Liberation

Coffee; 12:21 Friday afternoon. Cold November night made way for a sunny day. First day able to be in my studio in a while. I stand an empty apple juice container up; Mold has formed along one side. Dark green with bits of brown. I am protected from the cap. I forgot to put a cap on my black acrylic paint the last day the babies took a nap, when I came in my studio to work and saw  on my “Never Trump” sign, “Never Give Up” imbedded in my message of Protest. I made it through yesterday: Parents meeting, (I was so grumpy I thought about not going, but it helped me so much). I told the facilitator, “I need to go back to therapy”. I took Jack and Fiona to the park. I let Jack eat Yogurt with his excavator, after he played with it in the sand box. I let Fiona smear yogurt on the ground then draw with her finger like I’ve been teaching her with various substances. I’ve been a great mom. I met a man this morning on the trail walking our dogs, I didn’t even wonder if he voted for Trump. I’ve concluded that it doesn’t matter anymore. With the men that Donald Trump has hired this week for Government jobs, it is crystal clear that this government philosophy, the power and masterminds behind it, has been in the making for years, forever, for as long as America has been America. There has been a strong movement towards peace, civil rights, and the environment, but that side hasn’t won yet.  After every traumatic, life altering event I am forever changed. My innocence and optimism concerning the world we live in and the human race changes. The idea of life itself. Sitting in the back yard yesterday with Jack and Fiona, we noticed a green bag that used to house the jumpy house hanging on the fence full. “Is the Jumpy house in there?” asks Jack. “No, remember, the Jumpy house got a hole in it”. I take the bag down and open it revealing forgotten toys. Jack grabs the Fire Truck and the plastic bat. Fiona didn’t run to the toys, she sits and watches me explain things. She asks me questions and repeats what I say. I see a tick on Billys face. Fiona looks close as I explain, “Ticks burrow into the skin and suck blood. They get huge and fall off. They have diseases, I need to get Billy some medicine”. Fiona follows me to the closet, up the step ladder behind me. Telling me about the tick, about putting medicine on Billy. Jack asks me about the bat. He’s noticing the line from the mold. “It’s made in a factory, that’s the mold line” I tell Jack. I wonder if I should show him a picture of children working in a factory in China making plastic baseball bats. A plastic baseball bat that sits in the back yard un-used for most of the time. That will never disintegrate, that bat will be on this Earth for the rest of time. I walk back into the house and pass the children’s easel with a pad and scribbles and crayons, I feel myself coming back. Emerging into my space on Earth. My reality. Glug, Glug, Glug. I just poured myself a glass of red wine. It’s 12:48pm.   I have a potential of three hours to work in my studio, if Jack and Fiona take their nap today. I miss sharing my naptime paintings on Facebook, but I am so relieved to be out of that atmosphere. I miss so many people on there too, seeing their up-dates, paintings, but I don’t miss the constant negativity, and look, it did us no good! We influence very few by posting the negative stuff Trump and his cronies do. I am going back to the drawing board. Back to before IPhones and Facebook. I have changed.