Prompt 302. Unreasonable Love

Elizabeth Gilbert & Nancy Reddy on love that changes you

I’m Trying Something New—

As I navigate a new health challenge, I’m trying something new: a handful of brilliant friends will be filling in for me as guest-hosts of the newsletter every other week for the next month or so. For as long as I can remember, I’ve found my value in work—in pushing myself to do it whether I was sick or well. But as I wrote in my essay “Consider the Lilies,” the siren call of productivity takes a toll. Each moment becomes a stepping stone to the next, instead of its own exquisite gem. I need to make space for the ups and downs of chemo and to reserve some unstructured days for just living. 

I’m so excited to pass the mic to some of the most inspiring teachers and thinkers I know and for you to get to experience their words and wisdom. Today, in my stead, you’ll hear from the one and only Elizabeth Gilbert, host of the newsletter Letters from Love and author of such bestsellers as Big Magic, The Signature of All Things, and—of course—Eat, Pray, Love. I couldn’t dream of a better proxy, and I’m so grateful to Liz, and also to Carmen and Holly, who keep the Isolation Journals running smoothly, and last but certainly not least to this community, for riding the waves along with me. —Suleika

Hello friends!

It is my sweet honor this week to be writing the newsletter for my beloved friend Suleika—and to be writing about my favorite subject in the world: love.

First of all, Susu: I love you. Thank you for trusting me with your community, whom I also love.

May I reflect for a moment upon what I love most about my friend Suleika?

It is her love for dogs.

It is, dare I say, her ridiculous and totally out-of-control love for dogs. Suleika’s love for dogs long ago passed anything remotely resembling normal or reasonable—and that is why it’s so beautiful. “Abnormal” and “unreasonable” sorts of love are my favorite kinds of love.

Suleika’s terrible dilemma is that she cannot rescue all the dogs herself (although not for lack of trying!) and so she has taken it upon herself to become what she calls  “a rescue dog concierge.” This means that she basically runs an unpaid canine-human dating service, in which she connects the exact perfect person with the exact perfect rescue mutt, thereby—in an incredible magic trick of the heart—saving two lives at once. About six months ago, knowing this great talent that Susu has for connecting people with dogs (and also knowing that she trolls dog rescue websites all day long, searching for amazing pups), I sat her down and gave her the assignment of finding me the perfect dog.

“Be specific,” she instructed me. “Tell me exactly what you’re looking for, and I’ll find it.”

And so I got specific. I needed a travel-sized dog, I said, weighing between five and ten pounds, and incredibly adaptable to my roaming lifestyle. I needed a dog who is good with everyone—good with dogs, cats, children, other people. Please do not bring me a dog who needs even more psychological care and emotional support than I do. (I was still reeling, after all, from taking care of Suleika’s iconic terrier mutt Oscar for six months!) On the other hand, if the dog could look like Oscar, that would be a bonus. (Because: OSCAR!) The list went on: No puppies. Snuggly, but not a Velcro dog. Someone who loves to go for long walks and also wants to sleep in my arms. A best friend. A travel companion. A good soul. Smart and kind. Her name would be Pepita.

Four months later, Suleika texted me a photo of a tiny, gentle-eyed replica of Oscar. 

“I found your dog,” she said.

And so she had! I knew as soon as I saw that face: This was my Pepita! The only problem was that the dog was in Los Angeles, and Suleika and I were in New Jersey, and both of us had book deadlines.

So we did what any abnormal and unreasonable people would do. We got up the next morning at 4 a.m., drove to Philadelphia, grabbed a last-minute flight to LA, hurried over to the rescue center (shout out to Tobie’s!), picked up the best dog the world has ever known, slept one night in a motel by the airport (taking turns snuggling and cuddling this beautiful little fox-mouse of a creature), and flew home before dawn the next day.

As I write this, Pepita’s warm and tiny eight-pound body is zipped up right next to my leg—just where Oscar used to lie when I was writing or reading. In the three months that she has been with me, we have traveled all over the East Coast and up to Canada, and we just got back from our first (but not last!) adventure to Costa Rica. We spend approximately twenty-three hours a day within paw’s reach of each other. Pepita is the most perfect soul. She is not so much my child (although that doesn’t stop me from cradling her like an infant and carrying her around in a baby sling!) as my life’s companion. We read each other’s minds. When I tell her that someone is a friend, she believes me. She is chill with dogs, cats, and kids. We go for long runs in the woods, and she never needs a leash because she knows just how far to roam, and just how to run back to me at the slightest whistle. She has expanded my world enormously and caused me to spend many more hours outdoors than I would have without her. She has introduced me to new trails, new beaches, new mountains.

Pepita likes everyone, but she loves me. She loves me the most. She tells me so all the time. When I cry, she kisses my tears away—and not, I choose to believe, because she loves the taste of salt. She is perfect. She is everything I could have dreamed, and more. But of course she is perfect: Auntie Susu found her. 

Pepita in Costa Rica and with Auntie Susu

Our prompt this week is a beautiful meditation on love from Nancy Reddy, who writes about the miracle of learning how to “share attention” toward the world with her baby—on the two of them discovering the world together. I think our culture’s favorite definition of love is the romantic variety, which entails two people staring at each other, lost in each other’s gaze, oblivious to the rest of the world. But maybe there is a wider love than that—a healthier and better love than that. Maybe, as Nancy suggests in her essay, there is a kind of love that makes the world not disappear, but come into frame. A love that makes the world bigger. That causes you to see things you never saw before, to go places you would never go, to notice what had once been invisible. Four eyes, collecting the world together and loving it together. A shared distillation of the miracle of life.

Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Suleika. Thank you, Pepita.

Love to you all!

Liz

Some items of note from Suleika—

• On Wednesday I sent out a video replay of our artist talk for “The Alchemy of Blood,” my joint art show with my mom, Anne Francey. In it, we talked about how these works came into being and the meaning we make of them, and Anne gave us some mic-drop moments that left us all in awe of my brilliant maman. I hope you get a chance to watch it, and also to see the exhibit, which has an extended run. It’s up ‘til October 6 at ArtYard in Frenchtown, NJ!

• In case you missed our last meeting of the Hatch, our virtual hour for paid subscribers, our community manager Holly Huitt brought in a light, horizon-widening activity—you can find it at this recap of the gathering, “A Room with a View.” As for the next one, we’ve scheduled it for next Sunday, September 15 from 1-2pm ET. Hope you can join us!

via The Public Domain Review/Philadelphia Museum of Art

Prompt 302. The Patient Eye of Love by Nancy Reddy

Before my first son was born, I’d barely even held a baby, but all the mothers I knew swore that I’d be swept along by the instant, alchemical love I’d surely feel for him at birth. And I did love him. He was a wonder to me, his deep blue eyes and spiky dark hair, the lightbulb toes that were his father’s but also so clearly his own. But those first days and weeks of motherhood were like living with an unpredictable, angry stranger. He nursed and cried. He howled and slept and woke up screaming. I loved him and I cared for him but he didn’t seem to know me. He didn’t seem to love me back.

It’s hard to say exactly when that changed. His first smiles, for sure, the first giggles. But I remember one moment so clearly: he was sitting in his high chair in the kitchen, smearing yogurt across his tray, when his dad came in to change a lightbulb over the sink. The light was off, then the light was on. The baby looked at the light, locked eyes with me, and clapped. That light was a miracle to him, and we were sharing it. 

There’s a name for this, I’d learn later, from the wonderful book The Scientist in the Crib: joint attention. Between six and twelve months, most babies develop the capacity for joint attention, when they can shift between attention to an object or event and their caregiver’s gaze. Joint attention is an important developmental milestone, and the back-and-forth nonverbal communication it enables is an essential precursor of language development. It’s at the heart of what makes us human, what creates our species’ particular aptitude for planning and cooperation.

And even more than that, I’ve come to believe this practice of sharing attention is what love is. Through that first year, we walked the neighborhood together, the baby strapped into his stroller or bundled into a carrier on my chest. The seasons moved from the shocking chill of an upper midwestern winter to the slow bloom of spring. We watched the world together. I grew to know the way he’d wiggle and fuss when he was getting tired. He learned my voice and turned toward it when I picked him up at daycare. We learned each other through what Iris Murdoch calls “the patient eye of love.”

That baby is eleven now, and though we communicate in some ways more easily than in those first newborn weeks, we still don’t always understand each other, particularly as he heads into his moody pre-teen years. But getting to witness him becoming himself has been the most transformative love of my life. I’ve learned that love doesn’t have to be instant to be magic. 

Your prompt for the week:

Write about someone whose love has changed you. Or write about what love has helped you see. What have you seen differently through “the patient eye of love”?

If you’d like, you can post your response to today’s prompt in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals. As a reminder, we love seeing your work inspired by the Isolation Journals, but to preserve this as a community space, we request no promotion of outside projects.

Today’s Contributor—

Nancy Reddy is the author of The Good Mother Myth, forthcoming with St. Martin’s Press in January 2025. Her previous books include the poetry collection Pocket Universe and the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, which she co-edited with Emily Pérez. She writes the newsletter Write More, Be Less Careful. You can find her on Instagram @nancy.o.reddy.