The Red Maple
Dear Friends,
I’m on my way to the hospital. It’s the middle of the day, wedged between two performances of Elf the Musical. I work part-time at the performing arts center—a retirement job that helps supplement our income and keeps me connected to the arts. This morning I was ushering a matinee; tonight I’ll be back for the evening show. In between, I have four hours to drive north and see my son. It’s the day before his surgery, and the worry has already settled in like a second shadow.
They offered to cover for me so I could be with him, but I needed to work. I needed something to quiet the noise in my head, some ordinary routine to hold onto while everything else feels uncertain. I’d rather be in the studio, lost in the scritch of pencil on paper, the slow rhythm of color mixing, the peaceful certainty of making something. But every time I pick up my sketchbook, guilt creeps in. It feels wrong to make art when he’s in pain. And yet being around people all day—mostly strangers—is its own kind of exhaustion. I long for the stillness of that creative space, the refuge of my own mind.
The weather seems to echo my anxiety. Last week, the hills were blazing with gold and red—the brief peak of autumn’s glory. Now the rains have come, and the color has drained from the world. Along the highway stands a red maple I’ve been watching all week. When my son was first admitted, it was brilliant—flaring against the gray sky like a promise. Today it’s bare, its branches sharp against the clouds. The sight makes me ache. How quickly something bright and alive can seem to vanish overnight.
We have to hold close the fleeting moments before they fall away.
Lately, that thought has taken me back to when my son was small—those early years that felt endless at the time but, looking back, were gone in a blink. I remember how he never walked anywhere—he ran. He ran toward everything: curiosity, laughter, the next thing that caught his attention. I remember how I used to imagine that, when he got older, we’d go jogging together. I wanted to share that joy with him—the feeling of wind and rhythm, of simply being alive in motion. But Crohn’s disease took that kind of energy from him, and I’ve had to let that dream go.
Tomorrow he’ll be in surgery. It’s a specialized procedure—one that’s been around for only a couple of decades and done in relatively few hospitals. The odds are good, the team is skilled, but there’s still that small, terrible word that never leaves a parent’s mind: risk. My imagination can’t stop circling it, testing its edges, as if worrying hard enough could keep it away.
In the middle of all that worry, I keep thinking of a book a friend gave me before he was born—Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. In it, a mother sings to her son through the stages of his life, promising she’ll love him forever. Eventually, he grows up, and when she grows frail, he cradles her and sings the same song back. It’s a tender story, but also a sad one—a reminder that love carries us through the cycle of life, right up to its end.
Now, standing where I am, that story feels turned inside out. I’m the one still strong, and he’s the one who’s been unwell for so long. I don’t know what the future holds, only that I love him with that same fierce, enduring love, and that love will outlast whatever comes.
Love is what keeps the story going—through joy and ache, through all the chapters we never planned to write. My creative side feels the pull of the studio right now, but an even greater pull keeps me here: the pull of a mother’s true masterpiece—her child.
Now, as I drive past that red maple along the highway once more, its branches bare against the gray sky, I remind myself that it hasn’t really lost anything—it’s just preparing for another season. In time, its leaves will return, as brilliant as those that fell. That thought gives me hope. And truth be told, I’ve never stopped believing in happy endings.
Warmly,
Anni
P.S. Last week I wrote about what I learned at the Johnson City Zine Fest on the Realmscapes blog. You can find that post here. I haven’t updated the shop with anything new recently but the freebie download “What’s a zine?” is still available at Studio Second Street. It was very popular at Zine Fest! I plan on getting the other popular titles up there as soon as life gets back to quasi-normal. Thanks for being patient and for supporting my work!