There are things you can be attached to when you have a toddler. And there are things you can’t. Our priorities must adjust, of course. It’s important to realize, the first time your 15 month old whacks a bamboo brush handle across a dark gradient on an already varnished painting, scratching it down to the white ground, that this is your fault. This is the cause of many resigned sighs emerging from the lips of parents as they assess the damages that occur and learn to smile as a small, eager mind blooms and explores the world. There’s nothing to do but laugh about it.
Letting go of my expectations and need for perfection has been and will doubtless continue to be the greatest lesson of motherhood. In artistic pursuits, nothing has symbolized this obsession more concisely for me that the practice of drawing ellipses. There is no perfection too great for ellipses. This made it all the more amusing when I, not Ansel, was the one to break the first of my grandmother’s hand-painted dishes while I was separating bread slices with a butter knife to make him a piece of toast. In all the broken ellipses of my new chapter, I eventually see the beauty, and embrace this new gentleness with myself—a gift from my child.