Creating

“I rummage around in my flat file, find some persimmon-tanned paper that looks like cowhide, grab a few pastels.. I begin to rough in Alba’s head.. my hand is moving across the paper like the needle of a seismograph, recording Alba’s form as I absorb it with my eyes. ..I begin to lay in pastel. I start by sketching in highlights in white.. then I rough in the shadows, in dark green and ultramarine.. I use two pink pastels, a light pink the hue of the inside of a shell and a dark pink that reminds me of raw tuna. With rapid strokes I make Alba’s skin. It is as though Alba’s skin was hidden in the paper, and I am removing some invisible substance that concealed it. .. Over this pastel skin I use a cool violet to make Alba’s ears and nose and mouth..

“The drawing is finished. It will serve as a record—I loved you, I made you, and I made this for you—long after I am gone, and Henry is gone, and even Alba is gone. It will say, we made you, and here you are, here and now.”
–page 407-409, The Time Traveler’s Wife

We are on vacation, the three of us. D is taking a nap in the room he picked because the quilt in it was green, his favorite color. His hands are curled in the way they always do when he’s unconscious, and I wonder if the baby will curl her hands the same way. I am sitting in a chair by the screen door enjoying the Kauai breeze, the prickly aftertaste of pineapple still at the edges of my tongue. The baby is kicking inside. She has been kicking a lot lately, hard kicks that punch out my skin and jump up against D’s hand.

I was reading this novel and missing drawing. I wish time could stand still so I could take a few refresher courses on pastels and oils, could teach myself to quilt, could learn the mechanics of photography. I would like to draw our cats, take photographs of the baby, paint a tree across the yellow walls of our nursery.

I think sometimes about the time and energy that was invested into all these things growing up that I don’t even do anymore now—painting, piano, drawing. I haven’t seriously played in a decade, and my sorry collection of paints has solidified somewhere in a back closet. I wonder if it was all a waste, but then at times like these when my narrowed life has fallen away and I can think beyond work and call, I feel glad to feel the urge, the conviction that I could pick those things up again.

I have had more time to think about the baby coming, and one of the things I’m looking forward to the most is having an excuse to be creative and let my imagination run amuck. I hope I get to make up lots of stories, finger painting and collect picture books. Maybe I’ve changed, but that seems more important than driving in because someone showed up in the emergency room with flashes and floaters. Ah well.

Week Twenty-Six