The getting back of things important (or at least a smidge of them)

A door at my grandparents house. Taken by me.

So yesterday I went and bought a small, basic, starter supply of art supplies (i.e. acrylics, brushes - as all of mine are in the black hole called Townville -, cheap watercolors, water color paper, and small cheap canvases).  

Today, I used them.  And I feel the best I've felt in a while.  I sat in the floor, put on some Sufjan Stevens and painted away.  It's nothing extraordinary, but it made me remember I have something that makes me feel better.  I like to play the guitar, but I'm not dedicated. I used to play the violin, but the first and only time I played it since Mama left left me sitting in a puddle of tears and snot wishing things were different.  So I have art.  

I remember after Mama's first diagnosis, first semester of my junior year of high school, I had just started the audition-only art class at West Oak.  Everything that was happening spilled out in acrylics and pastels and charcoal and ink.  It was truly therapeutic.  Then when I went back to visit my art teacher (the one I met for a lunch last weekend) after Mama's second diagnosis she told me, "Remember you still have something."  She didn't have to tell me what I had.  And it's taken me nearly two years and a motherloss later to remember it.  

So here it is, the first painting I've done in at least two years.