Hey soul sister, justify my blog

Man, I can't seem to make time to write in my blog.  Have you missed me?




How embarrassing.
How did Housewives of DC get on there?

I'm also having trouble finding time to run, shower, grocery shop, watch the 500 educational shows on my DVR, call my wonderful friends (you know I still love you, right?), etc. etc. etc.   People often interrupt my complaining by saying, "You're lucky to work from home doing something you love." And I am. I am.  But it's sort of like college. There were things about college that were off the charts fun-tastic. And yet, while I was knee deep in the fun stuff, there were so many other things that I should have been doing. Like homework or finding my ID or not pushing anyone into the bathroom to drunkenly make out. And then feeling guilty and procrastinating more.
 


 
Having your own business means that whenever you are laying around drinking wine and eating cheez-its, you probably shouldn't be; and not just because of the calories/hangovers/inappropriate texts.  You should be drawing, marketing, fixing your broken website, putting layouts together, preparing for art shows.  I can sort of justify writing this blog because it loosely falls under the marketing category.  Even if I'm complaining about Facebook or confessing my marathon 50 Shades sessions, as long as I also mention the fact that I can draw your kids, pets, or belongings, then presto... marketing!  I do have a degree in advertising, you know. 

 
But really, I just want to tell stories, preferably in a bestselling book.  Although that's rather unlikely, as only my friends on Facebook and a few artists from my favorite artist websites (artfairinsiders and the corner booth) read this blog.  Getting discovered is even less probable than working hard enough to make it happen on my own.  It's hard to justify this rambling blog when I've got drawing to do, plus it's past dinner time, RIGHT NOW. Listen closely and you'll hear the Zumpano men sighing and snacking in the background.
 

Thank goodness this time, Beth will help me justify my blog. 
 

Out of the blue, I got an email from someone who had been reading my Pencil Envy posts.  Not only did Beth order a chunky sized portrait, she wanted a story.  A story about her sister.  Hey!  That's almost like getting paid to write stories, only she's not paying me to write, she's paying me to draw.  But I'm making it a package deal.

 
My first thought about the portrait and story about Beth's sister, was that I don't have a sister, because I'm rather self-absorbed that way.  I wonder what it would be like... would I be close with a sister?  Fight with her?  Would she love me despite all my many flaws?  Would I love her beyond hers? 

 
I assumed that Beth's story would be about sisterly love, a Walton's hair-braiding slumber party childhood with some eventual grown up wise advice with wine.  But it wasn't.


"Saying my sister and I have never been close is an understatement," Beth wrote me.  "We hated each other growing up.  The only thing we're close in is age; for six weeks every year we were the same."  She said her sister could be mean, choosing exactly the right words to form the kind of word weapon only the most familiar family can wield.  The kind that cuts you to your core. 

 
As adults, they had an uneasy relationship, going months without speaking. They lived less than an hour apart, but only saw each other a few times a year. "We are polar opposites," Beth explained.  "She's a minimalist, I collect everything. Her house is sparsely decorated, mine looks like a gypsy’s den. She has a firm sense of right and wrong. I have often been described as having no moral compass.  She's successful, I was always just getting by. We just never meshed. I often said if she wasn’t my sister we would have never been friends. But still, we're family."

 
If you've ever told me a story, you probably enjoy how I immediately butt in and relate the story back to myself, even though I've read Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and I know I'm not supposed to.  I told Beth how I've struggled in my family relationships, too; how my closest family friendship has deteriorated and how terribly painful it's been.  How I could relate all too well to those mean missiles that leave such deep, gaping wounds.  Here, I thought, is someone I can understand; I'm not the only one.  I've counted each month of silence with a pit in my stomach.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  

 
"I know," Beth told me.  "My sister got mad at me in June and she didn't speak to me or my mother until September.  The next time we spoke was when she called to tell me in her matter-of-fact cold tone that she was sick, probably dying." And Beth was forbidden to tell their mother.  "I was as close to my mother as you are to yours," Beth stressed, "maybe closer.  It devastated me not to be able to tell her, but I knew if I did, my sister would never ever speak to either of us again."  It was excruciating for Beth, fearing her mother would hear from someone else, until her sister was just too sick to hide it anymore. 


"My sister told me she wouldn’t have done the same thing for me, wouldn’t have taken me in and cared for me as I was dying, cared for my family, pets, my belongings, my affairs. I told her I knew that. I wish we had shared that moment much sooner. It seemed to bring some peace to her to know that I wouldn’t change no matter who or what she was. That’s when she finally got me.


"She thanked me for making her watch Fight Club. She forced me to watch Eight-Legged Freaks. The last movie we watched together was Man on Fire. She loved Denzel and really wanted to see it. I begged the Blockbuster guy to help me locate the last copy in the store, a needle in a mountain of movies haystack. It took over two hours but we finally found it. As I was checking out, he said they could’ve ordered it, it would only take about a week to come in. I remember thinking we probably didn’t have a week. She died four days later."

 
"My sister's death haunts me, much more so than the deaths of my mother and father," Beth told me. "I am guessing it’s some form of guilt I just can’t let go of. Some sort of ‘it should have been me, not her’ thing."

 
This summer, her nephew told Beth he can't remember the sound of his mother's voice. She tries to keep the memory alive, knowing that the hardest part about dying for her sister was losing her kids. Not being there to see who they will become.  The best photo the kids had with their mother was when they were quite young and Beth's niece hated her hair.   Funny thing about death, there are no more "through the years" pictures, no more do overs.  Beth asked that I combine recent photos of the kids with their mom, taking extra care to make sure I got her niece's hair just right.  A Christmas memory for two wonderful kids who can't yet fully realize what they've lost.

 
 
There are children in my version of Beth's story too, and I worry about them.  At first, I listened to Beth's side, thinking, yes, yes. I get it, I can relate. Up until the cancer. Then I'm a puddle thinking about it. I'm torn up. I'm thinking how maybe my family member would probably take me in; but I don't know if I could do the same. I don't know if I can be as forgiving.  I shared more about my own family experiences with Beth, eager to connect, telling her about our long struggle of distance and disease and pain and tough decisions and judgment.  That the hardest part is how we'd always loved each other like crazy and now neither of us can get past old wounds far enough to have a healthy relationship. I know I have some terrible faults that have made things worse between us - I'm too critical, I'm too sensitive.  And now I'm too scared.


Beth shared that she's had many of the same struggles. But not the same as me. The same as the person who has hurt me the most.


And then I realized, this whole time I'm rooting only for Beth, thinking I'm in the Beth role... But I'm not. I'm the cold one. I'm the judging one.  And I don't know if I can be the one to forgive and open my arms, and my home and my heart again. I'm too closed off and I'm just so hurt.  But people make mistakes.  Does it really take something so catastrophic to build that bridge?


Beth owns her part of her story and I own mine.  I do.  Writing this entry about a client's family has caused me to do more soul searching than any that I've chosen to write on my own. 

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Bronze Tablets and the Golden Corral

A few years after I got canned and started drawing full time, my mother retired and offered to help me with my business.  Other than one brief nasty, wretched teenage stage, my mom and I have always been very, very close.  Remember, she's the one who told me to sleep with my future husband.


My mother has a killer mind that she can laser focus on learning or analyzing anything.  She majored in Spanish and when I was growing up, she took French and Russian and Japanese classes just for fun.  She graduated in the top 1% of her class and her name is engraved on a Bronze Tablet in the University of Illinois library.  I used to trace my fingers along her name for strength on my way to an algebra torture chamber in the library basement.  And what do you know, she did help.  Because my name ended up on the Bronze Tablet too.

My mommy is smart and I am not that much of a dumb ass.

All my life, my mother has been beyond supportive, enthusiastically appreciating us, always putting us first. My father is a complex, intense person and my mother just might have been the one and only person alive on the planet who was absolutely perfect for him.  She lifted us up when we were down, she laughed her HEAD off at our jokes and stories.  She sits in her chair at the end of her dining room table with a book, her face alight with complete interest at almost everything we have to say.  The rest of us have a scorching case of verbal diarrhea in my family and that poor woman has had A LOT to listen to. 

My mother is half intelligentsia and half Ed McMahon, often content to listen and encourage.  She's my cheerleader, my friend, my careful critic; the one who wraps me in a long hug that makes me feel loved to my very core.  I rest my head on her shoulder and sigh... her hugs drain a bit of my tension.

Families are complicated and I've got a big ole Golden Corral buffet of that going on, much of which begins and ends in my screwed up stew of a head.

Allow me to scoop up some more weird shit and big fat hurt feelings. 
I can't get enough!

No matter how twisted or sad things can occasionally get, my mom is right there to promise that all will be well.  Life just doesn't get under her skin the way it does for me.  I sulk at my half empty glass of wine while my mom happily sips her half full manhattan.  Let's drink to being more like my mom.  If only.

Before my mom retired, I spent every spare stolen moment at my parents' house, which is 2.6 miles from mine.  Once the kids were fed, I couldn't get there fast enough to talk to my mom and tell her every random thing I did or thought or heard or saw.  She'll let me prattle on endlessly.

Once she started coming over to help me with my work, things changed a little.  As much as I find joy in drawing something that is precious to someone, my work can be stressful.  There is so much detail involved in finding the work, preparing the layout (which can combine more elements than you'd think), adjusting the final drawing to the client's satisfaction and managing to get paid for it.  I can pretty much throw a fit and lose my shit at any point during the process.  God freaking forbid something goes wrong with my computer or printer, it's full metal jacket panic spiral time.  I used to have my little mental breakdowns on my own, but once my mommy was here regularly, I had an audience.  On one hand, she can be wonderfully soothing, stroking my shoulder and making sympathetic noises.  On the other hand, she's a mom.  And no matter how glorious your mom is, there are stressful times in your life when the LAST thing you want is your MOM "helping". 

That's okay, really, I've got it, Mom.

Over the last four or five years, I've tried to work through some of my crap, trying to adjust my own stubborn negativity and protectiveness of my nest and routine.  Sometimes I've had to outright ask my mom to give me space, like when she used to chime in when I dealt with a crabby kid's attitude.  She used to keep me company in the morning while I put layouts together, watching over my shoulder and occasionally pointing things out.  This was not my favorite.  But I know she really, really wants to help.  And if she saw something that needed adjustment, was she supposed to just sit there and say nothing?  Unfortunately for her, I had to say yes.  And she really tries.  We've never had to filter ourselves when we are together, but I needed to protect our relationship.  Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, but it can make me testy.  Most, if not all of my mother's suggestions are helpful in theory; they just aren't helpful to my variable mental health.  I have watched just about every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and I know I'm not alone in this.

When my mom arrives at my house each day, it is my cue to quit farting around on the computer.  At first, it was because she would take over and work on a list of stuff I'd compiled.  Later, it was because it was time to go watch a movie together while I draw.  In some ways, it was helpful with my schedule as otherwise, I wouldn't have one.  I am never done with the computer, because I have ADD and I am constantly distracted, which is inconvenient due to the invention of the internet.  I should be doing real work, but instead, I'm probably sniffing around your Facebook vacation photos or writing long emails to my college friends.  When my mom would arrive, I'd get a jolt of work-guilt that I started to associate with her.  Now she calls before she comes and I can tell her to give me a little more time to work, or stalk people or add songs to my ipod shuffle (you know I'm too cheap for a real one.)  My goal is to force myself to stop in time to have lunch with her, at the latest.

I draw my pencil portraits in the corner of my bedroom and my mom has a big comfy chair up there that my dad and my husband Joe bought her for Mother's Day. We have probably watched more movies together in a month than some people see in a year or more.  We love movies and take turns watching our respective Netflix arrivals.  This is the sweet spot of the day with my mom.  We pause the movie to tell each other things we forgot to say or to try and figure out where we've seen an actor or who would have been better for the role.  I almost always remember to put the captions on for her.  I did need to work it out with her that she should leave the room when Joe gets home so he doesn't have to change in the closet.  These things just took awhile to figure out.

In the very beginning, my mom was at my house up to five days a week, from mid morning until dinner time.  My friends would gasp in horror, shaking their heads at the thought.  That's just too much mom for most people.  Now it's more like three days.  I've been really busy with back to back art shows so the last couple weeks were less.

As much as I love having my dear mom's company, I miss the days when I couldn't wait to rush to her house.  I'd get away from the demands of my work and my family and my mom would be waiting there to throw her head back and laugh with me.  We'd talk and talk and drink wine together.  It was a break from the routine for me.  Plus I never felt more special than when I was with with my mom.  She listens with such love and pays me such amazing, personal compliments, I'd feel shy sharing most of them.  She thinks I'm a good mom.  I could never be the rock that she is.  Now I get so much time with her, I don't have much left to say when she's not here.  If I do, I call her and tell her.  Things feel different now since we're always at my house.  It never gets to be about just the two of us anymore, our time is also about running my business and being a mom myself and fighting my losing battle not to be a complete slob.

When we're not together, I feel my mom waiting for me to call her and tell her to come over. I feel like I let her down a little bit when I don't. She's given me her love and support so unconditionally, so wholeheartedly. She just wants to spend time with me. My mom has never been a needy person. She's very introspective and is content with a great book and my father to talk to. My parents keep to themselves and they don't socialize very much. Sometimes I feel a lot of pressure to make sure my mom is getting the attention from me she deserves.  I can't predict my own schedule and we're both at the mercy of my lack of discipline. When I hear the loving hope in her voice over the phone and I've got five hundred things to do, it's hard.

I'm ridiculously lucky to have such a great mom.  Someone commented about her on my last blog entry...

I wish I could get you a mom like mine, Karen Holtkamp.  I am spoiled rotten.  And yet I'm just not as patient with her as I should be.  I snap at her when she crosses one of my changing, shifting boundaries.  I don't want her to talk to me about certain things that most hurt my heart, and yet sometimes I need to talk to her about it.  I don't get the chance to miss my mom and sometimes I miss missing her.  Which is really an awfully greedy thing. 

Mommy, thank you for putting up with my emotional roller coasters and my short fuse.  Thank you for being there for everything and anything.  When you love someone so much, we're responsible for each other.  You handle your responsibilities with such grace, and I handle mine kicking and screaming and muttering and swearing.  I feel like before, when we weren't together so much, you didn't have to see the worst in me.  You just saw the daughter who was always so very eager to be with you.  I hope you can forgive the moments when I take you for granted or when I need some space or when you witness yet another childish panic fit.

I'd be lost without you. 

Ode to Joe, or how I used to be an idiot

When I first met my husband, I had been dating Lucifer on and off for five years.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him, the prince of darkness?

Actually, that guy - let’s call him Dick - was just a screwed up kid who was the product of bad circumstances or rotten genes or whatever bad Zodiac sign makes you an asshole. In any case, he had a string of bad luck that led him right to me, where I was patiently waiting for a total jerk to treat me like crap.  The table was nicely laid for my trailer trash romance.   

Dick stole wallets out of people’s cars.  Dick wanted me to do stuff I didn’t want to do.  Dick adored his deaf mother, hated his stepfather and slept in their cold basement on a mattress on the cement floor.  Most of all, Dick wanted the life he’d envisioned at college before he’d lost his scholarship; he wanted to make something of himself and didn’t know how.  Anyone who had more than he did –more money, a car, a better place to live – made him mad. 

Growing up, I believed that I had the perfect family and regularly announced how lucky I was.  I reminded my friend Vicki about that a few years ago and she admitted that she’d thought I was a little off my rocker.  In retrospect, we had a lot of love in my family with a big side order of weird stuff, like everyone else.  But my parents often declared that we were lucky to be us, and I believed every word. 

When greedy, manipulative Dick came along, I felt sorry for him and figured I had a surplus of love to share.  Plus Dick had one of those Superman clefts in his chin. 

I shouldn’t go too far into the Dick stuff when this story is actually a Father's Day fairy tale about my husband Joe and how he saved me.  But you can’t entirely appreciate Joe’s rescue unless you get a good whiff of what a kiss-ass mess I was.  I would fake-cry on a daily basis to stave off Dick’s verbal abuse. I did what Dick asked, or implied, even when I knew I shouldn’t.  I drove my first new car into the ground, driving 60 miles round trip on a near-daily basis to Dick’s dumpy house, carting him around wherever he demanded like I was Morgan Freeman.   

When I playfully tried on Dick’s jeans one day, they were almost too tight.  His lean angry frame was no match for my Swedish expanse and that’s just bad news for an insecure girl.  His jeans were like his affection… confining and humiliating.

I rarely share exactly how bad it got with Dick, despite my usual habit of over-sharing.  I won’t tell you either, but it was bad.  I’ve spent half a lifetime cringing.

When Joe and I met at MicroAge, my first job out of college, Joe couldn’t believe I was dating such a jackass.  I couldn't believe that my advertising degree had only landed me a job at the 90's equivalent of Best Buy.  Joe was the new service guy, and he was a piece of work – 6 foot 8 inches of big brown plastic glasses and twanging nerves like a child’s toy guitar.  He had a constant rocking motion that I initially mistook for more nervous stuff, but that's just Joe.  He rocked his crib across the room as a baby. 

My fabulous coworker and beloved friend, Mary Ellen, got a kick out of him.  Joe took one look at M.E. and me with our snarky laughs and our constant commentary and thought, “Those two will be my best friends or they’ll ruin my life.”  Not to worry - we adopted Joe as our gigantic girlfriend and dragged him out for beers and girl talk regularly. He hadn’t had much luck with the ladies.  Like a dog hit by a newspaper too many times, Joe just wasn’t sure how to make a move.

One night at the bar after work, it was just Joe and I telling stories the way new friends do.  Joe told about the time he flipped off his mom at 16 and got caught by his dad.  Instead of berating Joe, his dad talked to him about maturity and good choices.  He told Joe that he loved him and that he was proud of him.  Ninety minutes later, his mother returned from the hospital to tell Joe and his younger brother and sister that their father was gone.  A sudden heart attack had ripped their world apart.  And that brief father/son conversation was suddenly a precious, unexpected good-bye.

It was such a deeply personal story and Joe told it with such trust and honesty, it made me cry.  I started to fall for him a little.  We made a couple friend-dates to watch movies like Turner and Hooch on his brand new VCR.  I patted myself on the back for spending charitable quality time with my lonely girlfriend, Joe.  One time, I had to leave in a hurry to pick up my mother from somewhere and Joe stopped me at the door.

“I’ll kick myself if I don’t ask you what I’ve been wanting to ask you all week,” Joe said, looking down into my eyes.  My uh-oh alarm went off immediately.  Things had taken a friendship U-turn. 

“Can I kiss you?” Joe asked softly, hopefully.

Oh no.  I was still slumming it with Dick and somehow never saw this coming. With a stunned, frozen smile, I apologized if I’d given him the wrong impression, embarrassing us both with all sorts of demeaning, “let’s be friends” crap.  Yet another newspaper spank for my sweet, funny Joe.  He muttered something or other about oh well, gave it a try, and I left.  Standing in the doorway, Joe half-grinned farewell at me with a forced “no big deal” look on his face.  He was crushed, and the memory of his face just destroys me. 

We spent the next seven months enthusiastically avoiding each other, which was tough in an office of 18 employees.  We were a pathetic pair of freaked out individuals, much to M.E.’s inconvenience.  Slowly, we got over it and cautiously warmed up to each other again.

It was finally over with Dick when he gave me not one, but two porcelain dolls for my 25^th birthday.  After I opened the first, I saw the second, same-sized package and felt actual fear. 

He thought I could start a doll COLLECTION. 

Insert creepy horror movie music here.

I hate dolls.  Not to mention, I was 25, not seven. He might as well have taken those dead-eyed dolls and beat me over the head with them.  He didn’t know me, he didn’t love me, and he represented everything that was wrong with me and insecure women like me.  I'd wasted FIVE YEARS with him.  Enough. He could shove those dolls up his ass sideways.

From then on, I was going to date whoever I wanted.  This went badly.  Joe got to hear all about it since he had regained girlfriend status.  He couldn’t believe I was dating more tools, while ignoring my obvious future husband every day for almost a year.  He needed me to get past his nervousness and see him.  Joe was hilarious; he’s the funniest person I know – and I like to think that I know funny.  Unlike the stud he is now, back then he was a bit desperate and he wore suspenders.  I was confused.  Besides, he wasn’t an asshole and that meant he was not for me.

Over the next twenty years, I would learn that Joe tends to be right about most things.  You may have a different opinion, but Joe sure as hell can back his up, so you’d better be sure of yours.

The tide finally turned when Joe invented a girlfriend.  He mentioned her here and there, quite convincingly.  I was outraged.  He knew he had me hooked when I casually asked him what was up with that tramp.  After work at the bar, M.E. began a cunning campaign of encouraging him and then encouraging me to give us a try.  “He loves you,” she slurred in my equally drunken ear one night.  “Go for it,” she told him another, toasting her own brilliance with our beer aquariums.

Thus bolstered, Joe gave me a handwritten manifesto on goldenrod notebook paper, written with so much certainty that we were right for each other, so much emotion and hope, I would have been heartless to turn him down.  I read it, gave a half-ass rebuttal and gave in.  We kissed for the first time in his pickup truck, a bit self-consciously, but with promise. 

“I’ll hurt you,” I told him.  “I’m not interested in anything serious.”

“That’s okay,” he said, happily. “It’s worth it.”

I was such a bitch.  I tried to train him to be a jerk, telling him to stop saying so many nice things, that he missed me, couldn’t wait to see me.  I pushed his buttons and pushed him away.  I refused to go to one of his beloved softball playoff games because I’d felt like he’d been too clingy and went out with a friend instead, where I talked about Joe incessantly. 

“It sort of sounds like you would rather have gone to his game,” she observed with irritation.  And suddenly I couldn’t get to the game fast enough.  Ditching the friend, I giggled over how surprised Joe would be.  I’d been resisting so hard, this was the first time I was making a clear gesture in return.  As I snuck up to the field, delighted with my own stealth, Joe was standing at the fence, anxiously watching for me.  He rushed to wrap me in his big arms and hugged me hard.

“Hey!” I snapped, annoyed. “Why were you looking for me?  I told you we’d spent ENOUGH time together this week.  You were supposed to be SURPRISED.”

“I am surprised,” Joe said tenderly.  “Things like this never happen to me.  But I always hope.” 

That was the beginning of the end of me being an idiot... in love, anyway.  Even though I felt the pull toward something right, I kept waffling, resisting, unsure.

“Sleep with him!” my mother helpfully suggested, thankfully not in front of my dad.



And then I finally tumbled over the cusp of friendship into love, where Joe had been waiting since the first day we met.

We couldn’t wait for the rest of our lives to start. From then on, Joe has made me laugh every day for 20 years and sometimes it feels like a soul-transforming laugh… where you feel so much joy you can’t even believe that you’re laughing that hard, that life is this good, that this man is so damn sweet and funny.  M.E. was our maid of honor. 

I would have married Dick if he’d asked.  I’d been hinting about moving in. I was so ready to be a wife and a mother, I would have put up with just about anything in order to make it happen.  It was true love that was hard to accept.  I had to stop focusing on all the things I thought Joe wasn’t and embrace all the wonderful things that he is.

When I have a headache, Joe gently rubs my head with his big hands. He makes fart noises when I bend over. He pays the bills because he knows money stuff freaks me out. No matter how bad I look, Joe makes lewd suggestions that make me feel beautiful.  He told me I should draw for a living instead of finding another corporate job to worry and worry over.

And when I put his gigantic jeans on, they fall down around me and I finally have all the room in the world to be me.

A bad sports mom gets a hug from Lepoleon

I met Lepoleon Swopes through Joey’s 3rd grade football team.  I fell in love with him and he made me wish I were cooler, as many people do.

Especially in the first years of drawing full time after getting canned from my corporate job, I tried to draw my pencil portraits in public whenever possible, hoping to attract new customers.  I probably should have drawn the line at my kids’ sports games, but I’m a shameless capitalist.  Plus, as much as I want to be a supportive mom and lovingly stare at my sons as they do everything, there can be a lot of down time before your young kids get in on the team action.

Mostly, I’m not a big sports fan, anyway.  Don’t even get me started on baseball when nothing happens until all of a sudden a kid makes a mistake and everyone is rounding the bases, rubbing the poor kid’s nose in it and later discussing how everything would have been okay if that one damn kid had caught/hit/thrown the ball better.  My feelings are officially hurt for every kid who screws up and I’m just too sensitive for baseball. Except for tee-ball when everyone gets a turn and we cheer for everything and everyone.  That’s my kind of competition.

Football was easier on my emotions because I couldn’t tell what was happening.  Plus, I loved seeing my Joey in his first set of football pads.  With a 6’8 father and a sturdy Swedish mother, Joey was always tall for his age and built like a truck.  When he first put on those big shoulder pads, his already over-sized, Baby Huey frame was thrust into the future, time travel to his looming manhood.  My baby suddenly looked so huge and tough, and he knew it.  

Watching football requires a gene that I lack. Joey is on the offensive line and locating him in the pile of flailing kids was impossible to my untrained eye.  I’d watch for awhile, then give up and draw.  On the way home, my husband Joe would accusingly ask, “Did you see that block Joey made in the second quarter when the score was this and the play was that?”  I can’t fake it with Joe.  He knows. 

At one of Joey’s football games, another mom was sitting nearby with her girls.  They were actually watching the game while I was drawing without even pretending to pay attention.  They chatted with me a bit about my work and I ended up doing a memorial portrait and prayer cards for their uncle, Chester Swopes.  I thought Chester was quite handsome and I was thrilled to add his portrait to my portfolio.

Someone once emailed me, “I don’t see any dark skinned people on your web site.”  This was embarrassing and true; almost all my clients check the Caucasian census box.  I got a little overly excited when Chester Swopes’ lovely niece, Jacqueline, asked me to draw him.  I was honored and proudly displayed his portrait at my shows.  I was hoping he’d be a handsome lure to a better melting pot of work.

The real prize in drawing Chester, was meeting his brother, Lepoleon.

Lepoleon called me on the phone to tell me how much he enjoyed his little brother’s portrait and I was instantly smitten.  He had a melodic, lilting voice full of warmth, as if he was always on the verge of telling the punchline of a joke.  

There is something about an elderly black man that humbles me.  I always think to myself - here is someone who has experienced things that I couldn’t begin to understand. 

In a rich voice straight out of the movies,  Lepoleon praised my portrait of his brother and told me what a wonderful person Chester was, a leader in his community and church.  Lepoleon was so proud of his brother and seemed to let that pride wash over me too, making me feel like he’d been rooting for me to do a good job.  He said that it seemed like I knew what I was doing and that he hoped I could help him with another project.  Lepoleon explained that he had a drawing of his grandfather that a young girl had drawn for him.  It needed some work and he hoped that I would be willing to take a stab at it. 

I couldn’t wait to meet him, and when Lepoleon came over with his drawing, I couldn’t get enough of him.  He was a wiry little man with a rubbery, animated face and eyes that snap and spark.  He could have been 60, he could have been 80, in that ageless way some people have.  He would rub his dry hands together slowly while he talked, rocking a little bit and revving up his story.  I was transfixed.  I wanted to be about five years old and climb into his lap while he talked.  Of course it would have startled and crushed him if I'd actually done it, but you know what I mean.  I loved him and I wanted him to love me because I’m just inappropriate and greedy that way.

Lepoleon had never met his grandfather and there were no photographs of him in existence.  In anticipation of an upcoming family reunion, Lepoleon was gathering photos for a family tree.  Wouldn’t it be a fine surprise for his family to include a drawing of his grandfather?  The girl who had attempted the drawing was a fledgling artist in the family.  One of Lepoleon’s cousins remembered their grandfather well, and said that the girl’s drawing was a close resemblance.  But the eyes were wrong and it was a little rough. 

I worked on the drawing while Lepoleon leaned over my shoulder, giving me instruction.  I felt like a police sketch artist.  As I would add a wrinkle here, an adjustment there, Lepoleon would make rumbling pleased noises and say, “Nooowwww, we’re gettin’ somewhere.  Now, I’m seein’ him.” 

When we were through, Lepoleon sat back with a slow, big grin.  “Well what do you know,” he said softly, with a little catch in his voice.  “There’s my grand-dad.  I’ve never seen him before.” 

I don’t know that I’ve ever had a more rewarding moment as an artist. 

Later, Lepoleon decided to bring me a photo of his grandmother to add to the drawing of his grandfather. 

“Wow,” I said, surprised by the stern looking woman.  “She looks like she had a lot on her mind.”

“Well, I 'spect she sure did,” Lepoleon agreed.  “She had herself eleven kids!” 

“Maybe she was thinking about all that laundry,” I guessed.  Lepoleon laughed and hopefully decided I was hilarious.  I drew his grandmother separately and then digitally put them together for his family tree. 

Lepoleon was delighted when he came to pick up his family masterpiece.  “Everyone is going to be so surprised… they’ll get such a big kick out of this,” he said with extra warmth and asked me what he owed.  He paid me from a big wad of cash in his fanny pack. 

“Wow!” I gasped playfully, “You’re loaded.” 

He chuckled and said it was money from his shop.  “I’m a barber,” he said with a little pride and maybe a little fatigue.  I don’t think I could have pictured a better job for him.  I wished I could sit in the corner of his shop and listen to the exchanges that must go on… all the talk that’s so full of history and culture and connection and laughter.  White people don’t ever seem to connect in the joyful way that black people do.  I know you’re not supposed to say black, but I think black people are so much cooler than white people.  White people don’t see each other and think, “Hey, awesome!  White guy!”  We think, his car is better.  Or my car is better.  We are idiots.

We are not cool.

“I’m so glad you’re happy,” I told Lepoleon, feeling a little shy and choked up.  “I loved drawing for you.”

“Oh honey, I love you, too,” he said, and he gave me a tight hug.  I’m a big hugger, as you know, but this was different and special and unexpected… this loving hug that reached across culture and generations and my sheltered upbringing. It was just so touching to me.

Every time I’m finished with a project that has involved a few meetings, especially when the subject is so important, it’s hard.  We look at each other and think, “Well, what now?  Is this good-bye?”  There’s emotion there, sometimes.  A connection.  And then it is over and we move on with our lives.  I told Lepoleon to please come back and tell me all about the reunion.  I didn't want him to go.

I wish I could give an afternoon with Lepoleon to everyone I know.  He would make you smile and want to be a little kinder, because you'd want to make him proud.

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