November (October)—What is time?
On Now: Time, grief, travel, and the (not-so) balancing act between art and motherhood
October was swallowed by Time, turning to November and November almost disappeared just as fast, just as sudden. November was taking my son overseas for the first time and watching him fall in love with people and cultures that are not his own. It was grieving the loss of community and finding a way through to even deeper connections with the people I love. It was trusting the process, trusting myself. It was sea glass in my son’s hands—blue, green, amber, gold and his tiny fingers. It was my son’s first plane, train, bus, taxi ride, and watching his joy and adaptability to the way life moves differently depending on where you are, adjusting with ease to time and the way it expands and contracts (I swear, I’m learning from him every day how to be fully alive in this world). It was seabirds and bubbles and collecting rocks like treasure. It was bridges and castles and streets almost two hundred years old and my son singing Creedence Clearwater Revival at the top of his lungs. It was waking up to a Red America and being hugged by strangers in the street in total empathy for the country we would have to one day return to. It was color in the trees, the yellow sun over the English countryside, and croissants for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was bonfires and fireworks and the tangerine glow on his face. It was losing one of my rings to the ocean in Spain and being okay with the letting go—it’s an offering, after all—a total surrendering. It was late night Madelines dipped in chocolate and afternoon tea and my son carrying around a record like a security blanket. It was Spanish pastries, Spanish olive oil, Spanish wine, Spanish everything in the Canary Islands, and dreaming of a different life. It was a fiery sunrise welcoming us back to the mountains and spending a whole day with my body curved around my dogs. It was holding onto gratitude for this life in these mountains that are always blue while at the same time questioning if they still feel like home.
WHAT I’M READING
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
Honestly, I read close to nothing while traveling. I remember when I could read anywhere—on planes, trains, buses, even while standing in line. But now, that time is spent playing with my son, drawing records, record players, and stick-figure bands on Crayola stages. It’s spent watching his face take in every new moment and me saying, “Look! Don’t miss it,” “Oh, look! We’re going through a tunnel,” and “The deer, darling! Do you see the deer in the field?”
I watch the world so I can watch him watch the world, and honestly, it’s so damn good. This ever-present aliveness, this vast, overflowing attention, feels so big and full. And I know it’s fleeting. He’s only getting older, and with age often comes a turning inward—a separation from the world and sometimes from the ones we love as we search for autonomy, independence, a sense of self. And that’s okay. Then I’ll read my book—on a plane, train, bus, or standing in line, just about anywhere.
I did manage to find a slim little book in a charity shop in England that fit neatly in my pocket. I’d sneak in a few pages while my son was immersed in his own world—pretending, imagining, experiencing the world without me. I picked up Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter because the title was clearly inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers.”
But this book wasn’t about hope—it was about grief. It tells the story of a grieving father and writer coming to terms with his wife’s death. The narrative shifts between the father, his two young sons, and a crow who serves as a sort of no-bullshit grief counselor. It blends prose and poetry—a eulogy and a celebration all at once.
I flew through it. I loved how Porter connected us to grief without sinking into the sorrow or wallowing in it. The book doesn’t sugarcoat anything—it’s raw, intimate, and deeply personal. That’s the kind of experience I crave when it comes to the big emotions and moments of life, the ones that strip us bare and remind us what it means to be human even if it hurts.
Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway
I had this book on my mini-manifestation list. While browsing a thrift store, I found it but it wasn’t the edition I wanted. So, I kept searching the shelves, and there it was: the tenth edition. I got it for two bucks. I live for life’s little magic moments.
I’ve been slowly working my way through it over the past month, absorbing it in rare quiet moments, trying to immerse myself back into the energy of writing fiction. My writing practice has suffered so much over the last six months—it’s a long, boring story—but the point is, I’m always thinking about writing, even when I’m not writing. This book helps me remember who I am and why I love this wild, beautiful, and sometimes heart-wrenching art.
One day, I’ll write another book. I know I have one in me. Honestly, I think I have more than one. But this season of motherhood demands so much of my presence, so much of my imagination and my focus, my joy and love—every part of me. I’m still learning to walk the tightrope between motherhood and art, forever teetering toward motherhood.
I know this young-child-magic is only transient. One day soon, my son will come home late, the sound of his car pulling into the driveway past midnight, his not-so-baby footsteps on the stairs, poking his head in to say, “I’m here, Mom. I’m safe. I love you.” And then, I’ll get to work.
Maybe it will be before then. Maybe I’ll have more space for writing than I think. Maybe it will be when he’s eight and no longer asks me to rock out to Creedence Clearwater Revival in the living room. And that’s just the thing, I don’t know how much time I have with him like this, so motherhood colors every part of me.
But the writing is there—it’s always there. It lives in the background, in the fringe moments, in the early mornings before he wakes. And now, it lives here, on this little Substack. After two years, I’m still figuring out what I want this space to be.
I know I always say this, but it’s because I mean it: thank you so much for being here. Thank you for reading these musings on art, motherhood, and everything in between.
Disaster, manifestation, and gratitude
I missed writing about October and nearly missed November, too. We’ve been traveling in Europe, soaking up time with family in England and exploring Spain. October was mostly about recovering from Hurricane Helene—trying to rebuild a community that had quite literally been washed away. We were also trying to work, or at least figure out how to work, after our workshop was flooded and covered in mold.
My family from England canceled their trip here, as did my brother and his family. There was nothing on the horizon. No playdates for my son. No Spanish music class. No record stores to visit. We did supply runs for people who lost far more than we did, but mostly, we stayed home. We filled out disaster relief paperwork and put together our annual Shop Small Sale for Rhodes—a last-ditch attempt to keep our business alive during a time when work was the last thing on our minds. We hoped to use the sale’s profits to get our little workshop running again. It’s our livelihood, after all. We had no choice but to try and save it.
We worked on what we could, though it felt strange to focus on business while so many people had lost everything—whole buildings, art studios, movie theaters swept into the river. I guess they call it survivor’s guilt: when doing all the things you need to do feels wrong. We put our heads down and did what we could with the limited resources we had.
But soon, restlessness swarmed, and our son kept asking, “Are we going anywhere today?” He was used to cafes, record stores, and music in the streets; it was a culture shock for him. “There’s nowhere to go,” I told him. He went back to playing his records, but the words stuck with me. There’s nowhere to go. I should have said, There’s nowhere to go here.
There’s nowhere to go in our destroyed little mountain town, but there were places beyond Appalachia. Still, the highway to my brother’s house was completely washed away, and getting there meant a tedious re-route through towns that were in even worse shape. I couldn’t bear to see more devastation—cars tangled in trees, piles of water-logged belongings stacked along the roadside, entire forests collapsed, empty lots where homes once stood.
We spent one night in Charlotte, about two and a half hours from home, and I could feel the weight lift as we left the mountains behind. That evening, we sat under the stars and watched Gregory Alan Isakov sing the songs that had saved my life so many times before. My spirit felt renewed. I hugged him, drank sparkling wine, and left the mountains out of my mind for a few hours.
It felt weird, though, seeing everyone else carrying on as usual—laughing, shooting the shit, making future plans with an easy, optimistic hope. I was still carrying the grief of an experience no one else could relate to. With the pandemic, we were all in it together and I felt a sense of collective grief that felt both terrifying and comforting that I wasn’t alone in it. But this was different. The collective grief stayed back in the mountains, and I carried mine alone.
When we drove home, the mountains came into view—blue and sprawling in the distance—and the air felt heavy again. We sighed and tried to unclench our jaws. I looked away from the downed trees lining the highway and the dead animals strewn across the mud-washed asphalt. People weren’t the only ones displaced; so many creatures lost their homes.
“We have to get out of here,” I told my husband.
I’d spent the year yearning for international travel. Before the pandemic, before our son, we traveled more often than we stayed home. My soul craved new landscapes, languages that weren’t my own, and experiences that cradled and stretched me. But I couldn’t see a way financially. It had been a dry year, and I had no spare funds for something as big as international travel for three people. And what about the dogs? Who would watch them?
Back in July, I revisited my manifestation list. I keep a list for small manifestations—things that can happen in the next three months—and two major lists: one for things within six to nine months, and one for things within a year. I’d written, “International trip either booked or taken with my son” on my six-to-nine-month list. I really wanted to take my son overseas.
I got really clear on what I wanted that travel to look and feel like. I didn’t get too granular with it because I find that I manifest better when I leave space for the details to move and flex. Here’s what I wrote in July:
International trip with Pressley + Perry
Somewhere safe, warm, and near water even if it’s just a city river like the Seine
If it’s a city, Paris comes to mind
Mexico, Spain, Barbados comes to mind for the beach
Hotel suite with lots of light and space or Airbnb walkable to town/beach with lots of light and space.
At least seven days
Easy flight schedule without long layovers, arriving in the day (before dark)
Manifestation is a guide for what your soul wants. It doesn’t guarantee everything will happen or even that you’ll want it when it does. There is room to flow, grow, and change your wants and dreams. But still, it’s a guide—a written reminder of the things you once wanted and, hopefully, truly believed you fully deserved and could achieve.
As the year’s end approached, I revisited the list. The international trip hadn’t been crossed off, but it felt like the perfect time to go. We had no work, and our son yearned for community. I checked my bank account and tried to talk myself into finding a way to do it. I searched flights to Barbados, Mexico, Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona—everywhere. I couldn’t swing it.
Then, one morning at 5 a.m., I received a hit of intuition to check my credit card points. I got out of bed and logged in. There they were—a fuck ton of points saved since the pandemic. I had enough to cover flights for all three of us. But what about lodging?
I reached out to my family in England, asking if they’d host us on short notice. They were thrilled. “We’ve got a whole unused loft,” they said. Perfect. I booked our flights with points and only spent $500.
Boom. We were going to England for three weeks, and bonus, we were going to be with family.
This checked a lot of boxes on my manifestation list, but it wasn’t necessarily near a beach or warm. So, I reached out to my cousin to see if she’d be interested in taking a flight from England to somewhere in Europe. I told her I didn’t care where, as long as it was warm. Flights are so much cheaper flying from the UK to the EU, and if she and her husband came along, we could split lodging—and, of course, make beautiful memories together. It was a win/win on all fronts. And as luck would have it, she and her husband had one of the weeks we were visiting off and said they’d love to spend it somewhere warm. Talk about timing!
She sent me a list of places in Spain that were both warm and affordable. Barcelona was tempting—it’s one of my favorite cities—but I wanted to explore somewhere new. We landed on Gran Canaria, one of the Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa but still part of Spanish territory.
The weather was perfect—90 degrees the day we arrived—and the sea was a stunning cobalt blue, with the city of Las Palmas as the backdrop. Manifestation list, check.
The Airbnb was everything I’d hoped for: safe, spacious, and filled with light. The house, built in 1912 by D. Alejandro Hidalgo and Romero, is a beautiful example of Art Nouveau architecture in Las Palmas. It had been in the hosts’ family since 1946, and they’d preserved its old-world charm. We spent mornings eating breakfast prepared by my cousin’s husband at the large dining table and stayed up past midnight talking in the high-ceilinged living room. It was all so beautiful it was hard to leave.
The time we spent in both Spain and England was everything I’d hoped for. We connected with family, felt a sense of community with the people we love, and explored new places, creating memories with and for our son.
Of course, it wasn’t all magic and butterflies. Is anything ever just easy? Our travel to England from North Carolina was a disaster. Our flight was delayed six hours and then canceled, leaving us stuck in a hotel overnight without any of our luggage or my son’s nebulizer or medicine. We didn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m. It was a rocky start, but like most hardships, we learned how resilient and strong we are, how well we can do the damn thing, whatever the thing is.
My son amazed me. Not only did he keep his joy about him—not a single meltdown—but somehow made even the hard moments more fun. What once seemed like a daunting challenge—international air travel with a toddler—quickly turned into a source of deep knowing that not only can we do it, but we’re good at it. My son is good at it. Travel, as it turns out, is kind of our thing.
I’m so grateful my son loves traveling as much as we do, and I’m manifesting much more of it in our future.
And the dogs? My mom watched them, and I’m eternally grateful for her help. I know it won’t always be something she can do, but I’m so glad it worked out this time.
Now we’re home, and the transition has been hard. Our Shop Small Sale is moving slower than we’d hoped. Our workshop is still a disaster. Our town is still partially in ruins. And coming home to Trump’s America is, frankly, a goddamn slog. But here we are.
I’m holding onto gratitude—for my family, for the time we were gifted to travel, and for the connections we deepened with the people we love. For the memories we made.
As the year winds down, I’m taking inventory—reflecting on the ways I’ve grown and the ways I’ve been challenged. I’m thinking about how to move forward, where to focus my energy, what to honor and celebrate, and what to let go of. Hopefully, I can share more in December’s wrap-up—if I can find a way to make it all make sense to someone outside of myself.
Now, it’s your turn. Tell me something about your November. Anything. Everything.
I love the way you see the world and the way you write it. So glad your trip went well! 💜
So grateful for your musings. Always. 🧡