Tag Archives: making postcards for your child

Card-Again!

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Even Picasso must’ve come up empty sometimes. And I’m no Picasso.

I’m starting to run out of ideas. For postcards, that is. Somewhere along the line Myra-Jean persuaded me that three was not enough to assuage her grief at my newfound part-time employment. I should be leaving her four. Four postcards, three days a week. I’ve been working for about a month and a half now. You do the math.

No? I’ll do it for you.

Seventy-two. That’s how many postcards I’ve made so far. Seventy-two original drawings. I’m running out of subject matter!

I’ve drawn cats, dogs, owls, camels, elephants, sheep, snails, and flowers. I’ve gone exotic, drawing sloths, okapis, and octupi. I’ve crayoned pastoral scenes, gardens, planets, and the sun. I’ve made up creatures. I’ve drawn MJ herself. And still, three nights a week, I have to come up with more.

The results are getting increasingly random.

Last night, for example, I started with food:

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Then moved on to a landscape. Which is not my strong suit. The result looked perfunctory.

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Next there was my old standby: a dog. But I put a flower in front of him, to change it up a bit.

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Because, you know, dogs and flowers are a logical pairing. Kind of like white wine and fish.

Finally, I sketched a dinosaur. Not a very good one, I might add. It looked more like a seal with legs. Plus, I forgot the tail until the last minute, then squeezed it in on the right. To deflect from this obvious error I put a cat on its back. Walter. Why not? At least up there he’ll be safe from Mina.

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I tried to make the accompanying text expand on of the image.

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It didn’t really work, but that’s another conversation.

The point is, I don’t know how I’m going to keep this up. And I have to. The postcards are the only thing keeping MJ from having a nervous breakdown on the days I work. But I’m getting a nervous breakdown making them! I need ideas. I’m not an artist. I was a philosophy major, for God’s sake.

Perhaps each card should feature a fragment of Socratic dialogue.

Or maybe I should move on to collage.

To Do or Not To Do

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Who says grownups don’t have homework? We’ve got a shitload. And there’s no blaming the dog if we don’t get it done.

I’ll speak for myself. I can’t catch up. If life were a graded class I’d be scrambling for a D.

These days, with work added in, I feel unbelievably swamped. Because everything now must be squeezed into the four days when I’m home. Or the parts of those days, that is, when MJ is not demanding my undivided attention to make up for my absence the rest of the time.

Which boils down to about, oh, forty minutes a day. Into which I try to squeeze the numberless quotidian duties of a modern mom, wife and homeowner. Plus:

The fundraising. It’s always on my mind. Always. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Or the committee chairmanship. How, I ask myself, will I raise thirty thousand dollars for my kid’s school? How? I lie in bed at night worrying. Plotting. Despairing. When I finally fall asleep, I dream about car washes, bake sales, ebay auctions, bank robberies. Only the latter is effective. Because it’s carried out by three-year-olds, with sticks for guns. Riding on bananas. Who’s gonna say no to that?

Then I wake up. And we’re still at zero.

Anyway. Then there’s this blog. I love it. But it’s an obligation, too. Self-imposed, but aren’t most of them?

Next: the garden. Jesus Christ, what a time suck. A while ago, in a fit of impatience and shortsightedness, I had Mike tear out the sprinkler system. Now everything has to be watered by hand. Every other day. Because it’s 150 degrees out there. Plants wilt easily. So do people. It’s a drag. And it takes seventeen hundred hours. I hate it. But I hate looking at bare dirt, too.

Next: the lunches. If we don’t pack those the night before, the morning is a disaster. Even under the best of circumstances our days begin frantically. God forbid we should add in one more task. Especially one involving mayonnaise.

Then there are the phone calls. To friends, family, insurance companies, tax assessors, veterinarians, doctors, handymen,  exterminators, board members, possible fundraising connections, old acquaintances whom I’ve been promising to call for years and haven’t and now they hate me.

And don’t forget the straightening. And straightening. And straightening. And dishwashing, laundry, bathroom cleaning, garbage emptying, sheet changing, doghair sweeping, toy picking up, dusting, organizing, mealmaking and melted-crayon-scraping.

Once all of the above is done (hah!) there’s the book club assignment. “Gone Girl,” at the moment. I like it. But I hate it more. Especially as it has to be done by Wednesday, and I still have 100 pages to go. Each of which will drip with venom, duplicity, and perfidy. Good for the outlook! Next book: “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

Speaking of positives. There is one homework assignment I love. It’s the postcards to Myra-Jean. These are crucial now. They are the sole reason she no longer bursts into tears when I tell her I’m going to work. They actually make her glad. Glad I’m going, so she can look for them. It’s that easy. Or so it seems. It probably isn’t. But it’s helping.

And guess what? I like drawing them. I do it the night before. It relaxes me. Crayons are a cooperative medium. Unlike life.

Anyway. I imagine her face as she finds them, her tapered finger pointing as she sounds out the letters “O-W-L,” her delight at the image of a favorite planet, her soft smile as Mike reads my words. This makes me happy. I need no dog here. Nothing to snatch away this highest and most pleasurable of tasks: the lightening of my daughter’s day. I love it.

And it makes me feel better about everything else that’s been left undone. At least I’ve got my priorities right.

That and thirty grand will get me a decent night’s sleep.

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Three Card Mommy

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The postman may always ring twice, but at my house he delivers in threes.

Three postcards, that is. And, strictly speaking, it’s not the postman who delivers them. They’re from me. I make them myself, then hide them for MJ to find when I’m at work. It’s a game, an amusement, and a lot of fun for both of us. But, let’s be honest, it’s also a salve of sorts for the great sadness we’re still feeling over my return to work.

Here’s how it goes: In the morning, I hide three handmade cards in places MJ will find them throughout the day. One goes in her school lunchbox, another in the mailbox, and the third somewhere else–today it was taped to her car seat. Each contains, on one side, a simple picture (the only kind I’m capable of), and, on the reverse side, a short message. Basically, I adore you. I miss you. I wish I were there. I’ll be with you again soon. The same things a regular postcard says, more or less, but without the stamp. And with more one-syllable words.

The idea was suggested by one of MJ’s teachers, and, I must say, it’s genius. Today’s only the second time I’ve done it, but the reviews yesterday were glowing. MJ was thrilled. And best of all, I got a postcard in return. I found it under my journal when I went to bed last night, and the sight of it, with its “two dog” drawing and words of love and sweetness dictated by my girl, made my day. I hadn’t gotten to see her since early that morning, so finding it was particularly poignant. Sniff.

Because she’s not the only one doing the missing. I might have needed that little card more than she did.

Anyway. Who’s looking forward to mail call now? Take one guess.

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