Lost and Found
So, I am blogging my life down trying to make sense of my hectic, scatter-brained days. Life with three sweet little munchkins (mmm, wish I had some of those right now), is all consuming. Just when you think you have scored a few moments to yourself, pow! Someone calls for you or gets hurt or just needs you to help them find something. But alas, they are little people with a new view of the world and a keen sense for when you’ve found down time that they can “be a part of.”
But really I need to mention a great awakening that occured in my heart only a few years past. See, ever since I was a child, I’ve loved art. Drawing, painting, building, creating, whatever. If it involved getting my hands into something and turning it into something else, I loved it. But I would never have labeled myself an “artist.” That term, in my mind, was reserved for the masters like Leonardo, Monet, Degas, or Cassatt. It was never a label that I could use to describe me and yet it is at the very soul of who I am.
My first real introduction to calling myself an artist was when I went on an international trip and my friend, a very talented singer/songwriter/drawer traveling with me, wrote on her international form that her occupation was as an artist. I was astonished to know that she accepted that truth and made it her label. Well, I of course thought “why not?!” I mean that is what I want to be known for too. Not that being known as a great homemaker is bad, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth because it was a label I felt I had no other choice but to accept as all I was currently doing with my life. So, with apprehension and excitement mixed, I wrote it as my occupation as well. It left me feeling gleeful and mischevious. I felt like I had just stepped with barefeet onto fresh green grass, the really soft kind that is cool and comforting the moment it tickles your skin; but that it was somehow forbidden and I was doing it anyway. Once I realized that it was okay to be so free with the term I tried to embrace it even deeper.
The neat thing is that I went to coffee with a sweet friend the other night and she matter-of-factly referred to me as an artist; saying that I would really appreciate the art her father does. It made my day! I mean, me an artist? The fact that other people would think of me in that way when I have done so little to show my talents, just sends my mouth gaping open in shock. I can only hope that I can live up to the true sense of the word and be a creator of things that were not until I made them.
