The Sounds of Home: Your stories

Our first community edition of Dandelion Seeds.

Hello there! And welcome to Dandelion Seeds, an illustrated newsletter that is hand-painted and hand-lettered, from my desk to yours.

About a month ago, and inspired by my latest illustrated essay, I invited readers of Dandelion Seeds to answer this question:

What are the sounds of home for you?

More than thirty people responded, and I’m delighted to be sharing their stories this week, in a new collection called The Sounds of Home — written by you, illustrated and hand-lettered by me, a true creative collaboration.

Each of the five stories in the collection represents a common theme woven through your responses — from the sounds of water and rainfall, to sounds that take you right back to childhood. And the first story speaks to a theme close to my own heart.

A sketchbook painting from 2020, featuring one of my favorite birds in Uruguay: the fork-tailed flycatcher.

Like so many others, I fell in love with birds during the pandemic, and I loved that so many of your stories were about birds and what their songs mean to you.

For Mafalda, the sound of home every time she visits Tokyo is “the loud caw of a crow in the early morning.” For my good friend Hallie in Montevideo, the sound of home is “the incessant, social chatter” of bright green monk parakeets, making their nest high up in the trees.

And for

Jennifer Rose

, whose story the collection opens with, the sounds of home in Colorado were the calls of two very different birds — and how they helped her find her way to healing and peace.

With love,
Candace

Thank you to everyone who shared their sounds of home, especially Jennifer Rose,

Jade Shih

,

Jahzeer Terrell

, Ashley, and Jessie Voigts — I loved bringing this collection to life.