Mr. Magpie and I are now, finally, able to reflect on our shuttered business with straight faces and clear eyes. We founded and ran a technology business from 2015-2017, and it has taken us years (and countless hours in post mortem hell) to process the experience. I feel in some ways as though we endured the eleven stages of grief. Which sounds crazy, unless you’ve also built a business and poured all of your money into it, and lived on heart palpitations and stress for the duration. It was, undoubtedly, the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. We now often muse on our learnings, and we continue to circle back to this: running that business removed the wool from our eyes. I understand, finally, the economics of things. The layers of business logic. Not the concept but the actual workings of product-market fit. It all clicks in ways it never did on the page. Running that business was like watching a landscape emerge from mist.
It dawned on me the other day that writing operates according to the same epistemological principle: I begin with scattered filaments, wisps of things, that I draft and re-draft into something of shape. I move from the nebula to the narrow and fine-tipped.
I was reflecting on this parallelism the other day on my walk, and I found myself prodding my own cognitive poetics. Clearly, I have internalized a kind of formula for knowledge acquisition: you must labor through a lot of hard things to arrive at a posteriori insight, the implicit goal being clarity.
But is clarity the goal in all things?
Increasingly, in matters of the heart, I think not.
Love obscures, throws light where there is none, softens and mediates. It is a warm haze, a penumbra, rather than a beam yielding full illumination.
Yes, when it comes to relationships, the longer I live, the more I think the goal is growing comfortable with irresolution. Of living peacefully in the light-dappled spots. My husband sent me an essay a few weeks ago that said something like, “True maturity is recognizing that your parents are independent, fallible human beings — and accepting that truth willingly.” And I thought — yes.
Motherhood certainly instructs me in this way: I spend much time puzzling over my children’s every mood and symptom, only to write things off as a blip and adapt to new norms. Loving my children is embracing things half-formed — thoughts, patterns, moods, routines! — and trusting the underpinnings will hold. Children are not weather patterns, or equations, or screens. They are irreducible; they are perfect; they change; they defy.
Parenthood, for me, is not about finding the answers. It is not angling toward a destination either.
It’s about lovingly feeling my way through the forested process, one foot in sunshine and the other in shade.
Post-Scripts.
+The spring blouse we all need. And the other spring blouse we all need.
+Tuck either into these jeans!
+Eyeing this “grow with me” play table for my son. You can buy longer legs to swap in as your child grows up so it converts to taller heights!
+Swooning over this mirror.
+People are raving about these “lip lights” (cream lip glosses) from RMS Beauty!
+Meanwhile, I went down a deep beauty TikTok rabbit hole the other day and so many makeup afficionados are raving about this $23 liquid blush. Dying to try! A little goes a long way!
+Love this quilted floral vest — very SEA without the price tag.
+The sweetest floral spring coat for a little love.
+Currently wearing this Alice Walk blouse — all of their pieces are just so thoughtfully designed. The elacisticized cuffs do not dig into your arms; the front is a tad bit shorter than the back so you can tuck in front and leave back un-done / offers more coverage. And love the neckline of course!
+This tablecloth is on its way to me — thinking of using it for my Easter table! — along with some woven bunnies?
+These clay cachepots would also be pretty lined up down the middle of a spring table, or on a spring mantle.
+How much do we LOVE these wall hooks?! So chic for a robe, backpacks, coats, hats!
here to verify the TikTok hype, haha— I love the rare beauty blush!! It’s gorgeous and yes, hyper pigmented but also still blendable. It’s my go to!
OMG I need it!!!
Thank you for your bravery in sharing what remains unfolding. So often we seek certainty. In fact, much of what ails us is certainty. “Needing” to be right about matters of politics, faith, and even whom one loves. In uncertainty, we permit wonder’s inevitable grace and mercy. Not only for ourselves, but, perhaps, even more importantly, our fellow travelers.
Love this, Mary — my husband did, too. He read this comment out loud to me last night!
Thank you for sharing this!
xx