WHAT GOES AROUND...

I had one of those "Aha!" moments the other day, during my morning reverie. The light bulb came on just as the sun came up. You see, I was sittin' there thinking about how odd it was that middle sister Gus has gone absolutely nuts over sewing since her retirement, making all sorts of darling totes and such for everyone she knows...

while the sister who majored in Clothing & Textiles (that would be me), and who put herself through college working at fabric stores, and made all her own clothing for years and years, never sews at all anymore. In fact, I don't even have a sewing machine now, since I gave it to my daughter!

Then I got to thinkin' about how I replaced that love of fashion with a passion for gardening -- a passion that became so all-consuming that it led me back to school and down a totally new career path. Which, of course, led me to remembering how absolutely flabbergasted my poor hubby was when I moved up to Wimberley a bit ahead of him, picked up pen and paintbrush, and suddenly forgot all about my trowel and pruners!

So what did that light bulb reveal? Well, that perhaps all I really did was take a circuitous route back to where I was actually meant to be all along.

When I was a kid, all I really cared about was reading, writing, daydreaming, and playing with art supplies. If I ever had any money at all, it almost never went towards toys. Instead it went towards tins of tempera paint, big boxes of crayons, playdough, and packages of manilla paper. I would actually sniff them when I opened a new package, and I remember each unique scent to this day!

So what distracted me from that path? Oh, who knows? Public school? Parents who wanted nice little girls who stayed within the lines? Criticism? The mistaken belief that if you weren't born a painting/drawing prodigy, then you obviously weren't meant to make art?

And so I found other, safer ways to assuage my inner artist and express my creativity, until at last I was strong enough, brave enough, to just say "Aw, what the hell? What have I got to lose, other than my silly inhibitions and, perhaps, other people's expectations?"