“I like this picture you took,” Emma tells me, “but it’s the opposite of Willow.” “What do you mean?” I ask. “I don’t know, it’s just not her.” I know people, including dear friends who would never post pictures of their kids on Facebook. The whole idea makes them queasy. They’ve told me so. I totally get it, but it still makes me feel sheepish, bad, silent. Sometimes I want to say my kids are my muses, they’re amateur actors, occasional collaborators but that sounds kind of lame and pretentious. Maybe that’s why I love Emma’s take on this picture of Willow so much – it gets me out of messy ethical terrain (at least for a little while). It also segues perfectly into this Sally Mann quote. “The fact is that these are not my children; they are figures on silvery paper slivered out of time. They represent my children at a fraction of a second on one particular afternoon with infinite variables of light, expression, posture, muscle tension, mood, wind, and shade. These are not my children with ice in their veins, these are not my children at all; these are children in a photograph.” (Facebook/Kelly O’Brien)

“Do flowers die?” asks Willow. “Yes,” I say. “Do owls die?” “Yes,” I say again. “Why?” “Everything dies,” I say wishing the conversation would switch to another topic. “Mom, are we going to die?” “Yes,” I tell her, “but not until we get old.” “I’m not old,” insists Willow. “Are you old, mom?” (I feel old, like the oldest mom in the world, but say nothing.) Willow jumps in, “Emma’s not old.” And then she pauses for a bit and asks, “When are we going to die, mom?” “On Wednesday or Thursday?” (Facebook/Kelly O’Brien)

Emma doesn’t talk as much about Teddy as she used to, but yesterday on the walk home from school she asked, “How old was I when I understood that Teddy had a disability?” I said that she was around three when she started to ask questions about why he couldn’t do the same things as her like walk and talk. I also told her that understanding doesn’t come all at once, that sometimes it takes a long time. And then she said matter-of-factly, as if it was one of the laws of nature, “Even though there are lots of things Teddy can’t do, there are lots of things that are better for him.” “What do you mean?” I ask. “Well, the news,” she says, “He can’t see all the terrible things that are going on in the world like poverty and suffering and pollution and stuff like that.” “What does Teddy see?” I ask. “He just sees all the beauty in the world.” We walked a bit further in silence until I noticed she was crying. “Are you okay?” “Sometimes I tell Teddy secret personal things about my life,” she confesses for the first time, “because I think he’s the only one in my family who will understand.” (Facebook/Kelly O’Brien)

“Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.” — Christina Rossetti On the morning walk to school I told Willow that the snow was about to disappear for another year. It took her a while to process this information and then she asked in amazement, “You mean the leaves are coming back? The flowers? The bugs? The ice-cream shops? Everything is coming back to life?” Winter dragged on for so long I lost interest in the snow. I forgot to notice the long shadows it makes in the sun, the silence as it falls, the faint traces of life it leaves behind. But as Willow and I listened to it drip from eavestroughs and melt along sidewalks we both felt a little sad saying goodbye. (Facebook/Kelly O’Brien)

Yesterday on a dog walk Willow asks, “So some people don’t have moms?” “Yes,” I say. “And some people don’t have dads?” “That’s right.” “And some people don’t have kids?” “Yes,” I say again. You could tell she knew she was onto something. “And some people don’t have grandfathers or grandmothers?” And then a short pause while she switches gears slightly, “And some people don’t have houses?…” I worried she might go on forever but she stopped there. I guess by then she understood something she didn’t before ― that not everyone in the world was just like her. (Facebook/Kelly O’Brien)

It’s an understatement to say that it’s hard to make a living making art, especially these days. It makes me sad that some of the most talented people I know have almost given up. Veteran poet Mary Oliver makes the prescient observation: “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” Even if you’re just painting Disney princesses like Willow on Sunday afternoons in your bathing suit, try to carve out a little time on the side. (Facebook/Kelly O’Brien)