Artist's Date

The Artist’s Date-This is an idea from Julia Cameron’s books. What you do is pick something new to visit or do, once a week with the intention that the purposeful date will fuel the imagination. She proposes the activity as a way to fill up the tank of experiences and images in which you hope to draw upon in later works. This absolutely makes sense to me. I love the idea in theory, but the practice ends up proving to be a little difficult. My plan was to visit the clock shop today with my camera and sense of smell ready. I have a distinct idea of what such a shop should smell like, but perhaps I would be terribly off the mark. I hope for hints of must, laced together with the lemon pledge, cedar, spiced cologne and WD40.

I’ll have to wait until next week to find out because today, I made an impromptu decision to make my artist’s date the Chinese New Year exhibit at the library. Since I leave for China in less than a month, and I just started the process of putting together a Chinese Cultural group for Kai, I figured it would serve me well. After looking around a bit, the man at the front door approached me and asked if I wanted to know more about any parts of the exhibit.

I shared my trip with him, and the fact that our son is also from China. We spoke for about a half an hour. It turns out; he is a newly minted Professor from UCLA. Apparently he served as the personal tutor for Meg Ryan’s daughter from China. He just finished his PHD program and his wife is in medical school at IUPUI. He showed me pictures of his son, David, 2 and a half, who is living with his parents in Beijing right now. Imagine that, he was in California, his wife here in Indy, and his son and parents in Beijing.

We described our sons and laughed as we did so. I searched this man’s face for hints of disapproval of our adoption of Kai and found none. I blessed him a hundred times in my mind for the lack of judgment and curiosity. He shared with me David’s 100 day picture and why 100 days is a significant time for the Chinese with babies, and the traditions they perform on those days.

He gave me his card and some information on the Confucius Institute at IUPUI. It is amazing to me how many resources I’ve come across lately in my desire to learn more about China and to create a place for support and learning for Kai. This is the first time I have shared the adoption of Kai with a Chinese person and not felt inwardly nervous that they would be somehow upset with me. Just as I hope Kai grows into a better understanding of his own cultural identity, I too hope to grow in my own understanding of what it means to be a Caucasian mother of a son of Chinese decent. It is time for all of us to stretch out a little more and open ourselves up to this other facet of our family culture now.
I told Xiaoan Li that I would bring Kai back tomorrow. I want to go through the exhibit with Kai and also introduce him to Xianoan Li. Some days unfold with such deliberate richness that I want to sit and linger in the moment. My spirit softens and slides across the sharp the edges of fear. Today, that is how I feel, loose and light, excited and flexible. It feels as if a prayer is being answered, one note at a time.