Ever since I started blogging back in 2009 or ‘10, I have enjoyed the annual tallying of life events. And now, my winter doesn’t feel complete without a “year in review” post.
So this is it. Get yourself a cup of coffee, or perhaps a more…reflective…drink ;)
I realize that these types of posts are quite self-indulgent, and that you have a reality completely different from mine - but I hope you will still find some entertainment and insight in what I’m about to write. Sharing our experiences is one of the most human things.
Looking back at this year about to end, two things stand out to me: a tragic one and a happy one. I wrote about both of them at length in my “Love in the Time of War” post. The war in Ukraine and my wedding.
Here is the rest.
January
Sometime in late December ‘21, I get asked if I’d like to teach architecture at the local university. Surprising as this is, I have always wondered what it would be like to teach at the higher education level. It was one of the career choices I considered at some earlier part of my life but never pursued.
So, after some deliberation and check-ins with my business and life partners, I say yes. It helps that the commitment is limited to one class, one semester, very much defined scope. Let’s see what it’s all about.
Due to leftover covid policies, the first two weeks of the class are online. It’s brutal. I spend a full week before the class starts learning the ropes of the university’s remote learning delivery system and preparing my course content.
Thankfully, I’ve had a lot of virtual meeting practice by now. The very first class, although nerve-wracking for me, goes smoothly. I feel like I just finished a marathon.
Sac State card
They call me “Professor Watts.”
There is a sense of…not quite responsibility…maybe debt that I feel when it comes to teaching. Like I am trying to single-handedly undo the trauma of architecture school that I experienced.
Most of my students are women. How many female architecture professors have I had? Maybe one. How many of them were first-generation immigrants? None.
I know that it’s a huge task to represent, be approachable, and instill a sense of “this, too, shall pass” into the very abstract and self-important world that higher architecture education is. But I am proud of myself for moving the needle just a little tiny bit.
All of that being said, I do not re-enlist to teach another semester. My architecture practice needs my undivided attention and the stress of keeping up with both was getting to be too much.
I feel a blog post on the power of saying “no” brewing.
February
February starts with a celebration of sparkSTUDIO’s birthday. My firm turns 2. We light sparklers!
sparkSTUDIO birthday celebration
The rest of the month is taken by preparations for my upcoming wedding (and that of my brother, who decides to schedule his wedding two weeks before mine). Getting ready for two weddings at the same time is exhausting.
On February 24, Russia strikes Ukraine. My heart sinks. I am disoriented and paralyzed for weeks.
March
I used this sketch of Erik and myself on our wedding invitations
The war spills into March, and every month since. As a Ukrainian immigrant, I am struck by the survivor’s guilt, a particularly painful variety of an alternate reality. It could have been me sheltering my children in bathtubs, basements, and subway stations. Those could have been my brothers taking up arms and defending our country. I could have been living in any of the targeted cities - I used to be a regular on the overnight Odesa-Kyiv train.
The guilt makes me freeze up, strapped to the steady drip of news. Most of them bad, with an occasional injection of hope and even humor. Ukrainians have a sense of humor even in the darkest times. I can’t move.
I go through the motions, because the alternative is the depression paralysis. I get up and take the kids to school and I work. But any plans beyond tomorrow seem to be locked up beyond a door I can’t open. Today matters. Next week? Who knows what happens next week.
And yet, the weddings do happen. My brother gets married, and two weeks later, so do I.
My wedding is, of course, way better than his ;)
Tea time sketch at the New York Edition hotel
April
Our New York City honeymoon is beautiful. This is my third time here:
First, just an aerial view of Lady Liberty and an overnight stay at a motel as a refugee on the way to California.
Second, many years later, several days at an architecture conference, my first solo trip after being married for eleven years. The trip when I finally realized I had to get a divorce or else I wouldn’t make it.
And now, the third time, a new beginning. A perfect bookend to a chapter in my life.
We come back home in time to celebrate Katia turning 10. She is such an amazing, beautiful, bright human.
May
Sketching at Bodega Bay
May is busy with work. Seriously, looking at my photos from May, it’s pretty much just snapshots of “existing conditions” (industry term for already-built stuff), basements, attics, measurements, sketches, and pictures of my kids sprinkled throughout. It still blows my mind to see this evidence of a functioning, successful architecture firm that I started from scratch.
June
June brings Father’s Day, Erik’s birthday, and my dad’s birthday. It’s basically a father-figure conspiracy month. Erik and I take a short trip to Bodega Bay, a sleepy coastal town with ties to Hitchcock’s The Birds. (My cinephile husband thinks of all of our destinations in terms of movies).
July
Summer is in full swing when July comes. School is out, summer camp is in. Erik plays a show, and it’s great, despite his protests. We take the kids to a production of Beauty and the Beast, starring Erik’s daughter, who is an amazing singer herself.
August
The main event of August is my son turning 13. He is tall, handsome, and full of mystery. I see him turning into a young man before my eyes. (And all of my kids just luuurve Starbucks. A new one was built from scratch and opened across the street from our house. Highlight of the year ;) ).
September
September, as usual, means my birthday. I give myself the gift of a few days off and an encaustics webinar. I’ve wanted to try encaustics for a long time, but couldn’t swing it when the kids were younger (hot surface, blow torches, fumes…you know). But now, I buy a live course by an encaustic artist I’ve been watching for a while (and I once literally begged her to sell me a small demo piece during her Seattle studio visit).
Encaustics experiments
Encaustics is fun. I learn the basics, and very quickly become frustrated with the slow pace of the course, along with the artist’s unwillingness to share a more “advanced” technique that is her signature style.
Through a little bit of googling and reverse engineering, I learn that technique, too.
I vent to my husband about this artist’s stinginess…Which I’ve encountered before. Artists holding their cards close to the vest for fear of getting copied, or somehow taken advantage of. Trade secrets. Spy games. Scarcity mindset.
I think generosity is a better way to live. Don’t you?
My sketch of Katia at the beach
We return to Bodega Bay, this time with our kids. We stay at a “modern yurt” house, which is made up of two round “yurt” volumes connected by a more conventional rectangular core. It’s a curious place - at night, you can see the stars in the round skylight at the top of the yurt, and when it rains, you hear the rain all around you.
October
In October, we host an epic yard sale (the kids loooove yard sales) and my musician husband plays another show. It’s a blast. I love his voice and the passion he brings into everything he does.
And did I mention he published a book? I watch him work on it, methodically, little by little, on weekends and after work, for almost a year. He reads it to me at night, to iron out the language and get my feedback (though I do tend to sometimes fall asleep when he reads to me ;).
And while the book is not completely autobiographical, a lot of it allows me glimpses into his mind, both when he was growing up and now. It’s a well-told coming-of-age story. The man is a fantastic storyteller, yet another talent in his arsenal.
What else to do during presentations but sketch the beautiful architecture? Julia Morgan would approve.
The last weekend of October is taken by the Monterey Design Conference - a work-related getaway to Asilomar. It’s simultaneously relaxing and intense. I miss my husband and kids within the first two days. I sketch furiously, feeling my tired brain stretch out and enjoy the moment.
November
We celebrate Ella’s birthday in November, just after Halloween, which is also the 19th anniversary of my immigration. I do some mental math and realize that in just a few years, the scales will reach an equilibrium- I will have spent as much of my life in the U.S. as back in Ukraine.
December
Once December hits, I am ready for winter break. I “save up” vacation time throughout the year to take two full uninterrupted weeks off around the holidays. By American standards, this is indulgent. By European ones, it’s laughable.
Whatever it is, I enjoy unplugging from social media and letting my email go unanswered.
We have way too many holiday parties, between various parents and other family members. I feel a meltdown coming: me plus lots of people, plus no me-time, plus stuff I “have to” do, minus a quiet place to do the stuff I want to do - equals low, low, low mood.
Black and red sunflowers, a meditation on the war in Ukraine.
I wish I were a different person, someone who loves being there for others, someone who enjoys spending their “free” time interacting. Instead, I long for solitude. I feel the need to save my energy, whatever little I have left, and burrow into some dark, warm corner. Maybe I’m secretly a small hibernating animal.
And yet, I also love this time of year. I enjoy giving gifts. I crave the labor-intense holiday foods I grew up with: kutya (the cold and sweet Ukrainian “Christmas soup”); kulebyaka (the cabbage-stuffed savory pie); apple strudel with paper-thin crust and powdered sugar; red caviar on everything. It’s a comfort thing for the angry, hurting, homesick Ukrainian in me.
Two colors dominate the Ukrainian culture. No, they are not the blue sky and golden wheat fields of the now-ubiquitous flag, though those are also important. In the long history of Ukraine (longer than that of Russia, if you can believe it), the two colors are red and black.
Black stands for tragedy and sorrow. There has been plenty of that, usually thanks to some king or another, who decides to come, conquer and destroy our land. This war is nothing new.
Red stands for love and happiness. Love of a mother for her child, love of a woman for her man, love of a man for the land he was born in. All these loves are cross-stitched with a red thread into our lives.
And that’s what I think about when I look back at last year: black and red patterns. Love running through all of it, like a river.