The cold in the air forced my hands into my pockets and Jeremy quick-stepped beside me as we made our in the night. The campus is lit well and remains beautiful while it sleeps. We make our way up the hill and see the light and hear the laughter through the large glass wall that is the entrance to the University of Georgia School of Art. Bursting inside we shake off the cold as the warmth of the room and positive karma surround us.
I gaze over the crowd and am struck by it's beauty. The girls all wear dresses and the guys have on khakis and button down shirts. They're all young and if they are aware of the things wrong in the world, there is no evidence of it tonight. Bright smiles and heartfelt embraces are the languages being spoken. The energy of youth, the conviction that each has the "Midas touch" and optimism that they will fix all of the things that are wrong abounds. Those of us who are older and know better still can't help but be caught up in it.
Chelsea, with her long blong blond hair, beautific smile that she whips out like a switch-blade, floats over to us in a black dress and boots. She drips beauty. My heart stops for a moment. The whole damn world stops for a moment. Then she crashes into me with a hug before moving on to the brother she adores.
Full of excitment she leads us past the wine and the food into the gallery. I laugh at the food table because it is full of the things that her mother makes. I flash back to all of those little girl birthday parties where the same things sat on a different table.
Sam suddenly stands in front of us. Chelsea's fiancee had picked me up earlier in Atlanta. When I got off of the Subway where we were to meet, he's talking to a homeless guy eating an orange. Dressed in faded jeans with holes everywhere, a dirty shirt and his beloved Georgia Tech cap he smiles when he sees me. We talk all of the way from Atlanta to Athens. Now, he is transformed into a college senior with the entire world and the girl he loves lying before him. He beams.
Janice, the maker of the food and the mother of the kids, is there too along with Shannon, her significant other. We all come together as a family no longer legally bound but the years and the devotion to the kids have softened the places that were torn apart. We embrace and then I shake Shannon hands warmly.
Collectively we turn and Chelsea's art is on display. My eyes grow wide as it is obviously different from the everything else on display ... Barbie doll themes, majestic depictions of life's diversity and sweeping scenes of landscapes and life. Chelsea's stands alone.
The largest piece is a cherub face of a little boy wistfully looking upward. A black Cherub's face is behind his left shoulder and an older one rests on his right. Both faces are full of sadness. DNA codes are the buttons on the shirt of the center child and DNA codes rain down upon him. At the bottom are rubber ducks and teddy bears.
The next one to catch me is her deceased grandfather in his last days, looking off to one side as though he was painfully trying to process whatever it was saw ... but could no longer put it all together. Behind him is a large mirror of everything the man accomplished in his past. Whimsical swirls and bright colors are splattered across the canvas illustrating the joy that he was.
Salt water from the ocean finds my eyes.
I see Chelsea looking at me looking at these things. "They're like the homeless stuff at Union Mission," I say.
She nods with the switch blade smile.
Back when I was at Union Mission we used art a lot. Artist would come in and pair up with homeless people and create. The pain of the people we housed made its way to the canvas and were proudly displayed everywhere. I hope they are still there as they are the deepest places that homeless people needed to get outside of themselves.
Chelsea had witnessed this as a child. As an adult, she'd made it her own. The little boy had autism and she'd spent month's studying it and then she'd expressed what she'd learned with paint. "It's conscience not contagious" is the title.
Each work displays the pain of being who you are juxaposed with the discrimination of what that often means.
Chelsea and I share music with one another often. Jeremy and I do too. Kristen ... occasionally stops long enough to listen to music. Years ago, when she first started college I made her a CD of songs. The first was Paul Simon's "Father and Daughter" from the Thornburies movie which Chelsea watched as a little girl. She often plays it when we are together listening to music.
It's something to watch your kids grow up. Who they become is never what you think. Jeremy was going to be a football player and brain surgeon when he was little. Now he's working on his Ph.D. Kristen was going to be a sports superstar (which she was for a while) and now lives happily ... alone.
Chelsea was always going to be an artist ... always.
Coloring led to drawing which took her to painting ... and then something happened and she started taking these things to other places.
Now she graduates from art school at the University of Georiga where always wanted to graduate from then she and Sam will marry. Then she's going to continue her studies in New York ... where's she's always wanted to go too. She's always knew what she wanted. The rest of us seem to always be looking.
This song keeps floating in my head. It is the one I gave her those years ago.
"As long one and one are two ... there could never be a father ... who loves his daughter ... more than I love you."
