Eighteen years ago, my grandma picked up a mug at a little shop she was perusing with my mom and held it up to her. "Do you think she would like this?" On it was a vintage illustration of a little yellow-haired girl standing in front of a red heart with the words, "I'll always stand up for you, Valentine."
"Yes! Whitney would love that!"
"Do you really think so?"
"Yes, that is her style! She loves anything vintage like that."
She ended up buying that mug for me and gifting it to me for my birthday. That was the year we moved to Florida; we actually arrived on my birthday, our family of six packed into a white minivan, and it goes down in history as my "worst birthday ever." I had left my home, my friends, the boy I liked who said he liked me back. I was terribly sad, and angry at anyone who dared breathe in my direction. (My sisters and I have talked about how fifteen is the hardest teen year. There's just something about it.)
Shortly after that move, my grandma was diagnosed for a second time with breast cancer, the diagnosis that would take her through a two-year battle against the disease that ultimately ended her life on earth two months before my 17th birthday.
My grandma, who was lovingly known as Mimi to her grandchildren (courtesy of two-year-old Whitney) was the best kind of human. She was a beautiful, friendly, extroverted, open, silly, easy-going, kind woman who had so much love in her heart for everyone around her. As a young woman, she longed to be a model (one of my favorite pictures of her is one where she is about 17 years old, posing with her foot pointed, wearing a classy late-50s ensemble complete with large curls in her hair and a pencil skirt), but doubted herself because of her lazy eye that was the result of having to wear an eye patch as a toddler, and so went to cosmetology school instead, and was a preschool teacher in her later years. She was a fierce prayer-warrior, lover of home decor, and a ray of sunshine. Sixteen years after her passing, I can still hardly think of her without tears springing to my eyes as I regret her absence all these years. I wish my husband could have met her, that my children could love her.
This mug has always been special to me, as it was the last thing she personally picked out for me. And for that reason, it has sat up in my cabinets all this time. I was too afraid to touch it. Too afraid to handle it, wash it, drink from it, not wanting to imagine my heartache if it broke. With each move, I wrapped it so carefully that it became an unrecognizable mound of paper and tape, and then unwrapped it and placed it up in its cabinet once we were settled in our new place, where it would sit in darkness and collect dust. But it occurred to me the other day that I've had it for almost twenty years and have only handled it with fear. Every time I look at it, it reminds me of my dearest Mimi, yet I hardly ever looked upon it because it was up in the highest cabinet in my kitchen, safe from harm!
So I took it down, washed it out, and poured myself some hot green tea with honey and oat milk. Wilder slept for two hours as I read a book, the sun pouring through the windows on that bright January morning. For what was perhaps the first time, I truly enjoyed that sweet mug given to me by Mimi almost twenty years ago.
I am no longer afraid - but it's about more than a mug. It's symbolic of some very tangible choices I have been making lately. I am choosing to be unafraid of starting. Unafraid of using the resources I have, creating beautiful things, unafraid of writing down the words that flutter around my brain almost constantly. For years I've stopped myself from taking steps or making choices for fear that I'll fail, that I'll not be as good as the next creator, that people will believe my words to be fluffy and pointless, or that I'll regret opening my heart and baring my soul to the world.
I am so tired of that. So over it. I'm 33 this year and feel good about that! I am so grateful for the life I've been given, for the fact that all of my loved ones are healthy, safe, and whole, and that there is so much about living that I enjoy. I am ready to let go - to live out loud and have not a care how anyone else perceives my art, whether it's writing or painting or weaving or what-have-you. That's what I love most about this life - creating. I need to do it every day to feel alive, and I will do it, and I will share it. Not because I believe my work to be unique or revolutionary or inspiring, but because it makes me feel alive.
I am taking my creativity out of its dark cabinet.
I am dusting it off and drinking it in,
and living it where people can see.
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