I recently heard a bit on NPR about young men in East Oakland who attend groups after school where they recite/perform their hip hop.  The group is coached by a professional hip hop artist.  These young men are encouraged to tell their stories in the hopes that the act is therapeutic.  This process in official terms is called narrative therapy.

I immediately thought of Seth when I heard this.  Seth tells stories all the time.  He often wants stories told or retold to him when he is trying to workout something that caused him distress.  Above is a photo of Seth and I at the Whale Museum.  He wanted me to tell him the story of how the whale died.  He asked me to tell him this story multiple times.

The following sequence depicts the story of how the purple “fire bird” was quelled and brutally eviscerated by the fire truck.  Now I don’t ever spend time thinking about putting out things that are on fire, or eviscerating things, or how blood flows from a body, but Seth does.  I lost my notes on exactly what he said during this process, but it was pretty graphic.

By the end of the saga the “fire bird” was dead and bleeding.  Seth spent along time doing this last red part.  As he ran the brush across it he kept saying, “soft, soft” as if he were comforting the spot of paint.  I guess why this all interests me is because little boys seem to think about killing, death and other dramatic subjects.  I am trying to give Seth the mental room to work out these issues.  Whenever I overhear a bit of “narrative therapy” I try to listen so I can get and idea of what is going on in his imagination no matter how gruesome the content.

I’m turning 37 tomorrow and I’ve decided to sit down with the charcoal and see where I am at.  It will be good to return to the basics and see what I discover.  I’ve been pondering self portraits for the last few weeks.  For me it is easy to see myself in natural objects.  I am famous for carting around  bits of nature from home to home becasue I have extended self attachment to them.   Of course it is always easier to get lost in Seth’s art, or Seth himself.  Afterall, he is a reflection of me mixed up with reflections of the world around us – a joyful indulgence.  It only recently occured to me to take my own photo.  I was putting the camera away and walked past the mirror, no premeditation, just a pause infront of myself.

We spent the afternoon with Violet.  Seth was sweet and curious.  He attended both feeding sessions, and conversed with Judy in a very natural fashion.  He was helpful, fetched things, and relayed messages to uncle Cary in the other room.  Before sleep, Seth usually makes an attempt at last minute conversation with me by asking me, “so mommy, how was your day?”  This time I asked him how his day was.  This was his reply:

“My first favorite thing was the fire escape, my second favorite thing was the basement and my third favorite thing was baby Violet nursing.”

I guess safety comes first, always good to know where your escape routes are.  Provisions come second, it’s manly to haul laundry up and down the stairs, and of course it takes manly strength to shove the quarter sleigh into the dryer.  Nurturing seems to come last, but I am thankful that with Seth it is even a consideration ~ snarf.

Violet was actually awake when we first arrived and looked at us.  I was riveted by her big eyes.  I knew for a long instant she was trying to engage.  She was trying to get acquainted with us.  We were thrilled.

This was my first chance to really get to know Violet.  I found myself reviewing and re reviewing each profile.  Newborns put me in a primal focus zone.  I can’t just hold a newborn, I sense their essence and record what I feel.  It’s fun to see personalities unravel, but profound to see that basic essence permeate a lifespan.  I guess that’s why they call it the soul.  I think a family has a soul too.  Something that happens when offspring arrive.  Cary was waxing scientific/philosophic about how we are interrelated as an organic family, but I see “the circle unbroken” in these three.  The human spirit content.

Welcome to the family Violet.  It strikes me as interesting that this is the card Seth made for Judy and Violet.  It’s such a powerful image with all the energy of birth and not so subtle purple overtones.  I wish I had photos of the onsies that Seth painted for Violet.  He went big on the purple and red.  He pounded the purple laden brush on the white cotton loudly announcing, “Celery will like this”!

My feelings towards her are equally visceral, but perhaps more complete.  This is a girl who will grow to be a woman that I will engage with for my entire life.  Here I am holding a child that I already adore and she has done nothing but be born.  Here I am holding Violet, my niece that I already dote on.  I am all set to watch her, to learn her ways, to experience her view of the world.  The love of kin is inexplicable.  The joy of holding the “new blood” of family is uparalleled.  Violet may be the only female child in this next generation.  Good thing she has a powerful spirit.

Blessings!

ADDENDUM

Six Pounds Seven Ounces ~ Good Work Judy!

Mom & Baby are Healthy

At some point this week Seth told me that he has two favorite colors pink and red.  Pink is his primary favorite color, and red is his secondary favorite color.  This more or less resonated with the Seth I have known from spirit to flesh.  Seth’s energy has always seemed red to me sometimes even magenta, pink fits neatly in that spectrum.  After all, if he was always red then he would never vary from his basic mold.  Add a little white and you get shades of pink, a glimpse of character and self-definition.

Pink is all around us here in our California February.  For all intents and purposes it is spring here.  It is not the spring fever spring that overcomes the cloistered New Englander after mud season.  It is the “oh if you insist” spring, coaxed by temperate zones who can’t be bothered with the cold.  These are the zones that endure the long dry tedious summer in exchange for the miraculous few green months with winter relegated to absentia.  I’ve been to parties festooned with pink camellias.  I’ve idly observed the kids busy in the cradle of green grass and oxalis.  Gradually I’ve been toying with revisiting a memory.  If it were “wicked cold” here maybe the urgency of writing this would escalate.  Is it possible that flowers as lazy as camellias and banal as oxalis could provide insight into the core meaning of my life?

On a sunny February day at approximately one o’clock in the afternoon I sat down to play in the sandbox on our back patio.  I remember feeling weary of the humans that I was forced to endure in Kindergarten, how my mornings of stimulus gave way to the blessed, quiet afternoons at home.  The light was bright as it reflected off the bits of mint green paint that still clung to the 1950s cement.  I ran water from the hose and marveled at the crystalline nature of the substance.  I gathered camellia flowers and the impossibly yellow oxalis blooms.  After much organizing, the sand box transformed into a landscape of rivers, punctuated by floating flowers and constructed beauty.

Perhaps this process was the same as the many repetitions that came before it.  It may have taken many hundreds of hours in the sand box to get to this day but there it was, my first “ah-ha” moment.  People often refer to the “ah-ha” moment where a design is just right, just as it is – effortlessly absolute.  Well this was it for me, my first taste of creative satisfaction.  My first understanding that materials can be architected to bring about an aesthetic that mirrors exactly the vision the creator had in mind.  For an artist this cognitive realization is a moment that shapes our entire lives, we strive for it always.  Wither we are conscious of it or not “ah-ha” drives us toward meaning.

In the process of raising a child I have born witness to the hot bed of cognitive development that is the sandbox.  Although Seth consistently has an agenda I wonder if someday soon he will have his “ah-ha” moment.  Or perhaps his mind works at a different pace.  He seems to have hourly “ah-ha” moments where he pops up in joy and shouts something like, “Ya concrete!  That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”  Perhaps he is just more social than I ever was, and his creative play develops mitigated by interaction with others.  My own ideas and self-awareness were only reflected by nature.  Our sand box experiences may shape us to become very different people.

Seth won’t have the same experience as I did.  I’ve been reconciled to that from conception.  However, I can wish Seth the joy of “ah-ha” moments.  I can studiously make note that he refers to oxalis blossoms as “bell flowers”, and I can quietly indulge his love of the color pink.  I try to encourage Seth in his explorations of pink.  It may get beaten out of him later, but today he is standing his ground and keeping pink as his muse, his chromatic guide to the world of beauty and joy.  It sounds something like this ~ Ah-ha mommy!  I know…we should paint it…PINK!

I took these photos of our ornamental kale in December.  The deepest pink in the shadowed crevasses is the color of the camellias that grew next to the back patio of our 1953 tract house.  The inspiration for this post came from Carolyn Fosters writing exercise Root Memories.