Early Cubism

A left this morning, after days of frenetic packing and preparations of various kinds, including A teaching me how to clean out the weird water trap thingy at the bottom of the washing machine, how to package the recycling for pickup every other Friday, and how to unhook all the various cables from the TV (which lives in the murky basement) and re-attach everything up here in the habitable part of the house, should we, say, get the stomach flu and need to be able to stare at Mister Rogers on a continuous loop from the couch for a day or two. I guess those are the points of non-overlap in our division of labor. Traditional, huh?

Anyway, the leaving was sad. He was horribly stressed about it, and I waded through it in a daze. He'll be gone 68 days, is all. I'm sure we'll have our awful moments as always, but I also feel like it will ultimately be fine. And, yikes, one day at a time. This is the last time I'm thinking about how many days we have to go, at least until we hit the single digits.

It was a glorious 40 degrees here today and we spent an hour at the park—the most time we've spent outdoors in embarrassingly long. It was lovely.

Ingrid spent the hour after dinner drawing picture after picture of A. Here are my faves. She hardly ever describes what she draws, beyond giving me the default, This is an elephant—always an elephant—to get me off her back when I ask. But this was half a dozen drawings at least, done slowly, one after another, and she talked about them as she made them. Sometimes it seemed like she was talking about a dream. I know any resemblance to actual people or things is coincidental, but I'm so impressed with how intentional the lines seem. And the way she seemed to be making these to work out something about A being away, it makes me think of these as real art—the first time I've looked at any of her many drawings and crafts that way.

This is Daddy in Russia. He's outside, and he's wearing a t-shirt and some shorts. He's flying a kite.


This is Daddy on a sailboat.


This is Daddy in Russia. He has his snowsuit on, and he's holding a piece of wood. He's fixing a wheel on the purple truck. And there's a taxicab with him.