It is July and the summer is here. Little girls sit cross-legged on the floor, hair stuck to sticky faces that glisten with sunscreen and the remnants of ice lollies. A baby girl bounces on the floor, every now and then, elevating her stature as she teeters, poised in a elephant-walk position, desperate to escape from the immobility that her immature core has bestowed upon her.
2 little females, in one room, before my eyes; locked in a game of play which is unravelling pencil stroke by pencil stroke to reveal kinks in the nonchalance that once was.
Each of the older 3 has her own set of colours, her own piece of paper, her own collection of stencils. They are on equal footing. Even. And yet, as one colours in her picture with a particularly vibrant shade of pink, the other whimpers with a heat to her cheeks as she wishes with all of her might that she may have that same image for her own. Her rose pink pencil is simply not enough.
The baby continues to bounce, unaware of anything better than what she already has. Content to attempt elephant-walk. Blissful in nonchalence.
I glance over again from my table space and say with a quiet authority 'you each have your own picture, they are both lovely. It is not a competition.'
It is not a competition.
I listen to my own utterance and just as a crystal becomes clearer the longer you hold it, the more that you feel it's weight, with my words a realisation that transcends the infantile show in front of me, pours forth with clarity.
My little girls, sisters...a perfect example of personalities brought together by blood, birth, bonds of time. They have not yet learned of SISTERHOOD...the awareness and practice of living ones life aside women without the need to be better, to know more, to prove more, to gain authority.
'But I want that colour mama!' the hot-faced counterpart proclaims.
' NO that MINE' the other yells. 'You can't have it!'
There it is again. They do not yet see the fact that each can have the same colour, the same vibrant, beautiful, eye-catching, addictive pink, and BOTH be happy. Both serve the world with their loveliness. There is enough room in the family, the house, the world to have 2 hot pink stencil artworks...one will be appreciated by one audience, the other will have it's own set of fans.
This is the world as we know it. It is no longer enough to have a confidence in yourself and let it seep from you until others intuitively pick up on your qualities. It is no longer enough to trust in the fact that we are alternative in our own ways and that like attracts like; that if you allow it to happen, the right people will be by your side without effort and the universe will conspire to make it that way without any outside force.
It is no longer enough to just be and to let it be.
I am bringing myself back to that today.
Out of my white-washed, mish-mash cupboard I am taking 2 lovely gilted frames, one black and one white,both saved for portraits that I am yet to have printed but which will no longer fill those frames. I am taking the two stencil drawings, in two slightly different shades of pink, and I am mounting them inside the frames...one highlighted by the halo of white frame and the other accentuated by a black surround. I am holding them in front of the faces that are still unsure of their own ability, their own art, and I am showing them how they each made a very similar picture, from the same tools, but that each picture can be cocooned in a different shell, with a different intention behind it and a wonderful, beautiful, necessarily different delivery.
I am reminding myself, my girls, my sisterhood in in infancy that we can all come from the same place but harbour another aura; the pink crayon that sits hot and bright in one hand might just change to pale rose anyway. We make that happen with our nature, we provide a shade to the world merely by being ourselves. We put our own mark on the world, using the same Earth, the same space, the same home, the same metabolic makeup and realising that no matter how many of 'us' there may be, we are the only 'me.'
And that is just fine.
I am going to hang the art work and watch as they work out for themselves that those cheap little stencils made two pretty pictures, the same but completely different. It was no competition.
