card to you

more photos by Sarah Cramer

This is my card to you, the one I meant to lick and stamp and put in the mailbox with the flag sticking up; but the snow was too deep and I was too far behind, and we had to wrap and ribbon and run from here to there.

But I think it’s okay, because this card contains the same well wishes, the same good cheer, the equivalent humanistic hopefulness I feel all around in December into every new year.

What I mean to say is: I am thinking of you.

love,
Jocelyn

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blowing up

Video by Billy

In this video, can you hear Papa sighing as William rounds the bin on his shiny new bicycle? At three and a half, William is blowing up: pedaling and sounding out words and holding his breath under water. And we, his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, we grown folks are just doing our sorry best to keep up.

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tiny christmas

Video and photos by Billy

This week, in preparation for the big, shiny one, we celebrated Tiny Christmas, our own early opening of a few presents.

Is this still Tiny Christmas? William asks after brunch.

Billy and I fumble and share sidelong glances and get our story straight; this is the year we work out William’s winter traditions. This is the first Christmas William will remember.

Our friend Kathy’s band, PandaTransport, just put out a new CD, which sounds smooth and sweet!

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we heart sarah cramer

Photos by Cramer Photography

C’ville photographer Sarah Cramer put us at ease whilst taking our yearly Johnson Fall photo, frosted breath and all. Nothing Awkward here, but I’m still hoping someday for our matching family effort to make this favorite photo site: Awkward Family Photos. Maybe next year.

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something in the water

Photos by Billy

OH MY GOD, Mama! There’s something in the water! William shrieks from the bath tub. This is new: him in a pool of clear warm bath water, surrounded by bright toys bobbing, standing up. Dripping wet. Shaking.

It is not a small fear, but a big real fear smeared across my son’s face. Fear forces his thin arms out from his naked body so that he is reaching to be lifted up, rescued.

Later that night it is the same when the lights go out, and again the next morning when I am leaving him, routinely, at preschool. This is a new bright fear of the dark, of the unknown, of being left behind.

MAMA! William calls again, saying he wants out of the tub, but I hesitate. I want to say: It’s only water, just darkness. We will always, always come back.

Instead I say, William, honey, you are perfectly safe.

But already, at three years old, he senses this is only a half truth. That there are real things to fear, and it is their very formlessness, the way they lurk invisibly around you, that makes them so terrifying.

Finally I relent and lift Will from the water, wrap him warmly in a towel, and he settles against me. Lets his breath out.

We are perfectly safe, I say again, padding from the bathroom. And for the moment, we are.

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wild style cooking

Billy and William scramble eggs, cook grits, flip sausage and bake fake bacon. That sizzle, those close-ups: it’s like Nigella Lawson as a toddler.

Video by Billy

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kiss

William loves Grandma; Grandma loves William.

Photo by Papa.

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on the road

This fall, we’ve logged many miles. Here we are in Carolina with Grandma, Papa, and Uncle (Aunt Nesa was there too).

Photos by Papa and Billy

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art and immortality

Computer drawing by me.

Mimi’s house is a monument to remembering; the stairwell lined with old faded pictures, and those silhouettes cut from black paper, inscrutable profiles. There jutting out like a mast is the youngest family member: our boy William.

Having children has always been the time honored path to immortality, and it’s no different for us. William’s arrival shifted our sense of scope, like plate tectonics, unseen but massive. All at once we felt ourselves balanced between antiquity and the future that we see in him.

Nonetheless, I think there is another, less talked about way to connect to the future. In short, by making things. Not monumental best selling things, but small, careful, strange, awkward things. Artifacts of being here.

Art, even art with a lower case ‘a’, has a way of remaining in the world. I’m generally taken aback when I reunite with an old friend and they mention some forgotten paintings that still lives on some wall in other their house, occupying some small framed corner, and their mind each time they pass it.

But why should I be surprised? I have threadbare mixed tapes, and scraps of old songs stuck in my head that play in loops if I wake in the middle of the night; that I sing sometimes to William when he can’t sleep. I’ve got stories, even stories from forgotten friends— a girl I met one summer when I was 15, for example, whose poem is embossed in me. Her name was Stephanie and the silver feather-shaped earrings she wrote about still shines in my memory, catches the light, reflects some sliver of her back to me.

My friend Sara Owen does this beautiful ‘house’ painting. Check out her painted portraits by clicking on her link.

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