Broken hearted

So yesterday..............Friday, my in-laws took us out to dinner.   (by the way, I HIGHLY recommend the crab cakes at the Blue Ridge Grill).....It had been a glorious Friday.  A sunny beautiful end to a tiring week.  All things considered, not a bad week......but a tired week.  Five straight days of toiling away, doing jobs I like (mostly), but don't love....or to be more specific, I love and yet oft times don't truly feel like myself when doing.

So we are lingering over coffee and dessert, and I hear a small child-like voice behind me, "it's my art teacher"....Then I look up to see this beautiful child, and her family and the mama says, "oh my goodness, look Reagan,....................it is your art teacher"  And then came the hurtful words:
"We'll see you in a few weeks....Reagan has signed up for your class again".............I smiled, said the appropriate words, even joked a bit with Mom and Dad, and told Reagan that she mostly clearly had become a successful artist, since she was wearing something pink and shiny.

The heartbreak?  I am not teaching art this summer....and sadly, may not ever again...not exclusively..
And then it hit me....

I can remember feeling the paint flow through my fingers like cool blood.......giving life to everything in my soul......and giving a voice to all I want to do.  The sound of fingers rubbing oils into pastels, making them into colors that only I have names for.....the way that wet clay opens itself up to you to become anything you choose it to be, (or...if you are like me, anything IT chooses to be)....
I remember a class last year with only 4 girls....we spent every idyllic summer day that week in quiet rhapsody, each of us moving from station to station, going where the spirit moved us in open studio.
Music played low in the background, and there was the gentle murmur of quiet conversations, spoken to oneself, mostly, or now and again to the artist working beside you.

It was during that week when I made the realization that all of us, every thinking, creating one of us is an artist, deserving to be heard and seen and understood, no matter what our age or our station in life...and these girls taught me that.

When I think about my teaching, and about where I am now and what I am doing....I feel this salty, gritty lump rise up in my throat.  It feels like I am struggling to breathe, as I writhe against it...Sometimes I show my kids art, how to make it, who else makes it, how people think about it, but I never truly am one with them in spirit, and in the spirit of the art these days...

I lay out the paints, the paper, the tools of my passion, and then I take as much time as I can to tell them what we are "trying" to do, but time, that cruel stealer of all things worth caring about is a harsh taskmaster, and while I try so desperately to say this:

"You are the master of your own art destination.  You can go there in any color you wish, in slow motion or at a breakneck speed...you can paint yourself into your picture or anyone else...someone you love, someone you are afraid of, someone you want to be....You can feel good or bad or angry or sad or any way you choose to feel, and no one can take that away from you...There is joy in creation"

while I thinking this, feeling this, willing this for my students, I have one eye on the child in the corner, trying to put fuse beads up his nose, and one eye on the clock, so I am not late putting snack away....I am trying so hard to please the teacher, to be her helpmate and supporter, to know her needs before she even knows them herself....I am trying in my own way to be all things to all people, and in the mix, I lose the soul,...the "milk" of this art that I so dearly love, and dearly love to share with these young and talented thinkers.

So yes, it feels like heartbreak..............I am only a child myself, unable or unwilling to put away the pleasures in my own life, or at least, unable to do two things at the same time, and do them well.
I hate this...........................I hate doing something halfway..........I want to BE their art teacher....No, I don't, because in all reality, I am not teaching them anything they don't already know.  Yes, I might show them a new technique or a new material, I might introduce them to cubism, or impressionism, I might even guide them in a study of contemporary American artists, but what I really want, what I really need to do,.......I want to BE with them in that moment when they recognize a part of themselves in that crayoned landscape....I want to be a part of the fabric of creativity.  I don't want to miss a thing....I want to be a part of the conversation, and the beautiful realization that we are all together in this...There is a union among artists...It transcends age and race and gender, and most of all, I want to be THERE when these tender young artists find their voice.  I want to be the one to hear it first, acknowledge it, and give it the glory and purpose it deserves.....

But, in the meantime, I go on....the teaching assistant, a child herself.....learning to give in and give up, to show patience and dignity and kindness and tolerance, all the while stamping my foot at the gate, waiting for my race to begin...

And in the waiting, I grow......and my heart breaks......