Artist

He sketched it quickly.  He was unsure.  He's always unsure.  I told him it would make a great project.  He still hesitated.  I refreshed him on my lesson on how to use charcoal and we set his goals for the project.  I moved to the next student but watched him out of the corner of my eye, like I always do.  I watched him questioning his idea.  Again.  Like he always does.   And then I watched him produce a great project despite his self-doubt.

Inside I was screaming to the world, "See this kid.  He gets it.  He doesn't know it but he gets it.  He's an Artist!"  His brain formulates brilliant concepts.  He can't see it yet.  He doesn't know what he has.  It comes so natural to him that he doesn't know how talented he is.  As his teacher, I know that he still doesn't know how to manipulate his mediums fully.  As his teacher, I know that he still needs classes to learn the technical skills.  As his teacher, I know that he still has so much to learn.  But as his teacher, I also know how rare it is to be able to see things as he sees them.  He is brimming with concepts.  He doesn't understand how many of us would love to be in his head.  How many of us, who call ourselves artists, wished it came that easily.  Anyone can learn to draw.  Anyone can call themselves an artist and produce beautiful pictures (or shock value pictures).  Anyone can sell art that people think is lovely enough to hang on their dining room wall.  But original concepts are harder to come by.  Art that makes you stop and question.  Art that makes a statement. Art that can make you feel something that you weren't feeling before you stood in front of it.  Art that shakes you a little and leaves you thinking about it long after you've seen it.  That doesn't come naturally to all of us.  That's what it is to truly be an Artist. 

Yesterday, in class we were discussing our final projects.  In my middle and high school classes, I ask the students to spend spring break researching art and artists.  They have to find something that they feel is inspiring and create an original work in that medium and style.  All of them had great ideas.  One student is making a mixed media book of places she wants to travel to.  A place for every letter of the alphabet.  Another student is building two model cars.  The same car, one a vintage model and another a current model.  He's going to build a sculptural piece with the new passing the old.  Another student is photographing the same ballerina from six different angles.  They all had good ideas.  I was very pleased and  I'm looking forward to seeing the finished projects.  When I got to my boy, he looked at his feet and said, I'm not sure I can do this.  I told him to tell me about it and we'd figure it out.  He wants to replicate the detail of the hands of Adam and God from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  But he wants to change it so that Adam's hand is old and decaying.  He wasn't sure if he should do it.  He worried that people would think he was being disrespectful or speaking in a negative way against God.  I said, If that's not what you're doing, what is it that you're trying to say?  He told me that he wanted to show the fact that man dies.  That Adam didn't stay in the Garden of Eden, young and free.  That he died, and now we all die.  But that God still reaches his hand out to us anyway.  He said that he was worried that people would see it wrong.  (In my best teacher voice) I told him it was great idea.  I told him that I didn't feel that it would be disrespectful.  I told him that just because Michelangelo painted it, that doesn't make the subject matter holy and unquestionable.  I told him not to worry about how people saw it.  I told him that art should make you question the artists intentions and make people angry or happy or sad.  He's still not sure he's going to do it.  On the way home (in my best mother voice) I told him that I hope he does.  I'd frame that.  

 He's better than me.  I can't tell him that as his teacher.  But as his mother, I know.  He's better than me.  It's a hard balance.  

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Lately, on top of reading for classes, I have been reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.  It's the story of a girl who can sense the emotional drives of other people in the food they make.   The novel begins when she tastes a hollowness in her mother's lemon cake.  She, in fact, tastes this empty sadness in all of her mother's food and begins to sense that her mother is deeply troubled and discontent.  

When I read this, one chapter in, I began crying.  It resonated with the insecure part of my mother brain.  It's a part of the brain that I'm convinced all mother's have.  All women really.  Actually, I'm sure all men have it too.  It's the part of the brain that makes us feel like we're failing at the most important job we've been given.  In my case, that job is raising my children.  I began to wonder if my children can sense my insecurity.  Can they see the fear that I try to keep pushed down below the surface?  Children are so much more intuitive than we give them credit for.  They are closer to the wild than we allow our adult selves to be.  They can sense sadness and happiness and danger.  I sometimes fear that, in my attempt to redefine myself as a single mother in the last few years, I've left them feeling my own sense of being unsettled.  Not that I haven't tried with all I have to help them feel the complete opposite.  But I know things have changed for them too.  I know I'm not the mother I was.  In some ways, I'm better.  I've grown older and more patient.  In other ways, though, I don't know.  Sometimes I just feel like I'm failing in a crucial way.  

Being a single mother adds another entire dimension to the fears I have as a mother.  I worry that I'm not enough on my own.  I don't have a partner who can pick up the slack.  I don't have that other person who can see what I can't see.  There are three of them.  What if I'm so focused on one that I fail to see another one hurting?  Or I worry that I'm too much.  What if they grow weary with my presence?  Does absence really make the heart grow fonder?  And if so, what does too much presence do?  Does it make the heart grow resentful?  Does constant presence become background noise in their life so that they have no definite memory of you?  The other day we were sharing memories around the dinner table.   We had gotten onto the stories of our time in Virginia and the lovely little Montessori school that they attended.  Then the boy said something that pricked me.  It was really insignificant and seemingly not a big deal.  He said that he remembered that his dad walked him to school.  I said that I was sure he did a few times.  He countered and said no I only remember dad walking me to school.  Now that doesn't seem like a big deal unless you know that I took him to school and picked him up almost every day for the three years we were there.  I let it go while he was talking, but deep down I grew more and more hurt as this continued.  They were sharing stories and I wasn't in them.  Yet, I know that I've been more present than any other adult in their life.  Where am I in their memories?  Logically I know that I'm in the memory of their daily.  Logically I know that those other memories stand out because they are rare.  But emotionally, it still hurts.  

A fear like that is only compacted by the fear of another woman entering their life.  What if their dad finds someone who is better with them?  What if they go to that woman with their fears and concerns?  What if their childhood memories center around her for the same reason that the boy remembers his dad walking him to school?  And the ultimate fear, what if I die?  Will they remember me at all?  This is the fear of my nightmares.  I worry that their life will be completely different.  I worry that their dad won't know what's important to them.  That he won't know what to take from this home to his.  I worry that he won't know the rituals and traditions that I've sought to establish in their lives.  I worry that he won't remember to take the pictures or the letters or the baby clothes that I've saved for them.  I worry that he won't remember the stories of their births.  I worry about stupid things, like the fact that I can always find Sicily's bunny when it's missing before bedtime.  I worry that he won't care about the bunny.  And more than all of that, I worry that he'll forget to remember to remember me.  And I will fade from the earth having meant nothing.  

 In case you're reading this and you are now worried about my mental well being, don't be.  I don't sit here and wallow in these fears.  Most days I move through our daily life without a thought to any of this.  Most days I do the work of being a mother and at the end of the day, I feel good about that work.  Most days I go to bed with a heart full of love and hope for the next day.  I love my role as a mother.  It's my life's greatest work.  I am thankful for every minute that I get to spend with my precious three.  Good and bad, I love that I get to be here in their daily.  But some days the fear creeps up and consumes me to the point of anxious tears.  On those days, I can do nothing but hold it at bay with a carefully constructed wall until I can pour it out into words on the page.   It's funny, the things that prompt it.   Like a book about the sadness of lemon cake.  I love lemon cake.  And yet, I don't think I'll ever be able to eat lemon cake again.  

Winter Weary

It's spring.  You wouldn't know it by walking outside.  Last night icy rain fell in sheets over the still frozen ground.  The boy cut the grass on Tuesday.  It wasn't really that long and had only started to come up in patches of mostly clover.  I think he just needed to do something that made him feel like it was warm outside.  The little one was grateful all the same.  Her soccer ball glides smoother through her homemade goal, now that the grass is level.  It also helped us find the remaining Easter eggs.  Analiese came to the door with three yesterday. A pink one with yellow dots, a blue one with black zebra print, and a metallic purple one.  How had we missed those?  I think we hid too many.  Even now staring out into the rain soaked backyard I think I see a pastel pink one in the crook of the old tree that's starting to blossom.  I know by the little green buds that's it's here; it just doesn't feel like it.  I even picked daffodils on Wednesday.  It's really a foolish flower to pop up in the frost. I put them in a jar by the window.  A little sun to kill the drafts.  I think it helped a little.  We're all chilled, winter weary, and in desperate need of an outdoor meal on the weathered old picnic table that bows in the middle, making the plates wobble when you pick up a bite of potato salad.  It's supposed to warm up next week.    That will be nice.  The boy needs to wade in the creek and find snakes.  And the middle child needs to work her fairy magic, building rainbows, planting flowers.  I need to read outside.  I've worn holes in all of the seats from too much reading indoors.  Only the little one won't notice much of a change.  She doesn't feel cold.  She's an island of her own personal sun.  Thirty degrees or seventy degrees.  It's all the same to her.  Her toys ride nicely in her bike basket either way.

Holidays and Family

Easter 2013

I love holidays.  If you really know me, you know that saying "I love holidays" is actually a bit of an understatement.  I don't just love holidays, I live for holidays.  They make my little world go around.  I love decorating for holidays.  I love planning for holidays.  I love cooking and baking for holidays.  I'm not one of those people that gets stressed out about holidays.  An approaching holiday (I'm including birthdays and all other celebrations in that word, by the way) can actually rid me of stress as I move out of the daily and into the special.

Christmas 2012

Thanksgiving 2012

I love throwing myself into the preparations of a good celebration.  But more than that I love sharing all of that with my kids and my family.  Especially my kids.  I suppose it's because the two things that make my world go around meet.  My children and a celebration.  There is nothing else better than the collision of these two things.  In these moments, everything is right.  Everything is pure.  Everything is good.  And it just lasts a moment.  If you spend your holidays with kids  you know that a celebration with kids is really a collection of moments.  Let's not get too idealistic here.  It's still a day like any other, so of course there are fights and meltdowns thrown into the equation.  But there is also a little bit of holiday magic thrown in to help glaze over those things just a bit.  So that after it's over you don't remember the ugly, you remember the beautiful.  You remember the sweet moments when an older brother helps his little sister with her new toy.  Or the moment when they open a gift and their face is pure excitement.  Or the quiet moment when they are dying eggs together.  Or the huddled session on the couch when they're whispering to each other and laughing.  It's magic.  It's holiday magic.  I'm happen to be the kind of person that seeks out magic.

Halloween 2012

Chris' Birthday 2012

And I know I'm lucky, because I know this is not everyone's holiday experience.  Holidays cause some people stress for good reason.  I've heard stories of holidays gone bad and I think my reaction to celebrations would be different if that was my history.  But I grew up in house where holidays were a really big deal.  When everything else was upside-down and sideways, holidays were still right-side-up.  And that's still true.  My sisters and I will travel great distances to be together on holidays.  (Or we've been known to put all of our kids in matching clothes so that hundreds of  miles apart we feel like we're together.)  Holidays play a big part in our history.  I come from a family of survivors.  If you were to sit down and listen to the story of my family you'd find out that we should really be highly dysfunctional.  Things are always going wrong!   (Really.  I should write a book about it.  It would keep you on the edge of your seat, I promise.)  Just in the last few years, between the three of us we have been through major car accidents, major surgeries, cross country moves, marriage, divorce, complicated child birth, NICU, bankruptcy, job searches, and an unfortunate incident with a cup of coffee.  That's just in the last few years and I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting!  But all of that has made us closer.  My sisters are my best friends.  And I think it has something to do with the fact that our life has been complicated since we were born, but there were always days set aside when all was right and warm and good in our world.  Our parents gave us that.  And now we each give that to our children.

4th of July 2012

Easter 2013

The thought, the planning, the care that I pour into holidays is all for my three crazy sprites.  I know that their world sometimes feels upside-down and sideways.   I know it feels that way because I'm living this life with them.  But I hope that on a handful of days throughout the year, I can make their world right -side-up.  For a few moments, we can celebrate and laugh and play.  And I hope that in those moments, their world is right and warm and good.  So that one day, many years from now, I can watch them do the same thing for their children.

Peeps and Eggs and the Cross

Our Easter is a series of events that center on family and love:

We move the cross around the circle throughout the season of Lent.  Observing the passage of time and honoring the life of our Savior.  This is our act of remembrance.  It is first and foremost. It is essential.

Then, a few days before Easter, we roast peeps and we smash them up into s'mores because, well, it's a whole lot of fun to roast a sugary yellow chicken.   All families have odd rituals.  This just happens to have become ours.

 Following our sugar rush, we hide glow-in-the-dark Easter eggs.  This recent addition to our Easter celebration came about as a creative way to keep older kids interested in egg hunts.  It is 100% successful.  We hide eggs until long after bedtime, until we crash from adrenaline and sugar. 

When we wake up the following day, around noon because of the aforementioned crash the night before, we dye Easter eggs.  We're a pretty artistic family, so every year we try to find a new way to dye eggs.  This year, I decided on a science lesson.  If you put oil in the dyed water it creates a marbled effect on the eggs, allowing for several colors on one egg.  They were all sad when we ran out of eggs to play with.  I personally think they turned out beautifully.

On Easter morning we rise and, wearing our spring best, we go to church to celebrate our Savior. 

After lunch we still do a traditional egg hunt, though I think we've almost left this stage.  Only the little one truly enjoys the search.  The other two are good sports though, so they still play with her.  Chris hides and the girls seek.  Although I have to say that Sicily is so competitive that she would find them alone, which is what ends up happening by mid-afternoon.  She even changes out of her nice sandals into tennis shoes for the hunt.  Egg hunting is serious business to that girl!  The cat is also an egg hunting participant. She follows the egg hider around, waits until she doesn't think anyone is looking, and then pounces on the egg.  I think she's disappointed every time she finds that it's not a real egg.

After all of this, we spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying the beautiful spring day, remembering the love that was given for us and offering one another the same.

Happy Easter!

Let's Be Honest About Fundraisers

It's that time again.  Time to run to raise money for the school.  I hate school fundraisers. Seriously hate them.  Does anyone really like them?  But they're a necessary evil as our schools find themselves increasingly underfunded.   So I give to fundraisers because I care about my children's education.  (I feel I need to say that because I fear I'm going to digress into bad mom mode as this post continues.)  If I have to participate in a fundraiser I vote for this one.  I don't want to sell wrapping paper or magazines or even those "only worth it for people who eat out all the time" city pass books.  And let's just be honest here.  It would be me selling it.  Just like girls don't sell girl scout cookies anymore.  Over ambitious mom's sell girl scout cookies.  That, by the way, is the reason that my girls aren't girl scouts.  We went to one introduction meeting and it became clear very fast that I wouldn't just be signing them up to be a girl scout.  I would be signing up to be a girl scout as well.  I know, I know.  It's about parental involvement and maybe the fact that I bolted for the door as soon as they laid out how much of a time commitment this was going to be for me makes me a bad mom.  But, I didn't want to be a girl scout.  My daughter wanted to be a girl scout.  I wanted to be at home sipping a glass of wine while my daughter was off being a girl scout.   And I'm pretty sure you would all think I was a worse mom if I was sipping that glass of wine while walking door to door selling all of those stupid cookies.  (See. I told you I would digress.  Fundraisers and children's activities that require absurd time commitments do that to me.)  Back to boosterthon.  The reason that I like this fundraiser is because I feel like I'm paying for something worthwhile.  This program teaches positive character traits, promotes a healthy lifestyle, and the kids do a large chunk of the work.  I don't end up with something I'll never use or something that I could have bought at a fraction of the price elsewhere.  I'm paying for my kids to run.  They run their little hearts out.  And I pay because I'm proud of them.  They work hard for something and they're rewarded for it.  That's what a fundraiser should be.  It's the same reason I like read-a-thons or like programs.  I'm willing to participate in that.

So with that in mind, I pledged my $1 per lap like I always do and I went out and watched them work for it. One of them, the little one, ran 53 laps.  She stopped only at the water table.  She ran the whole time.  The girl has serious drive.  It's one of the things that makes her awesome.  The other girl ran off and on for the minimum 35 laps.  Then she walked hand in hand with her best friend, chatting about what little girls chat about.  Occasionally another friend would stop running and join them.  They laughed and danced the time away.  Her loyalty and friendliness are two of the things that make her awesome.  So you see, they participated in a healthy activity, they earned the money they raised themselves, the event brought out each of their beautiful personalities, and I walked away proud of them both.  That is everything a fundraiser should be.

*I apologize if I offended any girl scouts with this post.  I'm sure you're all great.  And I do love a box of samoas every now and then, so knock on my door any time.  And mom's, I totally won't judge you if you're standing back on the sidewalk with a glass of wine.

Poets Take the Weather So Personally

Well, we finally got our snow.  A solid snow.  Solid for the South anyway.  It started falling fast right before bedtime.  That, of course, meant that bedtime had to be delayed.  We played until we were numb and wet through.  Then we had a cup of contented cocoa before falling, each of us, into our own winter dreamland.  When we arose the world was white and calm, in a serene way that only snow can bring about.  We played until we were numb and wet through.  We crammed everything we had been longing to do into a few hours.  A snowman, a snow fort, a snowball fight, snow angels, and sledding.

Two years.  That's how long we waited for snow.  Some weeks earlier the boy had decided that if it didn't snow this year we should move to a place where winter was more predictable.  I told him that I'd take it under consideration.  Then it did snow, so there was nothing to consider.  Or so I thought.   As I sat at the window watching them play in the snow, my heart was content.   I wondered about the snow and the magic it has to calm a noisy mind.  How is it that a blanket of white can stir imaginative thoughts and clarity?

This place has not been particularly kind to me.  In fact, it's been a big bad bully who's thrown a few compliments my way to justify the meanness.  I waited for the snow.  I longed for the snow.  I needed the pure, clean, and cold to clean the slate.  It had not snowed since I separated from the porch swing.  Now with the divorce final, I needed the death of winter so that new life could grow.  (I'm a poet.  We take the weather very personally, you know.*)  I stared out at the snow and felt me heart calm.  But I also felt it begin to tug in new directions.

It's time for new direction.  I don't know where or when or how or what.  But it's time for a move.  And I don't even know if that means leaving this city.  All I know is that I need a fresh start.  Me and my three, we have endured.  It is time to settle.  I feel it in my very soul.  I need to be in place that is more predictable.  Our future is officially under consideration.

*J.D. Salinger - "Poets are always taking the weather so personally."