Every lover had to know my love of making art – even the grief of an abandoned love of making art – came before them.

The children, each a world born of creation, would come to know my beloved art as their mother’s ultimate partner.

Before seven years of age, when the ego confronts, children do not question their very central point in their universes. The artist – that time where there is no time – is where she must go.

How can her love affair with her world have dinner at the table on time? She who eats from the banquets of the muses… She who feather touches the very flavor of mystery’s caress…

Suddenly in a wonder my invisible mouth was slapped open with just as invisible a kiss that hollered down my throat, vibrated my gut with the words “Just paint!”. Should I be afraid?

I’m in the car I’m driving I’m breathless I’m stunned with my lips swollen hanging on my open jaw. “Paint with what?” The strawberries in the grocery bag beside me in the passenger seat. The carrot juice. Where? Here? Now? On the asphalt the cement. The seatbelt across my chest under my neck my chin my shirt – holding me in, contained like food in the refrigerator. I crack the carrot juice open. I drink and let it run all down my face my clothes to my lap.

Daily canvas is this body. A double venture overlaid un-between life. I’m understood here by a lover whose fingers caress my blood inside their cells.