The Apple

A drawing, a decision, and sixty four years of carrying the wrong one.

My mother took us to a hobby shop. We were going to investigate art lessons.

I remember the smell first. Paint and pencil shavings and something like clean dust. The supply racks went up like skyscrapers, and I stood at the bottom of them looking up. I was small. The colored pencils were lined up in rows that seemed to go on forever. I had never wanted to touch something so much in my life.

But more than the paint, more than the pencils, I had my mother. She was so pretty. Short black hair. A dress freshly pressed, the kind of pressed that takes time, the kind a woman does when she wants the day to matter. I had her to myself, almost. My sister was there, but I had her. That was the whole gift of the morning. Time with my beautiful mother.

A woman came out from the back. She pushed aside a curtain that hung over the doorway and she greeted my mother, not as children but as grown women speaking to each other. They talked low. I could not follow it. I looked up at them and the words went over my head and I let them. I was distracted anyway. My sister had found the low supplies, the ones set at a child’s eye level, and she was touching everything she could reach.

I was not touching anything. I was standing still. I was being the good girl. Quiet. The one I believed my mother needed me to be so that she would be okay. Because I loved her. I wanted her to smile. I wanted her happy, and I had decided, the way a child decides, that I would be the one to do it. This time I would make her smile.

The short older woman brought out two pieces of paper. Small ones, about four inches by four. And two pencils. My sister and I stood at a table, my sister on my right. The teacher told us to draw our best apple.

I was thrilled. I loved to draw. And I drew it the correct way. Not on a wall. Not on a chest of drawers or a door, the way my sister did, the way that upset my father, which upset my mother, which I had filed away as something to never, ever do. I drew my apple. And then, because I had time and because I loved this, I added a stem. And a leaf. A leaf for flair.

The woman picked up my paper. Then my sister’s. She held them side by side. She twisted her mouth, just slightly, looking at one and then the other. I was almost bursting. I wanted to tell her how I did it. I was sure she would love them both. I thought, what a good mommy I have, to bring her two girls here so this woman could see how beautiful and smart and creative we were.

Then the woman dropped her right hand, the one holding my apple, and she lifted my sister’s drawing up to show my mother.

My mother nodded.

She bent down. She put us together, shoulder to shoulder. And she said the words. She always spoke softly, my mother. She said them softly now.

Girls, I can only afford to pay for one of you to take art lessons.

And I got excited. Because of course. She would say my name. Me. I was the well behaved one. I was the first born. I had drawn it the right way and added a leaf.

She said my sister’s name.

I was six. Here is what six made of it.

I am not worthy of making art. I cannot make art because it will not be any good, and it has to be good for me to be worth anything. I cannot make art until I have earned the time to make it. I cannot make art until my apple is better than my sister’s.

I did not say any of this out loud. I did not know I was saying it at all. I just took the small paper of those thoughts and I folded it and I carried it.

For sixty four years.

I found it today. On a coaching call, with another coach, with the chairs turned around so that I was the one being coached. I had said, almost in passing, that I have not been making art lately. We got curious about it. And underneath the busyness, underneath the calendar and the to do list and everyone else’s needs, there it was. The same sentence I wrote when I was six. I cannot make my own art until everything else is finished. I cannot make my art until I have earned it.

The apple. Still in my hand. Still the wrong one.

It was a beautiful revelation, and I want to be honest about what made it beautiful. It was not the finding. It was what I did after.

After the call I spoke to her. The six year old who still lives in me, who still has paint she wants to touch and a leaf she is proud of. I told her the truth she could not have known that day. I said, it was a financial decision. That is all it was. Your mother did not have the money for two. She had it for one. It was never a question of your worth. It was never a question of your work as an artist. Your mom just did not have the money.

And something moved. I felt a crack in the wall. The whole wall of I can’t, sixty four years of it, and a crack ran through it. And on the other side of the crack was a willingness I had not felt in a long time. The willingness to walk into my studio and make art.

So here is what I understand now, and what I want to leave with you, because if you are reading this I suspect you have an apple of your own that someone once held up next to somebody else’s.

The story was a fact and a story braided together so tight I could not see the seam. The fact was small and ordinary and kind, even. My mother loved us. She made a budget decision the way mothers do. The story was the rest of it. The worthiness. The earning. The better than. That part was not true. That part was a frightened child filling a silence with the only explanation she had, which was that something must be wrong with her.

Nothing had gone wrong. There was a gap, and a small girl built a whole life across it.

And worth. What does worth even mean here. If I am waiting for the worth question to be answered before I make something, I will never make anything, because that question does not have a finish line. There is no apple good enough to end it. I could draw the best apple in the world and the question would simply ask for a better one. The only way out is to stop letting the question stand at the studio door.

I make art because I am an artist. Not because I earned it. Not because it will be good. Not because it beat anyone. Because it is mine, and it is the way I am made.

There is one more thing I did, and it matters as much as the rest. I separated my art from my business. They had gotten tangled, my own creative practice slowly turning into something that had to justify itself, had to become useful, had to feed the work. My business is a creative expression. It is. But it lives over there. My art lives over here. My art does not have to earn its keep. It does not have to be content. It does not have to be good. It only has to be mine.

I now have studio time on my calendar.

And it is moving up the list.

I did not wait until I felt worthy. I went in anyway, with the question still unanswered and the calendar still full and the wall still mostly standing. That is the part I want you to take. You do not have to settle the worth question first. You never will. You just go in.

I drew the leaf for flair, all those years ago. I always knew what I was.

I am only just now letting her draw.

Whatever your apple was, you were always an artist.

Lynn