A Full Yellow Cart
All month, your inboxes, both digital and physical, have been filled to overflowing with end-of-year recaps, well-wishes, and invitations to buy things on sale. This missive comes to you with no discount codes, but plenty of warm New Year’s tidings (and also a big hello after a lengthy hiatus).
Even though it’s been awhile, this is still Metaforia. I’m not just going to say “hey, auld lang syne, everybody.”
No, I’m going to tell you a story about a yellow rolling cart from IKEA.
I bought the cart in the fall of 2024, in the final weeks of my pregnancy, after waffling about it for months (mostly because of how much I money I was spending on every single imaginable thing). It had three levels, and I even sprang for the wooden lid that turned the top tier into a closable storage area. I have a vivid memory of struggling to screw the cart together myself in the early days of my maternity leave, the massive, immovable heft of my body and the swell of my carpal-tunnel fingers making the simple task into a Herculean one (and let’s be real: Hercules could never). I was sitting in my new living room at the time, watching the movie version of Guys and Dolls (the one with Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando) which I only mention to paint a more complete picture.
I had a plan for the cart, something I’d been reading about on Facebook groups, message boards, Instagram posts; all the places where a modern woman tries to cram for motherhood. The idea was that it would be a nursing cart, where I could keep spare pump parts, various balms, and (most importantly) lots of snacks. Also, since I knew there was a fair chance I’d need a C-section, I had the idea that I could initially use it as a kind of postpartum crash cart, where I could keep…I don’t know, ice packs? Tylenol? Whatever it is that a person who has just has their insides rearranged needs. I’d never had surgery before.
My C-section did happen, earlier than planned and in an emergency context (preeclampsia, to put it briefly). Lots of preparations had been made. But beyond its assembly, the cart had not been part of those preparations. It never got sweetly, neatly stocked with supplies and sustenance. My first weeks home, that top compartment housed all my medications: for pain, for upset stomach, for constipation, and (most importantly) for blood pressure. Gradually, I began stuffing protein bars in the bottom shelf as it occurred to me. The middle shelf held my newly acquired home blood pressure monitor, stuffed on top of whatever else had accumulated there.
A few months into 2025, my breastfeeding and pumping adventure ended.1 The cart now needed a new purpose. The first and most obvious option was “additional horizontal surface.” As is the way with horizontal surfaces, stuff started to accumulate. Burp cloths. Bottles. Pacifiers. A fan. After a time, board books. I’d started reading at bedtime, first to squirming and inattentive sleepyheads, then to little page grabbers and cover-closers, and eventually to wide-eyed bookworms.
The bottom shelf became a home for their books. The middle shelf still held the blood pressure monitor, which was now an item of some interest to tiny button-happy fingers. It made a fun noise when you pressed it in the right spot.
As the babies began to crawl, the cart posed a new problem: it rolled, so it could be pushed, possibly over tiny, crushable fingers. I needed some kind of wheel-stoppers. Over the course of far too many weeks, I found out that what I needed existed, that I could buy them in person near me; I bought them; I brought them home; I set them on top of the cart.
The babies learned to stand. The caster cups (that’s what they’re called) urgently needed to be opened and placed, I mean for God’s sake, what are you waiting for? Someone could really hurt themselves. The babies loved to use the cart to pull up to a stand, and I sometimes worried it would topple over on top of them. Maybe they’d fall. And eventually, they did fall (though the cart never did). They got up again. And went back to the cart for more.
The babies learned to cruise (this is the step between standing and walking, where a baby can confidently walk if they are holding on to something for support). My daughter realized that she could push the cart around (because Mom still had not opened the damn caster cups). I had to set the fan (which was plugged into the wall) on the floor so it wouldn’t crash to the ground when she inevitably pushed the cart straight back into her nursery, as far as she could push it before the wall stopped her progress. She started doing this multiple times a day.
The babies learned to walk (this milestone is very new as I write). They still push the cart around, but not as much, because they don’t need to. It’s much more fun to leave it where it is and pull things off of its shelves. Occasionally they’ll even put things ONTO the shelves.
When we left California last week for the holidays, the cart’s bottom shelf held both Goodnight Moon (theirs) and Gilead (mine). The blood pressure cuff2 was in the middle shelf, but the monitor itself had been relocated (by my son) to the floor by the bedroom door. The tabletop lid had an empty coffee mug on it that I should have put in the kitchen sink. Under that lid, in the top compartment? Still all my postpartum medication, untouched for months at this point. The caster cups lie unopened on the floor of the nursery. My daughter likes to play with the package, though she may have recently grown past that interest.
It’s quite a curriculum vitae for a piece of IKEA furniture. Yet, every time I look at this cart, there is a part of me that pangs with a mixture of disappointment, guilt, and regret. Over a cart. I never stocked it nicely with recovery supplies. I didn’t follow through on my babyproofing plans. I should have come up with a better way of using it.
My intrusive cart-thoughts are true. But they are also immaterial. No, I didn’t use it for its idealized purpose, in a way that maximized its utility, streamlined its functionality, and unlocked its aesthetic possibilities. And yet, I used it. WE used it — use it — every day. We used it as it was, and it was what we needed it to be. It could have been more, perhaps. But it was enough.
When 2025 began, my children were 12 weeks old. I didn’t make resolutions for the year; I barely made plans beyond our return home from New Mexico. As the year has continued, I’ve felt myself — the planner, the dreamer, the secretly ambitious creative — come back online.
I’ve wanted to write to you time and time again. I had a whole plan to tell you about the top 5 places we stayed on my solo road trip from LA to Coastal Oregon for the 4th of July. There was going to be a great story about the motel in Ashland, OR, where the front desk clerk booked a new guest to the same room I was just getting us settled into. An unknown older man unlocked our door and walked right in, startling both me and himself, and saying of the situation, “thank goodness you were decent!”
I definitely should have written to you when I gave not one but two summer sermons at my church, All Saints’ Beverly Hills. Also when I finally wrote the first act of a play after only making glancing blows at the thing for years. It was read at InHouse Theatre’s staging of new work, in which I also performed a monologue on motherhood (not written by me).
I didn’t write to you. I didn’t finish the play (yet). I didn’t restart Sweet Valley Diaries (yet). The truth is, I’m a little nervous to set firm goals around any of it for 2026, because of how much it might disappoint me to miss those goals. And yet, look at all I accomplished in the slivers of time available to me this past year. It could have been more, perhaps. But it was enough.
I think being afraid to set goals is dangerous. Goals save us from stagnation, and from the deep regret of never having tried. But for myself, and for you, my wish is that whatever goals we set in the year ahead, we remember that this life is not about maximization and streamlining, and it is almost never ideal. It’s about showing up and attempting to get — and give — what is needed.
May you have enough of whatever it is that you need in the year ahead.
PS: If you’re curious about those sermons I mentioned, you can watch them below:
The first one was inspired by a Dr. Seuss-related mystery.
The second is a bit more serious, about the challenges and demands of claiming a Christianity of justice and mercy at this moment in history.
It was an immense (honestly, an insane) privilege to be a part of the summer preaching team at All Saints’, and it was SO HARD to find the time to write and prepare these sermons when my twins were 9 and 10 months old. I hope you’ll listen and enjoy.
I could write a lot about that topic, but this is about the cart.
My blood pressure has thankfully leveled out in the year since the twins were born, making home testing a less frequent and pressing matter.