Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-05-17 - 9:34 a.m.

Oh Yes You Are

There's something I've learned recently. It took me a long time, but I think I've got it now. I just had a lot of other stuff to go through first.

I'm an artist.

Oh yes, I am. You are too. Trust me on this one.

I didn't get that for the longest time. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe because my sister used to draw these horse's heads, and they were really great so I drew some too, and mine were lame. LAME, people. And my mother used to sew these incredible things, and she never ever turned a hem on the machine - that would be a slutty thing to do - and I couldn't measure up there, either. If you can't draw a decent horse's head, and you can't sew, then you obviously have no art in you.

The writing thing? That's nothing. That just happens.

I always did get it about singing, for some strange reason. I knew we were all singers. All of us. Some of us can hit specific notes and some are a bit more random, but we all have song in us. In fact, when one of us breaks into song and one of my kids tells them to shut up, they know the lecture they get from me. They can recite (in that yeah-mom-we-know-eye-rolling-monotone) "Singing is the expression of a joyful heart."

But art? That seemed to be reserved for the talented. "I'm just not artistic."

I was pretty good at choosing to be around people who would agree with that, too. When I made a dress, my ex said, "That looks like a tent!" One for my child looked "like a tablecloth!" You can imagine what he would have said about those horse's heads. (If I'd drawn the other end of the horse, would he have known it was his portrait?)

But something changed. First, I did the rain-dance that turns current spouses into ex's. Second, I bludgeoned through the layers of numb scar tissue enough to HEAR a lifelong friend telling me I was a capable human. Third, and a much later third, I found myself a man who loves life and encourages it all around him.

So I wrote a little bit, because I hadn't been, except in anguished rants that I would hide under the mattress. And I sewed a little bit, just to see. I started cooking again. Then I made a card for a friend with the kids' watercolors and some tissue paper. And I kept writing, and actually got something accepted for publication.

It started seeping in that just because I wasn't Picasso, or Amy Tan, or Vera Wang, or Paul Prudhomme, it didn't mean I couldn't test the waters. So what if it's only the kiddie pool. I LIKE the kiddie pool. It's warmer.

One day I made this wind chime out of stuff, and it was very cool, and it's hanging outside my door. I just decided to make it. There was no one here, and if it hadn't worked out, no one would have known. And I bought myself a little bit of terra cotta clay, and I made a figurine, and it's sitting on my table here. And I took some photographs, and this year I'm going to enter them in the local county fair. Is it great stuff? Yes, because I like it. I liked doing it, and I liked the results. You don't have to own the joint to go in and have a beer sometimes.

So that's my point. It's in you. If there's anybody telling you it isn't, and especially if the voice sounds suspiciously like your own, smack 'em down.

Go on now. Sing out.

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