Jack with His Purple Star Eye

I pulled a doll out to draw and found myself tumbling through time

“And so it is with our own past. It is a labor in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.“ — Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Everything cycles and circles and comes around.

This is a mantra I carry, a chant, well-worn.

Sometimes the spiraling nature of existence is reassuring. Sometimes it is overwhelming. Sometimes you can see the overlay of rings, like the colorful concentric circles on a Dr. Seuss cover.¹ Sometimes you see yourself on the map, a little splotch in motion, see that there is an accident ahead, that there is a shortcut you can choose to ignore or a scenic route to follow, see that you are cresting an elevation and approaching a certain point again, anew, from a new ring, a slight shift in angle, a new evolution, a new iteration. Did you think you were moving forward?

Have I passed this house, this barn, this pizza place, this row of trees with flaming red bark, this hurt, this wishing, this lack of understanding before?

That we see new things, bring new perspective, a change of heart, shiny new awareness, the benefits of time or therapy, can lull us into forgetting the simple nature of the path, that days and months may be linear, but that existence may simultaneously be an endless circling. Both can be true at the same time because our search for understanding doesn’t have to follow rules of theoretical physics or general relativity.²

Back in 2004, I was on an operating table for a repeat c-section, a month early, and I remember the doctors and nurses all abuzz about the first gay marriages being performed on the steps of city hall. They wanted to know if we’d gone.³

That child walked in this week and said, “What’s that?”

It took me a minute to realize he was talking about Jack.

This week, a story about a homemade doll. Well, really, the story of there not being a story. But that is how stories are made.

Thank you to those who read last week as I marked two years of writing Illustrated Life.

I planned to just share a journal page today, but Jack brought my attention to the circle of days.

I hope you are moving forward, and making notes as you go. I hope, too, that as you reach points where you look back through the years, you pause and hold softly the passage of time.

Thank you for reading.

Amy

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Jack

My youngest walked in this week and said, “What’s that?”

It took me a minute to realize he was talking about Jack.

“That’s Jack.”

He had no idea who Jack was. “I made him for Matthew when he was little,” I said. “He had a whole set of clothes, with a flannel shirt and other pants.”

He wasn’t overly interested.

Back when I made Jack, Matthew wasn’t overly interested either. But I always really liked Jack.

I pulled Jack out of a basket in the bedroom one night this week when I was looking for something to draw. The plastic bin of bears is buried under piles of boxes that now take up most of the space between the door and the window, but Jack was peeking out of something closer.

Reachable.
Drawable.
Personal.

Jack looks a little worse for wear, and I don’t know why he has one purple star eye. I feel like he must have lost a black button eye somewhere along the way, as stuffed things do, and I must have replaced it with a purple star, but I can’t say why I did that. Why a purple star? I must have thought it was cute at the time, but that purple star disturbs me. It gives him the wrong feel.⁴

Jack is far, far from rock. Jack isn’t glam. Jack has no punk bones. Jack has no bones at all, but he has an incongruous purple star eye, a crop of spiky brown hair, a little stitched red mouth, a curve that almost perfectly echoes his round nose, and a smudge of something on his cheek that seems slightly gross.

I am glad he is dressed.

I mean, I prefer the doll in clothes to just a naked doll, yes, but I’m also glad that at least one set of clothes survived.

The rest of his clothes were probably weeded out at some point from where they were haphazardly stowed in the green catchall baskets.⁵

The little fleece shirt he is wearing is pretty cute, sky blue with a mock turtleneck with a lion and cat print in reds and oranges and red fleece elastic waist pants. The strings that give definition to his hands have popped, and there is a hole in one hand where the stuffing is coming out.

Jack needs a patch, some TLC.

I drew Jack in my journal. I really wanted to put him on a page all by himself, or at least on a new page. But I tucked him right into the small space available because that’s the way my journal works, and that’s what feels true to this process of documenting life. It’s just another drawing, a nightly drawing, but I feel like I need to draw him again. Maybe once more will get him out of my system.

That, or I’ll end up making new clothes.⁶ ⁷

This tension between chronology and a dedicated series, maybe even in a dedicated sketchbook, continues to derail drawing the bears. I’ve mixed a few into my journal, more as a way of trying to see if I can find the line.⁸

Jack is apparently twenty two years old.

In the scheme of things, he looks pretty good for his age. His hair held up well. It feels ironic given how much hair I lose each day.

I didn’t know that Jack was twenty two.

I didn’t remember until I found a random mention in a set of podcast notes from 2008, a mention of the doll made for one when he was two. But that was all, barely a whiff.

Puzzled that there wasn’t more detail, I searched for other notes. I was sure I had talked about Jack before. I thought I could hear echoes, but maybe not. Maybe I wrote about Jack farther back than my digging, notes lost to the analog void. Maybe I simply mentioned Jack a time or two, even last year in the oddball post, but never really talked about him.⁹

I have lost Jack’s story. That makes me sad.

I’m not even sure there was more story, but it feels like there had to be. I wonder what prompted me to make Jack? I wonder why we called him Jack? I guess the texture of Jack’s origin is lost. I wonder about the timing. Where did sewing Jack fall in the context of my second pregnancy? Was there already a Jack when we picked up our container of dry ice, the workers laughing at yet another pair of women coming with their small Igloo chest before going around the corner for the next pickup, when we drove the curvy road that last time for a weekend getaway, when I tried to paint a picture of a red barn at the place we stayed, when we couldn’t get through breakfast because he was so fussy, when we tried what we knew was our final try for a second child, when we knit one-hour hats on large needles, when we drove to the ER on the way home?

When in that year did Jack arrive?

It might seem now like Jack, although never loved the way he deserved, has served his purpose, but now that Jack is out of the basket and sitting on the couch, now that I’ve drawn Jack, now that I feel the absence of Jack’s story, I am attached.

I think, randomly, that I could make more clothes. I return to that thought while writing this piece. I see myself getting up and pulling out the sewing machine and making a new shirt from jackets and shirts I keep not getting rid of because I know the fabric could be turned into a pillow, a bear, or part of a patchwork quilt.¹⁰

Jack might be the only doll I’ve ever made. I’ve done a lot of sewing, and I’ve made a lot of different kinds of things, including most of my clothes when I was in graduate school. I made and sold pen pouches and patchwork pillows. I made collaborative quilts. I tried several handmade businesses, through the years. I’ve given away yards and yards of fleece that we had stockpiled in our last “get-rich making things” attempt. The scrap of lion print fleece Jack wears is probably all that remains of it. That bolt surely went, along with flag stripes and solids and orange daisies and leopard print and one with lizards.

I never sold dolls or bears. I’ve stashed worn out socks for years thinking I would make sock creatures, but they are too fiddly for me. I like things that are more freeform.

But I made Jack. I sort of remember picking out the fabric for Jack’s body. He isn’t just a regular muslin. I remember partly because I know there is another piece of doll body fabric buried somewhere in the cabinet, a pinker tone. I’ve run across it a few times and didn’t put it together with Jack, but I think it was related. Did I order more than one color at the time? Did I plan a second doll? What pattern did I use for Jack?¹¹

Oh! Jack has little star-print boxers under the red fleece sweatpants! I’m as surprised as you (which really scares me).

I made a list of all of the odds and ends kinds of things I made through the years. It’s a motley list, a sometimes surprising list. Dolls were never my thing.

I’ve always had a tendency to sew things together wrongly, backwards, or inside out.

It feels like there might have been an issue with Jack, arms sewed on backwards at first, or something like that, but those details are all gone. There’s just that little niggle of something that makes me think that making Jack was something we laughed about.

I look at Jack, and, yes, it is partly about the boys, and yet it is mostly about me, me wondering about the woman who made Jack. Who was I?

Who am I now?
This question has begun to haunt me.

I think about reading the Magic Treehouse books, about Jack and Annie. I think about reading the A-to-Z Mysteries. I think about Ziggy as our nickname when I was pregnant. I think of the glider with its denim blue cushions. I think of sitting in that chair and knitting a purple striped sweater, one I always thought of as my Penelope sweater, the night I went into labor.

There is a tumble within me of birthday parties at the bowling alley, a homemade Knight’s Kingdom Lego bingo card, Pokémon parties, weekly trips to the bookstore, and Sunday morning brunch at a restaurant that no longer exists.

Both boys have birthdays in the next span of days.

This year, they are both adults. This year, their birthdays remind me that I’m the only one left to watch, to see, to look back, to worry, to guide, to let go, and to feel their absence. I’m the only one left to weed through what remains, to sift.

I think Jack needs a new eye.

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Illustrated Journal Week 6 2025

Week 6 2025 journal spread in progress. A. Cowen, 2025

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Weekly Bits and Pieces

• Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 7 (2025)

• Postcard prompt #5

• Weekly diary list comic series

Related posts:

Postcard Prompt 5: Tree

Branching Threads, Overlaps, and Venn Diagrams

A Teddy Bear Project

Not all stories have a plot—Not Reading, But Didion and Jansson

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Made It?

Thank you for reading along! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

Such a simple thing like Jack can be such a conduit, a portal for memory and reflection. I think Jack may be a broken portal, but a portal nonetheless. I wonder to what degree we have the ability to have empathy for someone else’s touchstones. I know that I have read sweet stories in the last year of other people and either their own or their children’s affinity for certain stuffed things.

I spent time looking at patterns online. This may not be over.

I know, because I have written about bears in the past, that many of you have stories of special things you have kept that have a similar resonance for you. I hope you work these things into your journals.

Reach out to someone this week. Take that chance. It saddens me to realize how fragile the bonds of friendship can be.

As a general reminder: I draw with a small group on Sundays. If you are interested in being part of a casual group, please let me know.

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Thank you for reading Illustrated Life. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!

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1. Oh, The Places You’ll Go

2. Sometimes you log out of the app, bury it it in a drawer under piles of mismatched socks, masks, and underwear, trying to drown out the beeping of warnings, notifications, and, worse, silence.

3. Those marriages were later overturned. In looking at news about Obergefell v. Hodges being challenged in Idaho, I ironed out the dates, I felt like that question might have been part of the first delivery, but it was the second. Which time did I throw up?

4. The name Ziggy Stardust pops into my head, but that’s not right. It was KISS with the star. I was never that cool. These names are almost just words to me. Research gives me the phrase “glam rock.” Have I ever heard that before?

5. Although I can’t see myself having gotten rid of them, so it’s just a guess. It could be that I packed them away when I finally emptied those misshapen mesh toy baskets.

6. Yes, The Emperor’s New Clothes is an echo, never a favorite. But I was a fan of Halibut Jackson. I should find that one on the shelves and revisit. It’s been years. If you have kids, see if your library has it.

7. I was never one for dolls. All of this strikes me as slightly unhinged today.

8. I think they need to be separate, but I am not sure I have the time, or maybe the energy, to do them separately and illustrate my journal. This is a personal series about memory, about the process of understanding how things persist after someone dies, about holding on, and about piecing together the past.

9. I searched again before publishing, looking to see if I could turn up an email receipt for the fabric. It must have been an address I no longer have. What I found though was a note to my email list about Episode 35 and a sad doll. Maybe. I then went looking for a digital copy of notes from Episode 35. I thought I had a digital copy of my written notes (even though, for now, the website notes are gone). But maybe not. I couldn’t find 35 anywhere. Maybe it was a different sad doll, but Episode 35 would have been the first year of the podcast. Jack feels like something I would have talked about early on.

10. A few years ago, I did a long slow-stitching project, and then the next year, I tried to keep up with a stitch journal, one of my favorite projects, but not one I finished. I keep thinking about surface-stitching over an existing Ugly doll. I was so convinced about that as a viable and awesome project that I tried one time and found that it didn’t work the way I expected. I have another Ugly doll sitting on the couch now and fished out the other one. I might try again.

I’ve also spent far too many hours contemplating covering existing bears with pieces of fabric cut from clothing, just patchworking pieces in place right on top of the bear. I know, in theory, this won't work, but I still feel compelled. I don’t really want to make a bear. I want, instead, to layer on top of one.

11. Now that is a question that might drive me to go looking. Everything falls out of that cabinet when I disturb anything, but I think there may be clues.