When Life Starts Screaming, Ancestors Visit
“The Beacon” by Bailey Constas. Prints available on Society6.
In one of my first memories, I remember following my mom through an arched brick entryway. Reaching up for a giant black rectangle of a door handle, I knew it was time to see one of my favorite artists.
Plopping on the tiny stool my grandmother, “Nanny,” hand-painted and needle-pointed herself, she’d peer down at me behind a crystal bowl of lemon drops. Sucking furiously on candies, I’d trace the blue, yellow, and red geometric swirled flowers with my finger. Lily was a painter, a brilliant student who went to college at 16, and a mother of five.
I come back to this memory when life starts screaming, or when I see the imposter syndrome creep in. Later in life when I started dealing with suicidal ideation, I’d tattoo those flowers on my flesh as a reminder to continue our long line of visionary women. I found the art inside in that Denver nursing home.
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Where else is art hiding? My mind flashes to a stranger’s house. Laying on a paint-freckled tarp on the floor, I’m watching my mom trace and paint Jupiter on the wall. It was the beginning of a giant space mural in a little boy’s room. She painted to pay for my daily ballet lessons. Inhaling the smell of paint, I thought to myself, “If I could do this every day, I would."
Suddenly, I’m sitting once again next to my mom. Only this time it’s in our dining room at the sewing machine. She’s trying to teach me how to prepare the machine but I’m throwing my head on the table, eyes glazing over, trying to disrupt the ADHD sensory issues that keep me from sitting still. Later, it would become harder to sit from chronic hip pain I’d eventually have to have surgery for.
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Now I’m 16, cutting black satin and chiffon for my couture prom dress I’m making for state competition. It’s the year I’m grasping for other skills after hip surgery made me quit ballet. It’s then that I slip, and accidentally drill my extremely sharp German shears into my left wrist. Flying down the highway with my dad I think, “I might die, but I love sewing and creating.”
Our path develops and life begins screaming for us to follow. Each one of us has an ancestral artist inside. It’s up to us to honor that artist, create our own legacy, and ensure the legacy of the seventh generation we’ve yet to meet.
Build and protect your ancestral line, your art depends on it.
