Art Makes Lives
My mom and a quilt she made just for me!
My mother is an artist. I’m not sure if she ever introduces herself that way, though I’m sure she says that she is a quilter, a calligrapher, a watercolor painter, and a devotee of the arts. ALL of them.
For much of my youth she drove a fake-wood-paneled Lincoln Mercury station wagon she had inherited from her dad. Across the dashboard were 40 kitschy dashboard saints. We often sang as we got into the car, “I don’t care if it rains or freezes/ as long as I got my plastic Jesus/ sitting on the dashboard of my car!”
The lone bumper sticker on the back of that vehicle read ART SAVES LIVES. I really didn’t get it as a kid. Of all the privileges I am just now realizing that I’ve had since birth, perhaps the greatest of all was growing up in a home so steeped in art and freedom of expression that that statement held no meaning. I had nothing to be saved from.
Our home, decorated with a taxidermied eland head in the entryway, violins hanging from the ceiling in the living room, and a curio cabinet filled with things like petrified koala poop shouted to all who entered, “Come as you are! All are welcome here.” And they were. Our Thanksgiving dinners always had a mysterious character or two who had nowhere else to be. “There’s always room for one more at the table,” my mom would say, and so there was.
Freedom of expression.
When I was six my mom taught me how to ride a bike. No training wheels. She showed me how to straddle that pink hand-me-down Schwinn in the parking lot at Washington School, held onto the seat, and jogged with me while I pedaled. She helped me stay upright until I found my own sense of balance, and then she set me free.
Again and again and again she has set me free. And again and again and again she has taken me in, given me the bed in her art studio for months at a time, folded my clothes, slipped cash into my pockets, and steadied me with her love when I’ve needed enough balance to find my freedom again.
I am lucky to have the mother I do. I am wowed by the chance of it. Especially now, when the fine line between breath and death feels so palpable and she is so healthy.
As Mothers’ Day approaches, I’m feeling great gratitude for her alongside my heartache for friends who are experiencing their first without their moms. I am feeling for folks whose mothers have been gone for decades, and for those who have ongoing difficulties with their living mothers.
My mom and her daughters at the Art Institute of Chicago.
I’m feeling for people who want to be mothers but, for reasons beyond their control, are not and may never be. And I’m feeling for mothers with children who are no longer living. I’m feeling for mothers who miscarried before anyone else in the world thought of them as moms and so carry their motherhood, and the early loss of it, privately. I’m feeling for mothers and children who have been separated against their will.
And I’m thinking about all the people who have given birth to a human being. I’m thinking about the tremendous amount of creative, generative, imaginative energy it takes to grow a person inside, usher it into this gorgeous, chaotic world, and then feed, nurture, calm, teach, and hold that little being… all for the sake of setting it free.
My mother is an artist, and if you are a mother, you are too. Because art doesn’t just save lives. It makes them.
May you be sweet with yourself and whatever this holiday brings up for you.
Be well, in love and beauty, xoxoo Becca
P.S. Treat the mamas in your life with 20% off all CBD products, bath salts, greeting cards, books, and tarot+astrology readings! Use code MOMLOVE.
