Well -- I received an email from an old friend and mentor today, and it's no use wondering who gave her my address when it's such a small town. Her name has come up several times amongst colleagues in the past few months, so inevitable is she. But I'm glad -- I've been too chicken-hearted to look her up after several years' lapse, though her studio is just blocks from my office.
Georgette is one of those rare women who both inspire and intimidate me. She is much older than I, certainly much wiser, I've flitted in and out of her life while she patiently, deliberately and joyfully does her own thing. She is a warm person, and someone who always shows interest in the people around her. She has a wonderful feel for the natural world with its dual pragmatism and mystery. She is a very talented artist. She has beautiful eyes! Like pine trees and granite. And she is Jewish, which inexplicably has always made her better than me in my mind. (She'd shake her head at that though.)
When I think of all the women I've attached myself to in one way or another, over the years, Georgette stands out. Maybe because we've never had a major conflict -- my relationships with other older female 'mentors' haven't fared well generally -- and too she has enough of her own energy and direction that there could never be any competition between she and I. She'll always have the experience and the authority to tell me what she thinks. But she's genuinely in no need of power, and it's amazing that she respects or admires anything I've done.
She too, like those books I mentioned, offered me something I desperately needed. Around 1995 and 1996 -- that's when she and I had a formal relationship. She instructed me, in a sense, let me hang around in her studio and look at her work, her life, the objects that inspired her. She looked at my drawings and encouraged a new direction for me. I paid her for her time, something she was quite clear about and it was certainly an act of discipline for me to do it then, when I had zero cash. I left town and got married before the relationship could deepen in a mentoring sense -- but I did reconnect with her for a little while when I first came back. And now -- I almost wish she'd take me on again, though that's a time past, perhaps.
It's always awkward when I admit to needing someone's love and approval. I'm such an idiot. I'm still so much a dope when it comes to emotional give and take. I don't think of this because of Georgette, specifically -- haven't seen her in years after all -- but I find myself reminded (again and again) of how much tension I feel in being an adult and yet wishing for guidance and comfort. Maybe it comes from not having close parent/grandparent relationships, as an adult. I'm always uncomfortable with that part of myself. It's the same dynamic that makes it hard to accept compliments and praise from my peers, or people I should be thinking of as peers. I must have a strange idea of what "grown-up" means.
Kae earlier today thanked me for a note I wrote to she and Mark; it was a Christmas note, and in it I tried to thank them for all the wonderful things they've done in the past year, for the church and for me. It was heartfelt but brief, and Kae said this morning that she read it at exactly the right time -- she evidently felt really down, or tired, or a little hopeless -- and she said it brought tears to her eyes. Wow. Kae is also one of those women whom I find inspiring, though not as intimidating, and to do anything for her that makes a difference in her life is a huge thing. HUGE. Because she has never failed in her kindness, or her wit, or her intelligence, and I can only aspire to that. Though it must be exhausting sometimes. And she describes Craig as "a small God." Where do I get off working for these people?
Honestly.
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