We had a yellow kitchen in Beverly when I was 5. I remember this specifically because the early sun bounced off the walls and the place glowed. Uncharacteristically, I was awake and up before the rest of the family. The house was quiet. This kitchen mine. I don’t remember how it started but I was alerted to the shadows my fingers cast on the table and for what seemed like a very very long time — I created silhouette finger ballets. Birds, butterflies, bugs — dancing hands — sun puppets — shape shifters — movement and mirror — and with an awareness of this happening outside of myself yet part of myself. These were my fingers but I was watching them and they delighted me. The sunlight was a wave upon which I was perched. I was riding the swell — exhilarated but still calculating, but still free, but still leading, but still following, still thinking, but still allowing. I was colluding with the magic. I was the magic. I was the puppeteer of magic, manipulator and manipulatee.
The sun may have simply moved on, my 5 year old self found another distraction or others began disturbing the quiet — but it ended I guess.
Framed on my wall is a tempura painting I did at the age of 4. The girl-being in the painting is of fat brush strokes and I think she is doing something to her hair. But most of all she is beaming. She is simply happy. I framed it because of that. I figure that child might just still live inside me. If she is there, I could have faith.
Because after the age of 5, things went screwy — parents, school. I became a stressed out little girl for years. Later, I tried to give myself away. I lost myself. I denied her. I wondered who the hell she was and what for. But that morning in the sun — and only now I think of this — I was experiencing power. I was experiencing the soul of my creativity. That little girl was expansive in that moment but so detailed in the movements. It was a beaming partnership with the sun god and with the silence. She was most present with herself — her hands transcending time for that passage of sun. I am remembering those hands. My hands. My hands.
