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I had a little boy on the first day of September. 

It was as though I left the hot fog of pregnancy late in summer and awakened to a wide-open unknown. It was also a realization of a change bigger than motherhood. The narrative of adult life that I wove for myself as a child has peeled away, year after year. As a girl, I felt sure I was a simple protagonist, that the usual conventions of government and society would deliver a predictable plot. But step by step the real story unfolds differently. Now, I find myself in an unscripted tale, like a huge field of clover and broom grass. It is lush with possibility; but also vulnerable and dangerous. The coyote, the owl, and the hawk, they all know this place. 

My college roommate taught me to chirp, “Rabbit, rabbit!” as I hop out of bed on the first day of each new month. It’s an old and poorly documented tradition for summoning good luck at a new beginning. September 1st, 2021 was a big rabbit, rabbit for me. But these beginnings and awakenings keep coming. Here we are in a new month, a new season. In this new story, I am tuning my senses to take in the world as it is, rather than expecting it to be anything more. I am determined to create my luck in this new future.

I made this set of artworks about teetering over the threshold. Come with me. Slip under the fence, through the weeds and the tall grass, like a rabbit into the garden.

-Elizabeth Noble, April 2022