February 23, 2016 – One of us flies away

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It was almost three years ago when I got a voicemail message from someone who was looking for an art class, an art group – a regular place to paint. She’d just moved up to Marin from Huntington Beach, in the LA area, where she had a watercolor group that she’d been attending for some time, and was missing terribly. She’d found my number through Perry’s, one of our local art stores. Mickey and I talked, I told her about us and she decided to join our Friday group. Starting in early April, 2013 until last Friday, Mickey came every week she could – which amounted to 116 weeks out of the 137, that we’ve met in that timeframe. She has been devoted – to us and to herself and her artwork. On Saturday, she’s on a plane to Portland, Oregon where she’s moving to join her son and his family. We are going to so miss her. And she us.

Friday we had a going-away/celebrating-our-time-together party. Our hearts were full and heavy all at the same time. I showed a slideshow video I’d put together of all of the watercolors that Mickey painted while she was with us, along with some of the photos of us I’d taken, so she’d have that to take with her.

Every week, I take pictures of each artist’s work-in-progress. I don’t know why, but something had me start doing this, not too long after I started leading the Tuesday (now Thursday) group in the fall of 2011. I miss some artists’ work some weeks, though and when I saw that I hadn’t captured some of Mickey’s paintings after she finished them, I called her earlier in the week, to see if I could come visit her and take new photos. I told her it was so that I could have a complete record of all she painted – I wanted the slideshow to be a surprise!

On a rainy afternoon last Wednesday, we had a sweet visit. She had framed a couple paintings, given away a couple more, and thrown away two she said were “busts.” The rest were stored in portfolios, which she pulled out from under the bed. It was really wonderful to see again, these paintings I’d watched come to be, week after week.

She told me she was trying to get her address changed with Social Security, and had been on hold for nearly an hour, and still had no luck. So I sat down at her computer to see what we could do online. And while there, she asked me if I wanted to see all her paintings. She’s kept a photo record of every one of her pieces of art. Other than the beautiful paintings she’d framed on her walls, I had no idea what she’d painted before she moved here. I was blown away by how prolific she’s been! I didn’t count, but she’s done dozens and dozens and dozens of paintings.

It was very clear how she felt about each one. A few, like the two she tossed from our time together, she called “a bust.” Some she said were “okay.” But some she really liked and called “successful – a really good painting.” She’s painted portraits, landscapes, buildings (barns, a Victorian house surrounded by flowering shrubs), flowers, fruits – all kinds of subjects. She knows where each one is and whether that person has it hanging or up not. Mickey is very connected to her body of work!

She’s kept in very regular contact, with some of the artists who she painted with two days a week, in Southern California. One of them still calls her every week! She’s also still connected to her teacher, who has come to visit every time he comes up here. She told me that some of them have been painting for 30 years, and that at 11 years, she a mere newcomer as an artist. The thing is, we just helped Mickey celebrate her 88th birthday at the end of January. I asked incredulously, “you started painting when you were 77 years old?” And she just twinkled back at me.

Mickey didn’t just start painting, she became a painter, an artist. She made making art a major part of her life, and she didn’t even start until she had outlived many, many people. What I told her I found so remarkable, is the force that is in her to just keep going. As soon as one painting was finished there was another idea, a plan for the next one. I didn’t have this kind of impetus to paint consistently, until I had an outlet, an audience. I found it really easy for life to crowd out my painting time. But not Mickey. Painting has ahold of her in a way that inspires and emboldens the rest of us.

Mickey has been living in an assisted living community, where she found many of her neighbors hard to relate to, as they aren’t as engaged in life as she. So, coming to her art group has been really important to her well-being. She told me not long after starting, “you are stuck with me! I’m not leaving, you know.” This has been the topic of a loving tease between us – I’ve – we’ve been so happy to have been stuck with her! And now that she’s moving away, she told us that though she’s made friends where she lives, what’s really hard is leaving us. She said “it’s intimate, this is home.”

Mickey is tiny – not even five feet tall, but inside that little body, is a spirit that has captured our hearts and shown us how it’s possible to be very alive, and creative well into our years. Sue, who is closer to my age, was traveling last week and couldn’t say goodbye to Mickey herself, so she emailed me: “Let her know that she has been a big inspiration to me as well … as I now intend to paint till I’m 100!” When I told this to Mickey, she said, “so do I!”

That’s our Mickey – gosh are we going to miss her something awful! But, I’ve heard that Portland has a beautiful rose garden, which I’ve never visited. We’re already plotting a trip this summer to see the roses, see our Mickey and paint together again.

I’m happy and grateful to you, Mickey, for being one of us. You are in our hearts always.

Love,

Cara