This kid…right now he is my inspiration. I suspect he will be for many years.

I miss him. I miss him so much.

I miss him teasing me about how much cheese is in the fridge. Yesterday I counted: 10. Swiss, mozerella, asiago, two kinds of parmesan, Romano, sharp cheddar, white cheddar, Muenster, jack. Ten different kinds of cheese and no Nathan to tease me about it.

I miss speaking Spanish with him. His grammar is better than mine and I remember different words than he does, so most of the time we talk in circles, using synonyms and almost-words and a few gestures until we start laughing and explain our thinking in English.

I miss seeing him sitting at the kitchen counter, drawing something. I miss having someone who’s excited when I tell him about buying three new colors of Copics. In fact, the fact that none of my Copics are missing right now, they’re all in their places instead of a few in the kitchen drawer and a few in his bedroom and the aqua one in his backpack: that makes me miss him, too.

I miss gathering up his laundry. (Yes, I know: he’s 19. Why was I still doing his laundry? Not because he asked me to. He could do it on his own. But it felt like one of the last services I could do for him, so I didn’t mind.)

I miss the obscene amounts of groceries I’d have to buy to keep him fed.

I miss him talking to me, and laughing with me, and knowing exactly when I needed a hug. Even if I was acting like I didn’t need a hug.

I miss him.

But he’s sending letters. And ever since I was in fourth grade and had a pen pal from Sweden, I’ve loved getting mail. Every time I check the mailbox I am hopeful there will be another letter in his handwriting, and about every week, or every ten days, there is one. Once three letters came at the same time.

I can tell…he is changing. He is learning and meeting new people and having experiences.

But he’s also still Nafe, still funny and caring.

In his letters I’ve learned that he is always cold and always freezing. Yes, he’s in the south. But it’s still chilly there, and it’s a humid coldness. He’s not used to that, and plus, he’s like me, he gets cold easily anyway. He misses the smell of the clothes I washed for him, he misses me doing his laundry.

And that is how he is inspiring me. When I’m out hiking or running and I’m cold, I think “but Nathan’s probably colder, and he has to be cold all day, so I will keep going.” I finish my run, I hike longer than I had intended, I take a little bit of his courage and use it in the small ways of my life.

When I’m feeling lazy and thinking “maybe I’ll just get a pizza for dinner,” I think about Nathan being hungry all the time, and missing my cooking, and it inspires me to cook for Kendell, Kaleb, and Jake.

And…this is probably silly. But I have two of his sweatshirts. They’re way too big for me but so comfy. So I don’t have any laundry, really, to do for Nathan. But I still wear his sweatshirts, and wash them, and remember that he is grateful for that little service I did for him. Wearing his big maroon sweatshirt helps me miss him just a little bit less. It makes me feel less discouraged about the kind of mother I was. It inspires me to be better, to watch for other little ways I can help Kaleb and Jake and Haley. It reminds me that family relationships are built with time and effort and that while I have never been a perfect mom, I have tried, and then I start crying a little bit, there in my laundry room, because I love him and I love all of my kids so much and I’m just so grateful I got to be their mom.

I’m in my laundry room crying and he’s out in the world. He’s learning and changing and making other relationships. My influence on his life will continue to be less.

But, this kid. I have a feeling that he will inspire me, not just now, but for the rest of my life.

Favorite Quote: “Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.”

When I finished The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden last fall, I wasn’t sure I would continue on with the series. Not because I didn’t like the book—I really did, in fact, like it a lot, despite first assuming that it would be just another fairy-tale retelling. I enjoyed being immersed in a new mythology I didn’t know much about—Russian fairy tales—and Vasya, who loves wandering the woods, is a girl after my own heart. But because the story wrapped up well, I wasn’t left hanging, wondering what would happen next. Plus, sometimes the amount of trilogies and series gets a little bit overwhelming to me (so many books, so little time!).

But a couple of weeks ago I noticed that The Winter of the Witch, which is the last book in the trilogy, had recently been ordered at the library, and there was, conveniently, a copy of The Girl in the Tower (the second book) on the shelf. As I had just finished the book I’d been reading, I decided to see if I would slip back into the world of Vasya, Morozko, and medieval Russia.

And I did.

The story starts with Olga, who is Vasya’s sister. In the first book, she married a prince and moved to Moscow, and in the beginning of this book we learn more about her and her daughter. We also catch up with Sasha, Vasya’s brother who became a monk and is a confidant of the Grand Prince. It takes a while for Vasya to enter the story, but when she does it is in the time frame of her leaving her small village because the villagers think she is a witch.

I always find it hard to write about books in a series because I don’t want to spoil the earlier books. So, in brief, in The Girl in the Tower tells the story of what happens when Vasya, who dresses as a boy for safety, leaves Lesnaya Zemlya, her adventures on the road, and her experiences in Moscow. You definitely need to read the first book before reading this one.

One thing I loved, and that I hope continues with the next book, is the theme of female ancestors and how they influence us, sometimes without us even realizing it. In a similar vein, Vasya’s relationship with her sister Olga and Olga’s daughter Marya resonated with me. I also loved that Vasya makes lots of really stupid decisions, which sounds like a weird thing to love, but for me it rings true. Main characters who are wise beyond their years, especially adolescent main characters, always feel false to me. Vasya makes mistakes and she injures relationships; she make faulty assumptions and doesn’t think deeply enough about the things she experiences. These decisions will influence not just her future, but her family’s as well, and while sometimes it is frustrating to go along with her, I appreciate that she is allowed to be authentic.

Finally, I enjoyed the feminist flavor of the story. A girl dressing as a boy forces many characters to consider what it means to be a girl (or a boy) and how gender influences our identity. It is a subtle thread in the story but I enjoyed watching it progress.

When I finished The Girl in the Tower, I had already picked up the sequel. So I’m diving into it next. I’m really glad I continued on with this series.

On Saturday, January 19, my mom made a decision: Rather than undergoing another surgery, one that would result in her losing her independence, she decided to enter hospice care. We brought her home the next day. My sisters and I made sure that one of us was always there, but there were also other family members and friends who came in and out, saying goodbye.

On the second day, my sister Becky got antsy and needed a project, so she decided to bring up all of the boxes of photos. She’d previously helped my mom pack these photos, which she’d gathered from various places around her house in Springville back when she was in the process of moving.

In these boxes there were photos from all different times. A studio portrait of my mom at age nine or ten had a family photo from 1991 underneath it, and then a stack of random snapshots anywhere from 1989 to 2005. Some school photos of each sister, including a few class pictures. Black and white portraits of my great grandparents and their siblings, some dating back to the 1920s. Mounds and piles and stacks and envelopes of photos. Some ruined, some dusty, some torn, some in fine shape. I found photos of myself that I have never seen before or forgotten existed, photos of my grandparents I will cherish now that I have them, even a photo of my Grandma Elsie standing on a trail in Bryce Canyon in the exact same spot where I have also stood for a picture.

It was thrilling and discouraging and moving and more than a bit overwhelming.

Over the next few days, I ended up sorting through all of those photos. I made a pile for myself and each of my sisters, a pile of photos to scan for the funeral, and one of old family photos that seemed important for everyone to have.

And I threw away photos.

I threw away so many photos.

Photos I’d given her of my family that I also had copies of. Blurry photos. Photos that were torn. Entire stacks of pictures that had stuck together and couldn’t be pried apart. We used to have a cat, Noelle, who would lick any pictures she found, and there were quite a few she’d irreparably damaged.

But a lot of the throw-aways were pictures of scenery and places and buildings.

I could guess where a lot of them were taken: London, southern Utah, Mexico, the beach, the mountains.

But without any words or stories to go along with them, they were entirely meaningless to everyone.

And honestly: even some of the photos with people in them felt inconsequential, somehow. Void of context, that photo of my mom and another woman I don’t know, for example, posing in their bikinis on a beach was, yes, a picture of my mom. But what does it mean? What beach were they at? How did she feel about her body? Why did she pick out that swimsuit? Who is the other woman in the picture and what kind of relationship did they have?

Oh how I wish she had written down the stories to go along with some of those photos.

I know not everyone understands my scrapbooking hobby. It’s easy to see it as sort of silly, a grown woman sticking down stickers and playing with paint and colored pencils like a kindergartener.

Sorting through my mother’s pictures was so moving to me. It was amazing to see how faces appear and reappear, my mom and dad’s features showing here and there in a child or a grandchild. Those piles of photos are evidence of a life that was lived: family, travels, holidays, houses and parties and snowstorms and rainbows.

But it also reinforced something for me: what I do isn’t silly. Even if there are stickers and glue and ribbon and flowery paper.

Because there are also stories. Thoughts, impressions, funny tales, personality quirks. Details of a life, context for the images.

I haven’t told all of the stories. Not mine, not my kids’. If I died tomorrow, there would be so many stories I haven’t told. Stories about races and running. Stories about motherhood, about being a wife and a friend. Stories about my job. Stories about the places I’ve traveled to.

At least some of them are told. At least, if I died tomorrow, my kids would have my words in writing. Not just my voice saying “I love you,” but my hand writing it, too.

Photos are images of places and people.

But photos paired with words are a legacy.

That experience of sorting my mom’s pictures (and o! how I wish I would’ve asked one of my sisters to snap a photo of me sorting the photos, surrounded by piles and piles of photos) taught me many things. It will change how I take photos in the future. Some wisdom I am still trying to put into words. But this I can say:

In the end, scrapbooking isn’t about the supplies. It is only about the photos and the words. Everything else is fun and pretty and colorful, but the stories—the stories are where the meaning is found.

And I feel something else. It isn’t really inspiration. It’s more of a prodding. A spurring: tell more stories. Not really scrapbook more things. But to simplify; to make sure the stories I want people to know about the photos I have taken are written down, because no one can do that but me.

I don’t want my kids to have to face boxes of meaningless photos. I want them to just have the stories and pictures that held meaning for me, so they know: their stories matter. My stories matter. The stories of a life are lost unless you write them down.

Favorite Quote: It’s almost impossible to separate words from the images in a graphic novel, so instead, here is one of my favorite panels:

Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal is a graphic novel that imagines what our world might look like if men disappeared. The premise is that for some unknown reason, the birthrate of male babies starts to plummet. Coupled with some extreme natural disasters, humanity drastically changes. In a few generations, there are no men left.

I went into this graphic novel thinking it would be full of dark commentary on the state of the world. I thought it would explore things like politics, war, and the structures of society and how these would be influenced by the absence of men.

In part, it does delve into these topics.

But mostly, Woman World is an exploration of how women communicate. Without men to worry about, conversations open up. As most of the women in the book have never interacted with men, they are oblivious to how funny and apt their observations are. The book also explores relationships—romantic, friendly, family-based, society-based. My favorite is the relationship between an older woman, who is looked at as a source of wisdom because she remembers the world with men in it, and her young granddaughter Emiko. It is a sweet, funny, and tender relationship that made me sniff several times. Also, many of our anxieties vanish—but many of them remain, except since they are stripped of their usual context (in relation to men), they seem almost pointless. 

One of the characters in the story, Gaia, is the leader of the village, and she is always naked. At first this is a little bit startling, but as the story progresses her nakedness started to make me think about my own body and my relationship with clothes. In the absence of a sexual binary, the meaning of the female body shifted. It wasn't about being sexy or attractive or appealing; instead Gaia's body becomes a manifestation, an outward expression, of who she is. In our culture, we make our identity partly on what we wear. What would it feel like if our bodies themselves could be the basis of our identity? Our scars, stretch marks, moles, and other "imperfections" could be stories about our past that others could know about us. This point is reinforced by another character, the doctor who is sent from the capitol. She wears her doctor coat but no shirt underneath it, so you can see the scars from a mastectomy. This part of her story is never told in actual words, but it influences the people around her simply because the scars are visible.

I’m generally unable to read graphic novels very easily (and manga is almost impossible for me), as drawing the story from the images is hard for my brain to do. (I feel a deep sense of shame for this, but it is also just how my brain works. I connect it with my dislike of picture-only picture books for kids. I never enjoyed “reading” those with my kids, and I think it’s for the same reason.) This was a great one for a reader like me to read, because while there is an underlying story that weaves through the whole text, each two-page panel can also stand on its own.

This book made me laugh, cry, nod, and think. I am so glad I read it!

Favorite Quote: “I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.” ~Wanda

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik is a reworking of the “Rumplestiltskin” fairytale and Russian mythology. The story is mostly told through three different women: Miryem, Wanda, and Irina. Miryem is the daughter of a moneylender—an unsuccessful moneylender who doesn’t have the temperament to force people to pay their debts. Tired of living in poverty while others thrive on her family’s wealth, Miryem takes up her father’s business, and has soon turned her family’s fortune around. Wanda is the daughter of one of Miryem’s customers. Wanda’s father owes Miryem a large debt, but every time he gets any money he spends it on drinking, so when she insists he pay her something, he offers Wanda. Each day, Wanda walks to Miryem’s house, where she bakes, cleans, and takes care of the goats to pay off her father’s debt. Irina is the daughter of a duke; her father is miserly but shrewd, and when he sees the opportunity for his daughter to marry the Tsar, he grabs it. Her mother, who died at Irina’s birth, was rumored to have the blood of the fey, but Irina doesn’t seem to have any—until her father buys a ring made of Staryk silver.

These three women’s lives interact and weave around and into each other’s in unexpected ways as the story progresses. The conflict is sparked by Miryem boasting that she could turn silver into gold. As the fey (called the Staryk) who live in the woods surrounding the community love gold, this draws their king’s attention. The fey, known for their violence against any humans found on their side of the wood, are encroaching more and more on the human world, causing winter to linger far into late spring, and as Miryem is drawn into their world, she discovers a way to possibly end this fey power.

This book came out in the summer, but one of my good reading friends recommended I wait until winter to read it, so I started it after Christmas and finished it in January. I’m glad I listened to her advice, as the book is a perfect winter read. And it was worth the way. I was really excited to read it, as I also loved her fantasy/fairytale-esque Uprooted. I made the wait easier by reading the short story that sparked the novel, which is found in the story collection The Starlit Wood. (I need to check it out again and read all of the stories.) For me, this novel was almost perfect and I loved almost everything about it.

My only quibble is that a crucial scene of the story is told not from Miryem, Wanda, or Irina’s perspective, but a young boy’s. For me, reading this scene—a violent and important one—through a child’s perspective made it feel less about imagining what was happening and more about the young character’s interpretation of what was happening.

But it didn’t ruin the book at all for me. I really loved this book. I like how each of the main characters start as someone’s daughter and then find their way to being their own selves. They each have strengths that the society they live in try to squelch, and they have to figure out on their own what their strengths are and how to use them. But they do this with each other’s help, often without realizing how the other woman has helped. I also liked how the romance in the story exists but is very subtle. It reminded me, in fact, of Pride and Prejudice, with each character needing to understand something about the other person’s perspective before they could understand how they felt about each other. The world building is immaculate and intriguing, especially a little house that sits on the border between the fey lands and the human ones. And Miryem’s adventures in the Staryk castle were so fun to read.

My favorite thing was the knowledge that Wanda gains. She realizes that work is a sort of magic, a way of changing something into something else. Here in the real, non-fey world we live in, that is also true. And she is right: usually you have to do the work first before you know what you are capable of. And we are all more capable than we imagine when we start the work.

I hope the rest of my reading this year is as good as this experience.

PS: I included both the US and British cover images. The copy I read was the US cover (the first image) but I love the British cover more.