Art in the Time of Personal Change

(divorce, kids going to college, that kind of thing)

1. She will leave soon. For good / (for) a while / forever / for bad for / college.

2. On her last night at home / she sleeps / in my bed with me.

Dear Reader,

Nearly a decade ago, as I was going through a divorce, my writer-friend said to me: Write everything down. The implication was that I was living the experience of a future story and that, being a writer myself, I’d want to write about it. This is because stories are fundamentally about change—how a person or literary character faces a set of challenges with a certain set of tools and beliefs, and how those struggles transform that person or character into someone new. What do they learn, who do they become.

I didn’t write it all down. It’s very hard to take notes on one’s own divorce. It’s hard to take notes in the midst of any transformative experience. You’re too busy living it.

But you can make art—eventually—and you can take comfort in art along the way (songs, stories, dance, movies).

When my daughter left for college—which is to say, when we packed up a carload of her belongings and I drove her four hours, unloaded said belongings into a concrete block dorm room, took photos in the quad, hugged her goodbye, hugged her again, goodbye, goodbye, and drove home in an empty car crying—I was too consumed with feeling all the feelings to write it all down.

But that fall, I doodled abstract shapes in my journal. I cut out words and images and glued them down. I took comfort in making, even if I wasn’t making anything in particular.

The pain of that initial separation wasn’t the end of the story. In some ways it was only the inciting incident. I’d had her when I was 25. As she started her adulthood, I was starting a new version of mine.

Eventually, I got out my typewriter and typed words—things she’d said, thoughts I had—and glued them into my journal. I numbered them, turning it into a story, of sorts. It became my first “image + text” publication, at Passages North. I called it “Empty Nest/Emptiness.”

I know a lot of folks whose kids are going off to college right now. It’s so hard! I see others of you sharing about tough and transformative experiences on social media. I look forward to your art and stories, and I’m sharing mine with you.

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“Empty Nest/Emptiness” continued from the top of post (with a couple of images left out due to space):

3. We take things from her bedroom to the living room then to the car for the ride to the dorm.

4. She doesn’t / exactly say Don’t call me / but she says / I’ll call you.

5. After the dorm I drive the empty car home. The Indiana skies mourn with me.

6. Home. Empty. I eat alone at midnight, Taco Bell and Cabernet.

7. My days are quiet and open.

8. She calls. (feeling lost)

9. She calls. My speech partner, she says, has her major figured out and her minor and she’s already done this job and that club and what if I don’t figure it out?

10. She calls. I’m walking to Taylor’s soccer game, she says, and it’s a beautiful day and we are all walking around I’m looking at all these college kids and I’m like they are all going to die someday, we are all going to die someday, someday I am going to die.

11. She calls. A shift / I auditioned for / The trees are so pretty. / We walked around the stadium at midnight / I’m going to a conference in / I signed up for / I love it. I love my classes. I love my dorm.

12. She texts me a picture of her on a blocky chair made of Keystone Light beer boxes and asks Can I post this on facebook?

13. It is the first time in my adult life that I’ve had a house, a week a month to myself.

14. I paint a painting and call it leaving.

15. We have new people to be.