Hormonal Genius

A few weeks ago I did something I thought very grown up and mature of myself - I commissioned a painting from a painfully talented friend of mine. It was all very forward thinking and purposeful. We discussed sizes and scale and colors and mediums, we discussed the feelings I want from it and the emotions it would elicit. Once we were on the same page and the deal was done - I felt glorious! I felt immediately that I wanted the painting yesterday, but I knew that what I really wanted was for her to spend as much time as necessary on it so that it would be everything we both want it to be.


Then, I found out she was in the family way! What a wonderful and exciting thing - made even better by the fact that she was 20 weeks along before she even realized it!! She was halfway finished before she even got started! Lucky...


But what about my painting? How would this little dirt loving earth baby growing in her belly affect her art? I remember being pregnant with both of my boys - there was good and there was bad and toward the end of both there were some times that Gabriel would just rather forget - God Bless him for not running away when I was waddling about and could not have given chase.  Most of all I remember hormones - happy hormones and sad hormones, hormones that laughed uncontrollably and hormones that cried until my eyes swelled shut. These hormones coursing through my veins making me feel everything so much more intensely than I normally would.


I realized, rather quickly, just how lucky I was. If my painting had a fraction of that feeling, those emotions - my lord what a wondrous thing it would be! She is an artist down to the center of her being and now her being was double occupied! I can't wait to see this glorious piece (and I am pretty excited about the little hippie she is cooking too!)

I will admit though, the closest I got to artistic genius was 1 week before my due date when I locked my depressed crying self in the bathroom and stripped the paint off the cabinets with Scrubbing Bubbles (it totally worked). My husband thought I was crazy and maybe I was.