I Drew a Terrible Little House and Loved It Anyway

Dear Delyara, It was crooked. The windows were uneven. The tree beside it looked like broccoli. If a child had brought it home from school, I would have praised it sincerely and then forgotten it in a stack of papers by morning. But I drew it. And I loved doing it. Not because it was good. Because it had no purpose. No one needed it. Nothing depended on it. No one’s comfort or future or dinner or emotional stability was riding on whether I finished. That made the whole thing feel almost holy. I think women are starved of purposeless joy in ways that don’t get named enough. So much of what we make is in service of someone else. Yesterday I made one small stupid drawing only for me. That felt bigger than it should have. Maybe because it wasn’t small at all.