Superhero in Progress

Work in Progress

I’m watching how Superheroes are made. Mine is getting a care lesson from the ostomy nurse, gearing up for the next weeks of recovery, not flinching as she shows him how to care for his small intestine that is now protruding through his stomach.

There have been nights of pain so severe he nearly broke my hand as I held his but not one utterance of “why me?”. There has been only plans for the next day and acknowledgments that he – and we – are so lucky, that things could be so much worse. There’s been gratitude for the nurses and for Mom staying close and even concern that I am not resting enough.

So now I know how superheroes happen. They aren’t born, they’re made as they weather storms without letting the deluge force their gazes down or inward but instead keep focusing on hope on the horizon.

Have Mountain, Will Climb

Saturation Point, 4”x6”, Oil on Board, $45

A little over a year and a half ago, Thing1 climbed a mountain, walking up the drive from our house about 2 in the afternoon and climbed five miles up the back of Mount Equinox that divides Sandgate from Manchester, VT.  He circumnavigated land owned by Carthusian monks and negotiated a right of way with a bear that literally crossed his path on the way back. He watched as storms went by and took shelter for a few minutes as needed. 

But he kept climbing. 

 Thing1 had been sick for almost a year.  He told me later he had kept climbing because he needed that win. I know he kept climbing because, regardless of his fears or any obstacles that come his way, he is willing to keep going. He will keep moving forward, even if he has to go slowly.

He’s going slowly today. He’s stood up for a few minutes and then needed a two-hour nap to recover. The first time, I steadied him. The second time, he insisted I only spot him.

He’ll be standing again today. He’ll expend a mountain’s climb of energy to walk from his bed to the nurse’s station, but, even as I watch him wince as he works to inflate his lungs fully, I know he’ll be at the top. He’ll be walking down that mountain with a smile on his face, even if the sun has long set and he knows his mom is still worrying sick about him.

Because worrying is what moms may do, but climbing mountains is what kids are born to do.

 

If you are interested in purchasing this painting, please contact me directly.
Museum-quality prints or art on household items available here. 

What’s New is New

Sunday, Sunday

In October, wanting to go back to school to train for something new, I took a long-heldout promotion and started working weekends.

Murphy’s Law still being the only functioning the law of the land decreed that my new weekends— Wednesday and Thursday–would be otherwise occupied, making school impossible. Most of my new weekends have been spent driving to hospitals, but as flu season winds down, I have been able to carve out at least one day on the weekend for re-creation, usually in the form of doodling.

Doodle time did not evolve into painting time until last Sunday when T2 and I went to a Paint and Sip. I haven’t played with acrylics since high school, and even though I’m more confident with watercolors, dipping a brush and a new medium with the spark again.

I haven’t forgotten how much I need to paint, but sometimes it’s easy to let the doldrums keep you from what you were meant to do. My doldrums were plastered under a layer of yellow acrylic last Sunday. When my Sunday kicked off this morning, paint — oil this time —was on the brain.

Oils are completely new and will require a more than little bit of homeschooling to get the hang of, but it’s all part of making something old new again and making the new weekends count.

And hey, I did want to go back to school.

Sipping


Last night T2 and I went to a Paint and sip event at the Roundhouse Bakery and Café in Cambridge, New York. 

I’ve kind of shied away from these events which, to me, seem to be more an excuse to drink wine then to paint, but the picture advertising last nights endeavor was different from so many had seen before, So I signed the two of us up.

I don’t dislike gatherings, but on personality tests, I generally score in the extreme introverted category. It took me 20 minutes to get comfortable enough to say hello to the teacher who seemed very nice and knowledgeable. 

T2 who has a strong creative bent is, by contrast, a confirmed social butterfly. He took two minutes to get settled, get his paint and get talking to a couple that we had met through our favorite diner in Manchester, Vermont. 
In the beginning I was mainly focused on trying to copy the painting, listening to instructions, and getting to know the new medium. The husband in the couple sitting across the table from us, however, was just as extroverted as T2, and the two of them kept the wife and me giggling as we all painted (Don’t worry T2 was drinking orange soda).

T2 was focused on his painting. He loves to draw, and when he got home he started copying the painting here just meet a few minutes earlier to see how he could improve it. In the hours at the café, however, art for him and for the other people at our table was seemingly as much a social experience as it was an academic one.

They had come with one expectation—to have fun, and we all did, and all remarking that next time the Big Guy must go along. The funny thing was that as I watched T2 redraw his composition on the first piece of notebook paper he could find when we got home, I realized that the fun was every bit as valuable to his education as if the painting and sipping had happened at the finest art school. The fun, after all, was what got him doing art and kept him working at it right up until bedtime.

Wednesday Storm

Wednesday Storm, Watercolor, 5×7

It’s been about two weeks since I made the decision to resurrect a creative routine. The decision was the result of a webinar hosted by a friend, but the fuel to keep it going beyond the first day or two came from an unwelcome source.

Saturday morning we rushed Thing1 to the emergency room because his chronic illness had generated an overnight weight loss of over 10 pounds. I knew he had not been feeling well for the last day or so, but most of his flareups have resolve themselves in a day or two. 

This one is still playing out, as we continue with fluid replacement and hospital visits. 

I’ve been trying to find a silver lining–acknowledging that the umpteen phone calls and emails and texts are signs that — unlike too many Americans — at least we have the resources to help him. Like any parent, however, my  focus has been on the cloud over the lining.

I worry how long he will have access to the care he desperately needs. I worry for all the parents of children with chronic illness who don’t have adequate health coverage and wonder how they handle that impact on their child’s health or life.  

And I paint. When I’m frustrated on T1’s behalf, I paint. When I get off the phone with the insurance company wondering if his treatment will be compromised by what they are willing to cover, I paint. The painted pages don’t express tears or shouting, they exist instead of those things.

Art has always been a therapy for me, channeling worry or depression into something productive. Inspiration is a dubious gift, however, and right now I am eagerly anticipating the moment that my new creative routine must be fueled by discipline instead.

Recess

It’s December, and school is out. I have homework over the break, and work never stops. Still, this is close to recess as I normally get. And recess is time to play.

I used some of my December bonus to buy an iPad Pro and a pencil, thinking it might be faster to trace illustrations and to scan them in and clean them up in Photoshop. In the long run, it will probably be faster. In the short term, however, it is been an excuse to play just for the sake of playing. I have generated five or 10 iterations of the first page of my book, not making any progress and yet, making tons of it.

After three months where every moment of my life was defined by functionality, sometimes being able to make art just for the sake of art is progress.

Bouquet of Blueberries

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

This is a bouquet of blueberries I painted for my mom who is in the hospital right now. She should’ve gone to the blueberry Festival in South Haven Michigan last weekend, but instead she went to the ER.

She’s on the mend now, but I think the scariest moment for me in our relationship was Saturday night to say she was going in for surgery. She sound worried, and she never sounds worried. I’ve watched her merrily making blueberry muffins with a waterspout making a beeline for her kitchen and ask if anyone wanted butter at the table for them, so when she was worried, I was worried.

I’m a mom, but worrying about my mom made me feel like I was five again. So, when the person who taught me everything I know about mothering and unconditional love got sick, I did what I would’ve done when I was five. I made her something.

We will be together in a few days, and I’ll give her as big hug as possible. For now, it really is the positive thought that counts.