INDY 500

We're watching the race. We have every year since 1976.
My husband introduced me to it. To engines and everything mechanical and electronic. Racing was exciting! Who could outmaneuver who?

He knew engines and electricity by 2. At 4 he began disasembling a clock and at 5 he put it together. He listened to engines. He heard the men fill in unknown details. Like valve clearances, oil density, rpms. He could hear it. He listened to radios. Taking them apart and reassembling. By 9 he was diagnosing and fixing a Model T and off he went barreling around the farm.

My family are artists. Every one.
I always list them like this:
My father, my brothers, sister, aunt, grandmothers.
My children, nieces and nephew.
Everyone.

Although my mother tended to be more bookkeeper and knitter, fossil finder, hostess.

One time she came home from a little Easter brunch with the neighbors eagerly presenting her art. In her excitement, she pronounced, "Look, I painted a flower!" She had decorated an Easter egg. We stood in the hall, in the midst of 50 paintings, 30 sculptures and musical instruments.

There, in the tiny kitchen, she showed me how she did it. "I painted a dot and then painted 5 dots around it!" Mom enthused. "It's a flower!"

Understanding came slowly to me like steam rising from a bath. My mom wasn't an artist. I wanted her to be. I wanted her to be more accomplished than I was. She wasn't. Not on the drawing or painting front.

Her mother was an artist, my Mamaw, was an artist. She painted and played jazzy piano, she was clever and funny! She was beloved by young and old. She was very popular and entertaining at parties. Gramps was a music appreciator; on Sunday mornings he listening to opera on the radio, dozing in his big leather chair.

Her husband, my dad, was a painter, a musician, an artist in building even. A man so creative in every move he made. So ubiquitous that I almost missed the power of his evocative art. I never put any import upon his extraordinary paintings.



Her mother-in-law, my grandmother, Me'Me', encouraged me. She was trained at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was gifted in all the disciplines, truly a skilled artist. Singing opera or jazz, playing piano, violin, painting, sculpting, I was her 1st granddaughter after 5 boys. I was given her name. I loved her.


She was prissy and fussy. She didn't join in the beachy casual wild partying that took place. She dressed impeccably. She irritated the family. No one liked her. I wondered why they named me after her if they didn't like her. Except me. I loved her.

Her sons were musician and artists, from the beginning. A painting of Romulus and Remus amazed me. The painting skill amazed me. I studied the brush strokes, the colors. The ocean themed collages. Fossils glued beside beach glass and shells. To me they were profound. A great wood whale carved by the men was hoisted up atop a beached washed weathered telephone pole. And I participated in the family art, tentative though I was. A small, timid painting of a girl and ducks.

Her daughter, my sister, was an artist. Recently I saw a high school drawing hanging on a friend's wall. Appreciated. Honored. Her painting hangs front and center on my wall. Loved.

Me, I listened and watched all the painters paint and the sculptors sculpt with awe and fascination. They gave me art classes. I drew and colored and even created a fish in the family's cement back step to the beach. But, "Don't compete", was the message I heard. Later, in college I painted and sculpted, but my protective inner voice told me not to share it. Don't compete. Don't show.


The painting I did show them? They approved in a distracted way. When I felt worried about its neglect, I, myself hung it on the wall with the other pieces. Nothing was said. Except when I said it. "Do you like my painting? What do you think?" "It's pretty good."

The lack of enthusiasm pressed down on me. But the words were positive, just not enough for a starving daughter.



I took the inner message seriously. Stay out of the way; you never know what could happen. Maybe there would be criticism. Surely to help me grow, but I wouldn't hear. I only heard "Don't compete."

Maybe that's what I needed from my mom. Affirmation. "I'm an artist and you are too." Maybe that's what I needed from my dad.


The family was socially adept. Gregarious.
Artistic. Beautiful & handsome. Where did I fit in?

I was lost. Pressed down inside. Unsure. Loathing myself.

A childhood of holding back. Don't show.
Young adulthood, too busy to paint.
Midyears I'm lost.

Someday I'll enter the art room and watch out.

I'm going to compete in this world.
I'm going to attach myself to my gifts and never let go


Maybe today.

Maybe just after the Indy 500.