Painting

You may remember that I don’t have an office any more, so today when I was reading my cousin’s blog on one of the library internet computers, it was a little difficult to disguise my sniffling.

Listening to my cousins talking about saying goodbye kind of struck me. I didn’t say goodbye. I just visited with her about our trip and the birds we had seen lately. I just wanted to be with her. Her eyes were so bright and she was smiling so big. I thought she looked so beautiful.

Now I have these two paintings sitting in my studio. They are a couple of Granny’s paintings that she didn’t finish. I told two of my cousins I would finish them. I thought I was going to go straight to work on them when I got home, and I almost did. But then I was walking through my living room one morning, and I looked out the window and saw a hummingbird at the feeder on the porch. John got me a porch swing for my birthday, and I have a bunch of my favorite plants out there, and I put up some pinecone bird feeders. I’ve begun to enjoy my little porch the way Granny enjoyed hers. So I stopped there and set up my easel in the living room and started painting my porch as it looks from the living room.

Now that I’ve hesitated I’m not sure when I’ll start on Granny’s paintings. (But I promise I will do them.) But, after a painting dry spell, I am glad that I am finding beauty in things, even if it is bittersweet. I don’t want to be so distracted by my expectations of what a good artist should be that I quit enjoying painting. I guess, living is kind of that way too. I think living a good life is probably a lot simpler than I make it out to be. I want to live a good life too.