Yield

A personal essay by Stephanie Garon about traffic lights, silence, and writing

I’ve waited thirty years to walk into this room. 

Flashback to fifteen years old: I’m surrounded by pink lemonade walls, staring at dusk’s rosy sheath cast on the snow-crested trees across the street. It’s the third day of snow in Maryland. Nestled against the window, I’m jotting poems in a three-ring spiral. Pink pillows, a gingham comforter, and carnation-patterned curtains cushion the space. Which is why I beg my parents for a traffic light for my birthday. (At fifteen, functionality and practicality are as fleeting as the flavor in bubble gum.) 

Red 

Yellow 

Green 

It blinks, brightens and halts. It shouts, “Here!” It’s pink’s opposite. The light’s loop symbolizes urbanity’s movement. Like many teenagers awkwardly stuck in a snowglobe of a countryside Whistler scene, I yearned for city life. Black-combat-boot-wearing conformist trapped in a Hallmark Valentine’s Day palette. I fantasized about being a writer in a city. 

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

I launched in and out of college. I captured rural memories on paper like an abstract expressionist painter, using words instead of oil. Snapshots of time explained through letters. The letters never got addressed or stamped because I needed to camouflage myself into society and get a Real Job. 

Self-diagnosed with an overactive imagination, it took me years to understand that civilization should label me as an artist. I catch small details like snowflakes on my tongue and melt simple ideas into philosophical mazes. After a full day of processing the world around me, sketching concepts into fabrication, challenging myself to problem solve with tools and techniques, it can be difficult to fall asleep. 

I would hum my prayers, layer comforters, and close my eyes, but my mind jumped through anthropomorphic distillations of dancing shapes and the cadence of onomatopoeia. Once I got married, I would reach for my partner’s hand to tether myself while I slid into the unconscious. A consecrated time: when the weight of the day lifts into darkened ceilings and spirits catch fleeting thoughts like dandelion wisps. 

As I balanced family responsibilities and new jobs, my mind raced. 

At the edge of day, balanced between repetition and singularity, the alarm clock digits flap like a casino slot machine. 

“What can I think about?,” I’d ask my partner, pleading for an idea to help distract me from me. 

No answer. 

“Where can I think about?” I’d whisper, trying to unravel knots from the day. My partner would respond, “Shhh.” 

At my most fragile point, I was crushed. I thought it was a joke at first. 

“Just one idea, then you can sleep.” 

“Shhh.” 

I’d curl towards the wall. 

I quickly taught myself how not to talk.

It was easy. I was obedient: I accumulated hushes like tally marks. I swallowed my ideas, shuttered the most sacred part of intimacy — that vulnerable intersection when your existence feels cradled. I didn’t lose my voice, but I harbored it. Because those hushes continued throughout the day. They got louder and I got quieter. 

Luckily, contentment is not fodder for tangy writing. There were no more fights because I conceded. While roaming through museums one weekend, I stepped beneath a Zora Neale Hurston quote that hovered like a Fitzgerald billboard: “If you have it, you can’t hide it.” There was an intention, a duty, she declared. 

I had kept silent for two years. 

My days and nights did not have to be numb. My fifteen-year-old-self empowered me to be heard. I started writing again. By the third year, I decided to submit my work to a journal every time I was silenced. I had to be heard by someone. The journals and art shows became my haven for my ideas, my voice. I was nomadic, but I used words as bricks to construct a foundation to stand and protect myself. Guarded? I methodically built a fortress. 

Fast forward through empty place settings and I’m here: Highlandtown’s new digs for Yellow Arrow Publishing at the corner of Conkling and Main. The selected group of Writers-in-Residence is getting a tour of the offices. Gwen, the Executive Director and visionary for this nonprofit publishing entity, escorts us through the townhome and we reach the top floor. 

She ushers us into a common room and gestures to proceed through the door. One by one, the women file into the dim space, turn around, and stroll past me. I’m the last one to enter. Two steps in, I stop. 

There are string lights strung around two rectangular windows, one writer’s desk and wooden chair, carpet. Nothing else. A window sill harnesses blue-one-moment-past-sunset, frames a birch outside the window, and peers at a stoplight yawning from yellow to red. If I stretch my arms, I can almost reach both side walls. It fits. Van Gogh’s Bedroom was famous for his use of sunflower ochres, but this room with eggshell walls exudes warmth. It’s safe. I had walked into my childhood dream. 

I’m told this is my space, but it’s more of a portal. Over the decades, I created this almost perfect imaginative room for myself. The architecture that some people call shelter, others call home. Now, it protected me and my ideas. Because when I lean my right shoulder against the far window, I can see the traffic light. 

And it’s green.

Stephanie Garon’s environmental art has been exhibited internationally
in England, Colombia, and South Korea, as well as across the United States. Her writing, a critical aspect of her artistic process, has been published in international literary journals and her book Acreage was published by Akinoga Press in 2021. She received dual sciencedegrees from Cornell University, then attended Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

When she’s not wading across rivers, she can be found welding sculpture in her Baltimore studio. Visit her online at: www.garonstudio.com or IG: @garonstudio

Our next writing workshop Writing Divorce starts Tuesday, September 3rd. It’s a four-week writing workshop for midlife women who are processing a divorce, whether in the middle of one or healing from a divorce that happened long ago.