Imagination, Re-parenting, and T-shirts | The Classic Midcentury Modern Hanging Art Mobile

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The Classic spinning in Neuss

On green

“But how can a color make you feel anything?” asked bird.

“How could it not?” replied toad.

Thoughts while making

Imagine standing in a sea of undulating green, waves of thigh-high grass billowing like silk in an unseen breeze.

Picture colors so full they wrap you in childhood memories, the good ones, juniper and sage, chartreuse and lime, moss and pine.

Feel the soft earth between your toes as you make a new path, the scent of soil, the buzz of bees, as on your back you watch a bluesky dream.

This is your world. Safe you are. To be. Just as you are. Just as you are.

I sat down to write about a memory from the first grade that came to me as I was packing mobiles today. It was the first day of soccer practice. My mom wrote “LEARY” in big letters on the back of my white t-shirt.

The kids all thought my name was Larry, and laughed because “why do you even have a name on your shirt?!” I was embarrassed and I never wanted to go back to that soccer field again.

Yet I played soccer for many, many years and that field – those fields – hold numerous similar memories … as those places we frequented as kids often do, holding emotional densities far greater than what appearance might suggest.

In the past, when this memory has bubbled up, I try to laugh about it, but I can remember, bodily, the sensation; the way the ground felt under my feet, the earth uneven, the grass withered and yellow.

“It’s time to re-parent that little boy,” she said. “It’s time.” And so, today, when that memory came, I welcomed him to it in greens and heartgolds, inviting him to feel excitement where once was fear, curiosity not embarrassment, the earth solid and steady, conspiring in the favor of a 7-year-old boy not against.

If you could pick a memory from an earlier you to re-parent, what would it be and what color would you paint it?