Unexpected setback and surprise

 

Early one Saturday morning not long after the art show, my middle son, Gideon, came into our room coughing, wheezing, and barely able to breathe. Dale took him to the emergency room, and when they weren't able to stabilize him there, they transferred him to Dell Children's Hospital.

The rest of the kids and I caught up with them there, and after a half an hour with him it was obvious that he was a sick little boy. They didn't know what was causing his breathing issues, and he wasn't responding to the treatments they were giving him. So Dale took the troops back home and I stayed with Gideon.

A lot of what goes on in hospitals (for the people who don't work there) is WAITING. During my 3 day visit, as my son's breathing slowly improved, I looked through a ton of magazines. But it was as I flipped through a National Geographic that something special happened. A photo caught my eye and I decided that I just had to draw this face.

To my surprise, my drawing started to look like the photo. And I had a right to be surprised, after all. It was my first attempt after having gone some 18 years without doing any serious drawing whatsoever. In fact, I don't think I had ever drawn that way before.

Even though I still haven't finished it, and I'm not even sure who took the photo, I love looking at it because it represents another significant step that I took on the path toward becoming the artist I'm going to be.

Even now, when I happen to see it, I gaze at it almost in a state of awe -- thinking, "I did that?"

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