I learned something new about my mother this weekend.
You would think after fifty years of life together we would
have covered everything.
Somehow I had forgotten or never knew some things about Mom, but this reached into my heart and squeezed. How could I not have translated her deep love for certain author/illustrator of children’s books alerted me that at one time, this was one of my mother’s wildest dreams – to be an illustrator of children’s books?
How could I not have known that?
She made paper dolls for my children when they were little: in fact it was always Emma’s first expectation. “Nana’s coming? She will make me paper dolls!”
She would sit down with colored pencils and draw children much like the ones who pop up in 1930’s and 1940’s children’s books.
I knew my Mother’s drawing from her deep presence when drawing houses for the Junior League tour. I remember sitting beside her, very aware that what my Mommy was doing was sacred and sitting with her in silence as cars drove by is one of those very sticky early childhood memories that still comes awake easily when nudged.
I never took the time or hadn’t even thought to translate paper dolls – assignment for Junior League to – this is what My Mommy really wanted to do before she became My Mommy.
I realized I don’t even know what she majored in at Colorado College before she left to become a wife and eventually a Mom of six. I know what she majored in when she returned to school when I was seven-years-old, Education – specifically Special Education, but her life pre-baby-Julie lived mostly in stories told rather than creative jaunts taken together.
It took this weekend – this time of closeness after my
cancer experience – to give breath to her life and mine and the places they’ve
never intersected to now, when the invitation was opened the bridge was
lowered.
Several years ago I wanted, desperately, to collaborate with my mother on a creative project. I provided watercolor paper, pencils, brushes, even a fantastic location we could visit.
The collaboration never happened. I half-heartedly gave up.
This weekend, I shared my love of paper art – making a variety of projects using old and vintage books and loving those books enough to put them on display so they are not pushed away on a shelf and forgotten.
“I feel a twinge of guilt,” she said as I handed her an iron and a stack of crumpled pages.
“Please iron these, it makes it so much easier.” I had dyed pages and they had dried in such strange shapes and once again needed to be flat.
I pulled a page I especially loved from my wall. “See, Mom, I love this page too much to cut it up. The illustrations are so… I want to preserve them.”
She looked at it thoughtfully, poised with the iron above other pages. “I would like to somehow color the illustrations, but I’m just not sure…”
She nodded, silently, and I put the page back on my wall.
Later we took other pages and made them into roses. Hers didn’t turn out quite as they should, but I gave her the “No worries, they always look strange until we unfurl them.”
The next day I found out she had simply rolled from the wrong direction.
It was a simple fix to get it done.
When Mom was gathering her things to leave, she took a stack of dyed papers we had set aside for her to watercolor and then she took the rest of The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes to glean the best illustrations and watercolor them, again. She looked like “the cat that swallowed the canary” as she took the book from my house.
She had a creative plan.
We were collaborating.
Before she left she gave me a suggestion to make my roses even more special.
I tried it. They’re looking better and better and better.
We ARE collaborating.
Another dream come true. Now when I get the water colored pages back, I will frame them and hang them on the wall. Eleanor Estes’ words will live on as will my mother and I. None of us will be up on the shelf, dusty and dark, unread and unfavored. In the tiniest way, Mom is living her illustration dreams.
This makes me happier beyond words.
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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
This is my seventh post (of 31!) for the October Ultimate Blog Challenge.
Watch challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing
Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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