I decided to assemble a group of people who would help me mother my daughter, thinking that if I surrounded Katherine with enough remarkable women, I would not only be able to cover areas where I might be weak, tired or inexperienced, but that there was also strength in numbers. The phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” was widely circulating at the time, especially in the counseling circles where I worked. It’s a notion I whole-heartedly adopted. I literally had the t-shirt.

I deliberately set out to create my own village. In addition to my own mother and sisters, my village had a few early members. One was Katherine’s Aunt Dixie, who stayed just as embedded—maybe more embedded–in my life even after her brother and I divorced. Dixie had a daughter, Casey, and treated Katherine like a second child. Dixie’s mother, Katie Bess’s “Nanny Jo,” was a constant presence, driving to my house from her home on the Oregon coast once a week to give me a night off.

Wendy, my dear friend and college roommate who was also Katherine’s godmother, would take Katherine to her apartment where they’d bake cookies or put together puzzles. Not surprisingly, Katherine’s first favorite letter was “W,” and Wendy hand-crafted an entire book of “W” words, which we still have.

"Jilly Jill" with Katherine

And then there was Jill, or “Jilly Jill” as Katherine dubbed her. Just sixteen when I hired her as my very first babysitter, Jill apparently decided to take me under her wing, a decision for which I am forever grateful.  Jill settled in for the long haul and literally became Katherines’s “Other Mother.” (You can read about it in my  blog post). Because we somewhat resembled each other, Jill and I were often mistaken for sisters. It wasn’t much of a stretch, then, that she was also often mistaken as Katherine’s mom. I was fine with this. Delighted even. To make it an even better deal, Jill’s parents, Barbara and Tom, became another set of grandparents to Katherine, enlarging the village.

Other members came later. There was Katherine’s third-grade teacher, Ms. Reay, who really bonded with her and kept in touch over the years. And Ms. Romine, the TAG coordinator, a woman without whom, I think it’s fair to say, Katherine would have ended up hating school.

When Doug and I married  several years later, I not only  increased Katherine’s circle of parents, but expanded the village again. There was Nana, another grandmother to love her, and Doug’s sisters, Susie and Julie and Jane, all interesting, thoughtful women.

Just when I thought the village was pretty complete, a few more people came along. Katherine’s dad Kelly met a marvelous woman named Sabine. When they decided to get married, I was pleased to know that while Katherine was gaining another mother, I was gaining a friend.

Friends, it turns out, are a rich resource as well. While my friends are so important to me, keeping me grounded and sane, they nourish the lives of my kids as well. I know that my friends Elizabeth and Heidi would jump in in a heartbeat if any of my children needed anything.

Katherine is now 25 years old and is getting married this summer to a terrific man named Ryan. I’m thrilled. Not only are they a strong couple, but it occurs to me that Katherine’s village is exponentially enlarged. She’s gaining yet another mother in Ryan’s mom, Mary, who brings yet another voice, another vision to Katherine’s life. But this addition was Katherine’s own doing. I did my part early on, but she’s fully in charge now.

When I considered what kind of bridal shower I wanted to host for my daughter, my first thought was to have a celebration honoring all of the women who helped Katherine build the life she has now. Which is what we did this past Saturday. It seemed fitting that the date happened to fall on Mother’s Day weekend. Not everyone was able to attend, particularly those who lived out of town, but we had a good turnout, including many of the women I’ve talked about, as well as two of Katherine’s sisters, Kate and Sarah, and her best friend Jordan. The younger generation is now building a village all their own.

The day turned out just the way I’d hoped, giving me and Katherine an opportunity to publicly thank the remarkable women who helped me be a better mother, and who filled in the spaces I couldn’t reach. I looked around my house, filled with some of my favorite people in the world: smart, creative, talented, funny, and altogether beautiful women.

It took a village, and I somehow managed to find a good one. Every once in a while, however, it’s lovely to have a reunion.

And yet, I’ve learned that even really, really hard stuff can be manipulated with the right tool. As a result, I’ve become something of a tool junkie. I used to roll my eyes whenever Doug wanted to walk into a hardware store (I used to call them shoe stores for men), but now I’m right there with him. We’ve spent many Saturday mornings haunting wood shops, welding shops, and good, old-fashioned hardware stores hunting for tools. Once I figured out that Michelangelo carved stone with the same kind of chisels they sell today, I was completely hooked. The only difference is that his probably weren’t made in China, where most of mine were manufactured.

Until today.

Today, our class was visited by a stone carver’s version of Santa Claus in the form of a man named Tom. He drove up outside our classroom and unloaded hundreds of pounds of rocks, from which we were able to select and purchase stones to be used in our next sculptures. He had white marble, pink marble, black marble. He had alabaster in root beer and raspberry colors. He had limestone and chlorite and brucite. I bought a 43-pound chunk of soap stone, which is the softest stone we can use, carves easily with hand tools, and feels wonderful to touch. Talcum powder is made from soapstone shavings, or so I’ve been told.

What was even more delightful is that Tom also sold tools of better quality and lesser cost that we could find in any carving supply store. He basically brought the hardware store to us. We milled around in the parking lot, weighing the heft of different chisels, files and rasps in our hands. I swear, it was better than a shoe store. Tom was explaining to me the use of a particular two-toothed chisel when I saw a Rubbermaid box filled with a pile of rusty, obviously old tools.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Oh, those,” he said, his eyes glazing over with a dreamy look. “Those are really something else. They belonged to a sculptor named Pegot Stein Waring, who died some time ago. Most of her tools were gradually sold off. These are some of the last ones left.”

He showed me a few, their ends pounded flat by years of hammering, their tips chiseled and shaped  by years of honing. He talked about the beauty and utility of an imperfectly shaped tool, one that could carve out curves and spaces better than others that are freshly made and new. These tools had been tested. These tools had already worked in the hands of a much more experienced, accomplished carver. Maybe these tools had lessons they could teach me.

I picked up several of the chisels, selecting a variety of tip widths and shapes. I turned their dented, rusty forms in my hands. On a few of them, I saw the word “Italy” inscribed on the side, which made me even more excited. I figured that the country that gave us Michelangelo and Bernini would know best how to make a chisel. I’d take these over Italian shoes any day.

I’m happy to give these tools another home, another chance to work. I’m also glad to find that there is a place where shiny and new isn’t necessarily better. Well-used and well-loved can be an asset. I’m anxious to get out my 43-pound soapstone rock and start to work. I aim find out what old tools can teach.

I wrote this story years ago and included it in the book I co-authored with my dear friend, Elizabeth Taylor (the Canadian YA author, not the movie star). We wrote the book

Enjoy!

The Rapture Comes on a Sunday

by Barbara Allen Burke

“Hey, Barbie!”

I heard my mother’s stern Sunday voice calling.  I ignored it and continued to rummage through the refrigerator.

“Barbara JoAnna Allen!”

Ooh.  Now I was in trouble. I looked over the refrigerator door.  My mother glared at me from the kitchen sink.  I watched soap suds slide off her fingers into murky dishwater.  “You get out of that refrigerator and get your chores done. Now move.” She started scrubbing a pan. “I don’t want to be late for the service.”

My sister Karla stood beside her on a stool next to the drain board.  She was still wearing her church clothes from the morning service and had a dishtowel wrapped around her waist.  She looked over her shoulder and made a face at me.

I walked behind them on my way out of the kitchen and yanked the towel to the ground as I left.

I hung over the top of the corral fence, chin resting on crossed arms.  Sunlight glinted off the horses’ water trough. A breeze ruffled waist-high grass.  It was one of the first really warm days of the spring season. After four hours of choir practice, Sunday school, and the Morning Worship Service, it felt good to be outside. Usually, the prospect of another two to three hours of church in the evening didn’t bother me.  I’d never really known anything else.

Not today.  Today the sunshine called.  Today I was tempted to run barefoot through the field and tramp down a swath of grass to make a nest for myself.  There I would lie on my back and watch clouds.

I climbed down from the fence and started back toward the house.  Unaccustomed to my rebellious feelings, I slid deeper into them.  I deliberately scuffed my shoes in the dirt.  I stooped to gather a handful of stones from the gravel at my feet.

“I hate church,” I thought to myself. I threw a rock at the corral fence.  It hit the wood railing with a thud.  Anger had made me accurate.

I went in the back door, bracing for my parents to tell me to hurry.  I was surprised by silence.  I walked through the family room into the empty kitchen. Soap suds filled the sink. My sister’s dishtowel lay on the stool by the drain board.

“Mom?  Dad?”  Where was everybody?

I hurried through to the dining room – empty – and into the living room– also empty.  My father’s Car and Driver magazine spilled onto the floor.  My youngest sister’s blocks sat in a messy pile in the corner.

And then I knew with blinding clarity what had happened:  The Rapture.  The Lord had returned to call his faithful servants unto himself and I, Barbara JoAnna Allen, had been left behind.  I could just picture it.  While I was moping in the yard, my more righteous mother, father and sisters had been transformed into ghostly, light-filled figures and lifted straight to heaven.

I brushed away tears and trotted through the house, afraid to confirm what I already knew.  The bedrooms were empty, the beds rumpled, closet doors open.  I ran into my own bedroom and there, lying on the bed, were my Sunday clothes, set out by my mother.  They accused me of my mean-mindedness and sloth. And now the Only Train Bound for Glory had come and I had missed it.   How stupid could I be?

I walked more slowly, trying to remember all the sermons I had heard about the years of Tribulation that would follow the Rapture. I had to find a way to face it.

I headed toward the barn. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. The family station wagon sat in its usual place.  I stared.  There in the car sat my parents in the front seat, facing each other, talking.   My sisters leaned out of the windows.

“There she is,” called my sister, Karla.  “Are you coming or what?  We’re waiting, and the car’s getting hot.”

I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to run and kiss my sisters’ faces, curl up on my mother’s lap and let her stroke my hair.  I wanted to hug my dad and feel him hug me back.  I wanted to laugh out loud.  I wanted to apologize to God.

What I did was get in the car.  It was time to go to church.

They pay attention to what “speaks” to them.

Time and time again, I’ve heard these words spoken in different voices. It serves both as explanation for how they do what they do, and as advice for how I go about my own art. In fact, I learned very quickly that when critiquing someone’s work not to say “I like it.” Actually, in most classes, I’m not allowed to say these words. The phrase really doesn’t given any information to the artist, doesn’t tell her or him what works and what doesn’t or, more importantly, how the art affects me. We learn to say things like “I notice that you varied the material from the top to the bottom” or “I respond to the color red you used in the piece.”

That’s the way it’s supposed to work:  art speaks, we respond. We all know what it’s like to feel moved by art—a vivid painting, joyous music, a great book, a dancer’s movement across a stage. Still, it’s hard to pin down what it is that moves us. Why does my heart well up every time I hear George Bizet’s Adagio for Strings? Why does my favorite William Stafford poem, The Way It Is, bring tears every single time I read it? What is it that I am actually hearing or noticing when art grabs my attention?

It turns out, I’m responding to my own life.

At least that’s what I learned this week when I read an article week about scientists at New York University who just published research on the brain’s aesthetic response to art in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience. The subjects in the study were shown a selection of 109 pieces of art. These works of art came from a variety of cultural traditions, including American, European, Indian, and Japanese, and from several historical periods. Images were representational and abstract, and included several classifications (e.g., female, male figure, a mixed group, still life, landscape, or abstract). Using fMRI imaging as well as behavioral reporting, researchers were able to scan  subjects’ brains while they viewed a wide variety of art. The subjects also reported which art pieces elicited an emotional response. In other words, they shared which images “spoke” to them.

Not surprisingly, all the of subjects used the brain’s sensory, or occipito-temporal regions, to gather information about what their eyes were actually seeing, regardless of whether or not the subject reported being moved by the image. However, another pattern emerged . Although the subjects varied widely in which types of art appealed to them, when they did respond emotionally, they all showed a significant increase in activity in a specific network of frontal and sub-cortical regions in response to artworks they reported as highly moving.

What I found even more interesting is that these regions belong to the part of the brain’s “Default Mode Network” (DMN), which had previously been associated with inward contemplation and self-assessment. As the article reported:

The most moving paintings produce a selective activation of a network of brain regions which is known to activate when we think about personally relevant matters such as our own personality traits and daydreams, or when we contemplate our future.”

What is so interesting to me about this study is not that it confirms that art can and does speak, but that it speaks to each of us personally. My response to art gives me information about “personally relevant matters,” relying on the same transmission system used to give me information about my personality traits, my dreams and my future. When I contemplate art, therefore, I am in a way contemplating my own life. Information about my own aesthetic response can very well provide clues about ways in which I can contribute that are uniquely my own.

Maybe this seems obvious to everyone else. Perhaps it is a truism that we are best at creating the things we love in the world. I’ve learned that listening to art feels very much like listening for options in your life. It helps to be quiet and free of distractions. It helps to be curious and open-minded about what you will find. And then you listen. What pushes you to respond? What makes your heart well up, or bring you to tears? What moves you? How can you include more of these things in your life? What does it inspire you to bring to the world yourself?

There is a whole big world of beauty out there. It’s speaking to us all the time. It’s up to us hear it, to decide what it is saying to us, and how we want to respond.

There I am, in a very warm, dimly lit yoga studio. I’m balancing on my right leg, left leg stretched behind me. My arms extend out in front so I’m roughly a “T” shape—and I do mean roughly. I’m trying to approximate something like a Warrior III pose. Sweat drips off my face onto my mat. I struggle to find my balance, my toes seeking better purchase on my yoga mat.

And then I fall over. Again.

Still, I keep coming back—to the pose, to my mat, to the class. Sometimes I wonder why. I’m not a naturally bendy person. Plus, I’m fairly clumsy by nature and have serious problems with balance—as I am frequently reminded in class.  But there are several reasons I keep showing up. The first is that yoga seems to be the only thing that keeps me from getting injured. I’ve noticed over the course of a couple of years that whenever I skip yoga for any length of time, my back goes out and I’ll be out of commission and on muscle relaxants for about 10 days. That is usually motivation enough.

The other reason is deeper. There are so many correlations to working my way through a yoga class and working my way through life that I frequently leave class with just the message or idea I need to solve some other nagging problem. When I fall over while standing on one leg, it reminds me how hard it is to maintain balance in any area. When my muscles are burning with fatigue I realize that I make a choice to stay with the struggle to build strength or pull away to rest and recover. When I reach the limits of my flexibility (which happens in nearly every pose), I recognize that freedom of movement comes slowly, incrementally but, with continued practice, inevitably.

Not surprisingly, there are often times when our teacher, Dena, will say something that especially resonates with me. This is what happened today. We were three-quarters of the way through the class, feeling tired and sweaty, trying to stay with a challenging pose through five more breaths. Dena reminded us that although there are always muscles that are firing and working hard, there are also places where you can let go. Do you really need the tension you’re holding in your neck? Can you relax the muscles in your face? In your fingers? In the midst of great effort, there is often a way to find some ease as well.

This concept is hard to wrap my brain around. I’m really good at gearing up for a fight, tensing to face the next challenge. I’m also pretty good at  collapsing when I’m overtired, turning off my brain and body and crashing into sleep. But combining effort and ease? This is as hard for me as balancing on one leg, as much of a stretch as a backbend.

When I am in the middle of a crisis or a struggle, everything in me is ramped up for the battle. I have noticed that at the end of a long day, the muscles in my neck and shoulders ache. There can be no more telling reminder that I am trying to carry everything on my shoulders. Not anyone else’s shoulders—just mine. And truly, does that tension help me? Does it help anyone? As hard as I may have to work to solve any problem, will carrying that worry and contraction actually help me? Would I be better off if I could release my hold?

So, in yoga and in life, I am looking for ways I can let go, for places where I can drop the tension. I’m looking for ways to combine effort, which is productive, and ease, which is restorative.

Not either/or.  Both.

Of course, it’s another type of balancing act. I will still fall over. I’ll find the tension creeping back into my shoulders and my neck. But I won’t fail if I keep going back to the pose, going back to the mat, going back  to my life and trying again.

West of the Cascades, however, in the verdant Willamette Valley where I now live, it’s a very different story. Here, we get rain, and lots of it. I knew this when I moved to Oregon to go to college thirty years ago, and this fact was one of the the area’s most appealing features. I had visions of walking with cute umbrellas and rain boots, sipping tea while reading by a cozy fire. I knew that ivy-covered hillsides, flowering evergreens, clean air, and year-round green grass owed their existence to lots and lots of rain.

Which is all well and good, unless you’ve lived in the Willamette Valley over the past couple of months, in which case you slowly go, as my good friend Elizabeth says, stark raving mad. In the month of March, we had record levels of rain, making it the wettest March in over fifty years. Some days, walking around under looming dark clouds in a wash of grey mist, you just want to punch something. And still, all we seem to be able to talk about is how much it’s been raining, as if we all don’t already know. We are smack in the midst of that  awkward time when we are still months away from summer (which usually arrives on July 5th), but can’t really remember the glorious crimson leaves and crisp sunshine of the past autumn. It all feels pretty bleak.

There was a moment this week, however, that caught me by surprise. I was walking from my car to the front door of my house, glad that the rain seemed to have stopped for a moment. The sun broke through the clouds and I paused  to appreciate the way it lit up the dripping, green plants in my front yard. From a distance, the gardens still seem sparse and colorless. The trees haven’t leafed out and it’s too early for the blazing colors of azaleas and rhododendrons that will arrive in a few weeks. Still, if I looked closely, I could see signs of life peaking through. Flowering trees—pear and star magnolias—sent out scented blossoms, white and fragile.

Fern fronds broke through the bark-dust covered ground, beginning to unfurl, their spiraled tips geometric and gorgeous. The color green, an Oregon staple even in winter, was refreshed by the arrival of new grass.

The delicate pink petals of false begonia that border my sidewalk will be gone in weeks, soon to be replaced by the more vivid, saturated blooms of summer flowers. They are easy to overlook, as are the carpets of tiny grape hyacinths.

None of these early ambassadors of spring shout or demand your attention. It’s easy to make a mad rush from building to building to avoid the dripping weather. After a bleak, dark winter, it’s easy to forget that you’ve ever seen the sun or will be likely to see it again. Fortunately, Doug went out into the front yard and documented everything in the photos you see here. It did me good to notice. Maybe—just maybe—I can make it until summer. By then I’ll be able to appreciate the wonderful things rain brings to my life.

But give me a few days….

As many of you may know, ours is a blended family. When Doug and I married, I brought to the family my six-year-old daughter, Katherine, and Doug brought Sam, 4 and Kate, 2. Together we had baby Sarah. While Katherine lived mostly with us, Sam and Kate spent the school year with their mom who lived at that time in Arizona. Although they spent summers and vacations with us, there were a number of events that were not a regular part of our family experience. Things like Halloween.

In 1996, we decided to fly down and spend the holiday in Arizona, take the kids trick-or-treating, and attend the Halloween carnival being held at their elementary school. Perhaps I was overcompensating just a little bit, but I decided to make costumes for all of us, strange given the fact that I don’t really sew. I even decided on a theme for all of our costumes. At that time, Kate, who was in kindergarten, was  entranced with Toto, the little dog from Wizard of Oz. She’d often crawl around the house on all fours, barking. She refused to answer unless I  called her Toto. She of course wanted to be Toto for Halloween. Fine, I thought. I can pick out characters for each of us and pull together the appropriate costumes. I found a pattern for a dog costume to fashion Kate’s makeover into Toto. I modified the pattern to make a Cowardly Lion suit for Sam. Katherine wanted to be Dorothy, so I sewed a blue gingham dress for her, using her red, high-top Converse shoes for ruby slippers. Doug made a perfect Scarecrow when I stuffed a sweatshirt and jeans with straw. Sarah didn’t get much say and became the Tin Man in a grey sweatshirt and a tinfoil-covered funnel that fit her round little head. I wasn’t sure which part to pick for myself. There weren’t many female roles left. I was already heading to Arizona as “The Stepmother” so I certainly didn’t want to be the Wicked Witch of the West. That pretty much left me with Glinda the Good Witch. I somehow created a dress out of white and gold tulle, accented by a  magic wand and a tiara from the kids’ dress-up box. There I am in the photo, tiara and all, blissfully unaware of the embarrassment to come.

We showed up in Arizona the day before Halloween, swimming in the hotel swimming pool, and hand-crafting  Halloween candy bags. Okay, maybe I was overcompensating a lot.

We went trick-or-treating in Sam and Kate’s neighborhood. The weather was lovely, and the kids hauled in lots of great candy for Halloween, even agreeing to share some of their Snickers Bars with me.

Then came the school carnival. It was a big event, widely advertised in posters around the school. Everyone was supposed to come in costume, including parents. There would be games and music and food and prizes. We all dressed up in our Wizard of Oz finery and walked into the school as a group. The kids dashed off, eager to play the games. I, meanwhile, looked around with an increasingly sick feeling in my stomach. In a huge gymnasium filled with people, Doug and I were the only adults dressed in costume. I looked at all the other parents, members of a fairly well-to-do suburb of Phoenix. There were the all other moms, all of whom seemed to have expensive haircuts, size 2 designer jeans and excellent manicures. They were all beautiful and tanned and relaxed. And there I was, with my fish-belly white Oregon skin, craft glue under my fingernails, holding a wand, of all things. I was sure everyone was looking at me, judging me, incredulous that I could be so eager, so earnest, so . . . so stupid. Doug at least was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. I, on the other hand, was wearing a tiara.

I  wanted to drop through the floor and disappear. I wanted to ditch Glinda the Good Witch and revert to Barbara the awkward stepmother visiting from out of town. When that didn’t appear to be an option, I wanted to gather all the kids together and leave immediately. The problem was, they were all having a great time throwing bean bags and fishing for little plastic prizes and eating hot dogs and cake. They were in their element. I was the one completely out of place. I felt like I didn’t belong—in the gym, in Arizona, or in the world of happy, intact families. I felt, in short, like a failure.

I stuffed the tiara and wand in one of the kids’ bags and mostly hid behind Doug. I tried to chat with some of the other adults, parents of Sam and Kate’s friends, but I’m sure I didn’t make much of an impression, or at least not a good one. Would you want to talk to a silent, cringing woman in a white fairy dress? It was one of the longest nights of my life, and one of the hardest in my career as a parent. That was over fifteen years ago, and although I’ve shared the story a few times with friends, I’ve never written about it.

Until now.

Why now?

My daughter reminded me of the story earlier in the week, and I began to ask myself this question. Why, when I am willing to write about most things—my childhood, my relationships, my mistakes or my lessons—do I stop at recording memories like this one. It’s not that I resist talking about times when I’ve made a fool of myself, because I’m actually fine with that (see my story “Denver“). What stops me is that it is part of my history of raising a blended family, which carries the distinction of being both the thing I am most proud of, and also the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Twenty years into the process, I am humbled by all that we learned, and so grateful for the relationships I now have with everyone involved. It is perhaps one of the most significant experiences of my life.

So why wait so long to write about it? Because it probably took the distance of all those years to figure out what it means. What did I gain from that night standing in a crowded gymnasium, feeling out of place and humiliated? Here’s a beginning:

That I can’t control my experiences. I can do my best to plan, make beautiful, thematically-correct costumes, cover all the bases, and still have it fall apart.

That I survived the evening. It wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t happy. But my kids had a great time. They loved their costumes. In the end, it was just one night in a series of thousands.

That I belonged in that gymnasium, whether or not I felt like it at the time.

Ultimately, I decided to write it in hopes that perhaps I will be able to connect to someone else who has felt foolish or out of place—you, maybe—and be able to say that even in the middle of sinking humiliation, you have company. With time and distance, it will make more sense. You will survive. You already belong.

We were coming close to the end of my sculpture class which, as I have written previously (in “What I Intend and What I Get”), has challenged me in new and sometimes painful ways. This was the second of only two projects created during the entire term, and it had only one requirement: it had to be kinetic. In other words, it had to move. Our teacher showed us examples of other kinetic sculptures, things that had motors and gears and parts that required lots and lots of welding, none of which I felt anywhere close to being capable of building myself. I turned instead to the other example of moving sculpture powered not by machines but by nature: mobiles. I loved the way mobiles were animated by nature, a gentle wind blowing the objects into different shapes. I’d studied the mobile sculptures made famous by Alexander Calder. I’d seen a few in person at galleries, and I’d always loved them.

This is when I had my great idea. I’d often been fascinated watching a flock of seagulls collecting and hovering over water. Although made up of hundreds of individuals birds, they created a vision of a larger, organized body. The swirling, snow globe of a flock of gulls was beautiful to watch. It was the graceful movement of the flock I wanted my sculpture to represent. How hard could it be to create a mobile simulating a circling swirl of birds?

Of course, it was very hard. I spent three weeks working on the project—twisting wire, adding weights, tweaking the design—and nothing seemed to work. After about 30 hours of struggling with it, I asked my teacher, Michael, to talk through what was and wasn’t working about the project. He was sympathetic and a good listener. He did not, however, give me any straightforward solutions. Instead, he offered two ideas for me to ponder.

Idea #1:

“None of your work is ever wasted.” Reassuring, especially since I had already invested so much time in a project that wasn’t working.

Idea #2:

“I sometimes find it helpful to listen to the art to find out what it is trying to say.” Listen to the art? What if it didn’t have anything to say? My mobile was absolutely silent, and didn’t seem to have anything to say to me at all.

I decided to start over, to see if I could find a project that was willing to be a little more chatty. I made the decision with a fair amount of panic because the project was due in less than two weeks. Doug and I walked through the aisles of several hardware stores, trying to come up with ideas. I was listening for all I was worth.

Silence. All I heard was the sound of time ticking away.

But then Doug noticed that our local Ace Hardware was selling an old hardware display. It was a huge plywood panel filled with about 300 different sample springs—different sizes, different shapes, different types. I decided it was speaking to me. I didn’t know what it was saying yet, but I bought it. I cut off all the springs and spread them out on our kitchen table. For a week I played with the springs, dividing them into different families, experimenting with their shapes. A full week, just playing and trying to listen.

I decided that I needed the springs to work with something else.  I bought a piece of plywood. I took a straight edge and a pencil and drew a bunch of randomly shaped triangles. Doug helped me cut them into pieces.

Then came a LONG period of experimentation, messing around with springs and triangles. I spent a lot of time talking myself out of frustration and panic, telling myself to listen to what the art wanted to do, telling myself that all the experimentation wasn’t a waste of time. It was like building a house of cards. Just when I thought I’d figured it out, the whole thing would fall to pieces. Slowly—ever so slowly—the sculpture started to take shape. I played with the force of the springs themselves to hold the wood together. I worked to find the way the shapes balanced each other. I painted the wood pieces and assembled it again. It held together by the power of the springs without fasteners or glue.

When I stood back to look at it again, I realized with a growing sense of amazement and joy that my sculpture reminded me of a flock of red birds.

Perhaps my idea wanted to express itself after all. Maybe, just maybe, all those hours spent spinning my wheels wasn’t wasted.

Just like Michael said.

I was in college when I took my first solo trip by plane, coming home for Thanksgiving after my first term away. I flew from Portland to Denver in the middle of one of the worst blizzards ever. We were in a holding pattern over Denver for three hours. It was not a romantic trip. My second flight was the next year when I flew from Denver to England, meeting up with my study abroad group in London. My flight was cancelled at the last minute (a very harrowing experience for both my mother and me) and I was rerouted through Chicago. I didn’t know how to read my boarding pass when we changed planes and I decided that my best resource was a very chic young woman sitting in the waiting area. She was stunning, wearing a wool dress with matching jacket and pumps. She was also kind, helping me figure out my boarding pass and chatting with me while we waited. She told me she was flying to London to meet her fiance who was a banker or something. I suspected she’d materialized from the pages of a novel. My suspicions were confirmed when she opened her toiletries case, a very smart hard-sided leather box that, looking back, was probably Louis Vuitton. There was a mirror attached to the hinged lid which she used to reapply her lipstick.

I was entranced. I figured that someday, when I was a real grown-up, I would fly to London to visit my hypothetical fiance, and I would carry a beautiful travel case in which my jewelry and makeup would be carefully arranged.

I did make it back to London many years later. I actually got engaged on the trip. Somehow, the beautiful travel case didn’t materialize, but the allure of owning one never went away. Little did I know that it would take a painting assignment and a trip to the Goodwill Outlet store to make my dream come true.

Our final assignment for my class was to do a painting on a 3-D object. It could be anything, as long as the meaning of the object was reflected in the painting. Feeling stumped, I visited the Goodwill Outlet store in town, a huge warehouse with giant, rolling bins crammed with assorted cast-offs: clothes, tools, appliances, toys. I wandered the aisles until I came across a Samsonite toiletries case. It was burgundy, hard-sided, and the latches still worked. The lining was clean and intact, and it even had a little mirror attached to the lid. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t Louis Vuitton. But after handing over three dollars, it was mine.

The idea for the painting came quickly. I was intrigued by the idea of the things we carry through life, the things we choose to take with us on our journeys. Then I thought about the project I had done recently, writing the biography of my client, Jack Jouett. For three years, while working with Jack to record his story, sort through photos and memorabilia, and research his history, I felt I had taken a journey through his life. I would paint the case to reflect my travels.

First, I removed the handle and the mirror and taped off the hardware. Then I painted the case itself, covering the surface with gesso and several thin layers of paint in crimson, turquoise, buff white and a fun paint made with stainless steel. The surface was hazy and atmospheric.

Next, I wanted to add some images. Jack has great photographs, including some taken in the 1940′s when he was a young man living in the Virgin Islands. He’d gone on a sailing trip with some friends through the Caribbean, and the photos from that trip are some of my favorites. I copied the pictures onto photo transfer paper in my laser printer, cut out the photos I wanted, and layered them on the surface of the case.

One of the themes that continually emerged while working on Jack’s story was the idea that he kept circling back to places he’d lived before. Not only had he circled the globe, the events of his life continually carried him back to favorite places:  New Orleans, Washington, DC, China, the Virgin Islands. I decided to stencil a number of different circle designs on the case itself. In many places, the stencils obscured the photographs, hiding them behind paint. I decided this was fitting. Most of the details of Jack’s life were buried by time, as they are for any of us, and working with him was a process of searching for the images that made up his life story. Finally, I covered the surface with a thinned down glaze of burgundy paint, further obscuring the details, but softening any remaining hard edges.

Here’s how the project turned out.

The photographs are visible if you look closely.

And another detail . . .

We had our final critique this week, and my class was intrigued by my project. Not surprisingly, they were even more intrigued by Jack. Of course, I was happy to talk about him and the things I learned circling through his life.

And my travel case? I’m definitely keeping it. It is perhaps the most practical art project I’ve ever done. I could use it to hold my art supplies. It would be a great storage bin for photos or keepsakes. I might even load it up with my makeup and jewelry when I take a trip. Whatever I do, it will remind me to pay attention to the things I carry with me.

No more. I was finally committed.

The first day of class was spent learning about supplies—the difference between vine charcoal and compressed, what erasers and paper to buy, what kind of portfolio we’d need—so we didn’t have to face our skills, or lack of them, that day. But that changed quickly. When we walked in the second day, the teacher (a wonderful guide named Vicki Lynn Wilson) had filled the center of the room with a giant still life: a mannequin in roller skates, boxes and vases, an umbrella, a large wicker headboard and piles of other . . . stuff. We set up our easels, opened up our shiny, new drawing supplies, and Vicki gave us the entire class period to do an uninstructed drawing. No rules, no help. Just an hour and a half in a quiet room to draw what we saw. She wasn’t being mean; she wanted to gauge the skills we brought to her class.

It was absolutely nerve-wracking. I fussed with my supplies and readjusted my easel for a full five minutes just to delay putting pencil to paper. And  it got worse from there. I didn’t know where to start, how to start, which tool to use. I stared at the still life and sketched. Stared some more and erased what I had drawn. Lurching, fumbling, I somehow got through the time until Vicki asked us to stop. When I looked at my drawing, here’s what I saw.

I was miserable. The drawing confirmed what I already believed: that I didn’t know how to draw. Mercifully, Vicki collected our drawings to keep until the end of the term. I’m sure she knew we’d be tempted to destroy them. I sure wanted to.

Fortunately, things got better. Over the next ten weeks, we learned how to do observational drawing in stages. We worked through each of the elements of design,  learning about line and composition before moving on to perspective,  shading and value. We worked in white charcoal on black paper, black charcoal on brown paper. Eventually we learned color. Week by week we built on previous skills, bringing in our drawings for the class to critique. I became familiar with the tattoo artist who worked with detailed precision, the grandmother and high school teacher who drew images from her home, the  young man who asked intriguing questions and was uniquely drawn to color. I felt connected to them somehow because I saw so much of their art. It felt like I’d seen something of their soul.

Which I had. And week after week, they’d seen mine.

For our final project, we were given free reign. We were to draw objects that were meaningful to us and said something about who were were. We could use any color paper or any techniques. We could work in black and white or in color. I decided to do a drawing about living my life as an explorer. I picked my favorite traveling boots, the leather satchel I found at a market in Italy and which I now use as my school bag, and the journals I kept on a study abroad trip in college. I threw in my favorite fountain pen and and amethyst crystal I’ve kept on my desk for ages. I set up my still life on a table in my laundry room and worked on it for about twelve hours over the course of ten days.

Today, we hung our artwork for the final class critique. This is what I pinned to the wall:

So what did I learn?

I don’t have to figure everything out by myself.

I suppose, in theory, I could have learned much of this on my own from reading books or watching countless YouTube videos. But then again, I got to be 50 years old without ever actually learning how to draw, so there you go. I’m sure it is possible to learn through trial and error, but having someone else share their expertise with you, provide you with structure and ideas, and give you feedback in real time is priceless. It takes a certain amount of courage, energy and resources to expose yourself and your work to a teacher, and even to other students, but as it turns out, this commitment is amply rewarded. Resources abound. There are people out there who want nothing more than to help me.

Break big ideas into smaller ideas.

I figured out pretty quickly that my problem with my first, uninstructed drawing was that I was trying to do too much at the same time. It was like having a pile of building materials—bricks and cement and 2×4′s and nails—and mixing them all together to build a house instead of focusing on them one at a time. Start first with overall composition. What do I want in the picture and where? Then add the shading and the detail. You don’t have to do everything at once.

Take the time.

This was, far and away,  the most important lesson. It takes time to learn how to do something. I spent four to ten hours on my drawing homework each week, and at the beginning of each drawing, it looked like crap. In fact, it looked like crap for about the first two hours I worked. If I weren’t willing to spend at least two and a half  hours when I sat down to work on a project, I would never know what I could do. Yet if I sat with it long enough, working with  patience and trust, I was inevitably surprised by the objects that began to appear beneath my pencil. Honestly, it began to feel like magic. There I would be, sitting in my laundry room with my hands covered in charcoal, James Taylor crooning on my iPod, and suddenly beautiful things emerged from my paper. A jug of tulips, a drinking glass, the weave of a basket. I’d check my watch and hours had passed in what felt like twenty minutes. This was the payoff.

I’ll say it again: learning something new takes time. Mastering something takes a lot of time. They say that it takes about 10,000 hours of deep, concentrated practice to gain mastery, and I think being willing to spend this kind of time trumps talent any day. The trick is to pick something that you don’t mind spending 10,000 hours doing so that the time spent is, in itself, the reward. I’m thinking that being able to make art is worth a 10,000 hour investment in my life.  I’ve already started. Between my three classes this term, I’ve probably spent 300 hours on art since January.

Only 9,700 hours to go.

I can’t wait.