When I saw the image of the man start to appear, it made me laugh. I had seen him before. Not this exact version, but certainly a handsome man, clad in something spectacular from the Sundance catalog, or Banana Republic.
It started when I was in college. We didn’t have email or texting. We had letters. My mother sent something to me weekly. Oh what a glorious day when I saw it in the mailbox. Maybe it began because there wasn’t a lot of news to be shared. Or maybe it was simply her glorious sense of humor. She cut out images of good looking men her age from catalogs and wrote, “Wouldn’t you like him for a stepfather?” The answer was always yes! And the jokes continued about ordering, sending away for, arriving in the mail… we could go on forever, until it switched to the outfits in the same catalog that she would wear to get said man, which turned into a fashion show of what we already had, an exchange of compliments, bent over belly laughs and hearts that were full.
Through the years, at gallery shows throughout the country, people would ask my mother if she too was an artist. She shyly said no, but we both knew the truth in the hesitation. She could, had, and continued, to create something out of nothing. Isn’t that exactly what an artist is? I think so.
I see him in my sketchbook and write stepfather. My mother’s art lives on.
When the world gets this overwhelming, I have to narrow the picture. From planet to country. Still too big. From city, to neighborhood. I can’t make sense of it all. Down to house. To room. To kitchen. To my own hands. I pull it out of the oven. And rest in the place of, “This bread is good.”
And maybe that’s all we can do. Be responsible for our own hand in it. Each day. Each minute. Forget the but they did this, they think that, how could they???? In order to breathe, I have to let go of “they,” in exchange for the reach of my own hands.
At the breakfast table, it’s hard not to go over the latest news. Of course we have to be informed. We must learn and grow and be aware. I can’t change what’s going on in my old neighborhood. And it would be easy to say it doesn’t make a difference at all. But I can’t believe that. And so I humbly paint and write. And connect with the random. We will never be rewarded with certainty. But we have to try. Who would we be if we didn’t even try?
So I rise from the morning table, knowing only two things for sure, this bread is delicious, and all we have to do is be good to each other.
Sometimes, when painting a portrait, you can get stuck. The image isn’t exactly right, but you can’t see why. A trick that many artists use is to simply flip the canvas. It breaks the autopilot of the brain and you can actually see the shapes more clearly. You can get the chin just right, or the angle of that brow. It slows you down and you can see everything in a new light.
How I try to remember that lesson for real life — when the universe kicks my feet from underneath and I tumble topsy turvy. It’s hard to see the benefits immediately, but once I gather myself, I have to think, oh, perhaps it was time for a new perspective. I, we, can get so accustomed to “how things are.” To shake us out of the “well, that’s how we do things…” and the “well, that’s how I feel,” and into a new vision, a better way of seeing, living, sometimes it takes our world turning upside down.
I guess it’s all part of this delightful journey. This jungle gym. So if you see me, feet in the air, don’t worry, I’m just getting a better view.
