People keep exhorting me to "fill my cup." I laugh with a friend: "Fill my cup? Where IS my cup? What am I supposed to put in it, again?" It's under the couch, we joke, full of Duplo and dust.
I think of my daughter, now two, banging HER cup on the table and chanting "Milk, milk, MILK." She knows what she likes, we've always said. And she's not afraid to tell you all about it.
Things I worried about before becoming a solo parent: not having any time to myself, managing to shovel snow with a newborn in tow, being able to knit while she napped.
Things I didn't consider: the possibility of a pandemic, that it was possible I wouldn't be alone for 51 weeks entire, how it would feel to somehow forget what I like, because every spare minute and dollar and thought seems to go toward the practicalities of everyday life: she needs new pyjamas, will last winter's boots still fit, what's for dinner, are we out of bananas, somehow, again?
What fills my cup? Making things. Time with friends. Time alone. Time to write. (Time – never enough!) That's my project, then, this year. Somehow finding time for those things in between the work deadlines and the endless snacks and the lost socks, the Duplos and the dust.
