December 2020

I'm writing this on Black Friday after a very strange Thanksgiving. I knew this would be a different one and had made new plans for how that would look. But, as 2020 would have it, even that changed at the last moment on Tuesday night. My beautiful mother took a trip on the sidewalk and face planted into the corner of a brick stair shattering her nose and breaking her neck. She was lucky, the broken vertebrae did not sever the artery and her brain, to quote the doctor "looks beautiful". Her nose was shattered into more pieces than the plastic surgeon had ever seen yet he worked carefully and diligently to sew all those tiny pieces back together. Needless to say, this Thanksgiving I am more grateful for my momma, for doctors, nurses, the art of science that was passed down to teach them, and for their overwhelming work. Especially at this moment in time when their work is beyond what they ever thought they would get into.

I'm going to diverge for a second because I feel it's important to share this even though it's miles away from an art newsletter. I just spent 44 hours with my mom at the hospital. I talked to many nurses and doctors over that time. Hospitals are being overwhelmed and many units have been taken over and turned into Covid units. There is a rationing of care that I saw first hand as one provider, because of the Covid overwhelm, was pushing to send my mom home still bleeding and broken and the other was insisting that she stay. She needed to stay and he won. Even if you aren't worried about Covid, please care enough to know that if you or a loved one have any other emergency, Covid is affecting the care you will be given. There are only so many health care providers and they are working so hard to take care of so many people AND, they are human. At some point, they will get sick or simply have no more to possibly give. Please, please, please, follow health guidelines and encourage others to do so too.

As odd as this year has been, when we look back on it, it will be one that doesn't blend into all the others years where traditions continued, unchanged. I've held Kids Holiday & New Years Classes for over a decade now. Doing them on Zoom this year won't be the same but I do hope we can have fun in a not so ideal situation. I know we're all screen fatigued too. However, I hope that some of these class offering can still give parents a little break and kids some fun hands-on activities and gifts for the holidays and New Year.

Whatever your holidays turn into, I hope you find space for quietness, creativity, and absorb some sort of peace in going with the flow. Big lessons in non-attachment are being thrown our way. May you find some magic in whatever that is for you...

✨ ❄️ ✨