She aspired to illustrate children’s books. No art in college counted lucky her education, back then even Smith trained you to become proper keeper, upright hostess for gatherings husband held, gracious family diplomat, mother and wife. Educated, but you were a wife and you ran the household. And she managed. Didn’t think twice; graduate, find a man, married, create life, properly grow old. She held her dream. Raised creative children. Ran an entertaining, inventive household, games, gardens, crafts, carrots, raisins, grapes. In her sewing room she kept a drawing board where time desperate time allowing inked elves and angels, meadow flowers, speaking trout, worm escapes dangling hook. Her husband supported her, claiming cocktails, “Grand to have a hobby. And the kitchen’s clean.” This of a woman who studied philosophy, wrote novels in notebooks, played field hockey for the team. Did what you’re supposed to do; context inherited; we smile. Collection-burgeoned, filed neatly in the corner of her room, impressive accumulated mass. Her children healthy, intelligent, productive adults, proper, mainstream moral members, community: daughter a physician, son journalist for the Times. Everyone knew they would. Began sending to publishers, rejections, no word at all. “Due to the volume of submissions.” Knew people in the business, husband’s boy published, girlfriend married man famous. “Not good enough to uphold the conceit.” One wrote: “caricatures too simple, forms inconsistent, not worthy of a seed catalogue.” Still the world, slowly, casually. When her youngest was twenty-five she divorced her husband, the lot shook, friends grappled family disbelief. She’d been so wholesome, well-bred. Moved into her own place for the first time in her life. Small cottage two dogs edge of a meadow neighboring state forest mountain range. Raised goats and an emu, painted barn purple, years making cheese, ignoring noisy. Never listened to podcasts, avoided television, disregarded computer-generated deep fakes, bailed social media robots. Her own universe, fantasy existence, reality on the marginal confines of her small thatch, imagination’s fortune. Continued to draw and write, formulating ingenious stories for children, piled in her study, cabinets, four on the floor, shelves next to her quilted bed. Still rejections, nothing at all, cold impersonal, silent harsh. One particular illustrated story, “The Gargantuan Lilac Cat,” she sent a hundred times. You never know, she said, while she drew her god’s breath.
