Feeling at home … together

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Beat-up orange lockers made them VERY happy. So much so, they began to argue over who got the top and who would be by Elizabeth’s. Who knew?

Then again, the theme for my first session of Artsy Fartsy Saturdays was “Creating a sense of place” and it began painfully apparent these girls – from a large subsidized apartment complex in my neighborhood – don’t have much to call their own.

After a caring neighbor safely delivered them via a local church van and we settled, I asked them to keep three questions in mind during the afternoon. Questions they could answer for themselves:

• Where do we feel at home?

• What makes a place special?

• How can Artsy Fartsy feel like home?

In the midst of a scavenger hunt designed to help them navigate the space, rules and what’s off limits, they clustered in the hallway, ten beats ahead of me, asking if they could each have a locker. That was on my list for after the hunt, when I would briefly mention they could keep things there during Artsy Fartsy, but take them home each time as they were not secure.

Can I bring a mirror from home? What about a lock? Oh, let me put this magnet (intended for the AFS schedule and their home refrigerator) on, it sticks. But I want a top one. This one doesn’t work. No, I don’t want those short ones. I don’t want to have one by myself. Can I have one down at the other end of the hall?

I almost dismissed it as pre-teeny female flightiness, but then I would have missed what it really was: these girls begging for a space. Just a tiny one. A 10”-by’12”-by-36” dusty, metal cubby. A private space they could call their own and fill with whatever they wanted to fill it with. How could I say anything but a resounding YES and tell them they would be provided with locks next time, unanimously consented to by my exceptional adult volunteer advisors, all teachers.

Layla was so intent on getting hers ship-shape that she quickly finished our main project, then toiled away with Windex and paper towels. It shone … probably more in her eyes than on the metal surface.

I am certain no set of lockers has ever been as fussed over as these vintage 1970s specimens in harvest gold and sunset orange in a 100-year-old school. Perhaps because they weren’t assigned or that they were chosen, maybe they called to these girls. I like to think it’s because these girls were making themselves at home.

I know how important it has been to have my space … a room of one’s own as Virginia Woolf termed it. Mine started as a small stand-up desk (an old hostess station from a shut-down restaurant) in a kitchen window, progressed to an eight-by-ten studio in my garage, and, now, a 400-plus square foot former classroom lined by lockers outside.

These spaces have been places I have tended to my soul. Private spaces where I could feel safe and escape when I chose or invite a selected few in …  all on my terms. What would it have been like to have my own locker, aside from at school, when I was in fourth, fifth or sixth grade? May not have made a huge difference in my life because I had things of my own. But, what if I hadn’t?

I would have been scrubbing away at a dusty old locker claiming it!

• Where do we feel at home?

• What makes a place special?

• How can I make where I am now feel like home?

• How can I do that for someone else?

• What difference has having a room of my own made in my life?

All smiles

bounding off

the van and

waving

I had

experienced

their enthusiasm

two nights

previous

as I delivered

last-minute

permission

slips

a quick

task that

became a

two-hour

adventure

at the hand

of my

fourth-grade

guide

I don’t think

she wanted

to let me

leave

except,

she knew

something

special awaited

her

the secret

was

that an

even more

extraordinary

gift would

help us all

feel at home

together

Long way from the corner

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My garage studio

So, I went out to my garage studio to see what few things I could organize to take to my new studio. It was a pretty easy decision since my permanent space won't be ready for a few weeks. Just taking the basics.

I had a little picking up to do and then thought I'd sort through my pastels, box them up and pack them for the new digs. That's when it hit: the reality that I am leaving this very sacred and dear place. I got teary. My pastels have never been boxed up and taken anywhere except in small increments on vacations. Neither had I realized how much colorful dust has accumulated on my work table. I carefully folded up the paper I draw on top of that contained much of the dust and threw it away.

The room was looking emptier as I collected items to be moved into the center. I was overcome with gratitude for this 8-by-10 space that has served me so well for many years. It was been my private space to make art, meditate, do yoga, pray, dance, cry, laugh, scream, transform, grow, regress, soul search, write and just be myself. It is the ONE place I can completely relax. I owe nothing to anyone here and don't have to pretend anything. It was here I created my mad journal for railing, but also here that God has reached me. It is a place I have found myself. It has been worship and hell. The work I have done here hasn't always been pretty or pleasant.

It was my space and anyone else had to be invited in. It has served as the physical boundaries I have often lacked. I enter the purple door, close it and can become lost, answering to no one other than myself.

We all need a space like this. A room of one's own as Virginia Woolf described.

It'll still be here; I am not abandoning it completely, just making myself more public, but not entirely ... I will keep some boundaries and space for myself.

I think I'll want to take down the giant princess mask (a Target Halloween decoration many seasons ago) and bring her with me and probably some of my artwork, too. The walls are filled with paintings, frames, inspiring images, photographs, postcards and verses I wrote on myself. "Mom, you wrote on your walls," one of my daughters remarked years ago. "Yes, I did because they are mine."

I remember lovingly creating this space. First I had to clear out the detached garage, moving stored articles to another area and chalking out the space. Then I cleaned it, uncovering a beautiful old dry-goods counter (perfect height for making art) stashed in the back and topped with years of motor oil and original milk-green paint. I stripped the top, cleaned up the rest and added casters. It will never leave this room unless I build a larger door.

Before I had this studio built, I used a small hostess table from a restaurant tucked into a nook by a kitchen window. That was my studio when the girls were small. Before that, I had no place to do art until I attended a retreat in Barnesville, Ohio, at the Friends Center on spiritual formation and a redbird drew me into the woods. I sat down to draw and journal and decided then and there to send my prayer out into the universe for an art space. A very wise art coach said whatever our dream may be, we should share it and, then, it will happen.

Now I graduate to an 800-square-foot former art room in a neighborhood school. That's a long way from a desk in a corner.

• What room of my own have I had?
• What has it allowed me to do or be?
• In what physical places do I feel safest?
• How can I create such a space?
• How does this space feed my soul?


mothering and
not much more

sucked into
the needs of
beautiful young girls

not giving mine much thought

until, one day
a small redbird
called me into
his woods

called my imagination out
called my heart

to play
and I knew
I needed to play
often

I needed safety
to create and
rebirth
my own self

always,
I am grateful
to that little
feathered flash
of red

Room of my own

I was fierce today. Like a mother protecting her cubs.

Only I was protecting my turf: my weekly time in my art studio that so often gets eaten up by something else. Today I stood firm and didn't let it. I just couldn't.

I give in too often, but not today. Why was today so important? I'm not sure, but I journaled about my reaction and discovered this is the place I feel most safe to be who I truly am. No one else's apprehensions, opinions, thoughts, attitudes. No one else's anything. Just mine.

I had not realized how easily I shed other people when I make the short walk from my back porch to my detached garage. It's the only place that seems possible. It is like entering another world. One full of color, vibrancy, creation, life and only the color, vibrancy, creation and life I choose to let in.

It's also the place I feel most at home with God/Spirit, where I can be who really am and who I am there often includes many inner children, not tended anywhere else. It is where I am truly fed.

It was sad to realize I don't get that in my faith community because there's always some obligation, one more person to see, one more thing to do. I do get fed there, but not as unconditionally as I do in my studio. Probably because that's where my direct connection to God is best nurtured. I have had those kinds of experiences in worship, but then I leave my sea of contemplation for the land of real people. People for whom I really care and, therein may lie the catch. I need down time to nurture myself. As a nurturer, I love that work, but I also can't starve myself. I stupidly try at times and get to experience the results. Usually not favorably.

I am always a different person, a better person, when I emerge from any time in my studio. Thank God I have a place like that!

• How do I nurture myself? • Do I do it regularly? • Is there somewhere I can totally escape? • If not, how can I make that happen? • When I don't, what are the consequences?


I pull the kitchen door shut
and it closes out so much.
My mind is focused on
opening the porch door,traversing the stone
steps across the lawn,
while balancing a teapot,
cup and too many other things.
I am forced to put down
whatever is in my hands
to open the catproof latch
at the bottom
of the garage door.
Pick up my things,
close that door.
Set my things down
again to turn on the lights
located outside my studio,
open the screen door,
secure it with my favorite
mini boulder from Vermont,
then turn the handle on
the purple wooden door,
which is hinged in
the opposite direction.
Regather my things and
FINALLY enter my space.
My heart always sings
when I get inside and
shut the world away
... at least for awhile.
The short, but complicated
journey from back door
to studio has become a
relished meditation that
readies me to remember
who I really am.