My kids are getting old enough to see the planet we live in through their own eyes these days. They are gradually getting to where they see and understand things wholly with their own perspectives and through their own eyes. For the last ten years or so Thing 1 and Thing 2 were largely insulated from the world by me. That is to say, I never kept them under a smothering blanket of protection from the big, bad evils of life. On the contrary, I have always felt it was my parental obligation (and privilege) to open the world’s many doors to the kids in order for them to experience all the wondrous diversity and assorted cultures there are. What I have done is try to expose my children to the world while keeping them safe from it. I’ve tried to allow them to take steps out into society while making them aware of the fact that if they need to retreat from it to a place of safety I will be there.
I have always been one to revel in the miracles of life all around us every day, and I’ve started seeing The Things doing a bit of their own revelling. I’m not a religious person, but I see beauty, and I suppose you could even say divinity, in things all around me, everywhere I go. I see it in the petals of a rose, the laughter of children - you know, all the things poets have written about since they first drew sunsets on their cave walls. I’ve always thought it was important to see the glory in every little thing - a crying child, a rotting apple, the way a broken limb hangs from an old oak after a furious storm ravages a tree which has stood for countless ages; the pristine blank white canvas of an Easter egg just before it’s been permanently defaced with a Crayon in a twisted pseudo-religious ritual; the odd way a chimney or smokestack will stand alone in a field, its brown brick stark against the grey sky decades after the rest of the building it was once anchored to has been destroyed by fire, earthquake, or simply neglect.
I don’t know why or how I began down this path. I assume it’s either Nature or Nurture. Maybe I was hardwired this way from The Beginning. Perhaps the magical way my parents’ genes aligned when I was formed predestined me to a life of artistic appreciation, if not ability. (I once got into an awful argument with a former girlfriend who was convinced that I could not “truly appreciate” ballet, nor any other art, unless I was trained in that art. I, on the other hand, was convinced that A: it is entirely possible to appreciate something without having done it oneself by understanding just what goes into it; and B: she was absolutely full of crap.)
On the other hand, maybe it’s Nurture. My mother always made a beautiful home. When I was a child I lived in multiple residences, but they all had a single thing in common - they were beautiful. The house I spent most of my life in when I was growing up in San Diego always looked to me as if it could grace the cover of Better Homes & Gardens or something - particularly after my siblings and I had moved out. There were always flowers overflowing from various assorted pots, jars and vessels new and old throughout the back yard and front. The interior of the house was always full of beautiful quilts hanging on walls, hand painted artwork on canvas, wood, and stone. Porcelain figurines, photos of ancestors, sideboards of dark oak beside cabinets of red painted pine, all stuffed full of polished bright silver; myriad colors and textures surrounded the house’s occupants in a swaddling cloth of aesthetic pleasure. Again, plants cascaded from atop every single armoire, shelf and cabinet - not to mention under foot at every turn. (When my parents left town for various vacations it was always a big to-do who was going to feed and water the plants. Inevitably they’d return and inventory the casualties.) My mother loves antiques. My mother loves new things. My mother loves to buy things. I suppose my appreciation for beauty and art (which are nearly synonymous in my book) stems in no large part from growing up surrounded by it.
Thing 1 is artistic the way Slim is. She dabbles in just about every artistic endeavor you can think of. My father loves to write, as do my brother, sister and I. My mother is a painter, sculptor, baker and cook, as are my siblings and I. My daughter loves to create things. She’s always been big on arts & crafts. Christmas and her birthday will inevitably find her opening a gaily wrapped package of tape, or glue, or pencils. It will probably always be so. These days she’s also into beading and jewelry creation. Thing 2, who never showed much patience for these things (but who never had any trouble going through museums or art exhibits and proclaiming what he did and did not like and why) takes a different path from his sister, but seems to see beauty and art just like I always did. I suppose it doesn’t much matter whether one is creating art or simply enjoying anothers creation. Suffice it to say they both have art in their lives.
I think we’re all better because of it.
