“Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses
Joey made me a piece of art for Mother’s Day in May. Due to the Covid lockdown and general lack of supplies in our area, she used brown construction paper and pastels.
It’s full of curves – the mother with the hoop earring, the moon, and the papaya. I loved the colour palette – browns, peaches, and oranges.
A feminine vignette.
My children have become better artists, bakers, seamstresses, and writers than me.
A curve is a line that deviates from straightness.
Not one of their path’s to who they are and who they are becoming have been straight. They have zigged and zagged. They have taken the sharpest of turns and also the widest left turns.
In the beginning, I wanted to know where they were going, to see the straightest path to the clearest destination. A finish line.
And now I am the one telling parents there is no finish line or the straightest path. There is only the beauty of the curve – the shape of their heart, molding into the curves and spirals of Life herself.
I look at her gift, tacked onto the wall, deserving of a proper frame and all I see if myself reflected in the eyes of my daughter.
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