, the heaviness stills me—it’s a hand on my shoulder pushing me to go deeper into my heart-space. 𝘈𝘯𝘢𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘢, the yogis call it, meaning 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘬 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘥. It’s the stillness between heartbeats, the rest before motion, the pause between breaths. I close my eyes and bring my hands together at my heart. A steady mist of rain dampens my face. I inhale and, for a moment, all is still. Still, I worry about the world, about what we’ve become. At once there are dozens of Tundra Swans soaring above the cedars. I hear the wind whistling through their wings before I even open my eyes. Their clear ululation saturates the soft cavity of my chest, sates the yawning maw of sorrow wholly. Holy and familiar they call like the pealing of church bells, like a lullaby hummed in the dark. I watch them retreat beyond the canopy of naked trees; white wings splayed open, wet with the weight of water. Their feathered bodies fade until they are nothing more than a thrumming ellipses punctuating the sky. I close my eyes again. This time I let the stillness expand to include wingbeat and birdsong. I exhale fully and in the pause before the next breath, it’s as if my own wet wings have begun to unfurl. A buoyancy sidles up to the heaviness and I think, maybe, it’s hope. I inhale, filling my lungs and expanding my heart-space. 𝘈𝘯𝘢𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘢. For one moment, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩.

“𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴.” ~Mary Oliver

It was nighttime when we lay in your twin bed, your slight, sturdy body tucked into the soft curves of my own.

“𝘐 𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯,” you say, your small voice permeating the darkness. “𝘕𝘰𝘸 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.”

“𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮?” I ask, tracing my fingers across your brow.

“𝘎𝘰𝘥,” you say. “𝘉𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮, 𝘎𝘰𝘥.” You sandwich my face between your small, sweaty palms. Our foreheads touch. I can feel your hot breath on my mouth.

“𝘐𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯?” I ask.

“𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘎𝘰𝘥,” you sigh. “𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘰 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴, 𝘵𝘰𝘰.”

In the morning, we walk in the woods. The winter sky is unusually clear and blue; the ghost of last night’s moon a slip barely visible between the canopy of naked trees.

We are quiet together, you and I. Our boots tread a path through the niveous landscape. A White Ash rasps against an ancient Bur Oak. Dark Eyed Juncos trill and tick between the frozen weeds in the creek bed.

You tug off your mittens to stroke a seedpod glistening with hoarfrost, snap the blackened, spindly stem of a Queen Anne’s Lace, finger the fronds of a Phragmite feathered with snow. I resist the urge to tell you to put your mittens back on, that your fingers will freeze, for God’s sake.

Instead, I watch with wonder as you reach towards each austere beauty; your face as effulgent as newly fallen snow, your fingertips as pink as the night you were born.

𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴, but maybe this is close:

All around, the woods are alive; an open mouth ready to speak. And near the ground, God, 𝘴𝘰 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵, hearkening with the hands of a six year old boy.

I have thick varicose veins:
tributaries of blood
twisting across the map of my body.
A matrilineal genetic inheritance:
my legs
are my mother’s legs,
my grandmother’s legs.

The topography of my skin
is a blue and purple raised relief
I can trace backwards in time
until it is white and smooth with youth.

I am eleven.

I run bare-legged into Lake Huron
with my seven-year-old sister,
the waves cresting against our thighs.
We know our bodies
only as vehicles of delight—
awake to the spray on our skin, the sun on our faces, the freckles spreading across our knees mapping new constellations.

My mother, her own legs hidden
beneath loose cotton pants,
watches from the shore.

As a child, my mother’s legs don’t even enter my thoughts. I do not think they are unsightly or that they should be deprived of the pleasure of the lake in August: they are just legs.

I love all of her: the soft skin on the
palms of her hands, the way her lips feel
pressed to my forehead,
her gentle touch as she ruffles my hair
and draws me close
wrapping my shivering body,
all knees and elbows,
in a soft, sun-bleached towel.
I love her body
the way my children love mine—
like a softer extension of themselves,
a place of refuge in a world of uncertainty,
always within reach.

Now, my mind a retrospective of my mother at 39, the same age I am now: I see her youth, her eyes aglow, she is beautiful—a Queen—her heart-shaped face rimmed by the fading golden light of summer.

My body is made of my mother; the blood that flows through my veins first flowed through hers. Because I am made of this woman whom I love, I love this body, all of her, too.

Lord, make my heart a beehive.

Let it be heavy with the nectar of attentiveness,

laden with the pollen of praise.

Let a meadow of wildflowers

transmuted into limpid sweetness

seep into its combed chambers, and

s l o w i t d o w n

till everything is sticky

and golden with gratitude.

(After Reading Marie Howe’s “The Kingdom of Ordinary Time”)

There are eight blank pages at the back of her book. She earned an MFA the year I was born, teaches at Columbia and has an award for “sustained literary achievement.”

I don’t have a degree. I’ve known only the twenty years of living since I dropped out of university.

Two decades of learning and unlearning, leaning in to this life of broken things—some mended, some left behind, others grafted together to make something new, beautiful, whole.

I’ve learned how to plant some things and uproot others. I’ve known the weight of both full wombs and empty ones.

I’ve memorized the feeling of a small body pressed against my skin in the hour before the sun rises, the sky outside the bedroom window a threshold between darkness and light. And in the moments between waking and sleep, I’ve learned our skin, too, is a threshold: between souls, between what I once held inside and what no longer belongs to me.

I’ve learned, standing on my porch each night, that my heart bays to the howl of the coyote, because there’s a wild animal awakening inside me, too.

I’ve learned the smell of tomato vines beneath my fingernails, the exact taste of a golden beet, uprooted from the ground by a five year old boy, I’ve learned how to spin honey from a hive, weave tangled hair into braids, peel the skin from a peach without nicking the flesh.

I know that a mirepoix simmering on the stove smells like welcome and heat radiating from the woodstove feels like home.

And I know there is something I will learn from this (though I don’t know it’s meaning yet):

Yesterday, a moth flew into my open mouth in the hushed darkness.

I feel an answer fluttering in the periphery of my thoughts, and maybe these eight pages are here for me to pin it down, but perhaps there is only space for the question.

I pick up my pencil and begin to write. Here, in The Kingdom of Ordinary Time.

I don’t have a degree, but I know ordinary. I am educated in the everyday.

I scratch my pencil across
the pages left empty,
graphite smeared on my left palm
like the wing dust on my tongue
when I spit the moth,
still alive,
from my mouth
and turned to face the moon.

You don’t have to move up and out of your life
to create something new.
You just have to move
down and in.
Start with your breath.
Plant your feet on the kitchen floor.
Notice the summer heat outside the window,
the basket of tomatoes on the counter,
their skins splitting with so much
sweetness.
Here, the silence is it’s own kind of music,
pulsing past the din of the soundtrack
in your head.
Here, the silence holds the unsayable,
the irreducible.
What happens here is yours and yours alone.
This is the threshold where the veil is thin.
This is the place just beyond yourself
which evades description.
You have only
your breath,
your feet,
the window,
the basket of tomatoes,
and your presence:
a covenant of salt
tangled up with the silence.

We’ve reached the last days of summer when the air is sticky and our vegetable gardens are at their most bountiful. And yet, with this bounty comes the whisper of autumn: cantaloupes left on the vine are composting in their row, the lettuce has all gone to seed, asters and goldenrod have popped up among the wild asparagus ferns. Soon, nothing will be left but the heartier vegetables–potatoes, leeks, kale–and we’ll till the rest of the garden back into the ground.

But right now, our days are filled with tender-fleshed tomatoes. We’re popping Sungolds into our mouths, warm and ripe and straight from the vine, cutting Brandywines into thick slices and devouring them raw, peeling and simmering Black Krim and Red Vine tomatoes into sauces and preserves, jams and salsas. My bare pantry shelves are slowly filling with dozens of glass jars packed with tomatoes–an ombré of yellow, orange and red.

A few days ago, I found a 125 mL jar in the very back of the pantry. The label read:“Honey Sweetened Cherry Tomato Jam, Summer 2020.” I cracked the seal on the jar and dipped my pinky into its sticky contents. I tentatively licked my finger. The jam tasted exactly as it should: sweet and tangy, a little bit spicy, a hint of smoked paprika. I know how much can change in a year, not one of us has escaped this lesson since Covid-19 insidiously slipped into our everyday vernacular, our everyday lives. But miraculously, the contents of this jar have remained exactly the same.

In a year from now, maybe I’ll be breaking the seal on the last jar of 2021’s harvest. So much will have changed. All four of my children will be in school full time, my eldest daughter will be a teenager, my husband and I will have celebrated 15 years of marriage, I’ll have left my 30’s behind, and all of us in the wider world, will hopefully have found a way to live more harmoniously with one another, to recognize connective tissue everywhere, to look into one another’s eyes and see, not a stranger, but a part of ourselves reflected back.

So much will change, but not inside these jars lined up on my pantry shelf. They will stay the same. Like photographs, like stories written down.

These past few weeks, I’ve found myself holding on to my kids a little bit longer, saying yes to bubble tea on the way home from the library, backyard campouts with their Daddy on the trampoline, wearing bathing suits in afternoon downpours, waiting on our dirt road at dusk to catch a glimpse of the coyote pups playing in the hay field, reading just one more chapter before bed.

I’m foraging through these moments and collecting the fruit of these last days in tandem with one another and the slow rhythm of our life. It’s between my teeth, in my throat, the juice running down my chin. I’m taking in, not only the flesh, but the skin, its sweetness.

This. This is transubstantiation. 

I’m plucking this ripe and perfect fruit from the vine and filling buckets of it. I’m savoring the exact flavor of these halcyon days and I’m delaying their inevitable disappearance while I stack these moments in my heart like jars of tomatoes lining my pantry shelves.

I’m building an altar here, hoarding this embarrassment of plenty.

I’m sitting with it.

I’m letting it swell within me so when the life in my bones feels empty and hollowed out, I can fill myself with the marrow I’ve sucked from every joyful moment of this hard and holy year.

Your heart is not deceitful.
She cradles your inner wisdom
with infinite tenderness.
She makes space for the holy,
the ineffable.

Yet, you have been taught by this world
that you must protect her from others,
that the things you hold most dear
are the very things
you should keep hidden.

This simply is not true.

So find a string (any string will do)
and tie one end to your heart
and the other to your feet.

When you step out into the world,
don’t walk back
to all the places you’ve been.
Stand very still and wait to feel
her gentle tug.

Walk only where your beating heart
directs your steps.