Flash

by Rachel Anne Ridge

  But I couldn’t help it: I peeked at the paper beneath my pencil and was appalled at the misshapen form burgeoning there. I erased and started over, but the horrific mess was still visible, now half-smeared and half-erased. Walking to the supply area for new paper, I noticed the incredible success my classmates were enjoying in their very first attempts.

  Twice more to the supply cabinet for fresh paper. Still a mess. As the others began to finish their masterpieces one by one, the classroom chatter got louder and more distracting until I simply gave up trying to concentrate and pretended to join in the banter.

  The bell rang, and the room emptied. I gathered my books and stood next to Mr. Hastings’ desk. Perhaps if I could get a little help, or at least a quick pointer, I’d be able to figure it out. I looked at the collages displayed just over his shoulder and couldn’t wait to move on to those! The way the colors and shapes melded together to create spectacular scenes made me practically giddy with excitement. But first, I needed assistance.

  “Young lady,” Mr. Hastings said as he scowled at me over his glasses in response to my request, “if you can’t do this first simple lesson, then I suggest you drop the class. You have no business being here.”

  I felt my heart drop into my shoes. Embarrassed, ashamed. Mortified by his indifferent judgment. “But, I . . .” I stammered, but he was already back to reading, the conversation finished. I could feel my eyes fill up and the room tilt. With one last, longing glance at the collages, I closed the door—not just on the class, but on anything creative. Anything artsy. Certainly anything involving pencil and paper. He was right: I had no business being there. I was a failure before I had even started. I was crushed.

  The vivid details of that moment, down to the smells of oil paints, turpentine, and pottery slurry, became fixed in my memory. I learned to avoid creative projects of any kind—and I watched from the sidelines as classmates made scenic sets for plays, history dioramas, and cool collages. I would instead focus my attention on home ec, which it turned out I was also terrible at. But it was the elective I took in place of art—so practical, so sensible—and I would not pick up a paintbrush until I was well into my thirties.

  How I wish now that Mr. Hastings had taken just three minutes of his time to encourage me to stick with it. To tell me that the whole point of the exercise was not perfection, but practice. To gently say, “I see you have a hunger for making things. Let me show you what you can do.”

  It took me more than two decades to rediscover my childhood passion and reach a conclusion that he could have easily pointed out in those moments after class. “Make Art” means so much more than blind contour drawing. It means “Create Something Beautiful.” There are hundreds of forms of art—most of which don’t require pencil and paper—and unlimited ways to create meaningful, beautiful things that people will appreciate and treasure. But I didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, because the door was closed to me that day.

  I lost something important in one single moment. A budding, vibrant light was snuffed out. And it took three kids, an overworked husband, and a desperate desire to find something I could enjoy for me to find it again. I signed up for a tole painting class in a local craft store, simply as a way to get out of the house for a couple of hours a week. But with one dip of the brush into paint, something in my soul sparked back to life.

  And so I had found a third passion: “Creating Something Beautiful.” Or as I liked to call it, “Making Art and Stuff.” It was like coming home. I didn’t plan on trying to make a career out of it. I just needed to hold things in my hands that I had made. That I had decorated. That I had made beautiful.

  And it was wondrous.

  Whew. I took a break from all that thinking and went to the barn. Flash stood under the shade of the sloping roof like a donkey statue. Perfectly still, except for the occasional swish of that wispy tail. His eyes were half-closed and his ears drooped downward, indicating that it was nap time, no doubt his third of the day.

  With a click of my tongue, his head came up and his nostrils began to work. Ears turned forward. He nickered softly. Flash waited for my approach, then slowly rubbed his head on me as I reached around to scratch the warm patch underneath his mane. The scabs from the barbed wire were still visible, reminders of his dedicated quest through fences for his mare. I could see why she’d come around and fallen for him!

  Passion is like a magnetic force that draws others in. Its energy not only compels you to act but also elicits a response from everything around you. I pulled a few burrs from Flash’s mane and looked into his brown eyes, still sleepy from his interrupted nap. He didn’t exactly look like a magnetic force at the moment, but it was like he knew. His determination spoke volumes, and it made me start to filter my scattered thoughts into something concrete. Something that made sense and felt right.

  There was one last thing to add to my list, but I didn’t know quite how to word it:

  4. Helping others find and create sanctuary

  I started to realize that my struggle to find peace and beauty in the middle of all my busyness wasn’t unique to me. Others craved the same things I did. It seemed like each project Tom and I worked on had an underlying theme—to create a sense of sanctuary for our clients through art and design. But there was more to it than that. Sometimes we could see that art and design were cosmetic Band-Aids for deeper problems: dysfunctional family structures, unbalanced value systems, too many activities, maxed-out finances.

  You see a whole lot when you’re in dozens and dozens of homes for extended periods of time, and some of it is heartbreaking. You see that a pretty mural can’t fix a broken marriage, or prevent aching loneliness, or help someone sleep better at night. And I wondered if, in a roundabout way, God had put a passion for beauty in my heart for a greater purpose. More than just paying the bills. More than just a creative outlet. More than just making pretty things.

  But for something eternal.

  Eric Liddell, the Olympian who inspired the movie Chariots of Fire, says in the film, “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” I often felt a sense of God’s pleasure when I painted, or when I began to write my thoughts down on paper and saw beauty unfold in my words. There was a mantle of peace and satisfaction that warmed me down to my toes and caused me to wake up each morning eager to get going, excited to see what the day would hold. I’d begun to see that I was made to create things, and that doing so was an extension of God’s own character flowing through me. Feeling God’s pleasure in such a simple way made me want to share it with others.

  My love for art was quietly birthing a love for people.

  “Find your passion.” The scribbled words were more than a worthy goal. I could not have known, in my twenties or even in my thirties, how passion would find me instead. Sometimes it takes a circuitous route, back to your childhood, to remember what brought you joy—before anyone told you that you couldn’t do it, or that you weren’t good enough, or that it wasn’t practical. Before that voice in your head told you to close the door and take home economics instead.

  Sometimes you bump into your passion when you’re looking for something else, and suddenly it all becomes clear when you feel God’s pleasure as you create or give or learn. And sometimes you just have to break down some fences and bust some gates off their hinges in order to catch the prize on the other side. And when you do, you realize that discovering your passion isn’t an end in itself, but the key.

  The key to finding your purpose.

  Find your passion.

  Passion leads to purpose.

  I stood outside the stately door of the aging mansion and pushed the bell. The faint sound of Westminster chimes filtered through the panes of the side windows. Longest door chime ever. I don’t know how people stand it. “Just a minute,” came a voice on the other side of the door. The lady of the house jiggled the handle up and down as she struggled to unlock it.

  The wait gave me a chance to take a breath and collect myself befo
re meeting this prospective customer. I pulled my blazer down to straighten it and shook my bangs out of my eyes. Inhale. Now exhale. Our project with Bridgette and Steve had led to further work at the corporate site, but it had recently ended. Now I needed to fill our schedule once again. So here I was.

  I took stock of my surroundings. The home, which had been featured in design magazines in the 1970s, was once a showstopper in the midst of the old-moneyed part of Fort Worth. But forty years had taken their toll, and the old girl looked unfashionably shabby next to the sprawling new mansions that were going in nearby.

  Peeling paint on the wood door and trim, along with sagging gutters along the roofline, made the house look tired, and even the stiff boxwood hedges felt out of touch with modern style. Still, this was exactly the type of neighborhood we liked to work in: It had people who appreciated fine things—and who had money to spend.

  The designer on this project, who had put us in touch with the homeowner, was new to me. I’d never met him before, but I appreciated that he’d seen our work somewhere and felt we would be a good fit for his clients. He explained they were in the process of updating their home and needed us to provide some beautiful finishes for the kitchen cabinetry. “There might also be a few minor repairs,” he said. And then he’d hung up abruptly after giving me the address. A little odd, but hey, I wasn’t complaining.

  I rented a shiny new car, impressive enough to befit the sales call.

  “Here we are!” said the lady, finally throwing the door open, releasing a smoke-filled haze into the outside air. “Watch your step.” She pressed her slippered foot over the threshold to keep it from popping up and took a puff of her lipstick-stained cigarette. It was difficult to tell her age, but I guessed, oh, mid-seventies, with a little bit of work done to put her squarely in her late sixties. “We had a guy working on this door, and he never came back to finish.” She shook her head disgustedly. “You just can’t depend on people anymore.”

  “I know, people these days, right?” I nodded sympathetically and followed her into the dim entryway. She scooped up her black-and-white shih tzu, who was barking and baring tiny white fangs at me in welcome, and pulled him in close to her flowing housedress.

  “Now, before we get to those cabinets, I want you to take a look at this water-damaged wall and give me a bid on fixing it, then painting a mural over the fix to disguise it.”

  I heard her say this, but I could barely tear my eyes away from the scene in front of me. A multitude of bears—scores and scores of collectible teddy bears—lined every wall, step, piece of furniture, and bookshelf. Bears in wedding dresses, bears in overalls, bears reading books, big bears, little bears, bears in rocking chairs, bears in frilly Victorian outfits, bears with monocles, bears with baby bears. Bears and more bears. It was a veritable bear bonanza.

  “I collect bears,” the lady said modestly, pressing her jet-black hair into its elaborate updo. “And modern Asian art, as well as commemorative plates. And anything with elephants on it.” She motioned, spokesmodel style, to the sunken living room, where her collections were displayed in massive, ridiculous vignettes of utter tastelessness. It was as if the Home Shopping Network had unloaded all of its unclaimed merchandise right there. I felt an involuntary laugh about to erupt, but I remained professional.

  “Lovely, just lovely. Almost takes your breath away.” I busily pulled out my measuring tape and got to work. All those glassy bear eyes watching, watching. My neck prickled. And I knew instinctively, even as I measured, that she only wanted a price from me and did not plan to have us fix the wall or paint a mural over it at all. Tire kicker. You learn to recognize them quickly. People who don’t care that it takes hours to look at each project, come up with a solution, create a design and a sketch, then present a bid . . . all without them ever planning to purchase from you. Not that I mind—I’m just saying.

  We made our way to the kitchen, where to my surprise the cabinetry was freshly finished with a Country French, antiqued treatment. “You want to change this?” I asked.

  “No, just fix it,” she replied. She pointed to a very small area near the sink that needed attention. “I keep calling the painter to come out and finish this, and I’ve just given up. Obviously, he is not a very dependable person.” She launched into a conspiratorial rant about how difficult it was to get anyone to do a good job, the way things used to be done, and how terrible it was that no one even answered their phones anymore.

  “I’ll have to prep the wood and match the paint,” I said, interrupting her lengthy remarks and starting to feel just a teeny bit put out for driving all this way to bid on such a minor repair. “It’s a very small area, but it won’t be easy to get it to look perfect.” I’d have to recoup my time somehow.

  “I know you can do it,” said the homeowner. “I just can’t trust anyone else.” The cigarette glowed. “Now, you need to see the guest bath and tell me what you can do in there. The wallpaper guy didn’t pull off all the old paper before he quit, and I wonder—you can just texture right over it and make it look really luxurious, can’t you?” What was left of the gold wallpaper, with red-and-black flocking, burned my eyeballs with its groovy ’70s pattern. It was hard to think straight. Perhaps the wallpaper guy had been overcome with nausea.

  “What are your ideas?” she demanded. The dog in the crook of her arm quivered nervously with a continuous growl, chasing off any creative thought I might have had. Easy now, Fluffy. But I graciously spent the next fifteen minutes discussing ideas with her for the guest bathroom, which I knew was another tire being kicked.

  My eyeball problem was giving way to a massive headache, but the tour was just beginning. From the guest bath, we trudged through strewn laundry to the master bath, where the plumbers had left their tools and everything, presumably for a lunch break. But that was two weeks ago. I began to see a pattern here. No one ever comes back.

  My pounding head, the awful fluorescent lights, her gravelly voice going on and on about the plumbers . . . I zoned out for a moment or five, which was unfortunate, because I did not see the other shih tzu coming, full force, to attack the back of my ankle. Ack! I shook him off and tried to act casual about inspecting the bite mark. Bleeding! Are you kidding me? That wretched little dog had punctured a vein with his needle teeth. That’s when I stopped pretending to smile and just gritted my teeth for the remainder of the tour.

  Please, dear Lord, make this end.

  But God, in His inscrutable wisdom, was clearly not interested in swift intervention. He was going to leave me hanging. On toward the master bedroom we went. I could hear children down the hall singing the Barney theme song and ventured some small talk.

  “Oh, how sweet. Are those your grandchildren I hear?”

  “No, not grandchildren,” said my hostess. She flung open a door to a huge walk-in closet. “Parrots.”

  Three large gray birds, in three enormous dusty cages, all bobbed their heads, their beady eyes glued to a TV screen and singing with reedy voices, “I love you, you love me, we’re a hap-py fam-i-ly . . .”

  “They love this show!” she exclaimed. “I keep it on 24-7, just for them.” I brushed a floating feather from my nose and instantly realized that someone had put drugs in my drive-through coffee, and I was hallucinating this whole thing. Suddenly, the singing parrots made perfect sense. Of course. That feather wasn’t even real, was it? Hysteria bubbled up, along with a cold sweat. So this is what it feels like to lose it. Bu-whahahahaha!

  If I had had plumber’s tools, I would have dropped them and run, but instead I clutched my black satchel and snapped my notebook shut. I turned to make my exit, but before I could make a clean getaway, she kept the party going with one last item.

  “I want you to meet my husband,” she announced, and like a lamb to the slaughter, all I could do was follow helplessly to the next room.

  “Frank! This is Rachel! Frank! This is the artist!” my tour guide rasped as we burst through the door. Shrouded in blue cigarette smok
e, Frank, a shrunken little man, sat deep in the recesses of a faded floral couch, hooked up to an oxygen tank. The tank was at one knee, an ashtray on the other, just above a large leg bandage. He lifted his perfectly bald head in greeting and sputtered something unintelligible, his words drowned out by the Barney chorus and barking shih tzus. In that instant, I knew that I, too, would never come back.

  “Ohmygoodness, look at the time!” I pretended to look at my watch and wheeled around. I limped back through the house on my one good ankle, dragging my bloody stump behind me, while the lady shuffled to keep up, explaining the problems with home health care in minute detail. Something about Frank’s leg wound not healing properly, and would I take a look at it and tell her what I thought. My thought at that moment? Why me?

  We made it to the door. Finally! But it wouldn’t open. So I waited in desperation while she jiggled the doorknob for a full minute before releasing me from the netherworld of bears and disappearing workers.

  Air! Fresh air! My rental car! I take back everything I ever said about finding a quiet love for people. My heart was a giant hole of nothing. Except fear.

  And possibly horror.

  I called Tom the minute I got out of the driveway.

  “We are getting regular jobs,” I said in no uncertain terms. “You cannot believe what just happened to me.” I laid rubber on the road as I peeled onto the freeway. “Also, and I’m not joking, I think I may have been drugged.”

  My description of the event took most of the drive home. When I finally arrived, a shower removed the stale smoke from my hair. The clothes could be laundered. But I could not shake the nightmare.

  The problem was, we needed the money, and I knew we had no choice but to go back. We’d have to work with shriveled-up Frank and the singing parrots, rabid shih tzus, and awful smoke. And all that talking! My head throbbed.

  Tom guided me to the couch and handed me a steaming cup of tea, along with a square of dark chocolate (with sea salt and caramel—so healing). “Have this,” he said, “and then let’s get you into bed. There you go, baby.” I looked at this guy who after twenty-five years of marriage knew I needed to hear that everything was going to be all right. “We can manage without this job,” he lied. And I loved him for it.