In this quiet and poignant personal essay, Sandra Beasley recounts her experience at a writing retreat in Homer, Alaska. The author and poet reflects on allergies, grief, her family’s history, and—especially—her mother: her anxieties, their complex relationship, and how she’d put aside a passion for painting so that she could focus on parenting.
At every turn, my mother made art a valid thing for me to pursue, and so I did. But because I was around to pursue my art, she didn’t get to pursue hers for years and years.
A voice in my head often whispers that the refrigerator is running low, and our shelves are running empty. That to prove you’ve done the best possible job of loving someone else, you have to turn yourself inside out. That you should make a show of having no love left for yourself. This voice says there can be a mother-artist or a daughter-artist, but not both.
Except the sunsets are so long in Alaska, in this month of the summer solstice. A person could spend hours watching the skies turn pink and then purple, cook and eat dinner, put the dishes away and come back—and the sunset would still be there. I want my mother to see this abundance. I am trying to figure out a way to bring it home to her.
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