My Curiosity Driven Life

My Painting of Donna and Dude

Some people are born with a passion for something and know it.  I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be drawing or painting.  My mom recognized this in me and nurtured it....keeping me supplied with crayons, paper and eventually paints and canvases.  For some strange reason, I was not encouraged to study art with anyone but to develop my own style.  Not being a child who made waves about anything, I proceeded to teach myself how to paint. Part of me always expected that I would become a successful artist. I had no idea what that meant, but I figured it would work itself out in time.

Many decades later, I paint in a style that could be loosely described as emotional realism.  I am drawn to painting people. I often get so lost in capturing their true essence that I feel like I know them...even if we've never met.  I suppose that 50 hours of staring at someone's image could make you think that you really know who they are, but it's just my interpretation in the end.  I find that each time I paint, I fall in love with the process and the face.  The mere act of creation brings me connection and joy.

There is a darker side to being born with a passion.....a nagging voice that tells you that you must make something of yourself in the process and if you don't become successful and famous, you have wasted your talent.  Much of my life I have beaten myself up over this, as if I had to prove that I was worthy of the gift.  The problem was that life kept getting in the way.  I wanted to make up for what seemed like a lonely childhood by marrying young and having 4 children.  Through it all, I still managed to paint.... using my kids often as subjects but other things often lured me in different directions.  I loved to play the piano, take photographs, downhill ski, swim, sail, knit, read, write, kayak, walk dogs, do yoga, garden, cook, watch sunsets, gaze at the stars, run off to the mountains and build a log cabin and sometimes just lie in a hammock. I still do most of these things...although I haven't run off and built any cabins lately.

I will soon be 68 years old and many hundreds of paintings later, some sold, some given away and some burned.....it has occurred to me, that I am not successful by the standards of the commercial art world.  This thought made me feel like a bit of a failure, until I heard a short talk by Elizabeth Gilbert the author of Eat, Pray, Love.  The title of her talk was “The Fight of the Hummingbird – The Curiosity Driven Life.” It was an epiphany for me.  It was actually directed to those who felt like they hadn't found a passion. It was about having the gift of curiosity instead....a curiosity that allows you to savor the moment and enjoy many different paths in your journey through life.  I know that my endless curiosity often gets in the way of following my passion.

I felt a huge weight lift off of me and smiled at all of the paths I have taken that perhaps didn't lead me to the big elusive prize but to all of the glorious and delicious small gifts that life has offered me along the way.  I was....and continue to be curious and often passionate.

In honor of my new outlook on painting, I grabbed a tiny 6" square canvas and spent a couple of days painting a surprise for a Facebook friend.  I may not have a studio right now or lots of hours to devote to creating masterpieces, but I can definitely get into the flow with a tiny canvas in my lap and enjoy the hell out of it.  

So here it is, Donna and Dude and it's coming your way soon.  I feel like I know you.....even though we never met.  And may we all stay curious because that's where the juices flow and passion is often found.

Original photo of Donna and Dude

Camelot Unraveling

Tom's band.  Tom is upper left.

It is November 29, 1992....the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  My husband of 25 years and I have lived in a sweet old Victorian cottage for the past 5 years, on a lake I have loved all my life.  I am 45 years old and we have a son and daughter ages 22 and 20 , who are off pursuing their own lives and two younger sons ages 17 and 13.   

Our home is a gathering place for our children and their friends who love the lake as much as I do.  Weekends are often filled with a varying group of young people who are there to swim, sail, fish, sit around the bonfire or play ice hockey on a huge rink in front of our house.  I often happily spend days preparing huge amounts of food to be consummed by the fresh young faces that come and go to our idealic place.  Anyone looking at my life thinks it is a storybook existence.

It all seems wonderful on the surface, and I do my best to ignore the growing dysfunction in my marriage that is slowly eroding away the Camelot I struggle to maintain.  I will not let my secrets ruin what has taken so many years to build.  My husband has made sure that I understand his needs are the most important and I try my best to keep him happy.  I will not think of the despair, fear and shame that simmers just below the surface of my daily reality.  There is no one to talk to.  My beloved father died 8 years ago and my mom has never been able to admit to her own darkness, much less deal with mine.  Any kind of deep communication or emotion has never been a part of our relationship.  I make the mistake of trying to talk to a priest about the pain of my marriage and leave with nothing but a deep emptiness.....vowing never to set foot in a church again.  I have no answers.

My only sibling, a brother  6 years older than I, has spent his life doing whatever he pleases.  Banished from our home when he was 18 for his wild escapades, I have felt like an only child since I was 12.  He has never really been made to accept the consequences of his actions.  My parents are upper middle class and often pay for his apartments and occasionally give him a job in the family hardware business when he needs the money.  Tom is handsome, wild, funny, creative and charismatic.  He manages to get a college degree while he parties his way through life.  He is an accomplished photographer spending years trecking around the country taking thousands of nature photographs.  He makes exquisite jewelry and races cars, flies handmade kites and model airplanes, plays guitar, and collects butterflies from around the world.  Women are drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

I spend much of my life disapproving of him.  It is apparent to me that I am choosing the role of the "quiet and obedient child" not to rock the boat in his wake.   Over the years, his friends settle down while he continues to party on.  Running out of friends who want to party, he then hangs out with a younger crowd.  My appreciation for his deeply creative side is overshadowed by my judgement.  I am the "good daughter" who chooses the traditional life, gets married and has kids.  Never mind that by 1992,  under the surface, there is nothing traditional, good or safe about it.

On the evening of November 29, 1992, our home is decked out and ready for Christmas.  I always decorate while the boys and their father are off deer hunting.  I love everything about Christmas.  It represents everything that I have convinced myself that I have...a happy family gathered together in a cozy cottage in the country and sometimes we seem to be.  

My brother has been calling me unexpectedly the last couple of weeks asking for money.  Since my father died, I have control of my mom's finances due to the fact that she has plenty of it and doesn't know or care to learn how to handle it.  I have finally been instructed by her not to give my brother any more money and have to tell him no.  Successive phone calls become more and more incoherent and unsettling.   Even his current girlfriend who has taken him in, calls and asks me to help her get him out of her apartment.  Apparently, he is pretty much just hanging out on her couch.  I do nothing.  I am fed up with his endless antics and demands.  My own life is secretly unraveling and something about him brings out a feeling of deep fear in me.

I am putting a few finishing touches on the large Christmas tree that shines through the old windows out unto the lake that November night, when the doorbell rings.  It is far too late for it to be anything good.  My husband answers it.  I look up from the tree and freeze.  A police officer is standing there in our festive living room and the look on his face is sympathetic and uncomfortable.  I start to shake uncontrollably, my mind racing...."please don't let it be one of my children".......I secretly beg!  

My brother's car has been found parked near one of his favorite tennis courts.  It has caught on fire and gone up in flames.  There was a body inside burned beyond recognition.  They are afraid it is him but have to identify the dental records to be sure.  The next 24 hours are a blur as we wait.  They also find a gun.  Apparently, he had all of his belongings in the back seat of his car and lit them on fire before he shot himself.  

My mom lives in a posh retirement community and after I deliver the news, wants to go shopping to deal with it.  There is very little emotion shown and she wants no announcement of his death to be put in the papers.  She also allows no wake or public funeral.  

I  help her pick out the casket and the funeral director goes over the prices.  He actually asks if she wants to spend the extra $100 for a body bag to put his remains in before placing him in the casket.  I think I have entered the twilight zone.  It ranks as the most crass question I have ever heard, but I say nothing. 

My mom, husband and oldest son and daughter and I stand in the snow as a priest says a few words over my brother's casket.  My oldest son who has spent many hours with his favorite uncle, places a perfectly mounted, dead Tiger Swallowtail on his casket.   The silence of that cold place is a fitting contrast to the screaming in my mind.  I know it was my fault.

It takes me 7 more years to run from my marriage and make peace with my brother's death.