somehow it’s april.
I did a little experiment in February of daily painting. As I rolled through February, I was pretty sure it was a done deal and I would be able to get around to painting every day…every spare moment and then I wasn’t. I think on some level. I was just tired on so many levels. I wanted to watch YouTube and frolic outside. My oldest kid and I are having a garden contest:…which I am sadly loosing. There are bookshelves full of books and bread to be made, weeds to be studied….and laundry to be ignored.
In some ways I had gotten away from myself and my ethos and that was a weight. Too much shopping to cope, too much mental complaining and blaming…heavy weights. Too much trying to fill myself with noise…even good noise.
I made bread again. Buscuits really. It was innocent. Gluten free. And a small disaster. Then I made regular ones and then flatbread and cornbread. Then I was dreaming of my grandma‘s face. The old white house with the black trim and sagging porch. A place I wanted to run away from filled with the person I loved to run, too.
I organized my sewing things with true conviction. Held my book of stitching in my hand and read it like a psalm. one of my first memories is a church revival. People singing …frilly hats and bodies shaking. My mom refused to go to a traditional “black church” she wanted the truth…as it was sold to her. It is all sold to us…our ancestors grabbed it like a lifeline because it was but it was not without confusion and leaving some part of themselves behind.
In my mind this all ties together and maybe one day I will have the brain power to lay it and weave the threads. My grandma use to sing in the morning. She would have her coffee and Newport and a song before breakfast and then sweep the weathered wood floors. She would go outside and look at the forest of pine that held that little house in its heart and bless her day…her life and her people.
She blesses me. I look up a the sugar gums and elms climbing the sky outside my window. I sometimes paint with pigments and brushes again. And sometimes I just open the window and breathe the whole day into my heart.
when things get heavy. I want to remember that it’s okay to show up in small ways.
Steady practice looks so different than it feels.
Sometimes gestation is a container and a tool.
Painting is a love story and it has dips and bends.
Open the window. Watch the sky.
Pick up a brush or a bit of song.
Bless this life. Again.
