Early tonight I went into my guestroom closet to pull out my Christmas decoration bin. It seemed a good time-filler and 5-minute task while I was waiting for my Dill Pickle Bread to fully bake. By pulling the big tub back out, I would be one step closer to taking it back downstairs and perhaps tonight or tomorrow removing all the Christmas ornaments.
And then, maybe tomorrow or the next day, to get this pseudo-live Christmas tree dismantled and outside–clipperful by clipperful.
While in the guest room closet I saw all the “kids stuff” on the floor needing sorting, and thought of my goal to migrate it all to another closet so the guest room closet would be empty. I actually had guests last March who wanted to hang up some clothes in there! I hadn’t fully thought that one through…and though there was ample room to hang stuff, the closet was messy with personal items needing organization.
I thought to myself tonight, “What do other people do with this stuff?”
Many drawings and school stuff and other stuff from our children regularly makes it to the trash as they are growing up–in real time–and for those of us my age who are now sorting through their parent’s remaining possessions after their death, we make decisions what is worth keeping.
I feel like the more time that passes, the more treasured some things are but not all things…
And then I noticed in the pile of stuff the original caricature done of my sons at the beach in 1996. It didn’t much look like them, but this $20 piece of artwork was a game-changer for me and indirectly, for them, too, as time went on.
I remember that night. We were walking around Beach Haven on Long Beach Island, NJ and in-and-out of shops and rides for the kids, when we saw a caricature artist set up and drawing. We splurged about $20 to wait in line and have the young man draw Zach and Jonathan. I was curious. I was watching this young man methodically (and appearing so easily) to draw person after person with magic marker. He seemed to have a method to it, and something about it reminded me of calligraphy. He seemed so confident in his strokes. As he was drawing my sons I asked him how he learned to do this. I was already teaching art to homeschoolers and re-visiting art skills from so long ago attempts in college, and I especially loved drawing the human face.
The young man told me he learned it at Hershey Park in a single weekend and that he and other artists were trained from a video course. He said that if I had “any art skills” I could learn also, and he wrote down the name of the series. I purchased the video course from the back of an art magazine–the young man told me it was easily advertised in these magazines to which I also subscribed–and after watching them through a number of times and following the method, I began practicing on friends from church after a home meeting one night.
And the rest is history, so-to-speak. At sixty years old and with a four year BS Degree from the UD in a subject I “technically” never studied, there will never be anything past, present or future I am capable of doing to earn more money (per hourly rate) than to do live caricature drawing ENTERTAINMENT. I saw “entertainment” because the ability to do this consistently at a party event is what sets the worth in the entertainment industry.
There’s a lot of very good artists in the world, but caricature drawing is a specific thing that requires a number of skills–including socializing skills–which sets it apart from being “art” per se…
I think of the meals and provisions and bills this skill has provided for me and for my sons over the years, and I am grateful. It was a game-changer. Not necessarily a game “winner” (whatever that might mean) but definitely a game-CHANGER.
It’s about 6 pm on this New Year’s Eve, and I noticed a post a friend made with the following meme, and I also stop to think about resolutions. Essentially, the typical New Year’s resolution is to attempt to pick something we can put our attention on that might end up being some type of game-changer.
Maybe we can lose fifty pounds, and that would be some type of physical game-changer.
Maybe we can read through the entire bible, and that would be some type of spiritual game-changer.
Maybe we can begin marriage therapy with our spouse, and that would be some type of relational game-changer.
Maybe we can go back to school and start a new career, and that would be some type of financial game-changer.
Maybe we can be more intentional with some other thing, and that would be some type of game-changer…
I like the thoughts on this meme in the sense that in reality, any moment of any day can present game-changing potential.
I think of baseball when someone hits a ball out of the park and the crowd roars as the batter takes a leisurely walk around the bases toward home, knowing that ball isn’t coming back into play any time soon…
I think of football when a running back receives a ball unexpectedly and the excitement of seeing him break free from the congestion of linebackers and make a spectacular run almost the length of the field to score in the endzone…
I also think of the hum-drum tension of watching baseball and football when there seems to not be much movement nor action taking place, yet at any moment a game-changer could erupt.
Some game-changers are happenstance and some the result of diligence and intentionality. The happenstance game-changers might be that favorable break we so desperately needed and pleaded to God for, or, that happenstance game-changer might be some dreadful twist of fate that leaves us incredibly and seemingly permanently broken in some fashion.
I’m about to try to finish up my portrait of my sons I’ve tackled this week to honor Jonathan’s upcoming 30th birthday, and maybe do a bit on another painting tonight I’ve had in progress since 2018…
The house is quiet, and I’m alone, as many other people experience the aloneness and the sadness and even fear it can bring on such a night as this. This will be my fourth New Year’s here in East Berlin, PA and I know now to expect that one of the very nearby neighbors will be ringing a train engine siren they possess at midnight.
I actually heard the shrill whistle of it blowing at 1am last night and I was confused…I kept double checking my computer date and wall calendar to make sure I knew whether it was New Year’s Eve or not. They must have just been testing it out.
When I was young and the fire company drove Santa through our neighborhood sounding the truck’s alarms and children rushed out to see him riding down our street, it provoked a deep sense of fear in me. Sometimes if not often, my mother made me stay inside…everything was to be feared or somehow considered dangerous or ill-advised in the throes of my mother’s mental illness and paranoia.
I might watch from our window as this fire truck cruised by with lights and other neighbors and children lined up watching and waving…with its loud, blaring siren and Santa all lit up in his red suit waving…I often had a sense that I was somehow a “bad” child so I didn’t quite trust “Santa’s” intentions toward me, though I believed strongly til a very specific Christmas Eve experience in 1972…despite my friends telling me that he “wasn’t real.”
The sound of sirens and alarms triggers associations and primal fears perhaps in some of us...the sound of a train whistle brings out a sense of watching for danger…though it can equally be a sign of celebration and excitement. I can recall both aspects as I’d sit with my father in the 60’s-70’s as the first car behind the protective train bars on Old Harmony Road…and we’d count the cars going by us…
New Year’s Eve is a form of counting…counting what’s behind and counting what might be ahead…and we all know we are to count our blessings–and we do–yet we also in our humanity and brokenness also count our losses and our fears.
Speaking of counting…many online have reminded me of today’s unique date 123123 and I also saw someone say, “Let’s waltz away!”
I wonder if there is a “waltz time” version of Auld Lang Syne to be found online…I will take a look and see what is there….meanwhile, wishing anyone reading here a Happy New Year full of finding numerous positive game-changing moments in the time to come…Shalom.
“We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne”
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