I Threw Away a Drawing and Then Dug It Out of the Trash

Dear Delyara, It was just a scribble. A quick one. Marker on printer paper. Something my daughter handed me while I was stirring sauce and answering a work text and saying “That’s beautiful, honey” without really seeing it. Later, when I was clearing the table, I tossed it in the trash with the junk mail. Ten minutes after that, I went back and pulled it out. Not because it was great art. Because I suddenly imagined her asking where it went, and worse, I imagined her not asking because she had already started learning that adults lose things children mean with their whole hearts. So I smoothed it back out on the counter and cried while scraping dried rice into the sink. I don’t think the crying was really about the drawing. I think it was about how close I always feel to failing in ways no one sees until years later.