My mother has taken to complimenting me of late and I always feel like I should have braced for it. She complimented my journaling skills a few weeks ago. The way I journal isn't hugely remarkable. I doodle, with whatever art supplies I have on hand. Sometimes, they are abstract doodles. Sometimes, they are objects or moments. And then I write. But then she asked me to lead an art journaling session with a group of fourteen early-adolescents. It’s high praise. But as ever, it is heavy to hold.
My mother knows how I journal. I’ve never been great with vulnerability. It’s still a bizarre dance, especially now that I’m trying to be more public about my writing projects, which are about the things I normally journal about. I’ve certainly never been someone who would show my mother my journal.
With chemotherapy, and any intense medical treatment, your time has no real way of being your own. I journaled because it’s what I do. And my mother saw how I journal because she was my primary caretaker, and always knew what I was doing, invariably because she was in the room with me. I could have spoken to her. She was in the room with me. But I didn’t. I painted and drew and wrote, and sat with the irritation that she was aware of what I was doing.
The other day, during another work call, she told me I was one of the most widely-read people she knows. “I’m serious. Everything I tell you about, you’ve read about somewhere, or know something about.” We were talking about Enneagrams and Zodiac systems from different cultures, which didn’t feel like it justified the weight of that title.
I vaguely see what my mother was saying. For as long as I have been able to read, I’ve intrinsically believed that I can learn about anything. I was reading her parenting books when I was eight, while I was reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, yet again. Anything I felt remotely inclined to read, I did. If a book had a pretty cover, I was inclined to read it.
My father, of course, piped up “Why? I’m also widely read! Everyday, I read the newspaper, and it’s as wide as my arms.” and then left the room when my mother said he’d interrupted her while she was saying something meaningful.
My father operates under the belief that if you can do something yourself, it has to be better than having it done by someone else. Why ask someone else a question when you can Google it yourself? Why Google something when you can think and figure it out for yourself. Why buy a notebook if you can make one with all the paper at home? Why buy anything if you can make it yourself? He also just enjoys making things. If I’m an arts and crafts person, it’s because of him.
Even during the worst of chemotherapy, when I didn’t have the energy to hold up a book, I was listening to audiobooks. I was absorbing literature, and learning about fashion, colour theory, and Indonesian street food. I had a vague curiosity about caramel, and then ended up making jars of salted caramel. And then I played around and made apple, and coconut caramel. And then everyone got a jar of caramel for Christmas.
I know that the caramel making, the painting, and audiobooks and documentaries came at a cost. I was journaling, and in therapy, and still not dealing with my trauma. I wasn’t talking to anyone with any degree of vulnerability. I had no real control over my time, but I could let myself get lost in the motions of stirring a pan. Today, I’m grateful for questionable coping methods. For better or worse, they got me here.
