I have never seen a yellow-rumped warbler in real life, though I feel like I have because of the hundreds of photos I’ve looked at. They are small, stout creatures with a pronounced beak. The black feathers surrounding their eyes make them appear more like deer than birds. They carry daisy-yellow patches on their crown, breast, and occasionally throat. The brightness of the patch eclipses the rest of its body, and sometimes, when I spend a while looking at its meek frame, it is as if the essence of the animal itself lies in its simplicity. I would like to think if I were a bird, I would be a yellow-rumped warbler, if only because it migrates straight-shot through New England up north to Canada, where I am from.
***
On my mother’s side, I come from a lineage of artists. My mother has been a designer since before I was born, and her mother has been teaching painting lessons for over 40 years to thousands of students. I refer to my grandmother as Bubby.
My Bubby is my closest confidant. She has been an artist all her life. She works primarily with oil, painting, and assemblage. Though I have always known my Bubby as a painter, only recently have I come to understand her as a literary artist; she writes poems, fragments, clips, short stories. When the pandemic first hit, and she could not access her painting studio, she joined writing groups with other people her age in her hometown of Montreal.
***
People tend to hate email: the idea of having to sort through dozens and dozens of spam, emails you don’t want to receive, bills, appointment confirmations, messages dubbed URGENT when they are anything but. But it provides a lifeline between me and my Bubby.
I, too, only began my journey as a writer in the last decade. (Of course, this is because I am 21.) But even as I pursue a so-called traditional, formal writing education here at Brown, on the so-called ‘usual’ path, what I find I learn from and gain the most support through is my Bubby, in ways that I did not initially expect, and, in my understanding, can only come down to the symbiosis in our relationships, disrupting all expected timelines of us.
***
The yellow-rumped warbler enjoys the snow. It relies on family to sustain itself by working as a group to collect seeds and fruits, find hibernating trees to spend time in as the winter grows darker and the days grow shorter. In groups, they migrate during the winter, surviving on bayberries as they slog up north, farther away from me, closer to Montreal, French-speaking territory, where my Bubby resides, writing, painting, continuing her Künstlerroman at 86.
***
Though I'm only a few hundred miles away from my Bubby now that I live in Rhode Island, I project a vision of migratory patterns in our relationship.
Whenever I have a new piece, the first person it goes to is my Bubby. I often wake up in the mornings afterwards to messages sent by her at 2 or 3 a.m. Some facts: She is the most vivid and attentive reader I know. She has the stamina to recall excerpts in narratives that I could only dream of. She grasps my aesthetic in a way no one else does.
In my vision, I see her placing bird feed in my beak, the taste of food and support so delicious I can’t help but squeak.
I can recall FaceTime and phone calls with her throughout these past five years, as she debriefs her workshop with me. They didn’t understand this point, I recall her saying over the static line. But do you?
Her intention is rarely explicit but scattered, imagined, constructed over time—in the way artists’ brains often work. Since there is an established amount of trust between us, we subvert the typical older-mentor–younger-mentee relationship. Instead, I see us as having a symbiotic, necessary relationship that allows us to flourish in spite of it all. I am interested in exploring older artists who are still in the process of ‘coming-of-age,’ a group that is often disregarded.
***
9/20/25
HI COOKIE,
WILL TRY TO REACH YOU TONIGHT. SOMEHOW I DIDN'T GET THE LAST PIECE YOU
WROTE . SEND IT , I THINK MUMMY SENT IT BUT MAYBE I ERASED IT BY ACCIDENT.
YOU SOUND GOOD ON THE PHONE,
I AM SENDING YOU THE LAST VERSION OF MY STORY, ‘DOLL,’ GOING TO PUKE ON IT ALREADY !!
LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK !!
CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN, LOVE YOU SOOO MUCH,
BUBBY.
8/25/25
LOVING STORY
it keeps going, rambling , i love the style, while getting to know ava, lucas and clem,
a pool of feathers, where do you get your phrases , always original and fascinating.
the style kind of puts me in another state of mind,i know this sounds crazy, like
Proust , like there is no end to the moodiness.
emotions. i'm enjoying.
Don't read Doll yet, obviously , i'm not normal, have to make changes again. i must be sick
love you so much, your bubby.
8/12/25
SO HAPPY TO SEE THAT WONDERFUL PICTURE OF YOU IN MY PHONE LAST NIGHT.
A LITTLE AFRAID TO SEND MY PIECE FOR FEAR IT WILL COME OUT IN THE COMPUTER IN ONE LONG SENTENCE, AS IT ALREADY DID
SENT TO A FRIEND.
BUT I AM GOING TO DO IT COPY AND PASTE.
SCARED TO SEND IT TO YOU THE BRILLIANT ONE.
CALL ME BACK AFTER YOU READ IT, YOU CAN READ IT TO MUM.
LOVE YOU SOOOO MUCH. SO PROUD OF YOU
BUBBY
IF IT COMES OUT WRONG IN THE WRONG FORMAT DON'T READ IT I WILL FIGURE OUT A WAY
5/3/25
I READ YOUR PIECE QUICKLY, AND THEN MUM CALLED AND I WILL READ IT AGAIN.
AGAIN THE IMAGERY , EMOTIONS, ARE SO WELL DEPICTED. AMAZING, DEPICTED A STUPID WORD.I
MEAN SHOWN, FELT. INCREDIBLE!!
half lids, ribs, ect. ect.
excuse the tYping.
YOU HAVE SUCH AN UNUSUAL, VISCERAL DEEP, WAY OF DESCRIBING ANYTHING. it's FANTASTIC!!!!
YES VISCERAL , THAT'S WHAT I MEAN TO SAY.
I think that's WHAT MAKES YOUR STYLE. I THINK I NEVER READ ANYTHING LIKE IT.!!
I WANT TO READ IT AGAIN , SLOWLY, KIND OF DEVOUR IT, SO I CAN COMMENT.
VERY PROUD,
YOUR BUBBY
***
And sometimes, as the world appears to be crumbling beneath us, we share honesty:
3/18/25
HI GORGEOUS,
HOW ARE YOU , THINKING OF YOU. IT'S BUBBY.
WONDERING WHY I AM BOTHERING DOING THIS TODAY.
FEELING DISCOURAGED. AN ANT KEEPING ME COMPANY ON THE SILL.
HAVE TO GO MY WRITING GROUP , DON'T FEEL LIKE LISTENING.
I'M IN A BAD MOOD!!!
SENDING A SHORTENED VERSION OF PAOLO TO MUMMY, AND SHE WILL SEND IT TO YOU.
GIVE ME YOUR HONEST OPINION.
THEN I DID ANOTHER LONGER VERSION, I WILL SEND IT ANOTHER TIME SO
YOU DON'T GET CONFUSED. LOL.
I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TWINS STORY, MORE EXCITED ABOUT THAT ONE.
CAN'T STAND MYSELF ANYMORE . SEND ME SOMETHING GENIUS OF YOUR OWN
LOVE YOU SO MUCH BUBBY
***
Then, there is the inevitable reverse.
Don’t read my story yet! I proclaim to her over the phone. I made edits and changed it since I last sent you… I know… I know, yes, we are crazy about this stuff… it’s okay, okay yes I’ll call you later once you’ve read it. You’re changing yours too? Ok! Love you. Bye.
***
When the yellow-rumped warblers eventually reach Canada, they find suitable coniferous and mixed forests. They nest and raise their young. They forage: caterpillars, insects, fruits they digest like wax myrtles in the process. Uniquely, they thrive in northern habitats precisely because of how attuned they are to adaptation.
***
I have had many conversations with friends about how the publishing industry seems to have a fetish for young talent. There is a pervasive cultural notion—that I am working to unlearn—that publishing young is a win for society and the literary public consciousness. But what about those whose paths are not so standard?
Older women in particular are burdened with the notion of archiving their work, even as the world has not always taken them seriously, especially when they were first “coming of age.” The traditional art world has been “failing them” for decades, and the state of the literary art world, too, illustrates the experience of ageism. My Bubby, working at the crossroads of these mediums, demonstrates a topology of being that comes with age, wisdom, practice, and most of all, grit.
There are timelines. They are socially prescribed, constructed, not not to be followed, but subverted.
***
My Bubby is one of the most prolific writers I know. She writes nearly every day. She is stylistically and formally inventive. The highlight of my writing career thus far has not been my own growth but being able to apply some of the techniques I have learned in workshop with her work. We speak about trusting your gut, your reader. She tells me about her interest in world-building. We work together to read pieces aloud, cheer, scream, cry.
She utilizes experimental narrative structure. She links images through repetition and revision over time. She leans toward modernist prose. Have you read Swann’s Way? she constantly asks. She is a fan of slow character building, setting up traps for the reader. Most of all, she sticks up for herself.
To my ear, I need my poetic wildness, she recently declared to me, referring to a recent story, against the wishes of a workshop-mate.
In my literary arts training, I am often discussing the perks and perils of the workshop format. It can leave you drained, confused, and threatened. It can improve your work in ways you couldn’t have expected. It is tiresome and reliant on the people and peers around you. In a fiction workshop last semester, I read excerpts of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation (1966), which helped me think through the ways content and form are related not just in visual art but literary works, too. My class concluded that often, in literary works, logic is a feeling rather than a ‘truth’ that can be deconstructed.
My Bubby is no fan of her traditional workshop, even as it keeps her writing. They just don’t get it, I can still hear her say over the phone, frustrated at what her peers with different tastes did not grasp in her story or poems. In a sense, her work, too, resists interpretation, positing itself as an inheritance of feeling.
Recently, she has gone back to her painting studio, granted access to it again post-pandemic.
My sense of what to do next is still there, she explained to me over the phone. It’s like the work tells you what to do.
***
The yellow-rumped warbler completes its migration when it accumulates enough fat to make it through the winter. They can digest wax in berries, which allows them to winter farther north. As fall approaches, I’d like to imagine the warbler carries messages between me and my Bubby. Above the trees and clouds separating us, I envision the berries holding messages between us, sustaining our practice, providing the material conditions for her to become an ‘artist’ even as she always has been, and always will be.
