A Day In The Life

This book offered me the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone,  as a writer and a creator of art. I’d heard about the Art House Co-Op in Brooklyn, New York and their ongoing creative projects, projects that primarily centered around art.

I decided to dive in and create something for their Sketchbook – Fiction project, which was a combination of writing (although not on a mechanical device like a computer) and artwork. They offered a list of possible titles to work from, and for some unknown reason in the moment, I chose A Day in the Life.

For weeks it seemed, this title rolled over and over again in my mind, leaving me wondering what it could possibly become. I continued coming up blank. Magically one day, the muse kicked in and voilà the idea suddenly spoke loudly and clearly to me.

My mother, Lillian, was turning 95 in the upcoming year and we were throwing her a party where, as it turned out, over 100 people showed up to be part of the big celebration.

I asked myself, “What if this book was told from my mother’s point of view, recounting this one day in her life and what she was experiencing?” Memories would come flooding back and it would be her story, her life told over the backdrop of a single day.

For this reason, you’ll see that I started the book “34,702 Days…that’s how long she had lived” and how the story unfolded effortlessly from there. It was a photographic and written tribute to my incredible mother. It was both joyful and challenging to actually create the book.

All the participants started on equal ground, using a Moleskin notebook supplied by the Art House Co-Op. I was way outside my comfort zone and although writing the actual content was easy, rendering much of it hand-written over computer type to fit the small pages, was interesting to say the least. Creating the artwork and embellishing the photos was incredible fun and amazingly freeing. And a trip down memory lane.

It was a thick and juicy tribute to my mother, and the book received a lot of love as I had the pleasure of showing it to many people before it left for New York. The finished book was a joyfully visual cornucopia of textures, colour and words, and I was actually a bit sad to send it off to New York to become part of the permanent collection in Brooklyn.

I’m delighted I chose to have it digitalized, so others can now read and see my mother’s wonderful life journey!

Enjoy A Day in The Life!