The S.S. Josephine

One of my constant worries is that my daughters will grow up thinking that I like one of them more. I am forever fretting about dividing up my time, attention, energy, and praise equally. I regularly imagine them as adults on their therapists' couches, going on and on about how I made their sister's favourite food for dinner more often than theirs, or complemented the other's hair more often than their own. I desperately want them to feel equally loved and understood. And yet I also know that my children are very different humans, that they each require different things from us at different times. Treating them identically in the name of fairness is not really going to serve either of them.

One thing I do often fret about is the fact that my second daughter's room somehow always feels less personal and less complete than her older sister's. Zoe's room contains more art, for example, and it is all of it hung, while Mae's few pieces are largely still leaning against the wall. It is a little thing, but it nags at me. So, one of my goals for this fall is to produce a few more handmade pieces for Mae, and to actually install them properly in her room. Now that she is embracing the ritual of the bedtime story, she also could use a reading light over her bed, so sourcing that is on my to-do list for this week. 

It may be a small start, by I am beginning with this funny little piece I dreamed up this week. It is made from a mix of acrylics, wood veneer, and fabric scraps, and features a boat named in honour of Mae (whose middle name is Josephine, in case you were wondering). It is a silly little image, a sort of mixed-media doodle, but it is inspired by my deeply felt and very serious hope that she grows up confident in her ability to weather whatever storms she happens to sail into.