How I Got Here (here being who I am)

I was born one fall November day on a military base, in the Sacramento Delta. According to my mother, I just slid into the world and she thumped my foot so I would breathe.  (Not bad for a new start on this planet, right?)

At the age of 4 or 5, I was whisked off to a small Asian island called Taiwan.  There I lived for the next 3 or four years, immersed in the culture.  I rode around town in a petticab and tormented the koi in the pond in front of our house.

I learned to speak Taiwanese. Most vivid in my memory are children half dressed running around in the dirt streets, a woman with hair down to her ankles that walked through the market, the smells, the sounds, the music, the water buffalo.  I went to an American school called Jonathan Wainright Elementary.  There I began kindergarten.  I loved the color red or fat red crayons, they fit nicely in my little hand.

I think I have always had a vivid imagination. I told my sister she had been bitten by a dragonfly when she was little and dragonflies don’t bite.

My parents weren’t artists, didn’t think about visual art, except my dad loved jazz and I listened to Brubeck on a regular basis as a little girl. 

I ended up in Hawaii for elementary school, middle school and the beginning of high school.

The majority of my developing years were spent steeped in other cultures. 

I was an imaginative little girl, with no where to go. No teachers that valued my overactive imagination,

Or supported the development of my creative self.

Not even in high school, which is where some kids find themselves.

Nope, not for me. I had to go to college and begin flunking out to find my true self.

I was born an artist,  I was born with creativity pouring out of my fingertips, but no one in my family recognized it. 

I began to thrive in the art studio of my college,

I  began to flourish in creative writing class. 

I began to emerge a swan and find a place to express myself and feel good about myself.

By and by looking for my true self, I found it, sitting in a nursery school yard, waiting for an interview, when a little girl came up and gave me a hug.  All the dots connected and I began my life’s work.  I love teaching young children, everyday is different.

Before I had my sons, because I had studied the theory of human development I was an expert. Nope, I lay no claim to that title anymore,  I have been humbled by the experience of being a parent. That’s a whole other topic, but I am humbled everyday by the children I teach and interact with everyday. I am grateful for the opportunity to be apart of their learning and because I had teachers that didn’t see me, I work extra hard to see them.

It’s about being present, right here, right now.

It's About Love...
(one in series)
mixed media on canvas panel
8/2010

 "I found I could say things with shapes and color that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for."

Georgia O'Keeffe, American, 1887-1986