If y’all know me at all, you know I come from a typography background. If you don’t know me, never read my zine, don’t know my family history… well, let me help you out a bit.
Back in the day, when I was the mom of a toddler who we called “Zuzu”, and I was catchin’ babies (or assisting at home births, anyway), I got introduced to zines. Short for ‘per-zine’ which was short for ‘personal magazine’ – which were little stapled booklets made by an artist/writer to share their thoughts, poems, stories, art. I guess it was the early 2000’s version of TikTok or YouTube, in a way.
The first zine I ever saw was Ayun Halliday’s world-reknown ‘East Village Inky’, at my local Powell’s bookstore. I then found a lesser-known but still fabulous zine called ‘Miranda’ by Kate Haas, as well as various publications by a wildly talented man named Androo Robinson and his partner Maria. I had many other favorites, but those are the ones that inspired me. I bought as many as I could find, and devoured them.
I was delighted to find out that ‘Miranda’ was made by a woman who lived in SE Portland! I showed up on her doorstep one day (metaphorically speaking) to find out what this ‘zine’ business entailed. She was pregnant with her second child, mom to a son about a year older than my daughter, and she was friendly and kind and welcomed my barrage of questions: How do you make a zine? How do you decide how many pages? Where do you go to photocopy them? How do you decide on a price? How do you get bookstores to carry them? And, most importantly, was the zine world saturated with parenting zines already, or was there room for one that included a mom who was also a midwife?
The rest is history. Kate and I became immediate friends, despite (or perhaps because of) our vastly different life stories and parenting styles. We are still close friends to this day, I’m happy to say. We survived parenting!
Oh, and also, I started making a zine. I called it ‘Zuzu and the Baby Catcher’. It was ¼ page format, 98% hand-drawn and hand-written, and it was full of stories about parenting of course, but also midwifery, and other fun stuff. I loved making it – it was the perfect way to chronicle life with a toddler and subsequently pregnancy/birth/infancy of child number two.
(Image is a screen shot from my website of the covers of the 11 issues of my zine, Zuzu and the Baby Catcher)
\Anyhoo, I made eleven of them, total, over the course of a couple years. At the time I was also deep into illustrating Anne Frye’s Holistic Midwifery Volume II, which I also loved but was exhausting me and beginning to kill my desire to create art. (I had spent an obscene amount of time illustrating Volume I, and this was twice as many drawings. To say I was burnt out already would be putting it mildly.)
ZBC was a delightful, beautiful way for me to stay creative. It enjoyed a modest success. I attended a few Zine Symposiums, met a lot of wonderful folks, and actually got approached by a successful literary agent who asked me to write a book. (I did, in fact, write a novel – but in the end it was not what she was looking for. It was such hard work, and I had kids in elementary school, so when it wasn’t accepted I cried, shrugged, and set it aside forever.)
Where was I?
Oh, yes, the zine. So, yeah, you can totally go read all the issues on my webpage, www.24hourmama.com. They are quite entertaining. In issue No. 6, I had so much content that I actually typed up one of the stories, and in the style of many old-school books, I wrote a little piece on my choice of font for that story. Here it is. Enjoy.
An aside: Font matters. Google that and watch Don McMillan’s sketch on it. Hilarious. I also recommend Just My Type, a book about font history which is a brilliant and fun read.
Back to the present. When I was told by my guides to pack it up and hit the road, I needed to name my travel trailer. I tossed around a few ideas before ‘The Ripple Effect’ showed itself as the name – and of course I needed to plaster it on the back. These days you don’t need to hire a sign painter to put the name on a boat or a vehicle. You don’t even have to go to a special shop to have them do it for you. You can get online and order the lettering you want and then stick them on your own self. The miracles of modern technology, I tell ya. It’s one of those things I wish my daddy (a calligrapher and sign painter) was around to see.
So, in addition to my Substack address (because I just know that everyone who drives past me is going to want to know EVERYTHING about me, lol), I ordered ‘The Ripple Effect’ in vinyl lettering. Thankfully the font choices were very limited. I narrowed it down to eight, then I surveyed my family. My son and I were the only two who voted for the most chaotic, random-looking font called ‘Good Dog’… the rest of those surveyed (five people) were surprisingly unanimous on the more organized, if nearly dignified, Cherry Swash.
I went with Cherry Swash and I chose lime green, because it’s my favorite color. I wanted the letters BIG. I decided on 7 inches height, but then they also wanted me to choose a width. A width of what? Each letter? The spacing between the letters? (Which is called kerning, by the way, and it’s actually pretty fascinating. It may seem like letters in a word are all spaced the same width apart, but they actually aren’t. I won’t geek out on you, though. Look it up if you are interested.)
There weren’t really any instructions for what that second measurement referred to, which was very frustrating. I tried looking it up but found nothing. The website did show you how the final lettering would look, though, so I chose 5 inches. At 5 inches the words looked normal, good kerning, the letters not distorted. Click, click, and… done.
It took a while for the order to arrive – coming all the way from Bend, Oregon. When they arrived in a little box, I unrolled them excitedly. The vinyls for my Substack link were perfect. Exactly what I wanted.
‘The Ripple Effect’?
Well… sigh. Apparently, somehow, I had chosen .7 inches, not 7 inches. Point 7. I don’t even know what the 5 inches I’d chosen referred to. So, yeah.
(Image is my hand holding up the very small vinyl transfer sticker I ordered, which says “The Ripple Effect” in 1 inch tall letters.)
Go ahead and giggle. I myself found it hilarious. I mean, I always thought I understood this stuff. Prided myself on it, in fact. So receiving this miniscule vinyl type was beyond amusing. I made a phone call to the good folks at StickersStickers.com and spoke to the gal there and we had a good laugh. What, didn’t I want to have people squint to see the name of my trailer? Oh my lord.
We got it straightened out (7 inch tall letters, and whatever kerning came naturally – so about 5 feet in total length) and, as time was getting short, I had it expedited. When it arrived I was elated – it was perfect!
As far as sticking it to my trailer, I followed their instructions to the letter (pun intended). I waited until the temp was right. I cleaned the area with soap and water, then I cleaned it with rubbing alcohol for good measure. I had put on a vinyl sticker of a white cat (that one from the meme, who looks just like Salty) and it was not as easy as I thought. It had gotten stuck in the wrong place, with lots of bubbles, and in trying to move it I stretched it all out. As a result it looks pretty bad when you get close enough to really see it. Embarrassing for someone as fastidious as me, but if I’ve learned nothing else on this spiritual journey, I’ve learned that ‘perfect’ doesn’t exist. So I just let it go. A hard pill for someone like me to swallow – I mean I did very exacting, precise medical illustration for 25 years, and prior to that I was all about photorealistic portraits. Even my zine, which seemed like it was done in a very carefree style, was under specific standards (the amount of white-out on the originals is truly something to behold). So screwing up the Salty sticker made me want to cry for a hot minute before I decided it was totally fine, it really was.
However, I did learn some important lessons from it; the biggest one being take my time. So this time I did. I actually taped the whole thing in place before I started – I stopped short of measuring to make sure it was centered, though. I have an excellent eye for that sort of thing, I’ve trusted it all my life. So, fuck measuring lol.
I’m gonna assume that most of y’all have put a two-step transfer vinyl sticker on something at some point. However, if you are not familiar, the letters/images come sandwiched between the shiny backing piece that you peel off to expose the adhesive, and a clear cover adhesive piece that keeps the images lined up correctly. You stick one corner down, then slowly peel off the backing, diagonally, rubbing the letters down as you go. Once it’s all done you peel the clear piece off the top and the letters remain. It’s a very good system. I taped the 5-foot strip up on the back of the trailer and started from one end, lining up the top adhesive with the handy line of corrugation, and started very slowly peeling away the backing. I made a couple of miniscule adjustments as I went – it’s not a very forgiving medium so you basically get one chance to re-do before you start losing structural integrity.
It went very well. ‘The’… a space… ‘Ripple’… a space… and now it was starting to get kind of awkward and unwieldy. The backing was hanging down and the alignment was getting ever-so-slightly off, as things do. So, in a stroke of pure genius, I got some scissor and cut the word ‘Effect’ completely off, making a separate piece of it. In order to make sure it’s in alignment, I decided to start with the last letter and affix it right to left. I made sure it was lined up with where I cut it and began. I was feeling much more confident at this point, so I went ahead and rubbed it down. That ‘t’ was there to stay. Just in the right pl…oh, shit.
Yes, folks, I lined it up wrong. Like, nearly a quarter-inch lower.
For the luvvagod.
I was appalled. And there was no moving it… I tried. I went inside and got a razor blade, quickly realized that was not going to work. Stood back and tried to evaluate, but dammit there was no way to really appreciate how bad it was until the rest of the letters were up. Well, at least I knew where the rest were supposed to go. I cut the ‘t’ free. Sheepishly, I lined up the ‘E’, matching the side where I initially cut it, and started placing the rest of the word. All the while my mind was racing, thinking about how I could fix this. I could go back on the site and just order a lower-case ‘t', and have it shipped to… Finn? It should arrive while I’m there in Chesapeake. I mulled over my options as I rubbed down the ‘Effec’.
(Image of the back of the travel trailer, now sporting 7 inch tall letters saying “The Ripple Effect” - and the last letter ‘t’ is set slightly lower than the other letters)
Thankfully I had not screwed up the kerning, at least. The ‘t’ was still in the right place, just too low. I stepped back to look.
Sigh.
Yeah, it was obvious. To me, at least. Pa Ingalls’ voice crept into my head “It will never be noticed from a trotting horse…” Perhaps.
My new and improved inner voice piped up. Perhaps it would be noticed. So what? If anything, it might spark someone’s curiosity. Being able to spark curiosity is a precious thing. That’s not to say anyone who noticed and bothered to look up my Substack wouldn’t still be compelled to let me know that my vinyl lettering skills were shit. Still, they would have looked me up. And maybe, just maybe… a tiny seed?
Also it is kinda funny that I dropped the T. Dropped the tea. Spilled it. Get it? Yeah, yeah, I get it. That’s what I’m trying to do with my life. Just drop it all. My T. My truth.
Which is this: perfection is an illusion. Love is all that matters. Kindness can spread as far and wide as hatred. People can learn, and change. Healing is possible. There is beauty in everything. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. I know I will.
Even as I type this another memory has flooded in: my little sister Wendy, nine or ten years old, is asleep on the couch in our tiny little childhood home. I come home with a group of high school theater friends. She wakes up somewhat when she hears us, mumbles in her mostly-sleep, “Rhonda, you’re crooked one letter.” (she’d been dreaming about refrigerator magnet letters) We all laugh, and, frankly, agree. I’ve always been crooked one letter. All my livelong days.
I’ve always been imperfect. And that, y’all, is just perfect. I hope that you, too, are crooked one letter, and that you can embrace it wholeheartedly and know – know – that you are perfect, even as you are changing and growing and learning and healing.
You are perfect. Perfectly imperfect.
Till next time. I love you.