On Home and Tea

Perhaps the house I felt ready for
wasn’t a physical place,
but an emotional one.

 

Perhaps my search for home
wasn’t over just yet.

— “Home Is a Cup of Tea”

Just a quick note to say I’m thrilled to see sketch artist Candace Rose Rardon’s illustrated essay, “Home Is a Cup of Tea,” up on Longreads this morning. At Automattic, I don’t just work at WordPress.com — I also edit stories at Longreads and work with awesome writers. It’s been especially fun to collaborate with people I respect and admire, like Vela founder Sarah Menkedick, who I interviewed a few years ago; and fellow writers from my MFA program, like Richard Gilbert, whose essays (“Why I Hate My Dog” and “Boom Boom Song”) I worked on over the past year.

I’ve never met Candace in person, though my husband Nick did when they crossed paths at the Book Passage travel conference last year. But I’ve followed her fantastic work for a number of years, early on mainly through the lens of travel writing, and in more recent years through her sketches and growing Moment Catchers community, which I follow on Instagram. As some of you know, I find most writing on travel and place incredibly banal, but I’ve always enjoyed Candace’s blend of illustration and writing.

I’m happy to have had the opportunity to work with Candace and edit an illustrated piece for the first time, which was fun. And because of its focus on finding home, I also found myself a bit more emotionally tied to the story, as it reminded me a lot of my own musings on home and love five years ago, before Nick came to the US.

Here’s the essay, which is a lovely, breezy read, especially for those of you on a long holiday weekend!