Master Plan up in Flames

 When I was younger and dreaming of being a Mother, there was a pervasive theme in all of my fantasies:  Art.  Not Garfunkel...I heard that guy is a total douche since he was dumped by Paul Simon and subsequently went bald.  I’m talking about Fine Art; drawing, painting, possibly making elaborate macramé owls. 

In a previous post, I spoke of my Mother and how important Art was to her.  My nursery was a wonderland of visual stimulation.  She painted a mural for me before I was even born and I remember nothing of the first apartment we lived in except for those pictures on the wall. It was a beautiful labor of love on her part, and a gift that she gave to me that may very well have given birth to my vividly overactive imagination.  

A stone castle sat atop an Emerald hill, with a cobbled path that lead to a valley of smiling Wildflowers. A Giant Panda Bear sat, fondly (and endlessly) gazing at a triple scoop ice cream cone while butterflies and fairies froze, mid-flutter in a Baby Blue, rainbow painted sky.  With the wide-eyed wonder of infancy I drank in every brush stroke and by early toddlerhood, I’d written stories about my two dimensional friends.

Some of my happiest childhood memories involve crayons, finger paints, clay and glitter.  Every holiday we made decorations; cotton ball bunnies for Easter, sequined encrusted Styrofoam balls and hand painted ceramic ornaments adorned our Christmas tree and glittery black bats and spiders announced the coming of All Hallows Eve. At the time of her death my Mother was in possession of no less than seventeen construction paper turkeys that vaguely resembled my hand.  The foundation of my ‘Motherhood Master Plan’ was to give the same memories to my child. Time spent together, turning different colors and watching the beauty we could create out of nothing at all.

I was young when I chose a pen over a brush, but my Mother and I always crafted together and I got enough of her artistic talent to doodle like a Pro. Gabriel was still in his tiny, plastic prison when I decided that it would be an underwater theme for my boy.

Of course he needed his own Mural! 

There would be an underwater seashell castle in the background, with luminescent jellyfish and seahorses frolicking in a coral reef, while brightly colored tropical fish looked on.   I didn’t have time to start before he was sprung from the Hospital, and when I first brought him home I was too paranoid about paint fumes and premature lungs to begin the actual work but by then I had a pencil sketch of the painting I envisioned for him in my journal.  It was awesome (if I do say so myself) and I figured I’d start right after Christmas that first year. 

Un-huh.  The best laid plans and all that…

In the immediate aftermath of learning Gabriel’s diagnosis, I had a lot of crazy thoughts.  The first one that pierced my heart like a flaming arrow was that there was no need for me to ever paint that mural, or anything else. Ever again. 

My pencil sketch mocked me so I set it on fire, right there in a hotel bathroom in Bogotá, Columbia.  I stood over the bathroom sink and laughed as I watched it burn.  It was not a happy laugh, it was a maniacal, harsh twisted laughter that scared me.  I was out of tears, by then and I realized my path forward was quite simple.  That was the day that I decided I only had two choices: to deal with it or not.  I decided to deal. 

As I watched that last ember glow brightly into ash, I realized that I had another choice:  I could cry about the hand I’d been dealt or I could laugh. Laughter it was.

Yesterday Gabriel and I went rock climbing.  The day before that, we swam.  We cook together, have learned to affect British, Russian and French accents and write silly stories about Witches who only want to bake cookies.  We listen to or make music every day.  He plays in mud…and sometimes he sculpts with it, but that’s not really his bag.  I haven’t completely abandoned art, but right now my boy is more likely to eat a crayon than to draw with it, so we do other things and here’s the kicker:  I don’t miss my Master Plan at all.   

Every day is an adventure, every day is a chance to explore.  My life as a Mother could not be more different than what I envisioned as a child, it has changed so dramatically from my anticipations that I can’t really even remember when finger painting was centered at the core of it.   We don’t have time to sit around and make pretty things, we’re too busy getting dirty. And laughing.