I call myself an artist. It’s self-appointed because I’m self taught. No B.F.A. or M.F.A. degree on sheepskin with my name in calligraphy from the University of Creativity.
If you’ve read the inaugural post and “About” page of my blog, you know I’ve always had a bent towards creativity – just not the artistic kind that included drawing, painting and such. Steve always takes exception to me saying that since I used to occasionally draw some rudimentary cartoon characters. It’s not that drawing cartoons isn’t artistic, it’s just not the style of art I see in the definition that I’ve come to hold for myself as an artist. Anyway, becoming an artist in mid-life was an unexpected development. But, I have long loved to write.
When my cherished mother died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1996 it, too, was unexpected. I hadn’t yet discovered the artistic talent I now possess. Over the next three years after her loss I wrote a memoir titled Phyllis and Me to emotionally grapple with her death. It included poems I wrote to deal with the pain of her loss and simple but precious memories of my Mom and me. Events that helped shaped me. My goal was to finish the memoir before what would have been her 75th birthday on December 20, 1999. Mission accomplished.
Sometime around 2002 is when I believe I started referring to myself as an artist after my drawing titled Equine Soul garnered an Honorable Mention at the Mystic Art Association. Despite that accolade, internally I held only a lukewarm embracing of my self-appointed title, undoubtedly because of my lack of formal artistic training.
It wasn’t until ten years later that I had a whole-hearted embracing of the title as my following journal entry reveals. Once you’ve read it, read the story that follows. Chicken Pox and Puzzle Parts is one of the memories from Phyllis and Me. It discloses an extraordinary oracle-like revelation and explains how I came to be an artist.
But first, the journal entry from 2012 …
“As I stand at my easel honing my latest horse collage, my mind conjured the puzzle of the little girl at the easel. I felt, all at once that I was fulfilling a destiny I didn’t realize was mine until this epiphany announced itself. I AM an artist with an artist eye and artist soul. It was always so but I never owned it, truly, until now. This moment in time.
Yes, I said I was an artist, wrote it and thought it was so, but just now I took it as real, the truth, what I am here for, what my part in the universal order of things is.
I am. I am an artist.” C.A.W.
Chicken Pox and Puzzle Parts – from Phyllis and Me
“When I was three or four I got the chicken pox. Details of exactly when and for how long they invaded my body must have seemed unimportant enough that I can’t conjure up a detailed account.
There are really only two things I remember about having them, so it distresses me sometimes when other people seem to have a clear, blow-by-blow description of childhood ailments that kept their bouncy bodies in check and in bed. It makes me feel I was doled out short a few megabytes of memory. My consolation is that I at least remember the quality bits of information.
Bed position. I remember where my bed was, that safe haven in which I use to regenerate my energy. It was tucked in one corner of the twelve foot long room that was my refuge and was diagonally across from the door. The headboard was against the wall that had a window that looked out on the huge, open backyard where spontaneous softball and touch football games, badminton and croquet matches took place with cousins and neighborhood kids. The bed ran lengthwise against the other windowed wall that let me look out at the street in front of our house and our side yard adjacent to Mrs. English’s house. She was a Mrs. but I never knew her first name or the Mr. that belonged to the gentle, quiet woman I rarely saw but respected and who never raised her voice. He had died long before I had any experience to comprehend those heartbreaks of life.
My bed was my inside fort. I’d bury my head under the pillows and reinforcement of covers that protected me against any evils floating out in the air and in my head. I’d hunker down in my own secure box-spring lined fox hole. During thunder storms I could escape from what I was certain were the Japanese who had come to bomb us. A decade or so after the close of WW II American viewers were bombarded by television reenactments of the Big One, so I naturally knew that when it thundered the enemy had come back to get their revenge. I’d sweat and shiver under the covers but was always grateful that my bed protected me because when morning broke they were gone, I wasn’t and I could again go out and play safe in our yard.
Above my fortress bed, over the headboard, was a simple embroidered prayer on yellowing linen. Above the words was the embroidered silhouette of a young child imploring God’s protection.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake.
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
If I should live another day.
I pray the Lord to guide my way.
I believe that by recanting this prayer dutifully as a child I’ve been comforted, protected and guided ever since. From the safety of my room, the help that the prayer conjured from higher powers seems to have accompanied me into adulthood.
I can see myself back then, when the pox popped, propped up in bed and with a consolation prize. A puzzle. I remember Mom giving it to me while I lay there in my fort isolated from the healthy. She got me the puzzle just as she got me anything creative and mind expanding. I was always a bit wary afterwards that it would retain traces of contamination having played with it in my pox infected bed. But I never did get them again. Amazing how contagions work or don’t.
The puzzle was simple, the size of a standard piece of paper with large radiused corners. It had about 15 pieces with one egg-shaped part located slightly off center in the upper left-hand corner. That egg shaped piece had part of an easel in it. The easel belonged to a little girl with long, golden wavy hair in a wide brimmed hat. She stood in front of the easel, palette in her left hand and loaded paint brush in her right. Her fluffy little mongrel dog eagerly waited at her side for the masterpiece to be done so they could go play in the field of wild flowers sprawling in front of them. I liked that puzzle. A lot.
The chicken pox left me long before the puzzle did. It’s baffling to me why I hung on to it for so long. I kept it for nearly 39 years. It was stored jumbled up in a flip-over-the-top sandwich bag from the days before zip lock tops. I couldn’t seem to part with it. I’d forget about the puzzle until hunting for something in a closet and there it was, still in the same bag, surprisingly and rightfully. Occasionally I’d put it together again. And always a simple smile would permeate throughout me. Amazingly, that simple gift had traveled with me and never gotten permanently lost in the three homes I’ve lived in.
Now I wish I had it back. Just like I wish I had back the person who gave it to me. In a moment of simplifying our material life during a cleansing of stuff, I donated the puzzle to our spring yard sale. Why would I need it anyway? I hoped that someone else could share the inexplicable enjoyment I’d derived from putting it together, feel the quiet pull it held for me for so long.
But, no one sensed its power and magic. No one wanted it. At days end it still sat in the bag. Still mine. I decided that I was not a little girl anymore and rationalized that I hadn’t actually put it together in a long time and what good was it doing cloistered in a closet. I threw it out with the other miscellaneous yard sale treasures that no one else had seen the value in.
The ramification of my action dawned on me less than six months later. I wanted the puzzle back like the wasted wish you’d make with a genie in a bottle. I had thrown out the puzzle that I had held on to so long and that Fall my Mom died, the giver of the compelling gift. She died just as suddenly as I, after 39 years, had tossed her gift. The person I loved and who loved me and nurtured me physically, emotionally, spiritually and culturally was gone. I felt like I had thrown out the baby with the bath water and that somehow tossing the puzzle had contributed to my mother’s sudden death.
Four months after she died though, it all made sense. The connectedness of events dawned. I took a one-night workshop on rediscovering my creativity through expressive arts. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, taking that simple workshop was the door that opened after the one that was shut. The magic of the puzzle was at last revealed.
Now I am the little girl in the puzzle drawing and painting, something which I’ve never done before. I became the puzzle. The synchronicity and connection between the three people and events is evident. It’s a modern day miracle. The mystical law of three comprised of the little girl with golden hair at her easel, the little girl with auburn hair and chicken pox who grew into a woman, and the woman who gave me a puzzle and so much life.
The physical puzzle is gone. The giver is gone. But the little girl has emerged off the puzzle, come to life and is at her earthly easel, amazed at how a gift from so many years ago continues to give.”
I am a most fortunate individual. Not only did I have an amazingly supportive, kind and loving mother but I’ve also been blessed with a husband who is supportive, kind, loving and a creative soul, as well. Steve edits my blogs for me and lends suggestions – it’s always good to have another set of eyes. While editing this post he was reminded of the poem he wrote for me shortly after I finished Phyllis and Me. I just had to share it with you.
Little Girl Painting
by Steve Watson 12.7.99
I see her now in memory
as clear as on that day,
when Mom gave me a puzzle
to keep chicken box at bay.
It wasn’t complicated,
it hadn’t many parts,
but it became a cherished gift
straight from my mothers heart.
I put the parts together,
their secret was revealed –
a little girl there painting
some daises in a field.
And by her side a little dog
would wait for her all day,
so when she finished painting
they both could go and play.
I marveled at that puzzle
as I lay there in my bed,
the beauty of the little girl
with locks upon her head.
Her easel was quite steady,
she held her brush with grace,
the pleasure of her painting
showed all across her face.
And, though he had to wait for her,
the dog was happy, too.
‘Cause just to be there by her side
was all he needed do.
That puzzle was just pieces …
pieces and much more,
for I could not begin to know
the prophesy it bore.
I now have grown to womanhood
as decades have passed by.
But aging is no problem –
nor the reason why I cry.
Tears are shed for Mothers love,
her gentle little touch,
for chicken pox and puzzle parts
that meant so very much.
You see, I’ve lost my mother,
and lost the puzzle, too.
But never will I lose the love
she gave me warm and true.
And as I sit here painting,
the brush I will not choke,
so I feel her love flowing
with every single stroke.
My paintings are quite simple,
occasionally a pearl.
For them I bless my mother
and thank that little girl.
carol@mylifewithcreativity.com Post author
Indeed. XO
Steve Watson
Love and art – inseparable.