My Assistant

I rearranged the office situation to have more room to paint and write for school and for me. Monday night I sat down to break in the office with some prep exercises for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which starts on Friday. I have a few of my classes doing the young writers version of this project — it’s a great way to teach them the elements of fiction by reverse engineering and then creating it – –and I’m doing it in solidarity with them.

I’d been at the desk for a whopping five minutes, trying to come up with a character name for my mythology based cast member, when Lady Jane, our enigmatic gray girl hopped up on the edge of the desk and rolled over onto her back and my notebook.

Her brother, Jim-Bob, had a habit of climbing on my desk and into my arms when I worked at home. We developed a routine that let him sit across my arms without affecting my typing speed. I kept both of us warm and happy with my winter work.

But lady Jane is, or rather has been, much more aloof. She was an outdoor kitty when we adopted her, And although her brother was too, he instantly took to the joy of owning humans. Jane enjoys being petted and being near humans, But she never seem to want the responsibility of letting the humans in her sphere get too attached to her. We can be very demanding of cats, after all.

But, is her third indoor winter approaches, she seems to be having a change of heart. She has appeared on my bed night after night now. She follows me from room to room. And she hops on the desk demanding that attention you focused on her and not on something as inconsequential as a book.

It’s gotten me to wonder if any great authors with short literary resumes were simply kept busy scratching the bellies of felines in whose service they lived. I know that excuse won’t fly with my students, so Jane and I will need to work out a way for me to pet and write at the same time.

New Digs

I spent the weekend appropriating the Big Guys space, rationalizing that I needed more space for writing and studying and for painting. The news base is still a bit chaotic, but it already has a kind of cozy feel. I think it just needs a rug.

My Why

A couple weeks ago I was sitting at a craft fair, the final one of the season. It had hadn’t been well advertised, so no one was selling much. It was just an opportunity to see friends and neighbors, but those opportunities turn out to make some of the nicest days.

An artist friend of mine wandered by my booth, and we caught up with each other about what our kids are doing. She was getting ready for an open studio tour the next weekend, and we started talking about art and practice.

She works in ceramics, teaching her art and creating museum quality pieces of China featuring women in combat. The work is spectacular, and she often credits her evolution as an artist to her experience getting an MFA.

“It was more than just honing my craft,” she said. “Because of the work I did, now I think more about why I make what I make.”

My art is pretty cyclical. In the winter I tend to write more and do watercolors. When the weather gets warm, I get out the oils and go outside. The in between season, when I’m finding my way from one pole to the other, is sometimes confusing but also reflective. It wasn’t until my conversation with my friend, however, that I understood why I wander each season.

I’ve started to realize that making art is something I have to do, but I often feel guilty about it. I worry about the wastefulness of resources in a world that is suffocating from human consumption, and that worry makes me keener to create something that matters in the long run.

Friday afternoon I stayed after school for a while to read IEP’s to verify my data collection. The files include academic goals, and they also cover behavioral issues, including some of the history behind those issues. Sometimes the histories resonate too well, and I come home to my studio to vent on my canvas.

What’s on the canvas rarely has to do with anything in a file. It just gets me closer to mountains and woods and farther from the knowledge of the things people do to each other.

Instead of a canvas, last Friday night brought me back to a children’s book idea that began germinating before I started teaching, even before the #metoo movement was born. It’s a story about a little troll who became a troll because something happened to her. she believes all the negative things people say about trolls until she discovers her own truth.

I had started illustrating the book a couple years ago but put it away because I didn’t like the art. Now it feels like it’s coming back into my life at the perfect time, at a time when I need to find my own truths about art and know why am making what I’m making.

Frailty

The new girl was introduced to me about 15 minutes after class started. Often they enter the classroom wearing a defiant look as their armor. This one crept into the room, jumping at the rustle of a few papers, her gaze constantly darting from one person to another.

I usually meet them for the first time while class is in session. We introduced each other. I got her set up with a binder and stickers to decorate it. Then I had her start on a creative activity to break the ice between us. I wouldn’t learn how she came to our school until later, when I could read her file, but another student summed up what I was thinking succinctly, however inappropriately:

“Girl has seen some shit.”

The sad fact is that all of them, the defiant ones and the terrified ones have seen shit that no one — especially not a child should see.

This last week, stories of people fleeing yet another invasion in Syria seemed to dominate drive-time news. I listened, thinking about how something as random as the geography of ones birth insulates a person’s peace from the chaos of uncivil wars instigated and enabled by rulers treating people like plastic disposable game pieces . I thought of the children growing up in those war zones, of the shit they’re seeing, and of the adults that they will become. Then, as happens most days recently, I thought of the hundreds and even thousands children growing up in the ‘mini’ war zones all around us and of the adults they are becoming.

My kids are effectively refugees from those ‘mini’ war zones, and I know my job is to build their sense of peace so that they can get down to the business of learning, of growing up.

But peace is a funny thing. It’s not just the absence of gunfire or sirens or broken dishes for a few nights or even a few months. It’s the calm that comes with the knowledge that those things won’t interrupt life again.

Some of our kids, with a lot of help and love, find that certainty, that peace. When they do, they grow. They begin to share their gifts. They learn to control and redirect their anger which, however righteous, consumes peace and energy and everything around it like a dying star. 

But peace is fragile.  It needs maintenance. It begins (or can end) with childhood. And it needs TLC everywhere we want it to exist. 

 

Selfless self-care

One of the things I’m loving about teaching is that it takes every fiber of your being to do it well. It takes your creativity, your intellect, and your physical input. There’s no way to half-ass it and have any worthwhile outcome. One of the things I love about the place where I teach came as a bit of a surprise to me. During our orientation, the different presenters emphasized the importance of self-care for teachers and caregivers at our school.

All of the students at our residential come to us because of an emotional disturbance due to some sort of complex trauma.. Being affective with the students means being present, and, often, it means hearing stories that, when you get home, bring you to tears. it means having kids yell at you as they vent their frustrations with life and remembering not to take it personally. It means thinking about the people who have done these kids harm and trying not to become hard because becoming hard means you can’t be there for those kids.

I haven’t gone to an hour of the school organized group self-care sessions, but, about a month ago, not knowing why exactly except to save money on health insurance, I decided to start going to a gym. I hit the big 5O back in April and knew that keeping bone density up means doing some resistance training, but the desire to work out was something else. It wasn’t until this weekend that I realized what it was.

I’d behave myself all week, hitting the gym for each of my routines every single day before going home. Sometimes that means getting home a bit late, especially on the days when we have professional development after classes. It also means feeling a little guilty that, in focusing on self care each day, I’m not doing right by one of the two kids who is the most important in my life. I get home feeling more relaxed, but I’m spending less time with him to do so.

This weekend my husband, Thing2 and I have been stacking wood. we have a pretty good system of me carrying logs from the wood pile to a wheelbarrow where Thing2 hands them off to the Big Guy for stacking the way he likes. Ferrying logs, two and four at a time, is it pretty good workout. normally I’d be pretty tired and ready to quit after 15 or 20 minutes. Yesterday and today, however, I was able to keep it going until the boys are ready to quit, and I was happy not just for being able to keep up but because it was another hour each day that the three of us had to talk and joke and sing along to the Beatles albums that were playing as we stacked.

When we finished up for the day a little while ago, we looked at the work we’ve done and then at each other and said to each other, “We done good.“

and I realized that self-care isn’t just about being able to help the kids at school every day, it’s about making sure that when I’m home with my kid, I am really present.

Used Art

Fun fact, when you buy art off of my site, you’re getting used art. Most of the time when I do a painting, the piece ends up on my bookshelf until it’s time to go to a show or fair. When show season ends, however, the painting doesn’t, and, having a fairly small studio/office, I hang the surplus art in our halls and rooms, and it lives there until Etsy makes the little cash register sound on my phone.

Sometimes I feel a little sorry for my husband. Sure, plenty of wives come up with redecorating ideas here and there, but living with an artist, he often comes home or wakes up to a new house. On good days, it becomes a rotating art gallery, and every bit of wall space is fair game. On the more chaotic days, there may be plans brewing for a better way to use that guestroom at the end of the hall (a bigger studio? or maybe not).

Whether the chaos is a small rotation or a major room organization, my husband’s defining goodnatured smile will appear, reminding me of my mom’s observation, “You found yourself a good man.”

I’m guessing that next to a lot of productive artists is someone with a good natured smile.

Full Circles

I’m taking a step back from oil painting in October to participate in Inktober. It’s a good time to do some drawing, and, anyway, my studio is about to be torn apart as I claim a larger space.

Today’s prompt is “ring.”

I’m sitting in one part of a ring — on the couch with the Big Guy as I draw. I’m trying to get Thing2 to do Inktober with me, but he’s over at the piano teaching himself the Beatles song book and making our eyes sweat.

It’s almost Thing2’s 13th birthday, and I’ve been thinking about the first few minutes after his birth. I’ve been remembering that perfect round baby head and those early days when nothing seems as pure as the love that we felt for them.

Now all these years later, we know his triumphs and follies, and the love is anything but pure. It’s stronger and better because we know that each day will reveal some facet that makes it stronger still.

We are shy one kid. He’s away at college, and it’s been an adjustment. As broken bars of “Imagine” drift over from the piano, however, I keep thinking about how full our little family circle, with its faultlines and reinforcements, still is.

I sat with a student today who is trying to navigate from adolescence to adulthood with only support from the state. She has little help from the adults who brought her into the world, but her courage and determination to help people she still loves is nothing short of heroic. I know she should have enjoyed — that they all should enjoy — that same kind of parental love we take for granted, and I know the only thing I can do is support her and show her that I expect great things from her during our last few months together.

But, now, sitting on the couch as the first bars of “Let It Be” begin to echo, I think about the other things I can do, and I make a point to never take our small circle for granted.