Maybe the trickiest thing about living, and one of the most important, is that we have to be able to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. 

I’m lucky. I have found that way as an artist. Hours can go by, in a foreign country, alone in the studio, deep within the canvas, I paint my way home. And the bonus gift is, within that same finished piece, I can watch people take their own journey. For this I am most grateful.

It happened right from the start. Standing behind a draped card table at my first art show in Edina, right beside my mother, we heard it again and again…”This is so me,” as they read something I wrote, or held a picture that I had painted. To which my mother would often reply, “Well, actually, it’s about me…” And it often was. Her birthday poem. An image of her face. She appeared in almost everything, which is to say, that so did I. And we would come to learn that we weren’t alone. Behind every, “Well, actually…” there was a gathering in. A collective embrace. Losing ourselves, together, we were all, somehow, found. 

It seems the little arms of the girl in the lake are not only splashing, but pulling people in. I have heard so many times, “Oh, she looks just like…” and my heart smiles. It was just yesterday when my friend said it had to be her daughter, it’s her, it’s her! And then she continued, “Well, actually, it’s probably you…” And then I felt my mother smiling.

These are the true gifts. Our shared experiences. When you tell me that you didn’t wait an hour after eating to go into the water, I smile and feel myself aching, stomach full, toes dug in sanded beach of Lake Latoka. When you tell me that you miss waving to your mother on shore, I feel the same ache, that glorious ache, that beautiful ache of loving someone. 

Today’s world is eager to point out our differences. To divide us between vote and color. I don’t have the answers, so I paint, I write. I reach out my heart and you reach out your hands, and we know we are different, but something makes us say, “Well, actually…” And then we’re all smiling.