1 mobilearrtprogram@mail.org 0 2008-11-18T09:29:05-07:00 707 216 My mother was a self-taught artist. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996. As the rebel daughter, I had a tense relationship with my Mom but when she became ill, art brought us closer together. The process of creating art was very powerful for us. It was relaxing and gave my mother something to look forward to. \r\n\r\nAfter she passed away I wanted to continue working with others so I began taking art supplies into nursing homes and senior day care centers. Last year I formed a non-profit organization. With the help of a recent graduate of the University of Texas, and a current student, we go into six different locations and help the elderly and disabled adults create their own work of art. \r\n\r\nMany of these people have been uprooted from their homes, suffered the loss of loved ones, suffer from debilitating illnesses and overall diminished self-esteem. Our goals are to help them build friendships through group activities, give them a sense of self-worth, build their self-esteem and empower them to try new things. They have no control over when they eat, sleep or even go to the restroom so we give them complete control over their art projects. We have exhibits and parties to showcase their work. It has been a rewarding experience! There is no greater satisfaction for us than seeing a participant beam as they hold their completed art project.\r\n 1 2009-09-12T00:00:16-06:00 1 0 2008-09-30T10:23:27-06:00 615 195 2 2009-09-12T00:00:16-06:00 singing.flv 1 hpygrl2406@hotmail.com 0 2008-08-28T15:09:29-06:00 580 183 I think I�ve found contentment, and it was actually in the last place I thought to look. There is a story by Paulo Cuehlo about a boy who leaves home seeking adventure. He meets a king who tells him of great wealth. The boy goes seeking it, finds more trouble than treasure and gives up to return home. It turns out the treasure was in his backyard the whole time.\r\n\r\nI am that boy, but a modern version of it in the form of a woman and this is my story:\r\n\r\nI grew up outside a miniscule town in the Midwest on a peaceful plot of land that backed up to a lake, where the night sky was so effervescent that it glowed even with no moon, and pulsated with the sound of millions of cicadas. \r\n\r\nIt was contentment if the word was a vision, but not for a 17-year-old seeking adventure. I was not eager to spend the rest of my life there. It lacked excitement (except for the time we went parasailing in the cornfield behind a 1975 International Scout, but that�s another story). It lacked intrigue and romance and, well, geography.\r\n\r\nSo I left home at a tender age and while most kids I knew were preparing for college, I was learning the art of combat in the army. This hadn�t been my original plan and it was far from anyone�s expectation of my destiny, seeing as I am a 5-foot-tall woman who was never into sports. One day, it just seemed like a good way to fulfill my goals of travel and adventure.\r\n\r\nAfter basic training came eight years of seeing the world�and living in it too. I�d seen the demilitarized zone and the desolation of North Korea. I rode elephants in Thailand. I drank Hefferveisen in the Bavarian Alps and walked through the haunting Dachau concentration camp. I mingled with famous people and national media as I escorted them on military visits. I wrote historical news articles as a military journalist in the Army.\r\n\r\nBut, I wasn�t content yet.\r\n\r\nSo I thought, �If I find a good man, I�ll be fulfilled.�\r\n\r\nI found a man with passion and dreams for his future (I actually found him in South Korea, where I was living at the time - I�m a fan of accomplishing as much as possible at one time). He was a musician in life and an ammunition specialist in the Army.\r\n\r\nHe was great at everything he set out to do except making me content. He made me laugh, he gave me a son, but we grew further apart and soon I no longer knew him.\r\nSo I focused on my son, especially since I lived (again) in a foreign country, away from all familiarity with a husband that I had now lost familiarity with.\r\n\r\nBefore my son was born, I left active duty service to raise him. I was spending all my time doing the laundry, changing diapers, cleaning the house while living in Europe, which I couldn�t go explore like I wanted to. Then came the guilt of not being completely content to be a mom and at the same time, the fear that I wasn�t good at it.\r\n\r\nAgain, I wasn�t content. Maybe it was because I wasn�t happy with not having a career.\r\n\r\nSo I got a job in public relations for the government. I worked hard, strove for perfection and accomplishment and worked my way up to become a credible and highly regarded figure in my community.\r\n\r\nAnd do you think I was content yet? IT was still missing. IT was eluding me.\r\nI was happy, don�t get me wrong, but I�m ever the optimist. I thought for sure that when my son was born, I would be complete. I would be content. I would just�be.\r\n\r\nMy son has proven to be my greatest accomplishment in life, my pride, my joy, my love.\r\nBut even when it seemed like I had it all - the husband, the son, the perfect job, checking off of the list of life goals - IT still wasn�t there. And my happiness was waning too.\r\n\r\nI was stifled. I needed to get away. I packed up my son and we went to visit my parents in the same house I had grown up in so many years before. \r\n\r\nEvery time in the last eight years that I had visited, every phone conversation we�d had they�d ask me when we would move back near them. At one point, my mom gave up and said she would be content if I just moved back to the continent. \r\n\r\nBut on this particular visit, of no particular importance (no holidays, nothing going on, just a visit), something in me changed.\r\n\r\nI saw that shimmering sky that, quite frankly, I had never seen anywhere else in all my travels, in the whole world. I saw this beauty that I had never noticed before. I smelled this aroma that is a mixture of damp vegetation, sweet clean air, dirt and rain that I haven�t smelled anywhere else in the world.\r\n\r\nI saw an energy in my son that seemed more vibrant in this saturated countryside than anywhere else I�d ever seen. He was catching bullfrogs in the frog pond. He was being Indiana Jones in the tree house. He was driving the tractor on his grandpa�s lap and doing work in the countryside with his �worker man gloves.� He was sweating and getting tan and filling out in his rib cage. He was playing with his cousins who were teaching him to read.\r\n\r\nAfter those two weeks ended and I began the long and solitude drive back home (by this time, we lived in Texas), I was longing to go back with every mile that passed under my tires, and dreading going home.\r\n\r\nThis surprised me. And by the time I got home and saw my husband, I had lost something.\r\n\r\n�How was your trip?� he asked.\r\n\r\nAll composure escaped me and I burst into tears at the sight of him. �I don�t belong here anymore,� I said. �I don�t even know who I am anymore. I don�t know who you are anymore.� This was not the first time we had danced around the idea of a divorce - it had been lurking for quite some time. We had grown apart, and I�m pretty sure my expectations of him to fulfill my life didn�t help. He would tell me later that he never felt that I approved of him, and I�m pretty sure that helped destroy my marriage.\r\n\r\nBut now, standing in my living room surrounded by memories of everything I thought would fulfill me, I realized that I had to go. We had a long conversation and I told him I was leaving. He thought I was just tired from my trip. Maybe he was right.\r\n\r\nA little time passed and I realized it wasn�t that I was tired from my trip. I had been tired of the life I had built up, with all these high expectations of everything and everyone to make me happy.\r\n\r\nI had failed. That�s not easy for a perfectionist to admit.\r\n\r\nAfter another long talk (surprisingly empty of anger, bitterness or resentment from either party) I packed up enough stuff to fill my car ,and my son and I headed back to my parent�s house. With little notice that any of this was coming their way, and facing their own gamut of emotions about my marital fallout, being unemployed, moving in with them for an unknown amount of time, they welcomed me with open arms and support that only a parent can give.\r\n\r\nThe day I physically left my husband was the hardest day of my life. I had explained to our son that mommy and daddy weren�t going to be married anymore, but that we both still loved him very much, that daddy would always be his daddy, that I would always be his mommy and that we were going to stay with Granny and Papa (that�s what he calls my parents) for a while.\r\n\r\nHe cried of course, which I told him it was okay to do. I held him and soon, he looked at me with a brave smile that broke my heart as he nodded.\r\n\r\nThe day we drove away, he didn�t cry. But I did. I tried not to, but sometimes trying to not do something just makes it happen more.\r\n\r\nMy brave little man said, �Don�t cry Mom. I�m not crying.�\r\n\r\n�Oh but sweetie, you are so much braver than me,� I said. \r\n\r\nI wept on my Mom�s lap that night when we arrived while my dad took my son out to catch fireflies. She held me just like I had held my child when he wept on me. I guess some things never change about being a parent. After that day, things got more stable.\r\nI began looking for jobs, but there were no government public relations jobs open at the time. So, I took a job at Target and Noah and I moved into my parent�s recreational vehicle. It had a full kitchen, full bath, master bedroom, kid�s bunk room and two TVs.\r\nI traded in our car for a more economical one. \r\n\r\nTrading in my car soon had a much more symbolic meaning. I got a bright yellow Chevy Cobalt. I picked it because is was fun yet practical and bright. I named it Sunshine before I even drove it off the lot. If I was a car, this was the one I wanted to be.\r\n\r\nAnd this is where I have contentment, but not the way I thought I would. I have found peace, relief, and sense of self. I have days of sadness, stress, anxiety as I am coping with my departure but still trying to maintain a good relationship with my son�s father. We both agreed that, with his schedule and upcoming deployment, I should have full custody, but he can visit anytime he wants.\r\n\r\nI still have many goals I hope to achieve in the next year, including a good government job that I once took for granted, much like this peaceful plot of land that backs up to a lake. I hope to buy a house, become more healthy, watch my son blossom as he goes to kindergarten.\r\n\r\nMy goals are much simpler now, and the purpose of them is to augment my life, not complete it, not fulfill it. There is enormous relief in the realization that you have nothing to prove. By social standards, I suppose I have gone steadily backward right to where I began. But there is great relief in starting all over too.\r\n 1 2009-09-12T00:00:16-06:00