Growing and shrinking and finding the strength....

In which I run away to London, learn to bake bread, and shout a little bit too...

So, January 12th is both my birthday (52) and my wedding anniversary (22), and this year, with no kids left in our house, Chris and I decided to fly away to London, to visit dear friends who recently moved back there.

In some ways, this was a trip we’d waited 22 years to take. See, we got married in Vegas and never really had a traditional wedding or honeymoon. And then we moved to Atlanta and changed jobs and Mose was born so quickly after that, and then Lew arrived! So, while we travel frequently, the travel tends to be family-trips or work trips. All of which are great. But the truth is that in 22 years of marriage, Chris and I had never taken a vacation alone. Not once.

And it was WONDERFUL! We went to the British Museum and Westminster Abbey, and our friends surprised us with a beautiful dinner and tickets to see The Producers. We ate curries and kebabs, and we rode double decker busses. But best of all was just getting to BE, removed from all responsibility. To sleep and dream and drink tea, and walk to the pub and spend time with Abbie and Richard in their new home.

While I was there, I also had the chance to spend a day in Oxford, doing a little book research. Which was fantastic, if rainy. For anyone interested, this is Addison’s Walk, where Tolkien and Lewis once had their very important late-night-walk-and-talk, and a table that Tolkien reportedly used to sit at, when he was at Merton. We took a private tour and stayed in an inn above a pub and haunted used book stores.

But then, while we were in England, things in America got pretty intense, what with the promise of a Greenland invasion and then the murder of Renee Good and the takeover of Minneapolis by ICE. People kept texting me from home, suggesting we might just want to stay overseas for a while…

But tempting as that might have been, home is home, and so we returned to Atlanta. Where I found myself disinclined to leave the house, preferring to putter around in pajama pants, ignoring phone calls and the news. I also began sourdough-baking, five years behind the trend. Which means I have also taken up eating a lot of bread.

Of course, I couldn’t be entirely house-bound, because recent political events have also meant we’re back in the streets. As we all—collectively and individually-try to figure out what comes next. But honestly, I struggled a little in motivating myself this time. We fight and we fight and call and call and work the polls and knock the doors, and things just seem to get worse. Protests and vigils. Boycotts and lawsuits. HOW do we organize? Can America really pull off a General Strike? HOW do we protect our upcoming elections? How does the Democratic party reimagine itself and GROW?

And thinking about all of this, actually (oddly) made me think about my spring picturebook, SHRINKING VIOLET, a collaboration with one of my all-time favorite artists and humans, LeUyen Pham.

You see, Violet’s problem is that she get frightened . And when she gets frightened, she shrinks! Just as I’m inclined to do right now—to shrink into my house and pajama pants and bread-baking and old movies and kitten-snuggling.

Of course, there’s plenty to be frightened about in today’s world, for grownups as well as for kids, and that can be hard to navigate. I never want to look away from the frightening things, avoid them completely, but I know that I also need to sustain and care for myself. It’s tricky. I think a lot of us struggle to find that balance.

In our book, despite her fears, Violet finally learns to grow when her best friend is threatened. She discovers she’s able to show up for Bird in ways she hasn’t ever been able to do for herself. Because she LOVES him so much. In love, Violet finds a surprising kind of strength. She levels up.

And that feels like something I need to think about right now. Watching Minneapolis rise up in this way, GROW in this way, has been so inspiring. I feel like Minnesota has shocked everyone out of complacency. Like, we thought we knew the limits of what America might be capable of, but Minneapolis has shown us that we need to dream bigger, stretch ourselves further. Which perhaps means loving harder. Loving more.

And just coincidentally, my wise friend Kim Jones was talking about that subject just the other day, down at the Atlanta ICE offices…

Have a listen.