An Aries (Who Knows Some Stuff)
Current Photo Friday theme: Mother
Dorothy Jean, March 2007
Her 81st was her last healthy birthday. Tom and I took her out for dinner (she chose Red Lobster), and she ordered a decadent chocolate dessert to celebrate. When the waiter, Bryce, couldn’t find a candle, he lit his Bic while we sang happy birthday so she’d have something to blow out when she made her wish. She was ready to make him an honorary grandson. Photos like this one keep me grateful for cameras.
Lightness and darkness. Lightness and heaviness. Sometimes, I feel heaviness settle. I try to find ways to sit with it, consider it, and then let it go.
I sat outside and blew bubbles for you. Bubbles are nearly weightless. They float on air. They catch and reflect light. Their beauty is fragile and fleeting. Each bubble carries a bit of our breath with it, but the air and our bodies are quick to replenish our lungs. Inhale. Exhale.
When the heaviness and darkness come, I try to remember the lightness of you and our time together.
I tore out another reverse coloring page. I took circles from Kendra Norton’s book, and then I outlined them and as artist Andrea Nelson suggests, “rounded off the corners.”
I remember to breathe.
Theirs; today. They had thirty-eight years and three children together. She lived another twenty-three years without him. Not a single day goes by that I don’t think of their lives, their personalities, and their stories.
One day, back at The Compound, I picked up a fresh 4×6-inch canvas and chose my paint colors, only realizing sometime into my painting that I was being influenced by the painting on the wall behind me.
It was a painting my father gave me, which I suppose one might call an unpaid commission, since I said, “Please paint me a city.” I gave him no other parameters, and this is the large canvas he painted and gifted to me. I’m SO, SO glad I gave no input, because nothing I could have said would have been as beautiful and perfect for me as this abstract is. It has traveled and lived with me since, and now it hangs over the fireplace in the library at Houndstooth Hall, where I get to enjoy it every single day.
Recently, when we celebrated my birthday, Rhonda and Lindsey gave me this great coloring book, The Reverse Coloring Book, from Kendra Norton. The colors are there, and the person coloring the page gets to decide how to use the shapes and colors to create their own work of art.
This page made me think of The City, so it’s the one I chose to work on in honor of today’s date. April 18 is when my father died in 1985. I know I’m one of the most fortunate people in the world not only to have endless memories of a good father (and trust me, having endured my teenage years, my father might be surprised at how I always praise him), but also so many tangible memories of his creativity. I never went inside a museum until I was in my thirties, but I’d long been prepared to fall in love with art.
I’ve seen some great versions of that coloring page online with people using pen and inks, adding architectural features to the buildings, and even including some foliage at the ground level. I chose to keep mine simple and make it another homage to my father’s.
Thank you, Daddy.
I actually am not writing today, or haven’t so far. I’m mostly outlining on paper, and mentally, a bunch of possible scenes and plot points that will eventually bring the Neverending Saga to a close. And when I write those words–“to a close”–my brain can’t quite conceive of it. It isn’t that I want to drag this out forever, like a nighttime TV drama where characters go through more jobs and marriages and crises in seven seasons than most people will ever experience in their entire lives. (Or, for that matter, a daytime TV drama, where characters die and return to life on a consistent basis, and sometimes they look very different, and sometimes they’ll die again and return looking like their original version. Soap operas are a delight in that way, and I say that sincerely.)
I’ll be happy when all my deserving characters are happy and doing what they should be, and then I’ll leave them alone for a while. If I rewrite the second and third 1990s novels, many of these characters appear again in supporting roles. Plus I have three strong ideas for completely unrelated novels. I have much I can write, but I’m not anywhere near saying goodbye to this group yet.
I do reflect a lot on what I changed from the 1990s versions, and I’m happy with those choices. I provided backstories where there were none. I changed or let go of certain storylines that I never thought I would, but doing so opened up so many better possibilities. There were people who read those 1990s books and said they loved them, and I have no way of knowing if they would love these.
If I were to tell you some of the ways these seven manuscripts I’ve poured my time and heart and effort into for the last seven years have been a means for a few people to criticize, belittle, or disrespect me, you might wonder why I keep going. It’s okay. The books and I are still standing. The people who respect what I do or who love me are still supportive in a range of ways. The others are either no longer a part of my life or if they are, I mostly stopped talking about writing with them (sort of the way most of us avoided talking about politics, religion, or our problematic relatives before it became a thing to share all that over social media–with words and videos–and now we can’t avoid it by moving to the other side of the globe because our phones will deliver it all to us 24/365. My detractors are safe from this rambling commentary since they also don’t read this blog.).
I had a lovely period of time once when things I wrote were published. Maybe I’ll get to experience that again. Maybe not. Publishing didn’t bring me riches or acclaim or the security that I’d always have a writing career. It brought me happiness, a sense of fulfillment, and the understanding that I’m able to follow through and finish things.
Some day, I hope you’ll come along for the ride with the Neverending Saga.
And remember…
Current Photo Friday theme: Waiting
Houston, April 15, 2008
As long ago as the 1970s in Alabama, I’d drive to local post offices on the last night people could get their tax returns in the mail to get them postmarked by the filing date. Some would be filling out their tax forms; others waited in line to hand over their envelopes. A lobby full of people late at night in a small town has a surreal quality. After I moved to Texas, I discovered that at some Houston post offices, traffic cops and postal employees worked that night to make sure people got in and out efficiently and their envelopes were time-stamped.
Now in the days of e-filing tax returns, I don’t know if this still happens. I haven’t driven to a post office on tax night in years. I’ll be thinking of those last-minute filers next week, though, and wishing them luck.
Just a wee 4×6-inch canvas, painted in acrylics in 2007. I was looking to see if I’d ever done a painting in the One Word Art series with a particular title, and I haven’t. But in looking at all my photos of old paintings, I see a lot that became part of other works and then disappeared into the unknown. I hope some of them found homes where they were wanted.
Every time we share any part of ourselves, whether it’s been channeled into visual arts, words, performing arts, confidences to people we trust, we take a risk. Sometimes we find affirmation. Sometimes we don’t.
However you present yourself–your feelings, your thoughts, your creativity, your dreams–it takes courage. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. People who make you feel small or weak are not your people.
Impasto Painting Songbird
oil on canvas, 2020
©David Padworny, USA: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York
Name that mood!
Today is Draw A Picture of a Bird Day!
I’ve done this a few times before: first in 2010; again in 2011; once more in 2014; and again in 2018.
In honor of the eclipse which has everyone so worked up, here’s today’s 20-minute drawing. Let me know if you draw a bird. =)
A very sweet friend sent a strand of wooden Whirly Pigs for my birthday. She knew and loved Aaron, making this a perfect addition to Aaron’s Garden.
I forgot to take pictures during the daylight after Tom hung it, so the lighting isn’t great. When the wind blows, the feathers become spinners. I can’t wait to see it in action when we get a good breeze. I’ve collected pigs most of my life, and feathers are a reminder of Aaron that his mother once shared with me.
Thank you so much! ❤️
Time to browse the book that inspired this weekly feature, and today I chose this prompt:
I’ve recently taken out my wee keyboard to see if I can still play any of the easy piano music I learned WAY BACK WHEN. Turns out I can (falteringly); it’d probably be a lot easier on an actual piano. The electronic keyboard really is wee, having only 26 white keys (natural music notes) and 18 black keys (sharps and flats). For comparison, a standard piano of 88 keys has 52 white keys and 36 black keys.
Still a lot of fun though, and coincidentally, this favorite old classic my parents liked to dance to is in the music book, so I took a (very slow) run through it.
Sounds better when Ella sings it.
Where would your sentimental journey take you?