Our frenzied weekend of double graduations is over. Life is getting back to normal. Even our home, spotlessly clean for one glorious weekend, is slowly returning to its normal state of entropy. I knew its abnormally clean state was truly over when I smelled something funny and traced it to all the cut flowers in vases arranged beautifully throughout the first floor. We are so unused to flowers that I'd forgotten to change the water periodically. Some had dried up completely, and some were, well....stinky.
Two almost unrelated insights also came to us.
One was funny. One day, all our foster baby bunnies' ears were upright and perky. The next, one bunny's ears had drooped alarmingly. They looked melted. Did we have a bunny ear infection on our hands? Had we somehow broken the ears?? Did he need the equivalent of bunny Viagra?
Not at all. After a brief google session, we discovered that our bunnies probably have a little lop heritage in them.
Turns out lop ear genes are recessive. A bunny with upright ears can carry the gene and pass it on to its young.
And lop ears typically show up well into the second month of a young bunny's life. So you get perky ears one day and then bang! (or more accurately, "whimper!") you get droopy ears.
It doesn't mean anything. No disease, no disorder. It's just time for the lop's true nature to emergy.
We also learned that our son's true nature will appear in its own good time. We were bemoaning the frustrations of parenting a teen boy to our brother-in-law, the one who's an elementary school principal. I adore my B-I-L, Tom VanDeventer, and not only because he's married to one of my (many) wonderful sisters. He looks like an ordinary, affable, former football playing principal, until he reveals himself as a person of great heart--generous, supportive and quietly thoughtful. He has come through at difficult times in my life without a second thought. He did so again last week.
My son has had an interesting matriculation through middle school. Let's just say we are not one of those families who will annoy you with the Christmas newsletter filled with stories about our superstar children.
My husband was bemoaning this to Tom last weekend. Tom spent quite a bit of time with Doug last summer when we visited Michigan. Tom knows boys (he was the oldest of four boys--no sisters--and the father of three boys--no daughters.) He knows good boys and bad boys, naughty boys and troubled boys. And praise the Lord, he's impressed.
Tom said, "Doug is an amazing kid. An AMAZING kid. Just be patient. Adolescence is not his time. His time will come. And he will shine."
Why do I bore you with lop ears and sullen teens today?
Because I realized there is no sense of worrying "what it means". It means nothing. Each little guy will come into his own in his own good time.
And so will we, as artists. I know from the comments and e-mails I get from you that we are ALL struggling to figure things out. Trying to find our voice, our vision, our next step. Trying to find our audience, our perfect marketing strategy, our perfect show. Trying to find our place in the world.
With every obstacle and set-back, we look for a message. What is the universe trying to tell us? What are we doing wrong?
What does it mean?
It doesn't mean anything.
We are just being ourselves until we find ourselves in OUR own good time. We keep working and creating until we find OUR stride. OUR next step. OUR next achievement.
I'm realizing I've approached this whole artistic life as a problem to solve. When it's really just a journey to make.
We're already "there". Our art is in us, waiting for its time to shine. Our time will come. We don't have to do anything except be ourselves.
Well. Great photographs help, of course.
And all the other thin secrets to success and exercise insights. And everything else I've shared with you the last few years.
But they are all just means of simply becoming more OURSELVES.
I find myself praying that the moment of being completely, deliriously ME involves more shining than drooping. But that's just my personal preference.
